“Subhi? We got to Subhi because...” I must ask Sam. I don’t know how much to reveal. “How did we get to Subhi?” I ask her.
“To Subhi? Harris gave us his name.”
“Aah. Yes, Harris,” Adeeb says in English. “Very good man.”
Sam nods. She doesn’t mention that she has never met him, or that her editors have begun to think that maybe he is not so good.
“I...want help...you...” Adeeb shakes his head, starts again in Arabic. “I wanted to help him more but he didn’t have so much time for me.”
I tell Sam this, and she looks puzzled. “But wasn’t Adeeb his fixer?”
“Were you not translating for him? Working for him?”
Adeeb nods. “Yes, I was working only for him, but he had others. At least four, I think.”
“Four fixers?” Sam asks. “At the same time? Who could afford that?”
Adeeb shrugs. “He had a lot of money. But we didn’t get paid every day. We got paid only on the days when we got some good information for him.”
“They were paid for providing him with information, Sam.”
“How’s that work? No information, no pay?”
“He met us in the morning at the Palestine Hotel, gave us ideas, and said if we came to him at the end of the day with something good, he will pay for it. We were all competing with each other for the information so we can be paid. And for me I think this wasn’t a good way for working, but otherwise I think Harris is a good man and if you—”
“Nabil, can you translate?”
They’re both talking at the same time and it’s starting to make me frustrated. I tell Sam I want to speak to him for a minute so that I can get it right. And she says fine, and leans forwards to take the tiny porcelain cup of tea Adeeb’s wife has left on the table in front of her.
“So, many of you were working for Harris?” I ask.
“I think so,” Adeeb says. “At least four that I know of.”
“And he paid you whenever you could get him information?”
“Exactly. Fifty dollars a day.”
“And if you didn’t get any information that day?”
“He would give me about 30,000 dinars, just for the transportation.”
I reach into my shirt pocket and take out my tiny notebook. “And so what kind of information did you get for him?” I assume this is the question Sam would ask, although I am not entirely sure.
“Small things. The day-by-day news. Anything I could find on Saddam and his sons. He said he needed me to be his eyes and ears because he couldn’t be everywhere.”
“And that’s it?”
“Subhi said he had important information and documents that would help Harris get a big story that would prove that Saddam was very corrupt. So Harris was very happy with that. At the end, he owed me for a day of work that he hadn’t paid, but he told me that he was out of money and would pay me back some other time. I guess it was because he had to pay a lot to General Akram for the documents.”
“He paid? I mean, he paid General Akram for the documents?”
Adeeb looks at me as if I have asked a silly question. “Of course he paid. This is how it works for everyone who wants documents. Akram collected reams of documents. And a lot of beautiful furniture. You’ll see.”
“Everyone paid...you mean there were others?” I make a few notes and he seems unsure he likes the fact that I am writing down what he says.
“Are you writing about me?”
“You? No, no.” I turn to Sam. “Are you hoping to write about him in the story?”
“I doubt it,” she says. “But at this point, I have no bloody idea what the story is. If we even have a story.”
“She says no. You can trust her.” I proceed to give Sam the highlights of what Adeeb said. I can see in her eyes that she’s a little frustrated again with my translation, but I think she’s also realizing that sometimes she needs to let me figure out how to go about things. And I see that Adeeb is unsure whether to believe me, and that maybe trust is not the reason he’s trying to help us.
I start again. “May I ask you something on a different subject?”
He opens his hands wide and shuts them.
“Who was the young man working in your barber shop?”
He smiles and raises his eyes, as if I’ve passed a test that shows I’m smart.
“He’s a son of the most powerful criminal family in the neighbourhood. I have to pay money to them to keep my shop open and not have anyone attack it. On top of that, the head of this family made me take in one of his sons as an employee. They said they want him to work, to learn a trade. But I’m sure they sent him to watch me and listen.”
“So you agreed?”
“Do you think I could say no?” His voice carries resignation in it, as if he didn’t even bother to resist. “I come from a very small family. Even if we have enough money, thank God, it doesn’t help. In fact, it makes it worse, because they think we are rich and so they target us. What do we have? A barber shop and a few grocery stores. Do you think it makes a man rich? Do you see a Mercedes parked outside?”
“Nabil?” Sam is smiling calmly.
“Excuse me, let me translate this for her.”
“It’s not necessary,” he says. “You want to know about General Akram.”
“That’s true.”
“What else do you need to know?”
“Let me check with her, if you don’t mind.”
I quickly give Sam a rundown of everything he’s said, and she begins to fire off questions.
“How did you meet Harris?”
“Someone introduced me to him at the Palestine Hotel.”
