by Jan Coffey
“The Ashour Hotel is a luxury accommodation. It has been around for a while,” she told him. “The place has absolutely stunning views of the lake. It has terraces with pools and stone walkways that wind through beautiful gardens with flowering trees. It’s really one of the most striking places in Kurdistan to stay.”
Austyn saw her look in the direction of the lake again. “Did you ever stay there?”
She smiled, nodding. “After I came back from England and Rahaf was back from America, we would try to go away, just the two of us, for a week during Norooz.”
“Norooz?”
“The first day of spring. That’s what the Iranians and Kurds celebrate as the New Year,” she told him. “We always took a week off and came here. Kurdistan is prettiest in the spring.”
“How was it that the two of you ended up going to two different countries for your education?” he asked. He knew the source of Rahaf’s educational funds, but he had no idea how Fahimah had gotten to England.
“Our parents died in Halabja during the bombings,” she explained. “Our brothers, all three of them, were taken away a few months before that. They were killed by Saddam’s soldiers.”
Austyn saw her chin quiver slightly. She looked out the window for a minute or two, obviously trying to compose herself.
“Rahaf was fifteen and I was sixteen. We packed our bags and made our way with some of our cousins across the mountains to Iran. We stayed in one of the camps where Rahaf is working right now.”
This explained why Rahaf went across the border. Austyn had been a couple of years older than Fahimah back in 1988. He remembered when the news of the killing of the Kurdish civilians hit US newspapers and television screens. The aftermath of the massacres had been photographed and reported, and he’d studied the events in his training as an epidemiologist. Still, none of that affected him as much as sitting next to Fahimah, a victim of that tragedy...right here, right now.
“We both got our high school degrees while going to school at Paveh. That is a city in Kermanshah province in western Iran.”
“Did you go back and forth between the camp and the city while you were going to school?” he asked.
“No, an Iranian Kurdish family took us in. They were wonderful people. They had three girls about our age.” She smiled, obviously remembering their kindness. “Paveh is a great, ancient city that dates back three thousand years. They say the name of the city has something to do with Zoroastrianism, the past religion of its people. In fact, there is still a fire temple that tourists can visit.”
Austyn thought it was sad that so much of the history of that region was lost to Westerners because of politics.
“One of the most amazing things about Paveh is the housing. The homes of the people are built in the shape of many long, wide stairs climbing the foothills of the mountain.”
“Stairs?”
She smiled. “The buildings have been built in such a way that the roof of one house actually serves as the balcony of another house, built just a few meters above it.”
“I wish someday I could see it,” he said.
“So would I,” she told him. “I would love to go back there. “After the U.S. and its allies established the no-fly zone to protect the Kurds, many of us felt much safer about returning to Iraq. So Fahimah and I, with our high school degrees in hand, went back to Kurdistan.”
“Did you go to Halabja?”
“No, that was far too painful for us. It was just too soon to return there. We went to Erbil. We needed jobs to make a living.”
“Did you have anyone to stay with in Erbil?” he asked.
“We did. That is the wonderful thing about the Kurds. They help one another. They are generous in their hearts. They throw open their doors to others,” she said proudly. “The word went around that Rahaf and I were in Erbil, and we had dozens of offers from people who either knew our parents or considered themselves related…something like fifth cousins thrice-removed or perhaps a little more distant. We stayed with a family whom we knew from Halabja.”
“Now I really understand how inappropriate my joke would have sounded to these guys,” Austyn said.
The driver must have been in the middle of another joke, because the passenger was again steering the car. Austyn turned his attention back to her.
“So what happened after that?”
“We were in Erbil for only a few weeks when a cousin who lived in Baghdad contacted us about a fund the Iraqi government had set up to educate promising Iraqi women overseas. Rahaf applied for it and took the tests and, despite being Kurdish, she was accepted. Three months later, in the fall, she was on her way to America.”
“What about you? How come you didn’t apply for it?”
“I was a year older than my sister. As soon as we arrived in Erbil, I found a job working in the office for a British organization. I was their translator.”
“You could speak English?”
She nodded. “I wasn’t as fluent as I am now, but I could do the job they were asking me to do.”
“What was the organization?”
“The Kurdistan Children’s Fund. They were one of many volunteer organizations that came to the region then. They were trying to somehow help all these parentless children,” she explained. “They were truly good hearted people that I worked for.”
“Do you know who was funding the organization?”
“I didn’t know then, but later, I found out that the donations came from individuals and some large annual funding from the British government.”
Austyn knew there were many programs like this that flew under the media radar. Sometimes they were fronts for funding resistance groups—like the Peshmerga—and sometimes they were legitimate.
“The man I was working for—Dr. Whittaker—was a retired British government official,” she continued. “He was extremely kind to me. It was with his encouragement and recommendations that I applied to continue my education in England.”
“But not to just any university,” he teased. “You went to Oxford.”
“Yes. To this day, I believe he had a lot to do with that. He was very proud to call himself an Oxford man.”
“He paid for your education?”
