Crossing the Wire

by AnnaMaria Cardinalli

  The plan worked, with one major surprise. It wasn’t the Music department that wanted my research, or the Institute of Latino Studies, to which I had applied, but the Theology department that welcomed me.[3] I couldn’t absorb this.

  Notre Dame’s doctoral programs in Theology are renowned, small, and incredibly competitive. Most doctoral students had majored in the subject their entire academic career, and I wasn’t the kind of girl anyone could picture in the Theology department of anywhere. However, academically, I was serious as anyone could be.

  I had excelled in my studies before the accident, but Notre Dame was going to stretch me in ways I could not have anticipated. In the end, I had to take my research in a new direction to fit the parameters of the program of which I became a part. Though many strange turns that had guided my path so far, this alteration in plans was perhaps the most critical in my eventually finding myself in Afghanistan.

  A major part of my research began to center on the history and culture of the three religions that converged in medieval Spain—Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. I became interested in why the three cooperated when they did, and what motivated them to violence when they committed it. I found history reflected in the faith traditions of living descendants of those who fled the Spanish Inquisition to northern New Mexico. As I became interested in people, rather than documents, as sources, I began to become engaged with ethnographic field technique and other means of eliciting people’s guarded stories.

  All of this began before September 11th, but as I sat on the 7th floor of the Hesburgh Library, fighting tears of horror as I watched the second tower fall on a tiny TV with my classmates, I understood what was happening. From that moment, I began to think about my research in a new light.

  Simultaneously, while I was at Notre Dame, I ran into a friendly Army officer who drove a fast red convertible. The kind of car he had didn’t impress me nearly as much as the fact that he had a car. I did not. I often walked for groceries in the brutal South Bend winters. When I was with him, listening to him tell me about the Army Intelligence program and how I should join, I did not have to walk.

  Mom and Angelo and me at Notre Dame.

  Nevertheless, I really was listening, and his words started working on the grateful and patriotic streak in my Italian-American soul. I had a horrendous fight with my Mom, who I adored. We had almost never fought before, and I was stunned by her vehemence on this one matter. She had never asked a promise from me, but now she demanded just one—that I never join the military. I know she was simply worried over my safety. Rather than hurt her, I made the promise.

  In the meantime, I completed my dissertation at 24 and graduated from Notre Dame as the youngest person ever awarded a Ph.D. from the institution. I signed with an agent who booked concert and lecture tours for me on the university circuit. I was making a respectable living as a classical musician, which is a feat, given how impossibly small the industry is. But war was underway, and convertible-man’s words continued to eat at me.

  El Duo Duende in our days of “Flamenco Steel.”

  Then, the elusive possibility of mainstream musical popularity appeared again. After over 20 years of never seeing one another, the only person who ever influenced my guitar playing called when he began to hear my name on the concert circuit. It was Craig Alden Dell, the teacher I had when I was three years old. He was a reclusive but brilliant player who was a favorite of both Segovia and Sabicas, the diametrically-opposed kings of the classical and flamenco styles. Within a week of getting reacquainted, we performed together and were greeted with an uproarious crowd reaction at the West Coast Guitar Festival.

  We were an entertainingly odd pairing but an ideal duet, and we had representation almost immediately. Television and news features abounded. Reviewers were wildly complementary, referring to us as a modern Presti & Lagoya. (You really have to be a music geek to know the reference, but it is very flattering.)

  Then, in a last-minute decision as headliners for the East Coast Guitar Festival, we performed our flamenco set on rock-style steel-stringed guitars. It was an obviously reckless idea that resulted immediately in bloody hands and damaged instruments, but the drama caught audiences on fire. Two “El Duo Duende” CD’s were issued immediately, one titled “Flamenco Steel,” for which there was even a promotional tie with Harley-Davidson! We were poised for a popular crossover, when a shoulder injury requiring immediate surgery and prolonged recovery meant Craig could not tour. CD’s do not sell without concerts to promote them, so no income would come from the duo.

  Simultaneously, my parents separated, though they remained fantastic friends, when my father, with great integrity, came out as gay. With a situation drastically changed and our finances precarious, Mom and I made an agreement to work together to hang on to the Santa Fe property that was home. However, with the end of the duo, my musician’s salary seemed clearly too erratic to make my monthly commitment.

  A surprising solution presented itself when an earnest man in a turban appeared in a television commercial. His words echoed those that the Army officer with the red convertible had spoken not so very long ago. The FBI, with their regular federal paychecks, was recruiting heavily for individuals with advanced degrees and cultural/religious expertise. I soon found myself in a tasteful grey suit—a far stretch for my usual sense of style, which typically involved leopard print—and going to work just outside of Washington, D.C.

  I trained as an intelligence analyst at the FBI Academy and was assigned to the Iraq Unit, where I was soon directly involved in counterterrorism issues both overseas and on U.S. soil. We were the real-life model for the wildly-exaggerated television series 24, which was popular at the time. (“Agent Jack Bauer” and producers from the show would actually get cleared to visit our work location. The show’s “CTU” was the Bureau’s “CTD,” of which the Iraq Unit was a vitally important part due to U.S. war efforts.)

