Spoils

by Brian Van Reet

  PART IV

  But the women, and the little ones, and the livestock, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself, and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the Lord thy God hath given thee.

  —DEUTERONOMY 20:14

  14

  ABU AL-HOOL: THE TIME OF SCORCHING DRYNESS

  53 Days After

  IRAQ (WATER TREATMENT PLANT; FALLUJAH)

  All I wanted was my leave. It seemed like an easy enough request for the doctor to grant, but over the years I’ve found it best not to plan according to what is easiest. So, one morning not long after Michael Crump’s execution, I retrieved the vest I’d fashioned. I laid it out, inspecting my handiwork, touching a voltmeter to the wires I then connected to the detonator, nervous, working with the blasting cap and battery, inserting the nine-volt, priming the device; I am a passable bomb maker but no expert.

  The moment had come for me and my old comrade Walid. A test of intentions, wills, nerves. I put on the vest and over it my shalwar, the bright-white garment loose enough to obscure the bulky outline beneath. I palmed the trigger and said a prayer for my soul. Then I went to see him.

  “There you are.” He glanced up from his reading and waved me into his room like an overwrought maître d’hôtel. “Come in. We have a lot to discuss.”

  “We do,” I said coolly.

  He closed the book he’d been studying and appraised me closer. “Are you feeling all right?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “I noticed you weren’t there when the sentence was carried out.”

  “No, I wasn’t,” I said.

  “Are you ill?”

  “No.”

  “An existential malady, then. I can’t say that surprises me. I assume you believe there’s something I can do about it?”

  “Yes. I want you to release me. Give me my leave today. If we were ever true brothers, let me have that much.”

  “Leave? For how long?”

  “Indefinitely.”

  “Ah, you!” he cried, as if with reverent affection. “Do you remember what Field Commander Jawad said about you when you first met?”

  “He said I was green as a new shoot and eager to kill Russians. He said I had the look of one who would die quickly.”

  “What a compliment, coming from a man like that.”

  “But he was wrong. God knows I’ve been willing, but I’m still alive. All these years, I am still alive. Why is that, do you think? What about me did he misjudge?”

  “It may’ve been your fortitude,” Dr. Walid said, his mood abruptly turning.

  I ignored the gibe. “Will you give me what I want?”

  “You swore an oath.”

  “I know. I’m asking you to relieve me of it.”

  “What if I won’t? What if I take this for backsliding apostasy?”

  There. That was all he needed to say for me to know that in his eyes, I was already a dead man. The time had come to show him I did not plan to go gently.

  “If the sheep wander astray,” I said, “they’ll have been led by an ill goat. In which case it’s best to cull the whole flock.” I opened my hand and revealed the detonator, placing my thumb delicately on the trigger. He maintained his facade, cultivating an amused look like he was observing some heretofore unnoticed foible about me, a quirk or mannerism that struck him as delightful, but I could tell by the way he kept glancing at my hand that he wasn’t truly prepared to die. A man who’s afraid is most attentive to the weapon. By the same token, a man who’s prepared looks inward or, occasionally, if he’s more defiant than most, on the face of his enemy.

  “‘I wish I could raid and be slain, and then raid and be slain, and then raid and be slain,’” he said, quoting the Messenger of God, peace be upon him.

  “I take it by that, your mind is made up?”

  A tense moment, this. Neither of us spoke; we hardly moved.

  “Put it away,” he said after a while. “There is no need. You’re released of any obligation to me or this brotherhood. But there’s one final task I have to ask of you. My God. It’s what I wanted to talk to you about before you started in with this nonsense. One last errand, then you go. Come on, brother. Put it away.”

