The Mirage

by Matt Ruff

  “I know what a great circle is,” Mustafa said gently, picturing a younger version of himself standing at the front of a classroom.

  “The effect is more pronounced in America,” the airman said. “In Washington, the Qibla direction is fifty-six degrees. And should you continue on to the west coast of the continent, you’d be facing almost due north when you prayed. Of course the cannibals in the Rocky Mountains would probably eat you before you got that far . . .”

  When they were airborne again, the pilot announced they’d be at Andrews Air Force Base in another five hours, around 9 p.m. local time. A flight attendant described the special landing procedure. To minimize the threat from ground-based missile attacks, the plane would stay above ten thousand feet until it was directly over the airfield, then spiral down quickly to the runway. “Especially in darkness, it may seem like we are out of control and about to crash, but God willing we’ll be fine, so please don’t panic.”

  Mustafa had more reading to do but decided to rest his eyes for a few minutes first, and fell into an uneasy sleep that lasted for the rest of the flight. When the cargolifter began its terminal dive, he dreamed he started awake to find the plane packed with Americans. In the seat beside him a woman was reciting a rosary in terror, and when Mustafa stood up and looked about the now strangely enlarged passenger cabin, he saw other frightened faces—some praying, some crying, some whispering covertly into cell phones. None of these people seemed able to see him, but that could change in a heartbeat, and he did not think it would be healthy to become the focus of all that fear.

  Struggling to keep his balance in the steeply angled aisle, he made his way to the front of the plane. Two Arab men in civilian dress stood guard outside the cockpit door, and with the certainty of dream Mustafa knew they were no more his allies than the Christians in the back. He passed ghostlike into the cockpit, where another Arab sat hunched over the controls.

  They were very close to the ground. It was morning, not night, and Mustafa could clearly see the American capital across the river ahead. He also saw an airport off to the right, but they weren’t turning towards it. Instead they were headed straight for a large pentagonal building on the near side of the river. This was deliberate. The pilot had the plane under control and he was calm, smiling like a man on his way into paradise.

  “Hey, moron!” Mustafa shouted at him. “You’re going to murder us all, what’s wrong with you?”

  The pilot gave no answer, just dipped the nose of the plane a bit farther. Mustafa made a grab for the controls and woke for real aboard the cargolifter even as its wheels bumped the runway at Andrews.

  Across the aisle, Amal let out a sigh of relief and then laughed. “Now that’s a landing!” she said. Samir, tearing at his armrests in the next row forward, added: “Already I hate this country.”

  THE LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA

  A USER-EDITED REFERENCE SOURCE

  Green Zone

  The Green Zone is a heavily fortified region of Washington, D.C., that served as the headquarters of the Coalition Provisional Authority. It measures roughly 10 square kilometers and is surrounded by a blastproof concrete wall topped with electrified razor wire. Entry into the Zone is only possible via helicopter or through one of seven tightly controlled checkpoints.

  The Green Zone includes the National Mall, a large open park space lined with monuments and government buildings that is claimed by some sources to have been the original inspiration for the Zone’s name. By 2004, however, with the American insurgency in full swing, “Green Zone” was understood to be a reference to the fact that this was an oasis of relative safety in an increasingly dangerous area. The rest of Washington—and America—became, by extension, “the Red Zone.”

  In January 2009, control of the Green Zone passed from the Coalition Authority to the newly installed American government. Many of the Coalition troops have since withdrawn to bases outside Washington. However, a sizeable garrison of UAS Marines remains within the Zone to safeguard the Arabian, Persian, and Kurdish embassies, and to help American security forces defend against the continuing insurgent attacks.

  NOTABLE SITES IN THE GREEN ZONE

  · The White House

  · The Capitol Building (undergoing reconstruction)

  · The Washington Monument

  · The CSA Treasury Building

  · The Smithsonian Creation Science Museum

  · The Watergate Complex

  Mustafa woke again, from a dream of smokeless fire. He was lying on a four-poster bed with an embroidered canopy. Samir was a snoring lump on a second bed to his left, and to his right was a massive oak chest of drawers. A sign atop the chest, just legible in the faint glow of a nightlight, claimed that all three pieces of furniture were the onetime property of Pope Urban II. As for the room, it had originally been an office; looking between the bedposts Mustafa could see a windowed door, the words ASSISTANT CURATOR painted in reverse on the glass.

