by Jan Coffey
“It’s hard for outsiders to believe, but this is absolutely the safest area in Iraq.”
Austyn decided he’d been too obvious. He leaned back in the chair, watching the bicycle-drawn cart take a right at the next intersection as a small car careened around the antique vehicle and sped off out of sight.
“From the images of Iraq that Americans see on television, you wouldn’t know that there’s even one place left in this country that isn’t torn up.”
Ken nodded with understanding. “Living here, I see and talk to the locals every day. Delivery guys say they’re not worried about ambushes. Shopkeepers tell me that security is not an issue. And they’re not just blowing smoke up my ass. You’ll see for yourself. The shops are open as late as people are on the streets…and that’s way after it gets dark. The restaurants are full. I don’t know how long we’ll be here, but if we’re here for a couple of days, you’ll hear it from the locals yourself. None of the Kurds living and working in Erbil are thinking war—they’re thinking peace and prosperity. Occasional violence or kidnappings are the result of a disagreement between Kurds about independence, but that’s a rare thing.”
Austyn figured Ken was probably around fifty, maybe a little older. Short red hair going to gray, freckles, low key. He was easy to talk to and seemed like a guy a person could trust. He’d first come over as an Army Reservist when his unit had been deployed, but then his time here had continued to extend. Austyn could already tell that the other man had a strong attachment to the people and this area.
“While life in the cities to the south—like Baghdad and Falluja—is pretty much driven by the insurgency, Erbil is part of the other Iraq, the region that stays out of the headlines and where life resembles something close to normal,” he continued. “This is actually true for most of Iraq’s northernmost regions. This whole area forms a thin, peaceful crescent around the upper rim of the country, extending from Duhok to Erbil and Suleymaniyah, cities that are less familiar back in the U.S. precisely because they have largely avoided the violence down south.”
Austyn knew that was true. The media wasn’t alone in focusing on killings and disasters. The same went for the general intelligence briefings they received at Homeland Security. Reports were issued with the focus on trouble spots. Two tour buses drove slowly by.
“Tourists?” Austyn asked.
Ken smiled and placed one of the small sugar cubes between his teeth and took a sip of his tea. “Yeah. The local businesses are promoting it heavily. They’re trying to convince people that not all of Iraq is Falluja. They’re trying hard to show that Kurdistan is safe. The new, three hundred million dollar international airport you flew into is just one sign of the changing times.”
“Where do these tourists come from?”
“Turkey, Iran. There are some Europeans, too. And, of course, a lot come from south of the border.”
“Border?” Austyn asked.
Ken laughed. “The Kurds maintain a hard internal border between what they consider Kurdistan and the Arab-dominated central and southern Iraq. They’ve had the border in place since the Kurdish uprising at the end of the first Gulf War.”
“And they’re using it to stop the violence from creeping in from the south?” Austyn asked.
“Seems to be working. Cars on the road heading north are stopped at a series of checkpoints. ID cards are checked. Vehicles are searched. Smugglers, insurgents, and terrorists who try sneaking into Kurdistan through Iraq’s wilderness areas are ambushed by border patrols.”
“And that’s enough? A few guards and there’s no violence?”
“No,” Ken said looking around him at the faces of people on the street. “They have a second line of defense. The Kurds themselves. Out of necessity, these people have forged one of the most vigilant anti-terrorist communities in the world.”
“A kind of regional neighborhood watch, huh?”
“Exactly.” Ken nodded. “Anyone who doesn’t speak Kurdish with a native accent stands out. Kurds are famous for being hospitable, especially to foreigners…obvious tourists, contractors, the military. But if they think you’re a problem, watch out. As a group intent on protecting itself, they can be pretty…uh, decisive. And then, there’s the Peshmerga.”
“I know about them.”
“You should. They’ve fought alongside us since ’91. Peshmerga means ‘those who face death.’ Not a bad name for their armed forces group. Peshmerga is really the group in charge of security. They do a pretty remarkable job of it.”
Two fresh cups of black tea appeared before them. Again, Ken’s had two sugar cubes on the saucer.
“This tastes good. What kind of tea is it?” Austyn asked.
“Whatever kind they’re brewing today.” Ken smiled. “I guess…today’s tea is Ceylon…from Sri Lanka. That’s what most of the hotels in the city seem to be serving these days.”
Austyn sipped his tea and looked down the road. In the distance, mountains rose up, rugged and forbidding. His mind locked back on Rahaf Banaz. They needed to find her.
“How big is the region?” Austyn asked, feeling inadequate about his lack of knowledge of the area. But, he told himself, when he left Washington, no one could have foreseen his mission would take him here. Luckily, Ken Hilliard was a walking encyclopedia, and Austyn was grateful that he was their escort.
The first tea glasses were snatched off the table by a boy who couldn’t be more than ten or twelve. He had the incredible ability to carry some twenty or so sets of teacups and saucers, one stacked on top of the other, without a tray. Wearing a long white tee shirt, pants, and sandal, he flew between the tables, taking care of everyone sitting outside.
“Iraqi Kurdistan covers about 36,000 square kilometers, or almost 14,000 square miles, an area slightly smaller than Switzerland. It’s home to about 3.5 million of Iraq’s 25 million people.”