  Not many people are capable of going to their deaths with dignity, and I am no exception. Trying for thanatological decorum but falling well short, I sweated and fidgeted behind the wheel of a rusted-out Volkswagen Golf. Abu Annas and I had departed the water plant after the zuhr prayer; on the seat between us was a satchel containing four thousand American dollars from our treasury. The doctor’s last request, the price of my freedom, was for me to act as courier and deliver the money to Abu Ali the Cripple, in Fallujah. He had claimed it was a payment for arms and other supplies, but I thought it just as likely a pretense to give me a false sense of security; why trust a man you intend to kill with so much?

  “I’ve just finished telling him about the Fallujah drop-off,” Walid had said, filling in Abu Annas as he entered my room carrying a suit of clothes, gray slacks and a button-up shirt. He’d changed into something similar and had cut his beard to appear more like an ordinary Iraqi, less like a soldier.

  “Put these on,” he said, tossing me the clothes. “That shalwar marks you too easily as a foreigner.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” I said, still wearing the martyrdom vest and wishing to keep them guessing about it. “The shalwar is common enough here. If we’re ready, let’s go. I’d like to make it before nightfall.”

  Abu Annas scowled at Dr. Walid, but the doctor wasn’t going to press me on this. It was a peculiar and deadly dance the two of us were making. The vest was real but effectively a tool for bluffing with. Neither of us was eager for a final showdown then and there, but rather, we wanted enough distance from the other to act with greater precision, less risk. Even with my power much diminished, I remained an alternate source of authority to which the men might return if they grew to mistrust his command. Mindful of the depths of his jealousies, I had, until that morning, given him little reason to plot against me; but at the same time, I had known that once I did make my move, I had to act decisively, or he would use any chance to cut down a perceived threat before it grew unmanageable. The one-way courier mission suited us both. Abu Annas, however, did not look happy to be caught in the middle of it.

  The Golf’s suspension was shot, janking and jolting us down the road. Abu Annas had asked me to drive, claiming his eyes were bothering him. I took it for a ruse to keep my hands occupied and visible. I thought there was a good chance the doctor wanted me dead on the road to the city; that he’d assigned this man to be my escort increased my suspicions. There were some in the brotherhood who still had love for me and who would think twice before cutting my throat on anyone’s orders. Abu Annas was not one of them.

  I wondered again how he planned to kill me. Knife or pistol, or maybe he meant to travel with me all the way to our destination, to put me more at ease, to park the car and walk up to the flat of Abu Ali the Cripple, where together, enjoying better odds, they’d dispatch me.

  I kept my hands loosely on the wheel, mindful not to tense up so that I’d be able to react in time to parry his attack, whenever it came. Grueling to be so attentive; the weather fair but my back damp against the seat. We passed through the marsh in the area where the river bends sluggishly and broadly, almost doubling back on itself. Here it overflows its banks in places, creating a morass of wetlands, untended canals, overgrown rice fields, a few of which were still in cultivation. Neither of us said much, listening to a cassette tape he’d brought, a mix of nasheeds popular with the Palestinian resistance. The songs heartened me, and I thought again how I might’ve misjudged the doctor’s intentions. We’d been together through so much: I remember vividly the time in Afghanistan when we were young men and the bombs fell from Soviet jets, whistling through the air and exploding so near, they threw us from our feet in the cave and collapsed a section of the roof, sendin
g a wooden support beam slicing downward to brain Abu Mahfouz the Libyan, martyring him before he knew what had happened, and even then Dr. Walid never cowered or pressed himself flat to the earth but rather ran out of the cave mouth and into the open air where shrapnel flew thick as leaves in a whirlwind. A joyful lion, he cried with his face to the sky, thanking God for the death he was finally to receive after two long years in the jihad. The rest of us marveled at his purity. After that day, many who lived through the bombardment swore that he was made of a special substance that, like copper, grows stronger the harder it is hammered upon.

  The marsh ended. We followed the river through farmland, approaching the city; we’d agreed it was best to circle around and enter Fallujah by the north road. The Americans had been reinforcing their positions in the south and east. Abu Annas shifted uncomfortably in his seat and adjusted his crotch.

  “Pull over in that grove, would you, brother. I’ve got to get some relief.”

