Youngblood

by Matt Gallagher

  “Not sure.” I set the skull and bag back in its hole. “But he may have been one of us, once upon a time.”

  Then I got on the radio with Captain Vrettos, apologizing for waking him, telling him he wouldn’t believe what we’d found.

  We detained the sheiks’ sons, though battalion let them go the next day, since none of them lived with their father and they all claimed ignorance of the body. The remains were sent to Baghdad and then to Germany for identity confirmation. Per higher’s instructions, we spent the rest of the afternoon digging up the entire yard, looking for more bodies. We didn’t find any.

  We returned to the outpost in the early evening, just as the desert beetles began trilling. Chambers met me at the top of the stairs, under the watchful stares of the Iraqi wall mural. He’d donned his body armor for a night patrol while I was preparing to shed mine.

  “You found him,” he said.

  “Believe so.” I stood straight and proud.

  “Huh.” He closed his eyes and exhaled slowly, like a man finding air after a long swim. When he opened them, his eyes had turned to chips of glass. “My turn to say thank you.”

  He stuck out a wristless right hand. I shook it and tried not to wince when he squeezed too hard.

  “Where is he?” Chambers asked. “I’d like to see him.”

  “Oh.” It was like I’d removed some great millstone from around Chambers’ neck. He wasn’t looking at me with contempt, or even irritation. Something had changed between us. I’d done something he couldn’t, that he hadn’t. He respected me now. Which made telling him that his friend’s bones were already en route to Baghdad even harder.

  I reached down and put my hand on his shoulder, where armor met cloth. His shoulder was tense, but he didn’t shrug me away.

  “We good?” Chambers asked. He wasn’t looking directly at me, but he wasn’t looking away from me, either. His right arm had gone slack, and he was balling his hand into a fist.

  “Yeah,” I said. “We good.”

  With that, he was gone into the Ashuriyah night. I stayed on those stairs for a long time, chewing over his words and the miracle we’d just stumbled across.

  26

  * * *

  The hell of July passed in a seared haze. Hours and days melted into one another under a sun so tyrannical the soldiers began calling it the Sultan. Siestas weren’t sometimes anymore, but most of the time. On the barren stretches of no-man’s-land and in the alleyways of town, we asked the Sultan for compassion. There was no response.

  We patrolled during the mornings. For our efforts, the locals called us majnuns, madmen. They weren’t wrong. “Don’t you understand?” they asked. “The insurgents work at night.” In between, I smoked a lot of cigarettes and drank a lot of Rip Its and watched DVDs about 1960s-era Madison Avenue and Prohibition-era gangsters. They made me miss home without reminding me of it.

  We’d made national news for finding Rios. NO MAN LEFT BEHIND was the headline blasted out by the army to every news service that still gave a shit. I spoke to an Associated Press reporter over the phone, reading a statement prepared by a public affairs officer. “We acted on a tip provided by a local, evidence that Iraqis are ready and willing to take control of their nation,” I said. “As important as this moment is for Americans and the U.S. military, it’s just as important for the Iraqi people.”

  “You believe that?” the reporter asked. “The violence numbers are increasing all over the country.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Why wouldn’t I?”

  My mom found my quote in ten different American newspapers and cut out and framed each one, even though they were all from the same AP article. “You’ll want these someday,” she assured me.

  Even Will was impressed. “This is a big deal,” he said. “And good leverage for you when you make your move against Chambers. What’s the deal with that, anyways?”

  “Nothing new,” I said. I still hadn’t told my family about the firefight or the medal for valor. I didn’t want to worry my parents. I didn’t tell Will for other reasons.

  A two-star general called from the Pentagon, asking to speak to me about finding the remains. “You Porter brothers sure are something,” he said. “I want you on my staff. Could use some hard-chargers back here, whip some bureaucrats into shape.”

  “Think I just want to stay here, sir,” I said. “But thank you.”

  He laughed and explained that he’d meant after we redeployed. I took down his contact info.

