Alexandre contributed platitudes, Jean inserted questions (and indicated to me, in an aside, that he was recording everything on his iPhone). Zorro played stick-your-tongue-out with Little Ahmed. (A game of facial contortions they had devised together one lunchtime in a smart bistro when I was trying to instill some table manners into Little Ahmed; a game with rules so impenetrable and complex that they constituted a whole private language.)
Father Angelo fetched more wine. The two intruding rectangles softened around their edges. The large one put his elbows on the table, comfortably expanding his territory. He seemed to have decided to enter into a wry duel with Ahmed. Syrian to Iraqi, brother-cousins; an internecine relativity.
“Don’t make the mistake,” Ahmed said to him, “of underestimating religion.”
The square man touched his breast and looked up into the night sky, reflexively, only half joking.
Brother Thomas whispered to me, “He’s an Alawite. Only God knows who their God is.”
“It is the most powerful force in our region. But now we need another ideology,” Ahmed continued, warming to one of his favorite think-tank conference themes. “We need a vision that can supersede the superstition of religion—”
Father Angelo frowned. “Man’s violence to his fellow man is not the responsibility of his religion.”
“I don’t think you can ignore God,” Ahmed said.
“I never think that I can ignore God,” Father Angelo replied drily.
“Religion. God. It does not matter,” said the Alawite. “Communism. Democracy. It does not matter—”
“After all,” said Alexandre, who had also understood quickly (as I had not) the political proclivities of our two intruders, and was now able to inveigle accordingly. “Al-Assad—the father—a great man, whom I had the great honor to meet,” he added with impressive emphasis, “on several occasions—was able to lead his country through all of these temptations.” The Alawite smiled, but saw through the emollience and continued to focus his gaze on Ahmed.
“We need something that can supersede the politics of democracy or dictatorship or East versus West. Even to supersede the imams and the clerics.” Ahmed paused for effect; his small audience waited for his utopia. “More important than all of these is the universal unifying medium of—money.”
I had heard this all before. Alexandre had too. He raised his usual objection.
“We have tried this, but you cannot have free markets without free and fair institutions to regulate them—”
“Money,” Ahmed winked at the Alawite bomber jacket, “will co-opt even the most fervent ideologues, even the pious ones. Especially the pious ones! Not because money is corruption, but because they need it to achieve their goals. Give them money.”
“Which is the same thing as giving them guns,” Alexandre warned. What did Alexandre know of Ahmed’s dealings in Hama?
“He is right!” said the Alawite, laughing. “You must give them money and guns, because otherwise someone else will give them money and guns.” Ahmed grinned, an alliance had formed. “And then you can direct them—”
Ahmed stood up. He held the world in the palm of his imagination (in the palm of his nonsense). This was a perfect audience: a Western diplomat to navigate the geopolitics, a journalist to disseminate, a photographer to record, local partners to provide logistics. Only the monks had no purpose—except someone would have to pick up the bodies; perhaps they could be used as rescue services. There were no Muslims present. But that was OK because as the subject of the plot, it was better they were kept in the dark.
“Let’s be a little bit clever.” (Oh Ahmed, always so clever; how could you have been so stupid?) Serrated shadows of vine leaves fell across his face. The big Alawite pushed his chair back from the table. Ahmed spread his hands impresario wide. “The first thing is to identify your true goal.”
“Peace in the Middle East!” I called out. This had been our old joke toast. What shall we drink to? Ah yes, Peace in the Middle East!
“Yes!” said Ahmed, surprisingly. “And what is the greatest obstacle to peace in the Middle East?”
“Israel!” “Amrika!” “Iran!” cried out different voices. (Oh Ahmed, you were a compelling motherfucker. But what whopping lies you told! Can it be that you had even convinced yourself?)