  “All right.”

  This was it, I felt certain. When I stopped the car, he’d do it. Too dangerous to do it with us moving.

  I pressed down on the accelerator. The Golf’s engine strained hoarsely, the car rattling and jouncing over the ruts in the canal road.

  “Whoa—I don’t have to piss that bad.”

  I laughed and said Relax, brother, relax, but neither did I let up on the accelerator, flooring it, and in the final few seconds before I jerked the wheel, sending us off the road, hurtling chaotically into the palms, the stately trees planted in a tight-knit checkerboard pattern, he realized very well what I was up to and fought me for control of the wheel; we grappled in the front seat as the Golf’s jouncing became weightlessness, the car clearing a dry ditch and bottoming out, zooming and fishtailing through a gap in the first row of trees before smashing head-on into the second.

  When I came to, the Golf was lodged against a palm, engine still running but with a pinging rattle, flames darting out from under the hood. My face throbbed. I poked around with my tongue and couldn’t find my front teeth. I saw one on the dashboard and focused on it oddly, the tooth with its bloody stump amid pieces of windshield glass shattered into crystalline pellets. I looked to the passenger’s side: Abu Annas was unconscious, with a nasty gash in his forehead. He had not been wearing his belt, whereas, quite deliberately, I had. Black smoke began to pour from the car’s front end, choking me. I tried my door but it was stuck. I pulled myself through the window and gasped when I hit the ground; my ankle refused to bear weight. I hadn’t felt it was broken before then. I hopped around to the other side, wanting to be sure of myself, of what I’d just done, leaning through the passenger window, patting him down for a weapon and not finding one, but the fire cut short my search, making it too cursory to be definitive. It’s possible he meant to kill me with his bare hands. It’s possible he had a pistol hidden under the seat or that Abu Ali was waiting with one in his flat. It’s also possible, I must admit, that I murdered him out of paranoia.

  I took the satchel and left him to die in the burning car. I made for the canal road. An excruciating kilometer later, it intersected the Fallujah highway, and a barley farmer and his son taking their crop to market stopped their truck out of alarmed pity at the sight of me—bedraggled, battered, bloody—limping along the shoulder. They offered a ride the rest of the way.

  In the hubbub of the bazaar I found a street boy who was willing, for a fee, to acquire a few items that would make my next hours bearable. While he searched the market stalls with my hastily scrawled shopping list in hand, I found an out-of-the-way bench on which to rest, elevating my leg. I groaned to see the ankle had already swollen to nearly the size of a grapefruit.

  I tried to take my mind off the pain by deliberating over Dr. Walid’s most likely course of action. By evening he would’ve certainly heard that Abu Annas and I hadn’t kept our appointment with Abu Ali. After that, it would be only a matter of time before the remains of the car were discovered and the hunt for me was on. I could try to flee. I had the benefit of a head start, but with a revoked passport and four thousand dollars—which would go a long way in Iraq but not so very far outside it—I could not see escaping the doctor’s reach for long. There would be a fatwa, a bounty, faxes sent to every node in his network of contacts within the movement. The other emirs would take his side, of course. He was one of them. I was a traitor and a murderer.

  I thought of returning to Pakistan and my wife, but that was out of the question. Even assuming she would take me in, her home would be one of the most obvious places for them to look. I mulled over other options, but the more I considered a life on the run, the less it appealed. A life spent looking over my shoulder. I had already lived it, always expecting death to come from the enemy when, as it turned out, old friends were at least as dangerous.

  That afternoon in Fallujah I knew I had reached the end of something. The time for running was over. It was time to take a stand.

  The boy returned from the bazaar with a pair of crutches, a stack of fashion magazines, some electrical tape, a new shalwar, and a bottle of Valium. I had asked for morphine, but the boy said he could find none, telling me that Valium was always easy enough to come by, and now the war had turned it into a staple. He claimed his own mother was a regular customer, her nervous condition making it otherwise impossible for her to tolerate the American air strikes.