  Other than a long afternoon spent patching the security hole in the outpost Haitham had found before the firefight, the war went back to normal. The headaches lingered, something Doc Cork attributed to too many Rip Its and too little sleep. Each evening around dusk, our company’s leadership gathered, the only time I saw Captain Vrettos anymore. And every morning around dawn, I met my platoon’s night patrol as they filed into the outpost, scorpions on their shoulders, fatigue on their faces.

  “Everything good?” I always asked Chambers.

  Everything always was.

  We settled into a strange sort of routine, the kind that demanded our time yet nothing of our attention. I began thinking that maybe we could really ride out the rest of the deployment and make it home all right. A few days later, I began believing it.

  Then Snoop said the cleaning woman needed to speak with us.

  Lying in bed, hands wrapped behind my head, I sighed and paused the DVD player on my lap. Among other things, my patience for counterinsurgency and its endless meetings had wilted in the summer heat.

  “Fuck that noise,” I said. It was late morning and we were alone in my room. “I don’t care about Shaba anymore. Or sheiks, or their daughters. It’s all bullshit, a myth for stupid people.”

  When I tried to go back to my show, Snoop shook the bed frame. “Yo!” he said. “She say she has information on Haitham.”

  Higher’s need to capture Haitham had become a parody of itself. It’s all they asked about, all they cared about. Captain Vrettos did his best to shield us from the Big Man’s furies, though he’d taken to calling their meetings “Death by Colonel.”

  “Haitham,” I said, pressing pause again.

  “Haitham,” Snoop repeated. He still didn’t believe the town drunk was capable of being a terrorist mastermind. I put on my uniform top and boots, and we walked downstairs into a council office. Alia waited in the dark, already seated, the room smelling of honeysuckle and kerosene.

  I flipped the light switch and we took a seat across from her in white plastic chairs. She had her hands crossed in her lap and her eyes on the ground.

  “Sing me a song,” I said. “And make it good.”

  Alia looked up at Snoop, confused.

  “Damn it,” I said, this time in English. None of the locals could ever wade through my Arabic, despite my being able to understand them.

  “You found Shaba?” she asked. She’d varied her usual outfit with a gray head scarf and eye shadow the color of dirty ice. I nodded, proud of what we’d accomplished, no longer bothered by how it’d come about. She asked where his bones were.

  “Texas,” Snoop said. “With his family.”

  She bowed her head and mumbled something I didn’t understand.

  “Iraqi curse,” Snoop said. “She’s upset the body went to America.”

  I asked why. She raised her head and explained she’d hoped he’d be buried in Ashuriyah so she could pay her respects. I considered asking Snoop why she thought that would’ve happened, but remembered we’d ended our last meeting suspecting her of understanding English.

  “Haitham,” I said, trying not to sound irritated. I reached into a cargo pocket, pulled out a twenty-dollar bill, and set it on the table. “Where is he?”

  She pulled the money to her. “He walks around the far southeast of town,” she said. “Where the tribal leaders used to live, before the Collapse. I saw him there two days ago, standing at the gates of Sheik Ahmed’s abandoned estate.”

  “Hmm
.” I pictured the map imagery of southeast Ashuriyah, then its wide, dusty streets, its sandstone mansions with balconies. It wouldn’t have been where I’d hide out.

  “Bullshit,” Snoop said. I turned toward him. He was rubbing the top of his head with both hands. “Think about this, LT. Would a terror men leader walk around the middle of the day? He’s not the Cleric. Someone wants us to think he is.”

  I turned back toward Alia, her face dropping again to the floor. She’s being forthright, I thought. Nothing like the last meeting. Old questions forged within.

  “Sig-ue mi ej-emp-lo,” I said to Snoop slowly, telling him to follow my lead. I recalled Dominguez teaching our terp conversational Spanish at some point, though my own was worse than my Arabic. “Comprende?”

  “Sí,” he whispered.

  “Tell her we know Haitham is the Cleric,” I said. “And that we appreciate this information.”

  Snoop translated.

  “But my friend here, Snoop. He’s more skeptical. He thinks it’s stupid to believe someone who’s lied to us. He thinks you must be telling more lies.”

  “I’m no liar!” Alia waited for Snoop’s translation, but barely. “Haitham’s a bad man. You must find him.”