“I recall the president referring to Kurdistan as an example of what has gone right in Iraq since 2003,” Austyn commented.
Ken leaned back, looking around the street. “I thought the same thing when I was first sent here. But after all these years, I know better.”
“What do you mean?”
“The relative peace they have here is not a result of the U.S. invasion. This region has been self-governing since the end of the first Gulf War.” Ken explained. “This was all no-fly zone patrolled by U.S. and British aircraft after that war, and that pretty much freed the Kurds of Saddam Hussein’s grip. At least, north of the 36th parallel. Since then, Kurds who fled Saddam's Iraq decades ago have been returning to take posts in the government and private sector, and in the universities here. They’ve had time to stabilize and rebuild.”
This explained what Austyn had read about Rahaf sending so much of her income to this area. Homeland Security didn’t have a file on Fahimah, but he wouldn’t be surprised if she had been doing the same thing. It also made sense why she would come here to look for her sister.
“Despite everything I’ve just told you, this area hasn’t been entirely peaceful. We had a couple of attacks on the offices of Kurdish political parties in the city a few years back. I think about sixty or seventy people were killed. But that was it. Nothing compared to the rest of this country,” Ken continued.
“That would be an average day in Baghdad,” Austyn replied, frowning.
“Exactly.”
The two men were silent for a moment, and Austyn watched the traffic and sipped his tea. The drivers in Erbil were as crazy as they were in any other city, and maybe a little more so. Surprisingly, nobody was laying on their horns the way they would be in New York or Cairo or Rome.
A street vender selling watches came by, stopping at each table. When he came to their table, Ken spoke to him in Kurdish, and the man replied politely before moving along. Austyn put his glass on the saucer.
“It’s more than just time or road blocks or the Peshmerga or even foreign investors,” he commented. “You can’t buy this kind of stability, and G
od knows we’ve learned you can’t really force it on people long-term, either. This comes by people making all of it work together. You’ve got to want it to work.”
Ken nodded. “I agree. People are the main ingredient. I heard one of their commanders say that the Kurdish people identify with their regional government. They feel they have a stake in maintaining peace. He told me if you try to rule a country with oppression and force, you have to surround it with fortresses. But if the people are on your side, they become your fortress.”
“Not a bad philosophy. Something we could keep in mind when we…”
Austyn stopped mid-sentence, surprised to see one of the guards he’d left outside Fahimah’s room appear at the door of the hotel. Immediately behind him, Fahimah followed with the other guard in tow. She had pulled a Nike cap on her head, and she was still wearing the white cotton shirt and camouflage pants she’d put on back at the Brickyard. Although extremely thin, she drew everyone’s gaze when she stepped out. Austyn realized that she was definitely a head-turner. Those green eyes in the pale face never ceased to startle him. She came directly to their table.
Ken and Austyn both stood up.
“I’m sorry, sir,” one of the guards started. “She wouldn’t wait in the room until we could ask you if—”
“I’m not a prisoner,” she said in a low but clear voice before sitting down at the table with them.
Austyn motioned to the two soldiers to wait by the front of the hotel. He immediately saw the error in that. Everyone—from those at the tables to the people in the cars or on the sidewalk—was looking at the soldiers.
“There’s very little U.S. military presence in the north,” Ken explained. “People say they don’t feel occupied. They’re not used to seeing armed soldiers.”
“I warned him of that when we were still in Afghanistan,” Fahimah said.
Austyn wasn’t about to let her sit out here without protection. He carried no weapon. Ken seemed way too relaxed to be counted on to draw the pistol he wore at his belt. Just then, an argument broke out across the street between a shop owner and the watch vender who’d stopped in front of his store. For a few minutes, anyway, everyone’s attention was focusing in that direction.
He looked at Ken, who was studying Fahimah’s profile intently. Interestingly, the red-haired soldier seemed to have a crush on her. Austyn noticed it at the airport where Ken had met them. The British accent and the green eyes must have done it, he supposed.
The boy appeared with more tea. He put one in front of Fahimah.
“Supas…mamnoon,” she nodded to him.
The boy shot her a surprised look, glanced at the men, and then asked something. She answered him. The boy smiled and walked away.
“What was that all about?” Austyn asked.
She didn’t answer. He noticed that there were three sugar cubes on her saucer.
“What did he ask you?” Austyn asked Fahimah again.
She actually smiled and looked over at Ken. “Would you care to translate?”
Austyn noticed that the other man’s face had blushed deep red. “I didn’t get the whole thing. Something about the bathroom. And him showing to us…” Ken’s voice trailed off.
“You are far too polite,” she told him before turning to Austyn. “The boy asked me if he should pee in your tea.”
“And you told him?” he asked.
“Not today. But maybe tomorrow.”
Austyn looked suspiciously at the glass cup before him. It looked strangely lighter than the last one.
“Don’t worry,” she said, softly tapping his glass with a spoon she’d been given with her tea. “He’s a good boy. He wouldn’t do it unless I asked him to.”
Austyn saw her drop the three sugar cubes in her glass and stir the tea.
“Did he recognize you?” he asked.