  I went into my satchel, paid him for his labor, and after we hashed out a few last arrangements, he went on his way. Using rolled magazines and electrical tape, I constructed a crude brace for my ankle, then hobbled on the crutches to a juice stand where I bought a cup and swallowed two of the pills. I went to the toilet and took off my clothing and the martyrdom vest, removing the battery and placing it, along with the vest and money, in the satchel, covering the contraband with the old bloody shalwar. I washed my face and did what I could to clean up. I changed into the fresh clothes, took two twenty-dollar bills and put them in my pocket, and rested a minute before making my way to the street, my black eyes and crutches attracting a few questioning glances, but the curiosity of the passersby was mostly casual. Here, the maimed and wounded were common.

  I flagged down a cab and climbed into the rear seat, the upholstery shredded like the driver had been ferrying loads of wild cats. The man was an African who spoke Arabic only adequately. When he asked, “Where to?” I noticed his teeth, stained brown with khat: a Somali, I guessed. Odd to find one in Iraq, but not unheard of.

  “The American base across the highway,” I told him, having never seen the place but knowing of it through Walid; the doctor had ways of staying informed. “The one east of the city. Can you get me there?”

  The Somali clucked and whistled and looked surprised, as if he’d pegged me for many things, none a collaborator.

  “That is extra charge,” he said. “Very risky.”

  I went into my pocket for twenty dollars. “Here, all I have.”

  “Nice. Okay, we go.”

  We drove out of the city. I rested my forehead against the window and drowsily watched the progression of slapdash little villages, farms and canals, children tending livestock, rummaging through mounds of rubbish dumped on the side of the road, hunting a few dinars’ worth of scrap metal. The Valium began to take effect; Iraq never looked so beautiful. It was the palm groves, I think, the neat rows of them, the way they appeared from the moving car, each tree shifting in parallax with those in front and behind, creating the illusion of infinite depth, as if you could walk forever through the groves.

  “Hey, so tell me, man. What happen to you?”

  I was annoyed the cabbie wanted to make conversation, and a tactless one at that. When I used to do this same work, I always had sense enough to let my fares dictate the mood.

  “Car crash,” I said.

  “Whoa. You are lucky.”

  “I would’ve thought the opposite.”

  “I mean you are lucky to be alive.”

  “I know what you meant.” />
  He turned and gave me a look before returning his concentration to the road.

  “You should be more careful. Like the way you are going to the Americans. Very dangerous now. You work for them?”

  “No,” I said.

  “But you are not afraid the mujahideen will think so?”

  “I’m not afraid at all.”

  The Somali whistled again at my bravado, which was actually a kind of resignation. Why be afraid? All things must die. The palm trees of Iraq, which I found so beautiful, they were dying, all of them. Thousands of years of civilization had robbed the soil of its ability to sustain life, the once-Fertile Crescent leached of nutrients, sown with salt. Slowly but surely what man touches passes into desert.

  “Me, I’m careful,” the cabbie said. “The mujahideen take your head just for talking to the Americans.”

  I decided, rather than succumb to silent annoyance, to have a little fun with him. I rested a hand on his seat back and leaned forward congenially.

  “You want to know why I’m not afraid? I’ll tell you. It’s because I am a mujahid. You’ve heard of the ones who captured that American girl? That brotherhood wouldn’t even exist without me. And neither will you, if you keep up your stupid yammering. Just drive, and don’t worry so much about me.”

  I was being reckless, but cabbies hear and see so much in any given day, he probably took me for a lunatic. I caught a look at myself reflected in the mirror and had to admit, I did appear addled: face swollen like a losing boxer, bloodshot eyes betraying no fear at all, not of man or death or the Americans, and a gaunt desperation to me, like I might without warning or motive scramble the rest of the way out of the backseat and bite off his ear, wrench the steering wheel out of his control, and send the car careening off the road just as I had with Abu Annas.