Baghdad Fixer

by Prusher, Ilene

  “You can always trust us. We know the way.”

  She nods a few times. “Also, there’s something else I’ll never forget after that day in the elevator.”

  “What’s that?”

  “My grandmother lived in 3G.”

  I laugh and she elbows my arm, then withdraws it.

  “What was her name?”

  “Her name?”

  “Your grandmother’s name.”

  “Sarah.”

  “Oh, right, you said that. You know this is also a Muslim name? My grandmother’s name was Zahra. It almost sounds the same, no?”

  “Yeah,” she says, “is it?”

  “No, Zahra means flower. And she was just like that. Like a stubborn desert flower.” I look at Sam. “What was your grandmother like? What was the smell you were looking for?”

  “Oh, you know how grandmothers smell.”

  “No, I mean, what did she cook?”

  Sam turns away, looking back to the balcony. “I think the B-GAN’s probably ready now.”

  “Wait, tell me. What do grandmothers in America cook?” I am imagining the masghouf that Grandma Zahra made, and also the slightly spicy kubbeh from my mother’s side, from the Samawa area, and I want to know what real, home-cooked food would taste like in America.

  “I hardly remember,” she shrugs. “It was so long ago. All I can imagine now is the smell of that chicken tikka I ordered from room service. Remind me not to do that again. Y’alla,” she says, and is already halfway across the balcony. She gestures for me to come over to her B-GAN, sitting on the roof along with a dozen or so others, half-open to the sky like oysters on a great white beach. “Let me teach you how to turn this puppy on so if the day comes, you’ll know what to do with it,” she says. She runs her finger over the tiny lights on the panel, clearing a coating of dust from the machine. Two black helicopters, with propellers at either end looking like giant locusts against the darkening sky, whirl overhead. “Children,” she pronounces in an artificially deep and authoritative voice, fiddling with the tilt of the satellite receptor with both hands, “don’t try this at home.”

  ~ * ~

  33

  Fiddling

  In the kitchenette, Sam opens the refrigerator and pulls out what looks like a tall, green can of soda. She holds it up. “Beer?”

  “Oh. Uh, no thanks.”

  “All right then. More Carlsberg for me.” She detaches the ring-pull with a psht and takes a double-sip. “I think you worry too much, Nabil,” she says. “You know, we’re getting really close to the bottom of all of this.”

  “Sam.” She’ll think you’re a poofter. She’ll think you re silly. “If you want my honest opinion, I think this is all becoming... majnoun. You know that word? Crazy. Don’t you think your editors would understand that if you explained it to them?”

  Sam sits and drops her head back over the top of the sofa. She coughs up a puff of air. “Understand what?”

  “That what you’re doing is dangerous. Aren’t they worried about you?”

  She busies herself with drinking the beer, which is not one of the things I picked up for her in the Al-Wahde Supermarket, which has plenty of foreign products. There are small Christian-run liquor shops in town, and I guess the journalists have found their way to them. “Sure,” she finally says. “I’m sure they are. But they need this story done. They leave us with a lot of personal autonomy. They just...leave it to us. We can decide whether to say no.”

  “Did you ever say no?”

  Sam looks at me sideways. “No, what?”

  “As in, ‘no, I won’t do that story.’ Or, ‘no, I won’t go there because there’s a war going on.’”

  She rolls her eyes, and her arms fold in on each other. She seems smaller, yet stronger. “No, I haven’t. But that’s not the point.”

  “Sam, everyone in America is supposed to be free to do as he pleases. And you have all your civil rights, rights no one in this country has ever had. So if you’re free, why do you have to do things you don’t want to do?”

  She stares at me for a moment, and then turns her hands out. It reminds me of one of the motions we use when we pray. “I don’t. I don’t do anything I don’t want to do. I chose to do this.”

  “You mean, you chose to come to Iraq? To cover the war?”

  “Well, more or less. They asked me to come, and I said yes.”

  “Did you have to say yes?”

  Sam reaches for the box of Parliament cigarettes sitting on the table. It’s probably the same pack that Carlos left behind - the one Sam cursed about the other day. She slides one out, runs it under her nose, inhales and closes her eyes, like the tobacco has jarred something in her memory that makes her feel good. She puts the cigarette in her mouth, sucks on it unlit, then takes it out and breaks it in her fingers over the ashtray. A snowfall of tobacco flakes quietly into the dirty silver dish below.

  “You used to smoke.”

  “I did,” she grins, and dismantles the remains of the cigarette without looking up. “I quit a long time ago.” I’m glad I didn’t meet Sam then. All the Iraqi women who smoke look like they’re trying hard, too hard, to look sophisticated and cosmopolitan. Instead, they just look hard.

  “Sam, you didn’t answer the question.”

  She laughs like there is a joke she isn’t going to let me in on. “Nope. Never said no to a story. That’s the question, right? But doesn’t mean I wouldn’t. Just that I haven’t.” I can’t tell if she is proud or embarrassed.