  Though I can’t say a great deal more, I was very proud to contribute to the counterterrorism mission in particular. I was also exhausted, as I would work long days to free up certain Fridays to allow me to travel to perform concerts and return to work without missing time—but Mom and I were succeeding in our commitment to hang on to Santa Fe.

  Then, as it turned out, I ended up going to Iraq to avoid jail. Bizarre as it seems, it was perhaps the only set of events that would have ever made peace between my Mom and I over the matter. It, and all that followed, was also the only set of events that could ever have lead me to Afghanistan—a possibility that had not yet even appeared on the horizon of my thoughts.

  A request was circulating for FBI personnel to deploy to Iraq in support of the Joint Special Operations Command. Given that command’s responsibilities, it was an incredible opportunity. I considered volunteering and was preliminarily selected for a rather coveted slot. I reasoned that I wasn’t joining the military, just helping.

  There were good reasons to go. I was intrigued by the prospect of seeing the culmination of my education and work play out “on the ground,” and I didn’t feel right shying away from risks that some of my colleagues were willing to take. Plus, the overtime and danger pay meant that I might be able to afford to return to Chicago to study with Janice more frequently when I came home—a dream that my grey-suit wearing life seemed to be taking farther and farther away.

  My friends in the unit, trying to get in their best shape before deploying, took to organizing an extreme fitness plan. They invited me to join in while I continued to consider my decision. I was fit only because I did not have a car and couldn’t afford much food. I walked 4. 5 miles to work and 4. 5 miles back every day, and I took up running for a faster commute.[4]

  However, I understand now that someone my size and shape was never intended to do things that 6'-something ex-military muscle men do easily. I enjoyed watching them do it, but I broke my foot trying. Then, not realizing it was broken, I ran until I damaged it to the point that I was relegated to a ridiculous contraption of a
cast by evening.

  It was three days before Christmas when I broke my foot. The next day, I was scheduled to visit the dentist, who botched a procedure to the point that, between my foot and my teeth, I was dizzy with pain. I consoled myself with the assurance that on Christmas Eve, I was flying home.

  I stood in the airport security line hurting and dazed. I almost never take medication, but I was on a cocktail of pills for my various issues. When I approached the screener, she asked if I had any metal on my person. With my mind completely blank, I said no.

  I walked through the metal detector and beeped. The screener asked why. I guessed that my walking cast had metal parts. She waved me through and “wanded” me. I still beeped. My broken foot didn’t beep, but my bra beeped. She gave me a shy pat-down, and found nothing. “Well, that’s one heck of an underwire,” the screener observed to me as she waved me out of the checkpoint.

  As I walked into the terminal, I slowly processed how strange a conversation that had been. Why was the screener so interested in my bra? Then it occurred to me. The knife I had casually stashed earlier was still there. If only I had changed my clothes as I had intended, I would have remembered to take it out.

  Of course, this was not Grandma’s beautiful protection knife that I would wear in Afghanistan. This was a little pocket knife I carried as a family memento from our last picnic. It, like my rosary and some cash, was tucked in my bra because my outfit lacked pockets and I wasn’t carrying a purse.

  I spun on my heel (the good one) and returned to the screener. “Ma’am, ma’am!,” I called out in earnest, suddenly horrified that I had violated a security rule, “I’m so sorry! I completely forgot, but I had this on me. Let me give it to you now.”

  “You need to wait here while I get my supervisor,” she responded sternly while snatching the sentimental little knife Mom had given as we lunched on the lawn and laughingly struggled to open a bottle of wine when I graduated from Notre Dame. The supervisor came out and offered to get me a FedEx envelope so I could send the knife home.

  The screener fumed and took him aside, making wild gestures. Shortly, I realized that the screener had called the Airport Police. They descended on me and kept referring to the “weapons incident” on their radios. I was being viewed as a potential terrorist by the Police. For the first time in my life, I was arrested and led away.

  Eventually, a nice Policewoman feeling the Christmas spirit released me on my own recognizance if I agreed to appear in court after the holidays. In frantic tears, I made a phone call. “Mom, I just got arrested!” Mom, despite all her efforts to be sympathetic, started giggling.

  The more I tried to explain how it had all happened, the harder she started laughing. The more earnestly I described how this was going to ruin my life, the more into hysterics she slipped. “Just come home, Chica,” she managed to get out. “God will help, and it will work out fine.”

  I returned to DC after the holidays fortified by my family’s encouragements, missing some teeth, and determined to hire a lawyer who would work for what little savings I had. I also looked up the violation with which I was charged. It stated that no person was allowed to carry a switchblade or a Bowie knife in the secure portion of an airport. I was innocent of the charge! My little picnic knife of perfectly legal dimensions and features.

  Instead of offering any word like this in my defense, however, my lawyer put me on the stand and asked, “Have you ever been physically attacked?” He must have been trying a fancy lawyer tactic to make me seem innocent. (I didn’t need to seem innocent. I actually was.)

  When I seemed surprised by the question and hesitated uncomfortably, he asked with blunt impatience, “Have you ever been violently raped?” I was prepared to speak about blade lengths and product specifications. Taken aback, but finding myself under oath, I answered a reluctant but honest “yes.”