  He sat up, remembering a helicopter ride from the airbase and a hasty meet-and-greet with a Marine Colonel Yunus who had been assigned to act as their host. Mustafa estimated he’d gotten to sleep between eleven and midnight. His watch now said 11:30, which, whether a.m. or p.m., seemed unlikely.

  He got up and slipped out quietly. The hall outside the office brought him to a room painted with a mural of a deluge. Three of the walls showed only clouds and rain and wind-tossed waves; inset against the fourth was a scale model of an ark. A bearded white patriarch stood at the ark’s stern, gazing towards the center of the room, where a jagged pedestal like the tip of a drowning mountain jutted up from the blue carpet. The skeleton of a dinosaur with sickle-shaped claws on its hind feet was set on the pedestal, poised as if it were about to take a leap at the ark, but the placard at the pedestal’s base suggested it would not make it. “Velociraptor antirrhopus,” the placard read. “Extinct, 2349 B.C.”

  A doorway in the wall opposite the ark led to a gallery containing the bones of many more of the Flood’s victims. The gallery had a skylight as well, and looking up Mustafa saw stars.

  Wandering farther through the museum, he came upon Colonel Yunus in a room that looked like a tourism ad for Giza. “Good morning,” the colonel greeted him.

  “So it is morning, then,” Mustafa said.

  “Yes, about half past four. Were you able to sleep at all?”

  “Some. The accommodations are quite comfortable.” Thinking of the velociraptor: “And unusual.”

  The colonel smiled. “I don’t know how much you remember from our conversation last night, but this building really is a storehouse of wonders. During the initial occupation a large number of troops were housed here, in part to prevent looting. Now that the Americans have retaken control the museum is mostly unoccupied, but a few of us have been allowed to remain as unofficial caretakers until the new government has the money to reopen the place.”

  “Thank you for sharing it with me.”

  “You are welcome. I was just about to pray. Would you like to join me?”

  “I would, thank you.”

  “And your friend?”

  “Samir is not observant, I’m afraid.”

  “Ah. Well,” the colonel said, pointing, “there’s a washroom that way, and you’ll find some spare prayer rugs tucked behind Pharaoh’s palace.”

  “You pray in here?”

  “Sometimes, yes.” Smiling again: “I have a theory that a Muslim helped design this room. It turns out if you draw a straight line from the Sphinx to the part in the Red Sea over there, it corresponds almost exactly to the Qibla direction.”

  “Interesting symbolism,” Mustafa said.

  “Yes, there’s a lot of that in the Green Zone. It’s a weird place.”

  Amal woke among lionesses.

  At last night’s meeting with the colonel she’d been sufficiently alert to understand that Mustafa and Samir were being given VIP accommodations while she was being relegated to women’s quarters, which annoyed her until she rea
lized which women she’d be bunking with.

  The Women’s Combat Support Unit, aka the Lionesses, had been formed in 2007 as part of the broader counterinsurgency strategy known as the Surge. In addition to their reluctance to show gratitude, most Americans had a deep-seated cultural aversion to having their homes ransacked, but research had found that a feminine presence could help moderate this. Lionesses were assigned in pairs to accompany Marines on patrol in the Red Zone. When a house was searched for weapons or insurgents, it was the Lionesses who interviewed the occupants, preserving the honor of the women and keeping the men calm; they could often get answers where a male interrogator would be met by stony silence, or violence. The Red Zone being the Red Zone, violence did still sometimes occur, but as their nickname implied, Lionesses could also fight, and with a ferocity that took insurgents by surprise.

  They lived along with the Marine garrison troops in the former residential and business complex adjacent to the Arabian embassy. Most of the male Marines occupied apartments in the Watergate East and South buildings; the Lionesses were housed on the top two floors of the Watergate Hotel, which had been turned into a high-security women’s dorm.