“If you don’t speak much English, how did you and Harris communicate?”
Adeeb smiles, as if he’s acknowledging her for catching on to something out of the ordinary. “Deutsch. We spoke in German.”
“How do you know German?”
“I lived in Germany for three years when I was younger. I have some cousins there who run a restaurant in Cologne. Harris spoke German very well.”
“What stories did you work on with Harris?”
“We didn’t work on any stories together. He asked me to get him information and to bring it to him. And he wanted documents.”
“What kind of documents?”
“Any documents. Anything we could find that was coming from Saddam’s offices but he said it had to be something useful that could prove something.”
“What do you think he wanted to prove?”
Adeeb shrugs. “That Saddam has big bombs that he could use to destroy America and Israel. Or that he was working with Al-Qaeda. But it was difficult. Everything was a mess. Papers everywhere, everybody fighting to take a box of what he could and run away. People would kill you for a box of paperwork.”
“How did General Akram come into the picture?”
He stares blankly. “I can’t remember. I only remember that Harris had heard about him and had wanted to see him.” He holds out his hand to Sam to indicate he would like a piece of paper. “I can give you his address. Why don’t you just go to General Akram and speak to him yourself?”
Sam tears a page out of her notebook and hands it over to him. Adeeb’s wife breezes in to pick up the second-to-last son, who starts to yell that he doesn’t want to go. She enlists the oldest son, who is probably eight or nine, to help carry him away. “But I want to hear,” he cries. “I want to hear them speak the infidel language!” He really called it that, using the word kafir and all. I’ll have to tell this to Sam later on, just because it’s so amusing.
“Do you know how much Harris paid to Akram?”
Adeeb shakes his head. “Thousands of dollars.”
“Thousands of dollars? Are you sure? That’s a lot of money for a journalist.”
“Maybe it was one thousand. I don’t remember.” He looks at Sam. “Why can’t you ask Harris? He is your colleague, rig
ht?” I translate this for Sam, and I see the hesitation, the look of uncertainty when, in a moment, you must decide: to lie or not to lie? Adeeb probably doesn’t realize that Harris is in trouble. He couldn’t know that if Sam’s editors confirm their suspicions that Harris paid for the documents, this will be even worse for Harris.
“Yes, of course,” says Sam. “We just can’t get in contact with him because communication is so bad right now. I can’t reach him.”
Adeeb nods several times. The room is quiet for a moment, and then our silence is punctured by the sound of one of the boys whimpering in his bed.
“I remember now,” Adeeb says.
“What do you remember?” I ask.
“How Harris learned about General Akram. But you must swear that you will not tell anyone I told you. No one.”
“Bismillah. In the name of God. I swear.” On Sam’s behalf, too, like her legal and spiritual representative.
“It was an odd chap named Suleiman. Suleiman Mutanabi. He was one of the fixers. He came to Harris at the Palestine Hotel and said he could put him in contact with a man who has good information. Lots of documents. So Suleiman took Harris there the first time.”
“Do you have any idea where this Suleiman is now?”
“No idea. He was from Syria originally, so people also call him Suleiman es-Surie. Just go and speak to General Akram himself.”
He wipes his forehead, grown damp even this late into the evening, and then dries his hand on his trousers so he can write.
“Go and see him, and if I can help you any more, please do come and visit me again.”
His pen scribbles across the paper, twice piercing a hole in it. Just as he finishes I notice a squarish blue blur on his hand. It looks like he had something tattooed on the skin between his thumb and forefinger, and then later tried, somewhat unsuccessfully, to have it removed. He must have noticed me staring, because he lifts his hand to eye level, turns it out, and smiles.
“It was a cross,” he says. “I was a Christian but I decided to become Muslim.” He gives the paper to Sam and retakes his beads, moving his fingers through them rapidly. His eyes roll over the perimeter of her body, looking while trying to look away. “Do you have any tattoos?”
I translate this for Sam. “He wants to know if I have tattoos?” She is amused.
“Yes.”
“The answer is no.”
“This very good,” Adeeb says, switching back to his spotty English. “Then you can marry fancy city man like this,” he smiles, putting a forearm on my shoulder and squeezing it roughly. “And to become Muslim should be very much easy for you, like for me.
Sam’s laugh emerges short and sharp, like the honk of a horn. Embarrassed, she lifts her hand, quickly covering her mouth, and one of Adeeb’s little boys begins to cry again.
~ * ~
19
Covering
It made sense to stop at a restaurant with Rizgar and Sam for dinner, but it’s also made me late. When I walk into the house, my parents and my sister are sitting around the radio. They are lit by two kerosene lamps, which gives them a strange yellow glow. My mother jumps up and puts her arms around me, and then takes my face in her hands. “Al-Hamdulilah,” she says. “Thank God you came back.”