“The biggest problem,” said Ahmed, slowly, drawing out his reveal, “is Saudi Arabia. The kingdom of oil that is the origin of this cancer of Wahhabism that is destabilizing everything.” Everyone nodded; this was a simplistic but universally accepted truth. “And by some happy irony, the very jihad that their Wahhabism has spawned hates the Saudis too. It should not be very difficult, non,”— he nodded towards Alexandre, who he regarded as a great pragmatist—“to persuade jihadis, a group of them, some commander-imam with a band of Kalashnikov idiots, to turn their attention away from killing Shia and Westerners and focus their attention on the venal and sclerotic Saudi regime. This was, of course, Osama’s original target, before he got distracted. And how easy to entice them and say, If you want to establish a caliphate the best and most obvious place for its capital must be—”
“Mecca!” The Alawite clapped his hands together delightedly.
“Voilà!” said Ahmed, making a small bow. “Turn the terrorism towards the Saudi royal family. Attack, suicide bombs, assassinations. There are plenty of uncles and nephews and lesser brothers and minor ministers to pick off. Think about it. It has the same evil genius logic of the Iran-Iraq War. You take the two most dangerous and unpleasant players in the region and encourage them to fight each other in a sand pit. You can even make money selling both sides weapons. The war will go on for a long time and no one will win and no one will care.”
“What you are suggesting is what the Americans tried in Afghanistan, funding jihadis against the Soviet Union,” said Jean. “Congratulations, you just created the Taliban. Beware the law of unintended consequences.”
“One consequence of smashing up Saudi Arabia,” said Ahmed, not the least deterred by this precedent, “would be to wean the world off Saudi oil. No oil, no money, no exported Wahhabism. And the rest of the world will have to find green alternatives and so the unintended consequence of this plan is to solve global warming.”
“Ha!” Alexandre clapped his palm against his knee.
“What is this pipe-dream crap,” I said, “the audacity of hope? Hollow campaign promises.” Ahmed ignored me.
“The corrupt Saudi royal family, an apostate Erdogan, ancestral Yemeni lands, Libyan oil fields—it doesn’t really matter what you distract them with, but instead of trying to defeat them with Western ideology, which only reinforces their opposition to it, or with bombs that only enrage the hornets—you simply redirect it.”
“It’s a solution worthy of the Iranians,” said Alexandre. I am not sure if he meant this as a compliment or a criticism. But Ahmed’s gaze remained focused on the Alawite. The Alawite nodded gently as if confirming something to himself.
“Is that what you were doing in Hama,” the Alawite asked, slowly, deliberately. Ahmed took a step back. He had not realized that he was the mouse and not the cat.
“As a representative of the U.N. High Comissioner—” he began in defensive remonstration.
“Talking to the Muslim Brotherhood?” The Alawite put his trump card on the table. Ahmed sat down.
“The U.N. is neutral,” Ahmed replied evenly. “I talked to several groups about their participation in a conflict resolution conference to be jointly sponsored by the quadrilateral powers under the leadership of France.”
“Ah yes, France—” The Alawite now turned to Alexandre, Ahmed’s “friend.”
“France has only the desire to facilitate and encourage whatever peaceful resolution is possible.”
“Yes, we remember.”
Alexandre did not take the bait. He had spent most of his career in the Middle East sidestepping the Sykes-Picot question.
“Gentlemen,” said Father Angelo, attempti
ng to defuse the conversation, “the Crusades are long over, their castles are ruins.”
“They are stockpiling guns in the dungeons of Krak des Chevaliers,” Brother Thomas whispered to me. “The Brotherhood in Hama will rise up, everyone knows this. We have to get rid of this Alawite—”
“Is he Mukhabarat?” I whispered back.
“No, Air Force Intelligence, I think, the scary ones, very close to the president—look at his watch.” I looked. Black matte Breitling. “We have to find a way to get rid of him, otherwise he will arrest someone just to have done something.” Brother Thomas got up and signaled to another monk to help him clear the plates.
The bells began to ring. Father Angelo looked confused for a moment, but Brother Thomas said quickly, “It is the hour of Compline,” and then Father Angelo got it.
“Yes, yes, of course, Compline!” We all got up in a great and sudden enthusiasm to go to the chapel.
“My apologies,” Father Angelo said to his guests. “You are welcome to join us in prayer.”
