“Nabil,” she exhales. “I’m sure you want to talk about everything that just happened, but you know, at this moment, I really don’t want to get into it. Because I’ve got too much on my plate at the moment to worry about Joon Park’s little intrigues. And her jealousy, which is really her downfall.”
“I…em...I probably should have left.”
She blows out a line of smoke like an exclamation point. “Why? Look, let’s leave it for now. Come, sit,” she says, and I do.
She is inhaling the cigarette so deeply, it’s already half gone. “Smoke bothering you?”
“No,” I lie.
“Good. So give me a quiet moment,” she says. “The smoke helps me think.” Sam closes her eyes and lets the ash grow long. The hum of the air conditioner fills the void.
“You know, Nabil, I think I’m going to have to leave Iraq as soon as this story is done.”
Sam had said nothing about leaving. Not until now, not until we got into this crazy story. I think I imagined that she would soon start giving out a card like the one she gave me on the first day we met. Samara B. Katchens. Baghdad Bureau Chief.
“I mean, I was supposed to be leaving soon anyway,” Sam says with shoulders jutting uncomfortably high. “I’ve been in Iraq since March 10th. It’s now May 1st? That’s nearly two months in Iraq. I need to go home and take a break.”
She stubs out the cigarette and stares into the ashtray. Then she reaches for the camera in her bag.
“I can’t stay here forever, Nabil. But I’ll probably come back, maybe in the fall.” Sam takes off the lens cap. “What? Why aren’t you saying anything?”
“I think that’s the right thing to do. You should leave. I don’t want you to leave, of course, but you have to do what is right for you.”
“It’s not just what’s right for—”
“And also for your safety. You’re right to be a little bit worried now. I don’t know about some of these people. Did I tell you I saw someone shot on a local expressway yesterday, on the way to work in the morning?”
“No. What happened?”
“I saw three men pull another man out of his car and just shoot him. They then got into his car and drove off, along with the rest of the traffic moving at about, I don’t know, forty miles an hour. No rush, because there’s no one to catch them. No one did anything. What should people do, go and find an American tank and ask the soldiers who don’t speak Arabic to come and catch the criminals? This is what’s happening, Sam, this is what I can’t control. What if Akram’s men come over here and try to shoot you in the car park and just drive off?”
“Hold on. Let’s not get carried away.”
“I’m just trying to tell you that anything could happen. No one’s in control here.”
“So you think it’s good that I’m leaving.”
Just like that, moving seamlessly from “I think I’m going to leave” to “I’m leaving”.
“Of course. You know you are always welcome in Iraq and I’m happy when you’re here, but you have to take care of yourself.”
Sam reaches for the camera again and holds it up to her face. “I don’t know why I want to take a picture of you here when we could do it out in a pretty place, along the waterfront. Okay, smile,” she says.
I do, and she frowns. “Looks artificial. Okay, don’t smile,” she says, wrapping her hand around the black body of the camera and pressing down on the silver button, releasing the sound of a fake shutter opening and closing.
~ * ~
The plates of Chinese food don’t look particularly appetizing to me, but Sam is exactly right: they’re not too bad. They have a sweet and spicy taste, and all the sauces have strange colours, like a red that I don’t think occurs in nature, and another dish has a sort of electric yellow glow. Everything seems heavily fried and then stewed or soaked in something, and somehow, it’s vaguely satisfying. Sam ordered broccoli and beef for me, which she refused to touch, plus several plates of vegetable dishes: eggplant and garlic sauce, chow mein with snowpeas, peanut and peppers. She had been asking over the phone if they could make her a Buddha Delight, which is steamed vegetables, but the guy on the phone didn’t get it, and Sam hung up the phone, laughing. I think he thought I was saying “put out the light”, she mused.
“Do you eat this a lot at home?”
“It depends on what you mean by home.”
“In Paris.”
“In Paris there are even more exciting things to eat. In Washington, though, there are a whole bunch of good ethnic restaurants not far from where I live, in this area called Adam’s Morgan.”
“But which one is home, Sam?”
“I don’t know.” She picks up a chunk of dripping broccoli with her chopsticks. “Right now, home is room 323 of the Hamra Hotel. That is, when my doppelganger is not staying at the Sumerland Hotel.”
“I never heard it pronounced until now, but I actually know that word.”
“See, that’s what I like about working with you, Nabil. I wouldn’t have used it with just anyone.”
I feel full already, despite not having eaten very much. I will keep eating, though, so Sam doesn’t feel like she’s eating alone. “What kind of food is ethnic food?”