“No.” She shook her head.
“Have you stayed here before?”
She looked up at the white cinderblock façade of the hotel. “Yes, I have. Many years ago.”
“Then you could have run into him.”
“No,” she said with certainty. “I was detained for five years, Agent Newman. And I stayed here quite some time before that. No, this boy would have been too young to be working anywhere.”
“Then how did he know you took three sugars in your tea?” Austyn asked.
“He didn’t. I don’t take any sugar in my tea. But I would have used whatever he gave me to make him feel appreciated. After all, in bringing me sugar, he was trying to make me feel special.”
He couldn’t help but notice how much more at ease she looked here. She seemed almost happy. Certainly, she looked at home. She turned her chair slightly so that she could watch the traffic going by. Ken was completely quiet now that Fahimah was here. Austyn noticed he was doing a lot of staring in her direction. The argument across the street had subsided, and the vender had gone down the street.
“There’s a place I need to visit today,” she told him after finishing her tea. “I can’t go there, though, escorted by your soldiers.”
“What place?” Austyn asked.
“The prison.”
“You feel homesick?”
Her gaze narrowed. “It is a little soon to be making such bad jokes, don’t you think?”
He lifted both hands in defense. “You were the one who’s planning the contents of my tea for tomorrow.”
“That maybe just turned into definitely,” she warned him. “In fact, Agent Newman, I would not drink anything more at all while you are in Erbil.”
“Which prison?” Ken intervened.
“Erbil Prison,” she responded, turning to him.
“Do you need to see someone being held there?” Austyn asked.
“No, I simply need to visit the neighborhood.”
“I know where it is,” Ken told her. “In fact, I’m fairly familiar with the area.”
The boy and the tea appeared again.
“Na,” she smiled up at him. “Supas.”
“What does that mean?” Austyn immediately asked.
“Na means no,” she told him. “Supas means thank you.”
Austyn looked at Ken first, making sure she wasn’t telling him something totally off the wall. The other man nodded.
“Na, supas,” he repeated to their server.
The boy smiled and dropped a sugar cube from his shirt pocket onto Austyn’s saucer before going on to the next table.
“I think he likes me,” he said cheerfully to the other two.
Another tour bus went by. A couple of young men stuck their heads out of the open windows and yelled something in the direction of the two soldiers standing guard on the street. One of them spit out the window. Austyn looked at Ken.
He shook his head. “Iraqis. Don’t ask.”
“I told you where I need to go.” Fahimah turned to them, pretending what she’d heard hadn’t affected her. “I will not accomplish anything if I go there followed by armed escorts.”
“I can take you,” Ken offered immediately. He turned to Austyn. “She’s right. It’s a lot safer to travel around the city if you don’t bring that kind of attention to yourself. It’s no problem. I’ll bring her back.”
There was no way she was going anywhere without him.
“Tell me who you’re going to see. I want an exact street address,” Austyn demanded of Fahimah. “Without cell phones and without knowing the language, there’s no way I can get hold of you if I needed to.”
She shook her head slowly from side to side. “I do not know who or where until I get there. I am acting on a…on a lead that is five years old.”
Austyn was not about to be the one who would have to report Fahimah’s disappearance to Faas Hanlon and the rest of them in Washington.
“We’ll go,” he said, standing up and putting an end to any argument she might have had. “The three of us.”
Sixteen
Atlantic Ocean, near Delaware Bay
In the e
ast, a full moon hung low over the water. The research boat, Harmony, rolled gently on the calm rise and fall of the Atlantic. In the distance, lights from the cities and towns along the shore twinkled happily, offering a sense of direction to those unaccustomed to the broad black expanses of the sea. The kids, the parents, and the crew were exhausted from the workday, but no one was ready to call it the night. Everyone was on deck.
David wished Sally could have been here. Josh and two other boys had immediately formed a friendship. The other seven kids on the boat were girls, but they were definitely not the enemy.
One of the guidance counselors played his harmonica, while another one tried to match the melody with his guitar. The parents were happy just to sit and watch. Divided comfortably into various-sized groups, everyone was sitting around, some with sleeping bags wrapped around them, enjoying this reprieve from hospitals and doctors and the day to day worry that was part of the illness.
“Ten hours into the trip and there hasn’t been one medical emergency,” a young father sitting next to David commented.
“That’s a victory, isn’t it?” he replied.
The younger man’s name was Craig. His son was eleven and one of the boys that Josh had befriended right away. They’d come all the way from Virginia. Dan had the same type of leukemia that Josh did, except that he had been declared “cured” last month. The father and son were on this trip to celebrate. David thought that it was a good thing for Josh to see the full head of hair on the boy, the healthy looking skin, the energy. Dan was a reminder that life could get back to normal.
No, David told himself. Would get back to normal.
The sore-sounding cough emanating from someone climbing the steep, narrow stairs from the galley drew both men’s attention. Ever since Josh had been diagnosed, David and Sally had been very careful about keeping their son away from illnesses. The program director came out on deck. He was still coughing.
“He doesn’t sound good,” Craig commented under his breath.
“You would think they’d be sensitive about sending someone who was sick on one of these trips,” David said.
