“Fertility goddess. Probably Sumerian. You want, Sleed? She do it for you?”
“Why would I want that?”
“Come on,” Galvan said. “You know how much a thing like this is worth?”
“No, and you don’t, either.”
“I know it’s more than you make in a year. Like ten times as much. Damn, kid. Don’t you ever go to sleep at night, like, wanting something more out of life? You ever dream about something bigger and better, or are you just too much of a pussy?”
“Yeah,” Fitzpatrick said, thrusting the idol at me.
Frago growled.
“Why do you care if I take it?” I said.
“Because. Then you’ve got some skin in the game. Then we’re sure you’re not gonna rat.”
I thought about it and decided I was not entirely against the idea. Everyone else was getting some, even the Iraqis, looting hell out of the Baath Party ministries, carting off copper piping and light fixtures and wires ripped out of the walls. Artwork, furniture, satellite dishes, spare parts for Russian-made flight simulators, law books, filing cabinets, arc welders, and second-generation fax machines that they hoisted like the greatest prizes ever won. Not to mention the other side of the coin. The U.S. contractors and mercenaries setting up shop in our AO, trucking in porta-potties and crates of frozen hamburger patties and concrete blast barriers and bottled water and ten thousand other things you need to run a comfortable modern war zone. The Row felt lucrative, like walking into a casino with a buzz on and your pocket fat. You had the feeling a man could make a fortune with a minimum amount of work, but only if he had balls.
“I’m not a rat,” I said. “Or a puss. But that old clay shit don’t do it for me.”
“Oh yeah? What you want, then?”
I told them I’d do it the smart way. Maybe snag a couple gems from the scabbard if Galvan would let me. Sew them into the lining of my uniform. Something like that, something small, easy to get home and sell. Cash would be good. “Got to be a hoard around here somewhere.” We talked about what we would do when we were rich, messed with the dagger, and about that time, Private Simmons, working downstairs in another part of the palace, took down the painting of Saddam. The walls shook with a walloping boom.
I had a close call myself not too long after. I was riding with Fitzpatrick, Galvan, and Patterson when it happened. We had use of a Humvee that we took on supply runs down the highway to Camp Zopilote. Place was named after a soldier who’d rolled his Bradley into the Euphrates and drowned. It was nothing special, just an old Iraqi army base that we’d taken over, and we were headed there to pick up hot chow for the QRF. That was what we were risking our lives for. Any meal that was not an MRE was a luxury, and it made as much sense to risk your life for food as for something as vague as Iraqi Freedom. Plus, it was worth the trip just to get away for a while. The Row looked impressive, but things there were starting to get weird. Two dudes from First Platoon, Crocker and Jenkins, had been prowling around, dry-humping guys while they were sleeping. It was part of a gradual slip in our standards. Everyone had stopped paying much attention to manners or decency. We wiped our snot on our sleeves or pinched our noses and blew strands of it to the ground. There weren’t enough water buffaloes for us to shower or wash clothes, so the smell was like the monkey house at the zoo. Conditions at Zopilote, while not great, were a grade better, and with hot chow in the mix, I jumped at the chance to go.
IEDs were still rare at that point. No one expected to get hit, although we knew we could. I was riding in the rear passenger seat and we’d traveled about halfway to the camp when the bomb went off and all I saw was orange. I can’t remember exactly what it sounded like. I guess like nothing at all, an empty space followed by ringing ears and Galvan shouting at Patterson, “Don’t fucking stop here! Just keep going, floor it, fucking go!”
Our truck emerged from the dust cloud, and everyone was fine. Second Platoon’s gunner had taken a sliver of shrapnel to his right hand. Like a splinter. Hardly any blood. We continued to Zopilote and radioed in the location of the IED. Later we heard that ordnance disposal had been sent to the spot and they’d discovered the primary device still intact, undetonated. Two 155-millimeter Soviet artillery shells wired together, over a hundred pounds of high explosive. That would’ve obliterated us, for sure. The blast we had driven through was only the crude primer going off.
