“Do you look good for kissing?” Tricia repeated, smiling awkwardly. “Hah. Okay.”
“Okay, what?”
“Yes, you look kissable.”
Luc’s head did a quarter-turn of annoyance from the front passenger seat. “How far?” he asked their driver, Adan.
“Not far,” he replied. Adan was also the “security” arranged for them by Barney the Brit. He had taken to them immediately, which was reassuring, although Tricia suspected it was because he was an outsider here and had no one else to befriend. He was a Kurd from Sulaymaniyah, in the north. He looked like he could have been a graduate student at MIT except for the boxy cut of his black suit, which he wore with an open collar.
After a few blocks, Adan slowed down to check the houses against the description he had written down in a notepad. They were looking for a house that had been hit by a mortar last week. The election was just around the corner, but there was plenty of random violence in Baghdad and Luc wanted to get a local, nonmilitary perspective on the stability and security of the city. The house in front of them was a blocky sandstone affair. Tricia found it weirdly reminiscent of bad L.A. suburban architecture, made ramshackle by bundles of hanging wires.
Adan parked the Rabbit, retrieved his pistol from the armrest, and jiggled it into the holster under his jacket. They walked up to the steel front door of the house, which had a cheap decorative inlay, painted green. Yasmin stood by Luc. Tricia was behind them both, trying to look vaguely Iraqi with the scarf Yasmin had helped her tie on earlier. Adan stood a few feet behind her.
The door opened on a boy who looked to be around thirteen. Yasmin asked him a few questions. The boy answered and then called into the house. An older woman appeared with a head scarf and a gray dress. Grandma? She and the boy pointed out into the street.
“She says the boy’s father was hit by a bomb in the street.”
Tricia flipped open her notepad and jotted that down as they walked out toward a small gouge in the concrete with some scorch marks around it.
“She says it flies in here and hit her son when he is standing next to his car.” Grandma raised her voice, jabbing a finger at the gouge.
Yasmin translated as Luc snapped some photos of the scorched hole. The heat of the late morning had just broken some strange threshold, and a small volume of sweat trickled down Tricia’s back. She had the feeling that she was writing way too much, but she’d figure out how to pare it down for the actual article. Her first. Luc said he’d find her the right photo and the article would write itself. Yasmin was telling them that the man was at the hospital, but they didn’t know when he would be back. They didn’t seem to think he was in danger of dying. “She says there is another bomb in the back of the house.”
“What, inside the house?”
“No, behind the house. It is still there.”
Luc glanced at Tricia excitedly.
• • •
They followed the woman behind the house. Her long, gray dress swished as it trailed over the rough-brushed concrete. She stopped at the edge of the patio and pointed at a small greenish metal object half-buried in the brown grass.
“Whoa,” Tricia said.
“Let’s not get too close,” Luc said, holding a hand out to keep her back. “That is definitely a mortar.”
A door opened and another young boy came out of the house, carrying a plate with cans of iced tea on it.
“Shukran,” Luc said.
“Shukran,” Tricia repeated.
The cans were cool to the touch but nowhere near cold. Tricia smiled and popped hers open. She sipped its cloying sweetness and stared calmly at the mortar as Yasmin continued talking to Grandma.
“I’m telling her that it is dangerous, but she says it is been here for almost two days.”
“Have you called the police about it?” Luc asked, fishing through his camera bag for another lens.
“She says the police want too much money,” Yasmin said.
“Maybe I can find some soldiers at the embassy who could come over and take a look at it,” he said to Tricia. “I know some of the Brits and Australians.”
“You don’t want to ask the Americans?” Tricia said.
“I’d be concerned about that, as they often don’t treat civilians very well.”
“The Brits do? There’s an unexploded bomb in her yard. Seems like a risk she should take, maybe.”
“I’ll ask someone at the embassy. Yasmin, tell her I’ll try to get someone to take that bomb away.”
“She wants to know if you can just take it,” Yasmin said.
“No, we can’t handle explosives. It could go off.”