  “Alia.” I shook my head. “Maybe that’s true, maybe not. But why should I believe someone who forgot to mention she’d worked for Sheik Ahmed?”

  Her lips pursed tight.

  “A lie, which is half a truth, is ever the blackest of lies.” Tennyson might’ve been too much, but I didn’t care. “You worked for Ahmed, and guess what? So did Haitham! And now you’re here, telling us he’s hanging around the dead man’s house. What a coincidence.”

  “Haitham never lied to us,” Snoop added, first in English, then in Arabic.

  She rolled in her chair like an angry ball. Long, hot seconds passed. “You must get him,” she finally said. I could barely hear her. “He’s there. I swear by the shrine.”

  I reached into my cargo pocket and threw down five ten-dollar bills. “All yours. But the truth. All of it. If not, you’ll never work in this outpost again.”

  She pushed the money away and tipped her head, eyeing me and Snoop with open disdain. “The people are wrong,” she said, her Arabic like darts. “You’re nothing like Shaba.”

  “I know,” I said, biting my bottom lip. “I’m not dead.”

  “Though Allah will never forgive me,” she said, “I’m no traitor like Haitham.”

  Behind fierce chestnut eyes, her long, elegant fingers gripping the table, this was the story she told us:

  “It was the winter of the Baghdad snow. Sheik Ahmed invited the Horse soldiers to visit, like he always did with new Americans. It was always the same talk about power, about electricity, about peace. Just talk.

  “The Horse soldiers came at dusk. There were three of them, and a translator. A captain, a lieutenant, and a sergeant.

  “Yes, the first two were named Tisdale and Grant. They were like every other American officer, white with pink faces. But the sergeant was different. Even before he became Shaba, we knew that.

  “He was small. And brown. And quiet.

  “I watched the meeting from the hallway, behind a curtain. The sheik’s daughter was with me. Yes, Rana.

  “The first hour, the meeting was normal. Lots of promises, lots of jokes about women. Then Shaba looked at the sheik and asked about the rumors of his al-Qaeda son, in Arabic. Everyone became quiet. None of us had ever met an American who spoke our language so well.

  “The sheik asked how he knew about Karim.

  “ ‘By listening,’ Shaba said, pointing to Ashuriyah. ‘They say the father wants peace. Then they say the son wants war.’

  “The sheik said the rumors were true. We hadn’t seen Karim for months, though, not since his father ordered him to leave his house for dishonoring the tribe.

  “What was Karim like? Like his father. Prideful. He’d grown up believing he would be an important man. Before the Invasion, he studied engineering in Baghdad, which brought honor to the tribe. But after their mother died of chest cancer, Karim became angry with everyone, and with the world.

  “Rana wasn’t allowed at meetings. The sheik made her stay away from Americans. He believed they would go crazy from her beauty and rape her. But after I brought out the apricots and hummus, Rana asked if the new sergeant was handsome. I knew then she was up to something.

  “She was always a brave child, but on the third visit of the Horse soldiers, it became something else. She walked through the curtain and into the sitting room, defying her father’s law, wearing a blouse and American-style jeans. With no face cover! She sat between her father and the sergeant, put her hand out and said, ‘Hah-loe,’ like she’d seen in movies.

  “How old? She was—sixteen that winter. Beautiful, like only a girl that age can be. Had the same circle mark on her cheek that her mother did. She wasn’t angry like her brother, but had his temper when things didn’t go her way. She thought the young men here were beneath her. Long before Shaba, she wanted to marry a man from Baghdad, maybe Basra, to get away.

  “Shaba nodded at Rana, but didn’t take her hand. He knew not to violate the sheik’s law. But when the sheik asked her to leave, she didn’t move. Her father was enraged but didn’t know what to do in front of the guests. So she stayed and listened.

  “The eyes of Shaba remained on Rana the rest of the meeting, and she looked back, smiling and twisting her hair. Neither spoke. The lieutenant, Grant, reminded me of a sad cow, he didn’t know what to do. Eventually, even the sheik became silent. The translator talked about the weather until the meeting ended.