We sped away knowing we’d been lucky but not knowing just how big a break we’d caught. We laughed like it was the funniest thing in the world. Too hard, like crazy people laugh, the way you do when you almost died but didn’t, not even a scratch. Believe me, I’ve tried it all, and there’s not much that will get you higher.
5
ABU AL-HOOL: THE TIME WHEN CAMELS ARE IN CALF
103 Days Before
PAKISTAN; SYRIA; IRAQ (HADITHA)
The previous winter, within a matter of days, the Taliban had fallen in a rout. Most of the old camps, including ours, were destroyed, forcing us over the border into Pakistan like mice avoiding the trap. Death came to the surface everywhere: the latest were the Uzbeks—Abu Timur and his son Abu Bakr, the boy I had once found so promising when he had joined the brotherhood in the days before Manhattan. The loss of the youngest and most vibrant among us was a hard blow to take; it happened across the Afghan border near a settlement at the head of a valley not far from our old camp. Several kilometers above the little community of shepherds, inaccessible by road, the Americans had set an outpost commanding the low ground. A group of us had traveled there to observe their position and study it for weaknesses, arriving at night disguised as merchants, rifles hidden in carts. We brought no heavy weaponry and during the day took care not to congregate in open places: each morning, I sent a three-man patrol to ascend the mountain and glass the enemy outpost from below tree line. These men were armed with only a radio and binoculars, both of which were to be used sparingly.
The first few patrols passed without incident. On the fourth day, I sent Abu Hafs the Yemeni, along with Abu Timur and Abu Bakr. A few hours after they left, those of us remaining in the village heard the shrieking of a rocket, an explosion on the mountain. We retreated inside the guesthouse and for some time heard nothing except the crackling of fire in the stone hearth. The voices of children playing outside the door. We all knew the strike had targeted our men, but there was little we could do for them, not even to recover their bodies; the Americans might be watching and would kill us if we tried.
We agreed it was best to wait out the night indoors before attempting any other action. We had lost hope of survivors, then after nightfall Abu Hafs returned to us alone, wounded with shrapnel in his legs but still able to walk. He threw open the rough-hewn door and I embraced him, kissing his cheeks.
“The Uzbeks are dead,” he said stiffly, not returning my affection.
He was treated, given refreshment, and told us how Abu Timur had insisted on approaching the Americans closer than any of the other patrols, more brazenly toward that nest of vipers, until he’d led the boys to the tree line. Abu Hafs realized the danger and told Abu Timur as much, but the older man dismissed the complaint as cowardice, claiming the Americans never fired on unarmed men who weren’t in uniform; he’d supposedly learned this through trial and error in Bosnia.
“Abu Bakr knew I was right, but wouldn’t leave his father,” Abu Hafs said. “God forgive me, but I was not ready to become shaheed. I refused to follow them into the open.”
“Peace,” I said, trying to comfort him; by now he was in tears. “There’s no shame in what you did. I would’ve done the same thing. We’re up against men who won’t show their faces to fight. You aren’t the coward here.”
We crossed back over the border near Peshawar and made camp sprawled in the dusty soil under the shade of a Himalayan cedar that once again had grown tall and strong after being stricken decades ago, cleaved in two by a lightning bolt, an errant Soviet shell, or some other calamitous missile. Under that persistent tree
we made the fajr prayer. It was Friday and Dr. Walid’s turn to deliver the talk. By the way that he’d avoided me after the death of the Uzbeks, I should’ve seen what was coming, but my mind had grown cloudy with sorrow and fatigue after so much hard living in the field. I also found myself preoccupied with broader strategy, the Americans’ good fortune. The turn in the war had left the brothers discouraged.
You wouldn’t have known these troubles, seeing Dr. Walid that morning. He assumed a position of authority at the base of the cedar. There he sermonized, the brotherhood gathered around. Boys from a nearby farm spotted us and crossed a hay field to hang on curiously, captivated by this warrior-priest, this leader and scholar, his face lovingly formed, eyes clear and calm, beard black as the feathers of an alpine swift. I could not hold with him for sheer charisma. I was well aware of that, and of my other shortcomings, which went a long way to explaining what happened next.