Yasmin translated, and the woman raised her eyebrows and looked to the sky, nodding in a way that seemed oddly sarcastic to Tricia. Though how could you ever really tell when your mannerisms and cultural cues were worlds apart?
Luc walked off with his phone to his ear, looking as important as he could. Grandma began talking to Yasmin and gesticulating. After a few exchanges, Yasmin turned to Tricia. “She says that she will tell her son to take it when he gets back from the hospital.”
“That’s ridiculous.” Tricia glanced back at Luc, then lowered her voice. “Why can’t we just ask the American troops?”
“I think here, in Baghdad,” Yasmin said, “you must call who you know. You help to someone and later they help to you.”
Of course Yasmin was right. Luc was making use of his contacts. But in a broader sense, shouldn’t they be currying favor with the most powerful force in the region, the group that could help them—and impede them—the most? Luc would never. But that wouldn’t stop her from making a few inquiries.
Luc returned with a satisfied grin. “Yasmin, tell her that I left a message for some Australians at the embassy who may have bomb disposal teams that can help her with this.”
“How long will that take?” Tricia asked. “There’s an American checkpoint around the corner.”
Luc glared at her.
“Fine. Then can you ask her what she thinks about the election?” Tricia added.
As Yasmin spoke, the woman put a hand to her heart; she avoided looking at Luc. Tricia wondered if this was because older women were not supposed to look at men. Yasmin jotted down notes as Grandma answered her questions. The suggestion of a breeze crept through the alley from the sluggish Tigris, putting pressure on the heavy air without quite being able to move it. Adan kept looking back toward the street. He seemed nervous. There was a smell in the air of tar or trash mixed with dirt. It was a little like Mexico, Tricia decided.
“She is doubtful,” Yasmin said. “She does not think the election will change anything. Still there will be bombs and guns shooting in her neighborhood. And there is not enough gasoline, she says, for cooking and heating.”
Tricia nodded while transcribing. Luc took a few photos of the mortar. They thanked the woman and headed back to the Rabbit.
“This is perfect,” Luc said as they climbed in. “If you can get this written up tonight, we’ll send the piece off to Matthias at Truthout.”
That was it? Time to write the article? Was this supposed to be breaking news? An unexploded mortar in Baghdad. “Maybe we should talk to some people who haven’t been mortared,” Tricia said.
“That’s not a story,” Luc said.
“I thought we wanted to get a local picture of the stability of the city.”
“I just did. It’s a picture of a live mortar in that woman’s backyard.”
“I’m not trying to be difficult,” Tricia said.
Luc turned to look back at her as Adan weaved through traffic. “Tricia. Think about the size of the embedded media machine, sitting behind the fence, pumping out stories vetted by the military. It will take all our efforts in collecting stories like this to counter that even a little. Okay?”
Tricia sighed.
“Your first publication from Baghdad,” Luc said. “You should be excited.” He smiled. She forced a smile and a nod until he sat back in his seat.
The Rabbit turned onto the arterial, and the checkpoint’s gun towers reappeared in the distance. Yasmin reached across and held Tricia’s hand, like she was some college friend in a taxi after a breakup. Tricia swallowed hard and looked out the window at a small clutch of boys bouncing a soccer ball between them in an alleyway. The Rabbit began the slow curve around the traffic circle, a black barrel from a gun tower lazily tracking their progress.
* * *
“. . . We are shutting down all traffic in central Baghdad while the polls are open. Details on further precautionary measures will be kept secret for security reasons until the day of the elections. Yes, Jim.” The press colonel nodded toward a reporter in the front row. Tricia had seen his press badge when they’d walked in. Washington Post.
“I understand that over seven thousand candidates on the electoral lists are choosing to remain anonymous for fear of being assassinated. Understandable, given that at least eight political leaders, including Baghdad’s provincial governor, have been killed in the last month. Why not postpone the election until voter and candidate safety can be guaranteed?”