“No. The Kurdistan Children’s Fund paid. Somehow they convinced me that even as a nineteen-year-old, I qualified for their grants. They paid all of my traveling and living expenses, and my first four years of education. Beyond that, I became fairly self-sufficient.”
Until she stepped in and took the rap for her sister.
“Can I ask you something?”
She shrugged. “I don’t think there is very much I haven’t told you yet.”
“What were you doing in Rahaf’s laboratory the day of the bombardment? Why exactly were you wearing her badge?”
Twenty-Nine
The research vessel Harmony
The Atlantic
“First tell me how this thing works,” Josh told his dad.
There was no let’s do it and get it done with Josh. Tests and medications had become part of the twelve-year-old’s life. He was curious and worried about every X-ray, every needle, every microgram of drugs injected into him. He wanted to be part of every decision. David and Sally encouraged their son’s curiosity. They wanted him to be involved with his own care. They both knew that cancer was a chronic disease, so Josh would have to be aware of what was going on with his body for his entire life.
David sat down next to him on the bunk.
Their room was in the bow of the boat, on the starboard side. They shared the cabin with two other boys, their fathers, and two Sea Grant lab instructors. The port cabin was occupied by the females on the trip. The skipper and the mate shared a cabin further aft. The large galley where everyone took their meals was also used as a lab and David knew a couple of the men from the research center had berths there. The whole experience made for close quarters, but no one complained.
Josh and David were the only ones who’d come bel
ow deck. Everyone else was hanging around above, either waiting for the video feed from the divers or hanging over the railing in anticipation of the samples that the two men would send up.
“You put on that sweatshirt and I’ll tell you,” David said.
Josh tugged a hooded sweatshirt out of his bag and pulled it on. It was a new one that he’d gotten as part of the cost of the trip, and David smiled at the words on it. I’ve gone off the deep end. Cape Henlopen Ocean Research Experience.
“This is not like one of those giant Q-tips that they stick in your throat and make you gag, is it?” Josh asked.
“No, nothing like that.” David opened his briefcase and grabbed the medicine bag out of it. “This is very simple. In fact, anybody can do it themselves.”
“I can make myself gag?”
“No gagging involved. I promise you. That’s the beauty of it.” David dug out the one sample tester he had left at the bottom of the medicine bag. “I’m telling you, Josh, the company is going to sell a million of these things in a little while. There isn’t going to be a household in America that doesn’t have a stash of these.”
The twelve-year-old sat on the edge of the bunk looking at him with a bored look. “Dad, can you just read me the instructions?”
“No formal instructions needed. It has just three simple steps. But to keep us from getting sued by every moron with a lawyer for a brother-in-law, the three steps are written inside, on the tester itself.”
To the sales force, the five-hundred piece sample lot—made individually in the prototype lab—had been pure gold. Each person was instructed to give out only one sample to each of their top clients. Nothing had been said, but David had expected that each sales rep probably kept a few for themselves or their families. David had done that, too.
“Okay, this is how it works…” He put the Strep-Tester in Josh’s palm.
“It looks just a like Band-Aid,” Josh commented.
“Exactly.” David nodded with a grin. “Except you can’t say ‘Band-Aid’ or Johnson & Johnson will sue us. The ads will say ‘small, flexible, disposable, individually wrapped’ or something like that.”
“That’s actually pretty cool.”
“Thanks. Okay, this is what you do. You tear open the outer wrapper. Then, you just peel the shiny clear membrane away from the gauzy side until a pink circle in the middle is exposed. It’ll look like a little bubble in the middle. Then you stick out your tongue and press the pink circle onto the middle of your tongue.”
“Does it taste disgusting?”
“No. It’s strawberry flavored.” As Josh shot him a suspicious look, David gave him a scout’s honor sign. “Besides, you’re not going to eat it. You just press it on your tongue.”
Josh had yet to open the package. “I thought it’s supposed to check your throat?”
“It is,” David explained. “This Strep-Tester is so sensitive that recognizes the strep bacteria from anywhere in your mouth.”
“Does this mean I can just touch my teeth with the tester?”
“Yes, you can. But that might be a little bit more complicated than it needs to be.”
David thought his son had a career in FDA. Josh’s tenacity in getting all the answers was superior to anything the Food and Drug Administrations had put Reynolds Pharmaceuticals through.
“Okay, then what?”
“You just press the clear membrane back over the pink circle and hold it for ten seconds.”
“So the bubble is on the inside,” Josh pointed out.
David nodded. “We can go through the steps as you’re testing yourself,” he suggested.
“No, not yet,” Josh held onto the strip, not ready to give it up, yet.
“Do I need a stop watch for counting ten seconds?”
“No. All you have to do is count. 1001, 1002,…you know how to count.”
“Then what happens?” the twelve year old asked.
“After ten seconds, if you have strep, then the clear membrane turns bright blue,” David explained.
“And if I don’t?”