“Brothers,” he said. “I tell you that the last days of the Abbasid Caliphate were much like our own. The faithful were rare as diamonds scattered across the vastness of the Empty Quarter. Many were discouraged. They had left the cities, preferring to live instead with their wives and children in the desert. That life meant hardship, thirst, and starvation, but they preferred it to the caliphate’s man-made depravities. They had turned their backs especially on the city of Baghdad, which was by then the most splendid in the world, far more sophisticated than any muddy village in Europe.
“Alas, we know the story too well,” he continued. “Sophistication breeds vice, grandeur walks arm in arm with deceit, and triumph is always followed by a period of sloth and greed. Word of Baghdad’s wealth spread north across the steppes until it reached the Mongol Khan, who demanded tribute. When he was denied, he assembled his army of horsemen and rode at its head, vowing to force the caliphate into submission or die trying.”
I saw very well what he was getting at, and it was no mere grandiloquent history lesson. For months, the symbolic importance of the fall of Baghdad in the thirteenth century of the so-called Common Era had recurred as a theme in his Friday talks. To give him his due, he had been predicting the American invasion of Iraq ever since the weeks immediately following Manhattan. It had seemed far-fetched to me at the time, and it was still hard to believe his prediction was coming correct, their forces massing steadily in Kuwait. That the Americans would be so foolish as to fulfill what I imagined were Sheikh Osama’s exact wishes when he had sent those jets smashing into the towers—it seemed too easy, too simple, to trap them in this way.
Dr. Walid’s historical analogy was equally unqualified, yet powerful ideas often are. My tendency to dwell in nuance was no doubt one reason I had lost the brothers’ confidence. The doctor was nothing if not sure of himself. He paced in the dappled shadows and shook his fist.
“And I say to you that even as today British dogs and Saudi princes lick American boot heels, so too did the Mongols have their Tatars and mercenaries riding in their train. And, even as Bush warns and threatens the Great Syria, so too did the Mongols conquer al-Sham after riding out laden with spoils from Baghdad, the city sacked, its women raped, warriors and children put to the sword, the House of Wisdom destroyed, until the Tigris ran black that day from the ink of all the books flung in the water—”
“Brother Walid,” I interrupted rudely, and more than a little unwisely. “We all know the story. Forgive me, but I lost the connection with the theological point you were following.”
“The point is simple, Emir. The point is that the past repeats itself. I’ve often heard you say this. And, although things may look dark now, my brothers, you should take heart. Because, even as the fall of Baghdad will again come to pass, so too did armies from Syria and Egypt, together with Arab volunteers, join forces two years after the sack of the capital, defeating the Mongols at the Battle of Ayn Jalut. We must have faith that God in His goodness will punish the Americans as He did the khan. There’s really only one question. When will the new Ayn Jalut take place?”
The brothers waited expectantly, thinking this yet another rhetorical flourish on his part. But the silence extended until it became obvious he had finished his sermon and wanted an actual answer.
Abu Hafs the Yemeni stood and spoke. “Soon, God willing. Soon we’ll make the Americans the new Mongols.”
The brothers proclaimed the takbir, hearts bursting with pride to think they might be the lucky ones to restore the caliphate. Dr. Walid seized upon that moment of solidarity to topple me with supple skill, the thing so smoothly done, there was no violence in it, no need even to denounce me or my legitimate faults as reasons why he should be chosen and I deposed. Over the past ten years, my command had been affirmed several times by voice vote, the last before we traveled to Chechnya. That campaign ended in tragedy; by all rights, my term should’ve ended then as well. I suppose I was overdue.
The doctor placed his hand over his heart and approached. “Emir, you must know we’ll have a better chance in the Iraqi cities. We’re too exposed in these mountains; our power is too diffuse. In the cities—with all the other brothers who are bound to travel there—together, we can strike the enemy a real blow. How many more like Abu Bakr must give their lives before we realize this?”