The big Alawite drained the wine from his glass and shook his head. He stood for a moment with his hand resting on his gun and looked at Ahmed with narrowed eyes. Little Ahmed jumped up and tugged at his father’s hand.
“Come and pray with us, Aba, it smells like Christmas cookies and they give you a piece of bread!” With his burnt sienna curls he looked like a Raphael cherub, imploring and irresistible. The Alawite bent down and pinched his cheek. Little Ahmed, I noticed with pride, glowered at him.
“Here’s my card,” said Ahmed, presenting his credentials embossed with pale blue olive branches. “Please forgive my exuberance among friends. It is only the wine talking. I am committed, as we all are at the U.N. Mission, to the stability and safety of the Syrian people.” He smiled warmly and held out his hand. The Alawite hesitated for a moment. Little Ahmed pulled harder, “Come on, Aba!” The Alawite took Ahmed’s hand and pressed his fingers hard.
“Another time,” he said, taking the card and putting it in his pocket. “We know where to find you.”
“With pleasure,” said Ahmed, flashing his charming smile and turning to take refuge in the church.
We all sat close together, as if huddling from the evening chill, and listened to the voices of the Alawites growing fainter as they descended into the valley below. Brother Thomas began to recite the liturgy in the language of Jesus. Rousse held my hand and I held Little Ahmed’s hand. Zorro bent his head and ran his fingers through a loop of prayer beads. I closed my eyes and prayed or tried to pray, to keep us all safe, to keep everyone safe. But I knew it was pointless and soon angry, annoyed thoughts intruded. What was Ahmed thinking, to spar with a shark? What was he doing in Hama? “Liaison” bullshit? Why was he drawn back, inexorably, inescapably, into the region’s disaster, as if he could somehow solve it, as if he would remain immune? Did he think his blue U.N. passport was an invincibility shield?
Father Angelo read from 1 Peter: Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil is prowling round like a roaring lion, seeking for someone to devour. Resist him, strong in the faith. And we nodded our assenting amens as meekly as the tortoise chewed her lettuce leaf.
Afterwards, tired and quiet, Rousse and I said our goodnights and went up to the women’s dormitory. I had found a copy of Alice in Wonderland in the library and had begun reading it to Little Ahmed, and now I took it out and opened it at random. My flashlight beam made a feeble wobbling glow, the words seemed to lift from the page and swim in all directions. Alice fell down the rabbit hole. Grew too big and then too small and then nearly drowned in a pool of her own tears. The Cheshire Cat grinned and disappeared.
“I’ve never seen Ahmed in full flow like that,” said Rousse, splashing cold water onto her face from a zinc bowl. “It’s terrifying, unstoppable, strangely compelling.”
“I know.”
“The whole evening, the dinner, had the quality of a last supper,” she continued, considering. “Orange-blossom-scented betrayal, death waiting in the wings, a canopy of vine leaves above, and the stars laughing at us from far, far away.”
“And the Queen of Hearts shouted, “Off with their heads!”
_____
In January 2014, Father Angelo went to Raqqa to negotiate the release of a French Syriac Catholic priest who had been kidnapped by ISIS. He called Alexandre the day before he left from Aleppo. Ahmed and I were having dinner at his house in Saint-Cloud at the time. I listened as Alexandre tried to dissuade him from his self-imposed mission.
“Ce n’est pas efficace, mon cher ami.” It will make no difference—another hostage, another death. “We need someone to be the hope. Dead is only dead.” I could not hear the other side of the conversation, but Alexandre must have known that his appeals would not dissuade the determined monk. Father Angelo would never count his own soul more valuable than any other. Death was hope, death could be hope; if his effort failed, it was God’s will, but without trying, there was nothing—
Anyway, there is nothing; we have not heard from Father Angelo since. Or there is hope; Alexandre says that if he had been killed we would have heard about it.