It was a good question. How were voters supposed to make informed decisions if they didn’t know who the candidates were until they reached the ballot box? Luc had told her that going to the press conference would be a waste of time, that she’d get nothing but propaganda. But she’d insisted. It was insane that he thought she could write a decent article about the Stability of Baghdad on the Eve of Elections after visiting a single house. She at least had to hear the official Coalition story.
“A delay will only prolong the increased violence we’ve seen this month,” the press colonel said. “It will also likely bolster the insurgency, whose campaign of violence has been aimed at derailing the vote.”
Tricia was trying to come up with questions to ask (although she didn’t quite have the guts to raise her hand, sitting as she was in the cheap seats behind the “actual” reporters—the ones paid by official news outlets). She was also listening to the press colonel’s answers, comparing them to everything she knew, and trying to divine what they were intended to convey or hide. She looked around at the reporters in front of her and was a little chagrined, but not surprised, that she didn’t recognize anyone. Of course she didn’t—these were journalists, not anchors or talking heads. Luc had pointed out to her some people he knew from The Chicago Tribune and The New York Times. And she’d been furtively glancing at people’s press badges, noting multiple APers and a woman from Bloomberg.
“Bullshit,” whispered the guy to her left. Tricia looked at him and he leaned closer. “They know the violence won’t decrease post-election. The major Sunni parties are boycotting it. The Shiites will vote themselves into power, and then we’ll probably have civil war.”
The press colonel was wrapping up. “We ask all journalists to use extreme caution tomorrow,” she said. “To abide by the prohibition on automobiles and to be very careful to avoid any behavior that could be construed as attempting to influence the elections.”
The press conference began to break up. “I’ll introduce you to some people,” Luc said to Tricia. “Just give me a minute.” He walked off toward the front of the room.
Tricia turned to the guy who’d whispered to her. “Who do you work for?” she asked him.
“I’m with AP. Ivan Volokh.”
“Tricia Burnham, nice to meet you. I’m with IPS.”
“IPS?”
“Interpress—”
“Oh yeah, yeah. Unembedded, right? You a reporter back home, too?”
“Well, no. I’m at the Kennedy School.”
“You’re a grad student? Hell of a study abroad!”
Tricia laughed, trying to cover her sudden annoyance.
“You having fun with it? Hitting the journo parties and all that?”
“Journo parties?”
“Oh, God. It’s like Sarajevo, basically. I suppose you’re a bit young, but in Sarajevo there was the same deal—danger, uncertainty, stress. It’s inevitable. You end up having terror sex.”
“Terror sex?”
“Oh, yeah. You’ve never had an affair until you’ve had one in conditions where you could get kidnapped or killed pretty much every day. It’s intense.”
“I’ll look forward to it,” Tricia said. She was realizing that this Ivan character was some kind of conflict-journo slacker who studiously affected a deep cynicism and aloofness from the profession. Either that or he was trying to hit on her. She didn’t like him.
She ducked away from Ivan when she saw Luc walking up with a tall woman in a blue suit. “They could easily be lying,” Luc was saying. “Ah, Tricia. This is Kate. Kate’s with the Tribune.”
Kate shook Tricia’s hand, then ignored her. “No. Actually,” she said. “Because if the Coalition lies and we catch them, they have egg on their face. They’d much rather mislead or misdirect, leave things out. It’s no less deceptive, but the public doesn’t have the context, so they’ll never get called on it. We can pretty safely assume that nothing they’re saying is a straight-up lie, which means we can probe the edges of what they don’t say. If it were all bullshit, coming here would be a waste of time. Why do you think we show up?”
“Well, yeah . . .” Luc said.
Tricia raised an eyebrow in his direction. He looked away.
“I gotta run,” Kate said. “See ya ’round.” She nodded toward Luc, glanced at Tricia—probably didn’t even remember her name—and left.
It was becoming clear to Tricia that Luc wasn’t as respected or connected as he’d made out back in Boston. Worse, it seemed like all the mainstream journalists regarded the unembedded Inter Press Service types as backwoods ideological hacks, like evangelical Christians at a Cato Institute soiree. Tricia found it hard to blame them. They were professionals. They actually knew what they were doing.