  The satellite phone rings. It has such a strange, metallic jangle, like the sound of a device that has yet to be invented. Sam moans and looks at me. “You’re closer to the phone,” she says. “Just press the green ‘call’ button, would you? Then hit speaker phone.”

  I do what Sam asks, press the buttons, and sit back down.

  There’s a lot of static, but I already know it’s Miles’s voice. It’s distorted, as usual, by being sent through a satellite somewhere over the Indian Ocean. I wonder what he sounds like in real life.

  “Sam?” he asks loudly. “Sam, can you hear me?”

  Sam drags herself off the sofa and on to the armchair next to her desk, to get closer to the speaker. “Yeah, Miles, hi. I hear you.”

  “Sam, we’ve got news.”

  “Well, we’ve got news, too. I was in the middle of writing you a memo about it but I stopped to fix the sat and eat dinner. You wouldn’t believe what we’ve learned in the last twenty-four hours. I think we’ve almost got it figured out.”

  “Look, we figured it out at our end. We got the tests back.”

  “Wh-which tests?” Sam sounds confused.

  “Oh. Didn’t I tell you? We sent the documents that Harris gave us to an Iraq expert in Washington. He compared the signatures on the documents to Uday’s real signature and it’s not even close to the real thing. No resemblance at all. Can you believe that?”

  Sam blinks in astonishment.

  Miles continues. “The letterhead isn’t even right. So at the same time, we talked to a private investigator, who said we should send them for ink-ageing analysis, and the guy who did that says the documents are no more than two months old. There’s no way the dates on these documents can be right.”

  “Wait,” Sam says. “I thought you only had copies of the documents.”

  “No, no,” Miles says. “Harris sent us the originals via another reporter who left Iraq last week.”

  “Uh-huh.” Sam blinks. “Well, this is what I was about to tell you. We’re pretty close to being able to prove that the documents were fabricated here, in Sadr City. I think we’re even going to be able to pinpoint where they were made and then maybe we’ll even figure out who did it and why. So tomorrow we’re going back to find the—”

  “Sam,” Miles interrupts. “You may not have to bother now. I mean, unless you’re certain you can pinpoint in the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours who made these documents an
d why. If so, great. Otherwise, we just won’t even address that in the story at all. We just need to come out and clear the record: they’re fake, we made a mistake and we’re sorry, that’s it. We don’t need to go breaking some additional story that increases our risk and keeps this whole thing in the spotlight for a minute more than absolutely necessary.”

  “Miles. Miles? I don’t understand. Three days ago you said you needed us to figure out who made the documents, to meet Akram, to go all out to verify the signatures.” Sam’s voice is rising as she speaks, and I can see a wave of disbelief passing over her. She rushes over to the phone and picks up the receiver, so I can no longer hear what Miles is saying so well.

  “I want you to know what we’ve put into this story so far. I’ve devoted the last week to this alone. I haven’t done anything else but chase after these people and these documents, and now you’re saying it’s all wrapped up?”

  Miles’s voice crackles from the phone, “...still need a confirmation on the documents...we’ll get a second opinion... you know with the front office...the decision is not entirely in my hands...and with such high legal fees... “

  Sam nods her head petulantly, making circles with her free hand as if to urge him to finish his point.

  “But Miles, why didn’t someone tell me about taking this to an ink-ageing analyst? You said something about using contacts at your end, in Washington, and that was the last I heard of that.” More Milesmumble, Sam walking the length of her desk a few times and then sitting on the edge of it. “I am,” she says. “I am happy we’ve got that now. It’s great. It’s just that I didn’t even know that you were going that route. If I had known you were about to find that out, I wouldn’t have been chasing down some of these nasty people we’ve been chasing down.”

  She nods with shut eyelids. “Mmm. Um-hmm.” She pushes herself further on to her desk and pulls one knee towards her chest. The words she’s saying to her editor sound assertive, even forceful. But to look at her, she seems like a little girl trying to protect herself. “No, it’s great, it’s just that we’re poking around in Sadr City and Tikrit and Fallujah and asking for the relatives of these nasty characters to verify these signatures, which is what you said you wanted me to do, right? And that’s a little sketchy, according to our local staff, and if we really didn’t need to do that, if you were on the verge of getting an answer some other way...uh-huh. But look, we’ve gone this far. At this point, tell them to wait a few more days. I think we’re on the cusp of finding out so much more. I mean, we wanted to know who made these documents and why, right? And finding out that they’re fake is only the tip of the iceberg. Why would someone in Iraq make up documents to embarrass Billy Jackson of Newark, New Jersey? I mean, something about this stinks, Miles, and in such a bizarro way. What if there’s other stuff involved? Maybe the same people who made these documents are the same folks who were drawing up fake documents on WMD! It’s possible, isn’t it?” Sam looks at me and opens her eyes with exaggeration, like she knows she might be taking this too far. She slides off the desk and leans on the glass door that leads to the balcony. There’s still a large X taped across it.