  It was like college, but with more guns. Amal shared a room with a girl from Nablus named Zinat. Barely nineteen, Zinat had followed her six brothers into the military in order to earn a scholarship and pursue an engineering degree. When Amal asked what sort of engineering she was interested in, Zinat said, “Cars. Fast cars.”

  Zinat kept a picture of her family taped above her bunk. A second photo showed Zinat and several other Lionesses gathered around the Persian war correspondent Christiane Amanpour, who’d done a special report on the women’s unit earlier this year. Zinat stood to Amanpour’s right, cradling a .50-caliber sniper rifle that was almost as big as she was. “Do you bring this weapon on patrol?” Amal asked.

  “No, that was just for the photo,” Zinat said, sounding a bit wistful. “We were at the combat range and I talked the gunnery sergeant into letting me pose with it . . . If you’d like, I could probably take you over there for some practice shooting.” She raised an eyebrow. “They’ve got flamethrowers, too.”

  “That sounds like fun,” Amal said, less interested in flamethrowers than in locating Salim. But perhaps this girl could help her with that. As for what she would do once she actually found her son . . . Well, Amal was still working on that. One step at a time.

  Reveille for the troops was a muezzin’s call piped through the Watergate intercom system. After washing up, Amal followed Zinat to the top-floor lounge that served as the women’s prayer room. Attendance at prayer was voluntary, but it looked as though most of the Lionesses, save the few who were Christians or Jews, were there. The majority were Zinat’s age, but among them were a number of older career Marines.

  The Lionesses’ commander was a fifty-two-year-old from Yemen named Umm Husam, who also served as the women’s prayer leader. As the last of her charges entered the room, she turned to face the northeast wall and raised her hands beside her head.

  “God is great,” Umm Husam began.

  The main banquet room in the Watergate Hotel was now a Marine chow hall. A portion of the seating area had been reserved for the Lionesses, and during Christiane Amanpour’s visit that section of the hall had been cordoned off by folding screens. Today, with no reporters present, the screens had been exchanged for orange traffic cones, and even these were largely ignored, the women and men fraternizing openly with only an occasional disapproving glance from Umm Husam.

  At a table just on the men’s side of the divide, Mustafa, Samir, and Amal took breakfast with Colonel Yunus, Zinat, and two male Marines. Mustafa asked a question about the African-American civilians working the serving line; like the iconic homeowner in Amal’s pamphlet, they were all wearing tri-cornered hats.

  “The tricorne is a symbol of the Minutemen,” Colonel Yunus explained. “Most of our support staff are former National Guard. We give them jobs to discourage them from taking up arms against us. The hats are a touchy subject—insurgents like to wear them, too—but we’re trying to win hearts and minds so we don’t make a fuss about it.”

  “What kind of Christians are they?” Mustafa asked next. “My reading suggested that black Americans are more often Protestant than Catholic, but it didn’t say what denominations they favor.”

  “I’m afraid I know nothing about Protestant denominations,” Colonel Yunus said. “But these men aren’t all Christian. Some of them are Muslim.”

  “Muslim?” said Samir.

  “Yes. Islam is still a minority faith in America, but it has made inroads, particularly among the marginalized.”

  “Which sect of Islam?” Mustafa wondered. “Sunni or Shia?”

  The colonel seemed disappointed by the question. “Surely that’s of no consequence. Islam is Islam.”

  “I agree,” said Mustafa, “but still I’m curious.”

  The colonel shrugged. “If it were considered polite to inquire, I imagine most would answer Sunni.”

  “That’s interesting,” Amal said, guessing at Mustafa’s train of thought. “If they’re Sunni Muslims, that would make them eligible for membership in Al Qaeda, wouldn’t it?”

  “Al Qaeda!” Zinat snorted laughter. “What fantasy is this?”

  Samir looked alarmed. “You really think Bin Laden would recruit Americans?”

  “If I might change the subject a moment,” Colonel Yunus said, clearly uncomfortable with this turn in the conversation. “I’d like to talk a bit about your mission here . . .”

  “Of course,” said Mustafa.