  “That night, the servants and guards gathered in the courtyard to listen to Rana fight with her father. She said she believed in love at first sight. That she knew she would marry Shaba. He said no; he forbade it. She said she would have many babies with her beautiful soldier. He said she would have many babies with the son of a Ramadi sheik, as he’d planned. She said she would run away to America with Shaba and leave Iraq and the al-Badris forever. He said nothing to that.

  “What did the sheik think? Probably that it was just the foolish wishes of a girl. But Shaba felt the same. He came to the gate the next night, no armor or helmet. Only a dishdasha that hid a small pistol. He and Sheik Ahmed talked for many hours.

  “I listened at the curtain as much as I could. They spoke of Babylon and caliphs and the empire of the Turks. They spoke of al-Qaeda and Jaish al-Mahdi, of tribes from Anbar to Diyala. Sheik Ahmed said most of the Iraqis who shot guns and planted bombs didn’t hate Americans, but that they’d been hired for that by men from other towns.

  “ ‘They need jobs,’ he told Shaba. ‘The key to peace is jobs. Idle hands find the trigger.’

  “Shaba agreed. Then he explained to the sheik that he would seek the hand of Rana, but only if he was permitted to. He promised not to dishonor the sheik or his daughter. He said the most important thing was to bring peace to Ashuriyah. The sheik asked many questions—of Shaba’s family, of his life in America. Shaba said he hated where he came from, that he’d never had a home. That was why he wanted peace in Ashuriyah. To make a home here.

  “When I heard what he said about Rana, I went to her. She’d been locked away in her room, under guard. Her eyes shone brighter than anything when I told her. ‘Go back,’ she said. ‘Learn more.’

  “When I returned to the curtain, the sheik and Shaba had come up with a plan for the Sons of Iraq—the Sahwa. There needed to be checkpoints, they agreed, many checkpoints that gave Iraqi men purpose and means to provide for their families.

  “They saved Iraq from chaos while the rest of us slept.

  “We learned the next day Sheik Ahmed had given Shaba permission to visit Rana. She wept with happiness and kissed her father’s feet. He seemed happy, too, the happiest he’d been since his wife lived, the older servants said.

  “It became a love like you hear in stories. They met in the sitting room twice a week. Sometimes he
came with other Horse soldiers for meetings. At first they pretended the other meetings weren’t happening, but that stopped when the sad cow lieutenant made a joke. If other soldiers knew what Shaba knew, the lieutenant said, they would come to the sheik’s home at night, too.

  “He was just a sergeant? That’s a stupid thing to say. Everyone listened to Shaba, especially his officers. He knew better than them. Once the Sahwa formed, peace followed. Slowly at first, but after the Americans paid the first time, more men wanted to join. The sheik started having meetings with sheiks from other parts of Iraq. They agreed to bring the idea to their American soldiers.

  “One cold night in the sitting room, they told the sheik they wished to marry in the spring. The sheik clapped his hands and praised Allah for their love. He said he’d be proud to call Shaba his son. Shaba smiled like I’d never seen before, and Rana glowed like only a beautiful girl in love can.

  “Yes, this was possible. That’s another stupid thing to say. Because our culture is so different than yours? Muslims are like people anywhere, Lieutenant Porter. They fall in love. They get married. They build families. All of that is what Shaba and Rana wanted. All of that is what they would have had. What they should have had.

  “The sheik hosted a feast for them. The old mayor came. The old sheiks, the old police chief, the old doctor and his wife. Even the mukhtar from the far villages. The sad cow lieutenant came with Shaba. The sheik’s cousin drove from Karrada to play the cello. There was food and dancing, and Rana and Shaba kissed in the courtyard under stars. After he left, she said it’d been the happiest night of her life.

  “Then Haitham ruined everything.

  “Days later, when the sheik was away, Karim came home. He said he’d bombed the golden mosque in Samarra, and needed someplace to hide.

  “We said his father hadn’t forgiven him, which surprised him. But Rana was so happy to see him, kept holding his face and telling him how skinny he looked.

  “I could tell something was wrong, though. He was so quiet. He took her hands off him. ‘Is it true?’ he asked his sister. ‘You’re to marry a dog of the occupiers?’