“Oh, you know. In Adam’s Morgan there’s Korean, Mexican, Japanese. There’s even a good Lebanese restaurant. I bet you’d like that. Oh, and there are these fantastic little Ethiopian places—”
“So ethnic is everything but American?”
Sam has one of those laughs that just stays in her throat. “Yeah, basically.”
I push the syrupy noodles around my plate with a fork while Sam snaps things up with her skinny chopsticks. I find myself wondering how she learned to eat with them, and where the Hamra Hotel gets such things.
“So we have a name,” she says. “Ali something.”
“Ali al-Yaqubi al-Sadr.”
“Name ring a bell?”
“No. Except that if he’s related to Moqtada al-Sadr, well, that might be logical. They also hate the people who tried to stop this war. Even if now their main thing is to complain that the Americans are occupying Iraq illegally and should get out.”
“And what about this guy you saw this morning?”
“Mustapha,” I say, taking another mouthful of noodles. “My cousin Saleh says he’s the right person to be talking to. But he wants to be paid,” I say. “Mustapha I mean.”
“How much?”
“He didn’t say how much. He asked how much we’d be willing to pay.”
Sam digs around a little more, fills up her plate again, but then sits back, putting her hands on her slightly distended stomach. “I think I’ve had enough. So where did you leave things with this Mustapha.”
“He wanted to know what we’d be willing to pay.”
“You know the paper’s policy.”
“Sure.”
“But we pay other people who provide services. Fixers, for example,” Sam says, gesturing in my direction, but looking towards the map of Baghdad she recently taped up on the wall. The place names look funny written out in English, and many neighbourhoods I would consider important are not even on it. Zayouna, for example, where I was yesterday, is nowhere to be found.
“Using fixers,” she continues. “Now that’s a sort of paying for information, right? Information on how to get to the people who matter so we can interview them.”
“Right. So you’re saying if he’s considered another fixer, like on a short assignment, then it’s okay to pay him?”
“I’m not sure. I mean, is this man a fixer, a lawyer...or a forger?” Sam shakes her head. “Paying him and paying you, that’s a whole different ball of wax.”
“Is that like a kettle of fish?”
“What?”
“The other day you said something was ‘a whole other kettle of fish’. Is a ball of wax the same thing?”
Sam looks to the ceiling with scrunched up eyes, as if t
o check the big reference book in her mind. Or maybe to ask God for patience. “Yeah, I guess so, it’s the same idea.”
“But why ’ball of wax’? What does it mean? And why a ‘kettle of fish’?”
She shrugs. “It’s just one of those things people say. I’ll look it up for you if you want.” Sam’s eyes search mine. “You’re always working, aren’t you?”
“No. What do you mean?”
“On your English. You’re constantly trying to learn new words and phrases, so you can do your job better.”
“It’s not that.” My job? And what happens to my job if Sam leaves? The Tribune will replace her with another correspondent who will want to work with someone else — some other person to fix things.
“I’m just curious,” I explain. “I like to know where sayings come from. I’ve learned a lot with you, especially the slang.”
Sam smiles.
Learned. As if she is already a thing of the past.
“I think I might someday write something in English. If I really worked hard on it.”
“What, like a book?”
“Maybe. Or some poems.”
“I think you’d be terrific at that Nabil. I’ve never seen anything you’ve written, but from the way you speak, from the way you use language, I think it would be really beautiful.”
I don’t know what to say, but my body feels like it knows what it wants to do — to move over to Sam’s sofa, to kiss her and touch her until she begs for me to love the rest of her.
“Excuse me,” I stand, pointing to the hallway. “The bathroom’s there, right?”
“Uh-huh. Feel free.”
I shut the door slowly, trying hard not to seem rushed. Sam Katchens, the only woman to have truly appreciated my love affair with language.
~ * ~
When I come out, she has moved the dishes to the counter near the front door, and is staring down at the Jackson papers laid out on the table.
“Such a big deal over five little pages,” she says. “Just words. Looks real to me. Would you have known?”
I look closer. “I don’t really know what government documents look like. Except maybe the draft notice from the army.”
“You were drafted?”
“I only had to serve for two months,” I say. “A lot of the boys from better families, their parents pay bribes so they don’t have to serve.”
“Oh,” she says, and I wonder if it is an oh of understanding or of judgement. Sam puts the pages back into the file.
“This whole thing is becoming just a little too sketchy, Nabil. Harris might be coming back. Suleiman and Akram are looking for me. Some sick person made up this letter to try to scare us. My editors have no clue what I’m going through here.”
“You are a brave woman, Sam. I have never known you to be afraid, ever.”
“Maybe I just hide it well.”