“Of course I came back,” I tell her and kiss her cheek. I unbutton my damp shirt and walk towards my room.
“There’s dinner waiting for you in the kitchen,” my mother says. “Don’t you want?”
“Maybe later,” I say. “I want to have a shower first.”
“Don’t open your mouth when you’re showering,” Amal calls as I near the hallway. “And don’t let it get in your eyes. The water was coming out brown today and it smells funny. Baba says there’s a bacteria in it.”
Lately, when I come home at night, our house is like this — almost dark, without electricity. I think of Sam’s room at the Hamra, of all the foreigners who mill around the pool into the late hours, of the lights that are in the very pool itself, making it possible to swim at night. They just arrived and they have all the light in the world, while we, the native inhabitants, are sitting in the dark.
It is amazing the things you can manage to do without much light, when you are in a place that you know so well that you don’t really need to see. Amal calls out and asks if I want a torch, but I tell her no. If the water is brown, I’d rather not see it anyway.
The water is warm and it washes away layers of the day, and in my mind I can imagine how the dirt and dust look as they stream towards my feet and down the drain. I inhale deeply, but cannot detect the smell my sister is on about. Poor Amal. She has nothing to do these days but roam around the house and notice what’s wrong.
After, I lay in bed and fiddle with my own small radio, searching for a station that doesn’t have news. I’m forced to settle on Oum Kalthoum, whom I like but have never loved. She’s one of my father’s favourites, and to say you don’t like her is considered unpatriotic to the Arab cause. Nearly every song sounds like an elegy; every love ballad could easily be mistaken for a dirge. But it happens I like this one, Il Atlal, The Ruins, because the words were written by Ibrahim Nagi, who was a very talented Egyptian poet. Baba told me that after the Six Day War, An-Naksah (The Setback), this was played on the radio all the time — an ode to our losses.
A rapping on the door, and then the creaking of it opening. Baba stands in the doorway with a raised arm leaning on the frame. In the other, he holds a small gas lantern, one of the new ones he purchased in the past week.
“Can we talk for a bit? Are you feeling okay?”
“I’m fine,” I say. “I’m just tired.”
He walks in and takes the chair from my desk, dragging it closer to my bed. He turns it around, with its back towards me. The chair emits a groan of protest.
“Why don’t you eat what your mother made?”
I sit up and straighten out my back. “I ate in a restaurant with Sam on the way home. She was...we were hungry so we ate dinner at a restaurant on Arasat Street,” I say. “I can’t eat again.”
“Do you realize how hard your mother is working to try to keep things going around here? Do you know how difficult it is just to get fresh food now?”
“Of course I know. That’s why if I have a chance to eat with Sam, I will. It saves us a little.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Baba says. “Your mother will make food for you because she’ll always assume you’re coming home for dinner. Until you get married…”
“If there were a way to call you, I would.” I roll the ridges of the tuner beneath my forefinger and thumb, trying to get clearer reception.
“Ah, Oum Kalthoum. I thought you didn’t like her.”
“I don’t. What else am I going to listen to? I can’t get another station. When I save up enough money from working with Sam, we can buy our own generator. That’s what they have at all the hotels, so that they can have electricity all the time. Then we can do what we want in the house, and maybe we’ll even get a satellite like I promised for Amal so she can watch all the TV channels.”
“Yes, terribly important,” he says, which could be either serious or sarcastic, and I’m not sure which. He rests one arm across the back of the chair and in the light from his lamp, I see the wiriness of the hair on his arms and knuckles.
“We were in Fallujah all day and we didn’t have lunch. Everyone was hungry and she wanted me to eat with her. Actually, a very nice restaurant called Lathakiya. You know it?”
“I don’t like Syrian food,” he says. “Why would you go to Fallujah? I thought you were supposed to work as her translator in Baghdad.”
“Well, mostly Baghdad.”
“I don’t like you going to Fallujah.”
“It was fine. We didn’t have any problems. In fact, we were received very well by one of the tribal leaders.”
I like the picture I am presenting for my father. There is a thread of truth running through i
t, just like it is when the journalists write their stories. They choose a string of events and some words that were said, but they never present the full picture of all that transpired. Sam let me read her Abu Ghraib story the other day, and it had only a fraction of all that we saw and heard, stitched together like embroidery, so that you couldn’t tell what was missing.
Baba leans over and plucks the radio from the table. His thick thumb moves the volume louder for a minute, then back in the other direction, clicking it off.
Baghdad Fixer Page 17