39
* * *
Iraqis all had the same three or four names, just arranged in different orders. They adhered to a bizarre, dogmatic, almost theological conspiracy theory in which the invisible strings that moved almost every event in the world were clutched by Saddam, who was an agent of the Americans, who were secretly controlled by the Jews. They lied like a gaggle of third-graders waiting at a bus stop on Opposite Day. They wiped their asses with their hands, probably, with the help of cut-up water bottles they left lying around in the port-a-johns. These were a few of the perceptions that US Soldiers of the occupation had of their refractory charges.
There were as many stereotypes on the Iraqi side: American men walked around sucking on candy like teething infants. They became confused and agitated when no one spoke their language. They sent boys barely out of school to parlay with sheiks. They gave their women rifles and let them strut around like whores. But one of the most damnable things about the Americans was that it was difficult to tell who was in charge—none of them had beards—and their most senior commanders trooped around in the same combat gear as everyone else; they rolled around in the same dusty Humvees.
Even the Americans themselves had trouble recognizing senior officials—Americans like Private Ant, who could sometimes tell by the size of an entourage that one of the Humvees had someone important in it. Today, manning Priority Search for the special election-day traffic checkpoint, he could have craned his head into the window of the first of ten Humvees.
But Ant was lazy and withdrawn, thinking about the lives of his Sims characters he would manipulate after his shift. Not having leaned into the window, he did not see the embroidered black eagle sewn onto the passenger’s armor and thus did not realize he was waving through none other than Greywolf Six, the commander of the entire 3rd Brigade Combat Team, the couple thousand troops tasked with sec
uring the center of the capital.
Greywolf Six, otherwise known as Colonel Moretto, had been running a sleep deficit since before the brigade left Texas, and the lead-up to the election had put him further in the hole. At this point, the next best thing to his cot was the canvas passenger seat of his Humvee, which was also known as Greywolf Six. The constant beeping and muttering of two radio nets, the stiff suspension on the rutted streets, the shuffling of the turret gunner’s feet against the turret sling: these had become a lullaby signaling precious moments of nap time between meetings and the million other things on his view screen. He slouched in the seat and let his Kevlar collar hold his head still as he relaxed his neck muscles in a meditative sequence.
When Greywolf Six the Humvee was stopped at the checkpoint, Greywolf Six the person almost failed to open his eyes. But when he did, this was what he saw behind Private Ant’s expressionless face and apathetic thumbs-up: strung between the whip antennae of two parked Humvees, a banner made from cut bedsheets with green duct-tape letters exhorting the reader to VOTE FOR PEDRO.
One day far in the future, Greywolf Six would find himself watching Napoleon Dynamite with his grandson and would finally understand this moment. In the present, however, the reference was lost on him. Finding it inexplicable, he found it inexcusable. Rage began to percolate behind his eyes.
* * *
The morning of the elections was pleasantly cool—about fifty Fahrenheit when the sun came up. Tricia had slipped out early to avoid Luc. He’d shut her down the previous day when she’d asked about observing the elections. He’d said that foreigners weren’t allowed anywhere near the polls. Besides, it was far too dangerous. They were expecting many polling locations to be targeted by suicide bombers.
But they were in Baghdad. Everything was dangerous. And this was an historic moment. The big-time embedded journalists were covering it. Maybe Luc didn’t have enough sway to get them an official pass from the Iraqi Interim Government. But did they really need an official pass? They were doing this DIY. Unembedded. Didn’t that mean bending the rules where they could? Rather than try to convince him, Tricia resolved to go anyway, without telling Luc or Adan. Maybe Luc was a great photographer, but he had an underdeveloped sense of journalistic ethics and obligation, of proper research methods—he didn’t know when it was worth taking a risk. With Yasmin along, she’d be fine.
War of the Encyclopaedists Page 29