“If you don’t have strep, it stays clear and you can still see the pink circle. And if you don’t have strep now, you might be fighting a virus or it might be too early to show up positive. But either way, you can still check it again later with another Strep-Tester.”
Holding the strip’s edge, Josh held it to the light as if checking to see what was inside through the wrapping. “What do you do with it after you’re done? Save it for your doctor to see?”
“No, the company recommends you flush it down the toilet. They’re water soluble,” David told him. “This doesn’t replace what the doctor might want to do in his office. Most likely, in a couple of months, they’ll be using these Strep-Tests in their office, too. It’ll save them a lot of money over the traditional tests.”
“If I have to go through it all over again at the doctor’s office, then what’s this good for?” Josh complained.
“This will eliminate unnecessary trips for parents or for people who think they might have strep throat but then find out when they go to their doctors that it’s only a viral infection and they have to wait it out.”
“Won’t the doctors lose money on this?”
Josh’s intelligence always amazed David. The fact that at his young age he was aware of how businesses worked—especially when it came down to the medical field.
“The loss to them will be minimal. Doctors are mostly swamped. Besides, this is something we’re doing for the patients. That’s the group that will be benefiting from it.”
“And you can buy these in any store?”
“Pretty soon you’ll be able to. Come on, try it out.”
Josh looked at the Strep-Tester again. “How many of these do you have?”
“This is the last one I have with me. I had two of them, but I gave one to Philip a couple of days ago.”
“Did he use it?” Josh asked.
“I never asked him. He might have.”
“If this is your last one,” Josh persisted. “What happens if someone else ends up needing it?”
“You’re the most important person on this boat, pal. You come first.”
“Sure…after Philip,” the boy drawled with a crooked smile.
The voices of kids could be heard from the deck above them.
“Okay, wise guy.” David gave him a gentle shove and snatched the strip out of his hand. “You’ve put it off long enough. There’s all kinds of excitement going on upstairs, and you’re missing it grilling me with all these questions.”
“Seriously, Dad. What happens if Mom needs it next week?”
“I’ll have tons of these by next week.” David ripped the wrapper off the Strep-Tester.
“I might do it wrong and ruin it. It might be too early for the testing. Maybe we should wait another day.”
Strip in hand, David looked into his son’s face. “You’re nervous about this. How come?”
Josh shrugged. “I don’t know. I just don’t have a good feeling about it.”
David tapped the rim of his son’s baseball cap. “Considering everything that you’ve been through…after all the needles and tests, after how brave you’ve been through it all, this is nothing. It’s just a simple test.”
David held it out to him. He didn’t want to force Josh. He wanted his son to do it himself.
Josh nodded. “Okay. I’m sorry, Dad.”
The boy took the Strep-Tester out of David’s hand and peeled back the clear paper.
“It looks like a zit,” he said, looking at the pink circle.
Both of them burst out laughing.
“Okay, now press it on your tongue.”
Thirty
Kurdistan, Northeast Iraq
“Why was I in the lab with Rahaf’s identification card? That’s not an easy question to answer—”
“Emeriki,” the driver announced, interrupting them. A roadblock ahead captured everyone’s attention. Fahimah didn’t get
the chance to answer Austyn’s question.
There were many words that she didn’t have to translate for Austyn. As she took out the ID that she’d gotten back from Ahmad, she noticed that Austyn wasn’t taking out his forged Argentinean passport.
“They should let us go through,” he told her. “Ken was taking care of communicating with all the American patrols along this road.
The two cars ahead seemed to be moving through. There was no major hold up. Their escort reached the American barricade and, after couple of questions, was waved through. Their driver approached the soldiers, rolling down the window and handing out everyone’s papers and documents.
The soldier receiving the documents looked inside the car, specifically at Fahimah and Austyn. He leafed through what was handed to him.
“Pull to the side,” he told the driver. He waved someone over from the pair of Humvees and the covered truck at the side of the road.
“Come on,” Austyn mumbled.
The driver cursed under his breath but did as he was told. Fahimah was relieved that Austyn didn’t ask for a translation.
“I hope they’re not planning on doing another switching of drivers,” Fahimah told him. “Would your bosses in Washington order that?”
“I hope not.”
Two soldiers approached the car this time. Austyn and Fahimah both rolled down their windows. The air conditioning continued to blast. One of the men poked his head in. He was holding on to their documents.
“May we speak to you, sir,” he asked Austyn.
One of the soldiers remained by the car, and the other walked with Austyn to the back of the truck.
The driver opened all the windows and shut off the engine. A soft breeze swept through, smelling like water and hills. It was a sweet smell, one that Fahimah remembered from years back.
Fahimah told herself she wasn’t worried about Austyn. This had to be very much the same type of inquiry she’d undergone with Ahmad. An American in the car with three Kurds. They probably wanted to make sure that they weren’t being double-crossed. Perhaps they were concerned that Austyn was being kidnapped. The articles she’d been given to read on the laptop told of how kidnapping foreign personnel—military or non-military—was the latest rage in Baghdad. It bothered her to think about what had become of the city where she’d taught.