  Things could have not gone worse for me from that point. The prosecutor launched an unimaginable tirade into my character. Knowing absolutely nothing about me (because my lawyer had said nothing), he painted me as a revenge-obsessed woman who carried around a tiny legal picnic knife so I could attack an arbitrary innocent victim in an airport when I finally “snapped.” Shocked at both the absurdity and the cruelty of his statements, I found unexpected tears streaming down my cheeks, which he used deftly to prove his point.

  Gavel swinging, the judge swiftly declared me guilty and sentenced me to six months in jail. Again, no help came from my lawyer. However, following the verdict, it was finally permissible to mention my federal employment. I begged the lawyer to say anything that might serve in defense of my character. I suggested mentioning my degree in Theology, my exemplary previous record, or my loyal federal service. What my own lawyer said was this: “Even though this is clearly a woman of questionable moral character, she may be deploying to Iraq, and a six-month sentence would prevent her from fulfilling this service to the country.”

  I was not yet actually scheduled to deploy. I still had that decision to make, and it truly depended on making peace with my family. The judge gave me an option.

  I could be booked as guilty but allowed to go Iraq. However, if I chose not to go or did not complete the full length of my deployment, I would be obligated to serve out the entire six-month sentence in jail. Just like in the old movies, I could either go to war or to jail.

  I had no money left to appeal, and given the way the trial had gone, I couldn’t be sure a new trial would go any better. My lawyer assured me it would not given my “background,” which would inevitably come up again. He himself had bought completely into the prosecutor’s argument and urged me to take the judge’s deal. “Just go downstairs now and let yourself be booked.”

  Still, I had a few days to decide what I would do, and I needed to clear my head. My heart stung at the idea of being handcuffed, fingerprinted, and held to bargain my own release. I almost wanted to go to jail rather than call myself “guilty” in the particular way the prosecutor had.

  I hobbled outside the courthouse emotionally drained and hungry. It was almost three o’clock in the afternoon, and I hadn’t even eaten breakfast. Like a mirage, there was a hot dog vendor on the street ahead of me.

  I love hot dogs inordinately. For five dollars, I could have two dogs, a bag of chips, and a soda. I had spent all my savings and my whole monthly budget on the lawyer, but I had five dollars. (Yes, it was tucked in my bra.) It was literally my last five dollars until I was paid two weeks later, but at that moment, I couldn’t think of anything more worthwhile on which to spend it than that feast.

  I got my hot dog special and headed for the train back to work. As I stood waiting for the train and trying to work out my decision, I took one glorious bite. Then, an angry woman in a security uniform approached me. “Miss, there is no food allowed in this Metro station,” she said. I apologized profusely for having forgotten the rule and offered to leave.

  “You won’t be walk’n anywhere in this station, even to leave, while you’re carry’n that food,” she said. Then she pitched my lunch into the garbage. “Maybe now you’ll remember for next time,” she added with a flourish.

  I said a silent prayer that one of the homeless denizens of DC would find those delicious dogs before they got cold. The security lady kept a close eye on me as I left, just to make sure I didn’t make a break to reclaim my lunch, which I peered back at sadly.

  I made a phone call. “Mom,” I said despondently, “they took my hot dogs,” as if that explained everything. This time she didn’t laugh. Then I did explain everything. “Do you know what you’re going to do?” she asked gently. Though I was truly sorry that deploying was against her wishes, I felt that I only had one real sensible option.

  “Mom, forgive me. I’m going back to turn myself in, and then I’ll have to go to Iraq.” Instead of fighting with me, her words were the first reassuring ones I had heard all day. “Don’t worry, Chica. God will help, and it will turn out fine. Besides, it’s very Carmen of you, goin
g to jail and all. Don’t flirt with the guards. Or maybe do.” This time I laughed.

  I thought of Carmen, walked with my head high, signed some paperwork regarding fines and fees, and turned myself in for booking. As I was led away and fingerprinted, I smiled and shared wry winks with the new friends I was making in holding. I had the tasteful grey suit and they had the thigh-high faux-leather boots, but it seemed we now shared the label of “women of questionable moral character,” and I suspected it was as unfairly earned by them as it had been by me.

  Though it would be several months before I even began considering going to Afghanistan after Iraq, this was one of my first windows of insight to the far more unreasonable experience of women in Afghanistan—an experience that would later become critical to my understanding of the people I would eventually come to know. I wasn’t guiltless. I had made a very real mistake by having the knife. However, it wasn’t my possession of the knife that had convicted me as a criminal—it was the dispersion cast upon my character based upon a circumstance beyond my control and in some way essentially related to my gender. This dispersion would never have applied to a man.

  I made it back to work by early evening, and my Unit, as usual, was still there. I told them the court’s findings and officially signed my intent to deploy. (The podiatrist had already given medical clearance on my broken foot, saying it would be healed by the time we left.) I felt resolved. I then tried to subtly scour the facility for food that might have been left over from any office parties. I almost broke down in tears again when I realized with what kindness my boss had saved me a plate.