Knocking. First a soft one, and then, two louder ones. “Who is it?” Sam calls. There is no reply, and she jumps up. “Maybe it’s the fried rice they forgot to bring up. They always leave something out and then—”
Sam stands at the open door and shifts her weight impatiently. There is no one there, and in the empty space I can feel a kind of nervous energy in the air, left behind by someone who didn’t want to wait for an answer.
“Huh!” She moves to close the door. “Oh, hang on,” she says, bending to a squat. When she comes up, she’s holding an envelope in her hand. She opens it — either the person who wrote it hadn’t bothered to seal it, or the person who delivered it decided to have a read for himself.
She unfolds the contents, a letter in Arabic on yellow writing paper. “Special delivery. Apparently it’s for you.”
Even before I can begin to read, I feel in my bones who it will be from: Mustapha. The beautiful and somewhat bombastic handwriting makes it seem like the kind of letter a lawyer would write. I skim through it and then translate for Sam.
“It’s from this lawyer I saw today, Mustapha.”
“Yeah? I thought you told him I was staying at the Sumerland.”
“I did,” I say. “He says, ‘Dear Nabil. I am certain I can provide you with the information you require. Come to my office tomorrow morning with the American lady in a regular taxi. I strongly suggest you avoid coming with your usual car and driver. Certain people may be watching and they already know your vehicle. Tell the journalist to come in hejab so she won’t easily be noticed. I trust that you will use the utmost discretion in this matter. Other news organizations are requesting similar information, and I want to ensure that you have access to it first. With sincere trust. Your friend and classmate, Mustapha.”
“Jee-sus,” she whispers. “Seriously?”
“That’s what it says.” I wonder why, if Sam is Jewish, even only half-Jewish like I’m half-Shi’ite, she says “Jesus” all the time.
“Do you trust this guy?”
My stomach is beginning to hurt, probably from these strange sauces made by someone who is no doubt from Al-Ummal and has no idea how to make Chinese food. Something inside contracts, then relaxes. “I don’t know. I didn’t know him well at school. But I don’t think my cousin Saleh would send me to someone he doesn’t trust.”
Sam picks up a chopstick from the counter and puts it into her mouth at the same angle she would a cigarette. Unsatisfied with her almost subconscious drag, she eyes the biscuit jar.
I look over the note again. Mustapha did say he’d have a messenger drop off a note.
“Rizgar’s not going to like that,” she says. “He doesn’t like when I do things without him.” She chews the chopstick a bit between her molars. “He’s very protective of me.”
“I know.”
“Not that you’re not—”
I hold up my hand, trying to make her stop explaining. “I understand what you meant. I’ll talk to him.”
“Rizgar? Yeah, but I’m not sure he trusts you.”
“Really? I think we work together well.”
“Maybe it’s a Kurdish thing. Your guys did kill about a few hundred thousand of theirs, easy.”
“My guys? No one in my family worked for—”
“I mean, the half of your guys who are Sunni.”
I wonder if Sam even knows about some of the things that Kurds would do to Arabs, given the chance. About the fact that they want to break up Iraq so they can make their own country and take all our oil wealth with them. About the Arabs in the north who have been chased out of their homes at gunpoint in the past few weeks, decades after Saddam moved them there. I’ve been reading about it in the newspapers.
“Sorry, I’m not being fair,” says Sam. “I’m just trying to see it through his eyes.” I wonder if, when I’m not there, she tries to see it through mine. “My God,” she says. “This place is too complicated. I don’t know if we should do this. My editors are happy to just run the story as is, so what am I doing putting my ass on the line? Mine and yours!”
“You don’t have to worry about me. I’m ready to do whatever it takes to get the story.”
Including getting a gun. I’ll go back to Zayouna first thing, pick one out, pay for it, and keep it under my shirt, like everyone else. Protective, like Rizgar.
“We have to finish this, Sam. If we give up on getting to the truth, what was the point of any of the work we’ve done together? What are you doing here?”
She looks at me with a mix of sweetness and pity, like she’s sorry she ever gave me all those talks about the truth, about ethics, about what good journalists do and don’t do.
A baretta. Or maybe a Smith and Wesson. Louis said that was one of the best.
“He also wanted you to bring the photocopies.”
“Maybe Baylor’s right. Maybe we hold off a day and see.”
“But you need to finish the story as soon as possible, right? I mean, your editors don’t want to wait another few days, do they.”
“No.” Her mout
h twitches. “It’s now or never.”
I come towards her in the kitchen. I have an urge to cover her mouth with mine, to turn that twitch into a kiss. Instead I lean against the wall by the door, on the back of which is a newly placed page of emergency instructions, signed by the Hamra Management.
Baghdad Fixer Page 42