  “But Miles, we still need to figure out who made these documents. I mean, there’s something fishy there.”

  The tinny crunch of Miles’s voice emanates from the phone. I pretend to get up to get a glass of water, but really I do it so that, on the way back, I can seat myself in the smaller sofa next to her desk, nearer the phone.

  “Miles, would you run a crime story and not let the reporter try to find out who the perp is? I mean, if you could figure it out...but, but I think we can figure it out. We’re close. Just wait, Miles. Please don’t do anything with the story yet. There are still a lot of gaps to be filled in.”

  Sam listens. Her lips and nose behave as if they are perpetually in protest at food that’s gone off in the fridge. She rubs the pretty bones that her eyebrows lie upon and sighs. “I understand. Just tell them the story really isn’t done yet. If they can hold off for just a couple more days, I think we’re going to have a much, much better story Okay? Good. I gotta run, but I’ll check in later.”

  Sam slams down the receiver. “Jesus H. Christ,” she says with a voice that would convey rage if the disbelief hadn’t sucked the air out of it. She looks at me and her eyes grow big for a moment, so that I can see all the whites around the edges, and then they fall back to their natural state. She turns away from me then, slides open the glass door to the balcony and walks out. She bends over and looks down at the pool below, where I can hear people splashing in the water.

  She turns her neck when she notices me standing there, watching her. “You heard all that, right?” It’s as if she didn’t pay any attention to which part of the conversation was on speakerphone, and at what point she had picked up the phone, turning their exchange into a monologue.

  “Part of it.”

  “Can you believe that? They didn’t even bother to tell me and they’ve got us chasing after Saddam’s best friends. I’m sorry to say this in front of you, Nabil, but that’s fucking ridiculous. This is patently, objectively insane.” She takes another cigarette out of the packet in her hand and brushes past me, stomping towards the kitchen. She clicks on the gas flame at the stove, lowers her face sideways towards the fire, and turns the cigarette tip bright orange. The smoke curls she lets escape from the sides of her mouth wind up inside her hair and hover there a moment. She seems half-angel, half-Medusa. “I’ll be back in a bit,” she says, not waiting for a response, and walks out.

  I want to chase after Sam straight away, but that seems like something stupid men do in those trite Egyptian tearjerkers. Run after the woman, tell her that everything’s going to be fine, then grab her and kiss her when she’s most vulnerable. When she needs you.

  Somehow, I don’t think that following Sam the moment she storms out of the room is something she will appreciate.

  I wait and pace for several minutes, which pass like hours. I peer over at her computer screen, though I know I shouldn’t, and read the subject lines of the messages lined up in a column. There is a message from Miles. Please call ASAP. One is, judging from the name, from Sam’s mother. Stay safe! And one from Jonah: “Re: Where are you?” I watch my fingers finding their way to her unfamiliar keys, and somehow, managing to open and read because the risks you’re taking aren’t worth it, Sam, and I learned that the hard way. And if you really cared about us, about yourself, you’d consider dropping that story before something and then I force myself to stop and exit because Sam could walk in at any moment and would be furious.

  But she doesn’t. And so I scroll down the page with the arrow key, past a dozen or so news headlines that the paper apparently sends Sam every day, to find more messages from Jonah. There are six messages whose subject lines read, Re: I love you, and a last one, stating simply, I love you. I have never told a woman that I love her, but when I do, I certainly don’t want to tell her through a computer.

  I have to fight the urge to read more. I recall The Unjust, a sura from the Koran. It tells us that the records of righteousness and sin are not meant for us to know in this world. “It is a sealed book, seen only by the favoured. (83:20)” My mother once taught me that this sura means we should not read other people’s mail or pry into their private affairs, even if we suspect them of wrongdoing.

  Instead, I grab the cigarettes off the table. I can hardly believe myself. I have hated cigarettes since my father let me see pictures of diseased lungs from the hospital morgue when I was twelve. But it gives me a good excuse to go looking for Sam. I have something to bring her.

  I am not surprised to find her on the rooftop. I know Sam likes it up here, because from this height she can watch the two worlds below. Inside the Hamra walls, her colleagues saunter half-naked in their bathing suits, swimming or drinking alcohol. Outside the walls, a claque of women in full-length abayas float past like black spirits, sending bad omens to the foreigners inside.
Once inside for the night, the foreigners try to forget the Iraqis outside. The Iraqis never forget.

  “I brought you these,” I say, and place the box on the ledge in front of her. I smile a little bit, and try to stop myself from imagining a lung going black in Sam’s body.

  “Thanks.” She points to the chairs in the hallway, where we left them. We drag them out to the space she likes, in the front corner where you get a bit of crossbreeze.

  I feel we’re being accompanied by a quiet orchestra of satellite dishes. Millions of people around the world get their news from this very rooftop. I catch myself fantasizing again about throwing it all over the edge into the pool below, drowning the communications equipment in a watery, chlorinated tomb.