FOUR
Not long after we returned to Paris, Ahmed told me he was moving to Baghdad. He said he had been offered a promotion, and the new job would give him a roving responsibility seconded to the Iraqi Foreign Ministry to coordinate with the American Embassy. Ahmed said things were different in Baghdad now that Obama had announced the U.S. military would pull out by the end of the year. Oil prices were high, potential foreign investors had begun to sniff. There was work to be done, he said, to guide and shape Iraq’s future and its place in the world.
“Business, financial infrastructure, international standards, legal codes, import-export guarantees, capacity building. It’s a challenge, Kit,” said Ahmed.
“You once said ‘a challenge’ was just an administrative euphemism for a problem.”
Ahmed made a wry face.
“Back to Baghdad?” I was surprised, I was concerned.
“It’s a career-defining opportunity,” he said. He sounded like he was trying to convince me with bullet points from a corporate brochure.
“Are you trying to continue your father’s work? Is this some kind of expiation?” Ahmed frowned. This had not occurred to him. Which didn’t mean it was not a subliminal explanation, but at the same time, it was unlike Ahmed to feel guilt. I watched his face sift through several possible responses. Should he change course, sail into the wind, luff? He finally chose the one that had always been the most effective with me, faux honesty, a popcorn puff with just enough kernel of truth to be plausible.
“Paris was never my place, never my city. I know you wanted it to be. The French are so constantly, constamment full of disdain. I don’t even think it’s racist, because they have it for everyone, even for each other. There are things I miss about Iraq that I never expected to. How people talk to each other—not what they say, but the tone, as if they are making a great joke of preparing to stab you in the back—is one of them. It’s my culture, after all. I am simply not in Paris enough to make it worth it to stay in the lesser job. The money will be better, I can increase my maintenance payments. I’ll still be back and forth between Paris; probably you won’t even notice any difference.”
He gave me so many reasons that I didn’t believe any of them.
“But Little Ahmed.”
Ahmed only said, “We’ll tell him together.”
_____
We took Little Ahmed to his favorite Lebanese restaurant, and over labneh and fries his father told him he was going to live in Iraq. He had thought about it, he said, and he wanted Little Ahmed to stay here with me, where he had a good school and a good life.
“Pourquoi?” his son asked him.
“I have business to do in Baghdad. And your grandmother Beeby is sick and I should take care of her because all her sisters are in Dubai now.”
“Quelles affaires?”
“Impo
rtant.”
“Des affaires that are more important than me.”
“It’s not that.”
“What is it then?”
“It’s—” and then Ahmed continued to explain in Arabic.
“Laesh? his son asked again. It is almost impossible to outwit a nine-year-old. Little Ahmed kept asking, alternating his three languages, “Laesh, pourquoi, WHY?” He gripped the starched white tablecloth with two small fists and shouted at his father. His father did not answer him. To me Ahmed could dissemble as easily as he had always done. He could not bring himself to lie to his son, but neither could he tell him the truth. Cornered, he put on his pickle-jar-smashing mask and resorted to anger.
“You will sit down and behave. You will eat everything on your plate. You will make good conversation and we will have a nice time. Life is not arranged for nine-year-old children. I want the best for you, as my father wanted the best for me. You must grow up in the West.”
Little Ahmed was not intimidated by this display of paternal authority.
“Why do I have to grow up in the West if you don’t want to live here? Why don’t we just stay together? You said we are a family. Why are you leaving me?”
Ahmed looked over the mezze at me for help. I raised my eyebrows back at him.
“All good points,” I said.
“I don’t have a choice,” said Ahmed. He swallowed his glass of wine as if it were a lump of coal. Whatever the reason was, was his; ours not to reason why. I saw that Ahmed was genuinely torn—not conflicted, but somehow caught. I saw in the way he could not meet his son’s eyes that he did not want to leave him.
I said to Little Ahmed, “It’s not your father’s fault,” although it was. “He will come back and visit often. You can Skype together. You can get lots of presents out of him by making him feel guilty.” But Little Ahmed was not the kind of child who was easily bought.
“It’s not fair,” he repeated, and no amount of ice cream changed his mind.
_____
Before long Little Ahmed seemed to settle into a new routine. As Margot said, kids adjust to the world with which they are presented.
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