“There’s some truth to what you say,” I agreed, masking the anger I felt toward my former right hand, this usurping, blackguard physician. Before this day, he and I had argued long and hard, but always privately, about whether to take the brotherhood to Iraq if the Americans were to invade that country. I’d been against leaving Afghanistan, but my reluctance was largely the kind of conservatism that inevitably besets men my age, an unwillingness to change, a clinging to routine. Afghanistan had become my home. Over the years, I had grown to love the place and its people, the freest and purest in the world. How many empires had left their mark on this proud country, only to be shrugged off? Alexander the Great, the Mongols, the Arabs, the British, and now the Americans—and still there were valleys where outsiders had never been allowed to set foot, and people who had never been taxed by any government. This place was at the edge of the known world and at the same time, its obscure, violent nexus.
What Walid was proposing—taking the fight to the Americans in Iraq—was an obvious, if radical, change in our strategy. I could see merit in the plan and hope in the boldness of its ambition. Clearly, many of the men preferred it. I myself did not, but had trouble articulating why. I could have pointed out the risk of the unknown, the danger of biting off more than you can chew, but I held my tongue. Citing vague dangers seemed an unacceptable argument against taking decisive action in warfare, an enterprise in which the most perilous approach is sometimes the right one.
The brothers awaited my answer to the doctor’s challenge. His eyes held mine steadily, and I confess I looked away first, afraid of him, not in the sense that I feared he would harm me, but afraid of the intentions I saw, of what he might become if his will were left unchecked. I knew that going to Iraq was not the only thing about our operations that he would change. There was something monstrous in him, an impenetrable jocularity that concealed a mass of ills, ruin, and error. When he spoke of our destiny and the struggle, he did not mean any spiritual battle. He meant taking heads. “Jihad and the rifle alone,” this was his motto. No negotiation, no truce, no settlement. A man with this sort of monomaniacal focus could not lead us to a new golden age. His was a perversion of our traditions—I knew this in my heart—but I was only one man, and those of his mind in the brotherhood had become more numerous. My time as emir was up. A good commander knows when to quit the field; there’s always another day to retake it.
“You’ve spoken, and we heard you,” I said. “Now, brothers, I think we must take a vote. Despite what the kuffar might think, we are a democracy, after all.”
A few laughed nervously at my sarcasm, but I spoke the truth. Before embarking on any new campaign, the brothers always select who among us should be emir.
“Those who choose Dr
. Walid to bear the burden, say aye.”
With their words my authority ended. I accepted defeat with as much grace as I could, having known beforehand that I would lose, and perhaps badly. But one voice, notable in that it was hardly yet a man’s, rose above the rest to sting my pride more than any other, even more than the voices of those who’d been with me much longer. Abu Hafs, whom I had taken under my wing and treated as if he were my own departed son, even he voted against me.
I was terribly seasick. I had always had this problem, the few times in my life I had traveled by ship. I tried to keep to myself, grown more introverted after losing command, but the close quarters onboard made solitude impossible. We had sailed from Karachi eight days before, headed around the Arabian Peninsula, through the Suez, to the port of Tartus, where we would arrive after another week at sea. It was a roundabout way to get to Baghdad but much safer than the overland route through Afghanistan and Iran, and we had contacts in Syria who would outfit us once we arrived at port. Traveling with me in this rusted freighter were coarse men who had been warehoused in regime prisons (which regime hardly matters), charged with petty thievery or licentiousness, these boys stricken by poverty who became men stricken by sin, until one day, as the story goes, they were befriended by a brother and shown the path of submission, often while in jail. It is a vexing paradox that the coarsest and most sinful among us often become the most pious: itinerants, nomads, wanderers; young men banished from their homelands, lost to their parents; and older men like myself, strangers to our own families—we were all lost, in the world’s eyes—and yet, at the same time, possessed of a deceptive resiliency, like the new spring wood best suited for fashioning arrows.
Spoils Page 6