  “I’ve discussed the matter in some depth with Lieutenant Fahd.” The colonel indicated one of the other Marines at the table. “The address you are interested in visiting is about thirty kilometers from here. There are insurgents in the vicinity—they’ve been quiet lately, but we know they are still there, and if we try to secure the area in advance it might just encourage them to mount an assault. Lieutenant Fahd proposes instead that we dispatch you with a light reconnaissance force—four Humvees, plus air support—and try to get you in and out before the insurgents can react. Do you know how much time you’ll need on site?”

  “It depends what we find there,” Mustafa said. “Obviously we won’t stay any longer than necessary.”

  “Very well,” Colonel Yunus said. “I’ll reserve some additional forces in case it does become necessary to secure the area—or in case there’s trouble. This will take another twenty-four hours to arrange. I suggest you spend today resting, and be ready to leave tomorrow after breakfast.”

  “Thank you. That will be fine.”

  “If you’d like some diversion, I can have one of my men give you a tour of the Green Zone. Or if you don’t mind waiting while I take care of a few matters, I can show you around myself.”

  “Sir,” Zinat said. “Amal has expressed interest in visiting Potomac Park. With your permission I’d be happy to take her.”

  “The combat range?” The colonel gave Amal a quizzical look, but then shrugged. “Of course . . . If that’s what you wish.”

  He said something else but Amal didn’t hear it. She was staring at the chow line, where the ghost of her father was bantering with a black man in a tri-cornered hat.

  The ghost was not Shamal as she had known him. This was the young Shamal, a newly minted BU grad working off his ROTC scholarship, still a year or two away from meeting the ambitious woman from Maysan Province who would become his wife. The uniform was wrong—he’d been an Army cadet, not a Marine—but other than that he might have stepped right from the family photo album, so uncanny was the resemblance. Likewise his mannerisms—the way he stood, the way he tilted his head to listen, the easy way he laughed, which would become less easy as time and Saddam wore him down—were all just as Amal remembered.

  Zinat saw the ghost too. While Amal sat motionless, fearful of dispelling this vision with a careless gesture, the Lioness stood up, cupped her hands to her
mouth, and called out: “Hey! Salim! Over here!”

  “Target right!”

  This Minuteman was a white American, with big teeth and a big nose, angry eyes, and slashing eyebrows beneath a tricorne that looked a size too small for him. Like the restaurant in whose window he had so suddenly appeared—a painted stage flat adorned with golden arches—he was also two-dimensional. And he was armed with a revolver, which made him a bad guy: Amal pulled the trigger on her rifle and put three bullet holes in a tight grouping between his eyes. The Minuteman continued to glare at her for another full second before succumbing to his wound and dropping out of sight.

  A chime sounded and Amal walked another ten paces down “Main Street”—actually an indoor lane lined with fake buildings. Her next target swung out sideways from behind a building marked KRISPY KREME. He had the same exact face as the Minuteman, but instead of a tricorne he wore a jersey with the word REDSKINS on it. “Target left!” Amal said. But the man was holding a soda cup, and after double-checking that the straw wasn’t really a lit fuse, she held her fire. After three seconds, the man ducked back into cover.

  The rules of the game were simple. There were four kinds of targets—Minuteman, sports fan, woman, child—each holding one of four objects—revolver, pipe bomb, daisy, or soda cup. The goal was to shoot only those targets holding weapons. Hit three unarmed adults or one unarmed child, and you lost. Miss even one target holding a gun, and you lost. Miss a target holding a pipe bomb, and everyone on the shooting course lost.

  Two of the course’s four lanes were down for maintenance, so Zinat sat out while Amal and Salim played. To keep from shooting each other, they advanced side-by-side and announced the appearance of each new target before deciding whether to pull the trigger.

  “Target left!” Amal called out again, as a woman in a cocktail dress appeared in one of the windows of the Krispy Kreme. The woman was holding a daisy, but Salim had just called a target of his own and was firing, so Amal imagined she saw a revolver cylinder and put a three-round burst in the woman’s ample bosom. A buzzer sounded and an X appeared on the scoreboard at the end of Amal’s lane. It was her second strike.