Inside the Green Zone, life carried on as usual. They rode in Yasmin’s Opel down the main drag, past rows of T-walls topped with razor wire, past a column of Humvees and a few Bongo trucks, past the newly opened pizza café and the bronze statue of a soldier from the Iranian war.
Outside the Green Zone, Baghdad’s streets were closed to civilian auto traffic in an effort to protect voting stations from car bombs. They parked the car at the Green Zone side of the 14 July Bridge and got out to walk across. Yasmin would have taken them a different route, but Tricia had insisted on Checkpoint 11. She’d e-mailed Hal, and he’d provided the crucial information: 2nd Platoon of Bravo Company. Once she knew that, it had been easy enough to find out where Mickey was stationed.
Tricia kept her head down as they passed through the checkpoint, discreetly looking at the soldiers to see if there was a blimp pilot among them. She swam in the folds of the long black jilbaab that Yasmin had loaned her. She pulled the fabric to her body to show a hint of her figure. Still no sign of Mickey. Her face was shadowed under a hijab. She’d accepted the fact that it would be much easier for her to maneuver in Baghdad if she covered up like this, but she still felt a deep hostility toward the practice and the cultural coercion behind it. Yasmin wore a puffy coat and had a lavender hijab over her knit Puma hat. She seemed to wear the hijab with pride, like a new pair of earrings, which made Tricia feel ignorant and sheltered.
She met the eyes of the American soldier who checked her ID.
“Tricia, huh?” he said. “Looks like you’ve gone native.”
“Are you in Second Platoon?” she asked.
He sized her up as if she’d offered to buy him a drink. “Third,” he said. “Second has the next shift.”
She and Yasmin descended the stairs in silence and stopped for a moment to take in the eerie emptiness of Karada Dahil. They could hear the Tigris moving languidly behind them, punctuated by the sound of mortars exploding in the distance.
The polling location was in a nearby school gymnasium. As they approached, they saw men in suits ushering a line of prospective voters through sandbags, concrete blocks, and razor wire. The Iraqi police at the door were searching people. Yasmin stopped Tricia before they were within earshot. “Everyone is very nervous,” she said. “They do not trust people from outside. They are told that it is only Iraqis here. You must act Iraqi, okay?” Tricia nodded, swaddling herself further under her hijab.
They waved Yasmin and Tricia through just as an old woman with a satisfied mug walked out, her right index finger freshly stained with purple ink. Tricia didn’t think the elections would change much of anything. But seeing that old woman, she felt a swelling sense of admiration for the Iraqi people. Even if the violence continued to worsen, they were turning out. They were voting, despite threats from the insurgency, despite the fact that their country would fall apart without the sloppy care of the United States Armed Forces, which had caused the chaos to begin with, shattering the old stability (yes, Saddam’s stability, but stability nonetheless). Tricia took a mental snapshot of that creviced old woman and her purple finger and imagined seeing the photo grace the cover of Time magazine, and inside: Cover photo by Tricia Burnham. She shook her head instinctively, reminding herself what an honor it was to witness this moment of social evolution, the Iraqi people like curious fish crawling out of the seas of dictatorship up onto the shores of democracy. No. She clenched her jaw, annoyed at herself for thinking like such an asshole, looking down on them. It was an honor to be here precisely because they were confronting risks she would never have to face, in order to have their voices heard. She was in awe of them. Tricia had convinced herself that as a white American, her default attitude was to be an asshole, that it took constant vigilance to see through the lens of her privilege. She could sometimes see herself overcorrecting, but wasn’t it better to err on the side of humanism and generosity?
They reached a small table where a poll worker checked Yasmin’s ID and had her sign her name on a clipboard. Another poll worker held out the inkwell for people exiting the booths.
Yasmin was speaking with the first poll worker in Arabic. He seemed displeased. Tricia tried to wear a face of stoic comprehension, though she understood nothing.
“And who is this?” the poll worker said.
“She is not voting today,” Yasmin said.
“Is she eligible to vote? Who is she?”
“She’s not eligible to vote . . . she has a mental problem and can’t understand things. Can she please wait in the hall for me?”
Tricia gave a small dignified nod in response to whatever had just been said.
“No, she cannot wait in the hall, she must go outside.”
“But please, she is my cousin and cannot take care of herself, that’s why I had to bring her.”
The poll worker shook his head. Yasmin turned to Tricia and said, “Tania, you must wait outside . . . will you wait outside for me and then I will come back?”
Tricia saw Yasmin pointing to the door; she nodded and walked back down the hallway to the entrance. She had hoped this would not happen. She felt very American as she slipped out into the heat. Nearby, some kids were kicking around a soccer ball.
“It’s good to see them playing in the street again.”
Tricia turned toward the woman who was saying something to her in Arabic. She tightened the hijab over her face and nodded stiffly.
“Why don’t you vote, are you from Al-Karada?”
Tricia nodded and tried to turn away a little. “La, la,” she ventured, but the way she said it was wrong.
“Then why don’t you vote?” The woman’s voice was changing. “Who are you, are you Iraqi? Speak to me, what are you doing here?”
* * *
Montauk was in good spirits. There had been only a few minor bombings so far, a few dud mortars launched at checkpoints, and though it was still midmorning, it seemed like the doom-and-gloom intelligence reports—indicating massive attacks throughout the city and general hell from the AIF—were overblown. His mood quickly soured when he saw Captain Byrd storming into the CP. Intelligence had been silent regarding Anti-Montauk Forces.
“Vote for Pedro? Jesus, Montauk. If it even looks like we’re interfering with the elections. What the hell kind of platoon are you running here?”
Montauk almost said I don’t know, a reversion to elementary school if there ever was one, but he held it in. “I’m assuming it’s down now, sir,” he said.
“Don’t assume. Check on it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I just got a good twenty-minute ass-chew from Warhorse Six.”
Montauk imagined the veins in Rad Rod Houston’s forehead as he stared down Byrd, his eyes bulging with some kind of Viking blood rage.
“Just so I get it straight, someone drove by it and told Lieutenant Colonel Houston?”
“Yeah, Montauk, and the guy who told him gave Houston his own twenty-minute ass-chew.”
“Then—”
“That’s right, LT. Your idiot soldiers flashed their banner to Greywolf Six.”
Montauk imagined the veins in Colonel Moretto’s forehead as he stared down Rad Rod Houston, his eyes nearly popping out of his face with some kind of Mongolian blood rage. And now that Byrd was chewing him out, he’d have to chew out Staff Sergeant Arroyo with his own blood rage and bulging Klingon eyes; Arroyo would in turn chew out Sergeant Fields, who would chew out Private Antonin Ant, who probably hadn’t made the banner—didn’t seem his style—but who wouldn’t mind taking the blame for it. Maybe Ant would chew out Monkey. Even Monkey probably had someone to rage on. It was turtles all the way down.
* * *
“Ameriki? Ameriki? Israeli?” The old woman and a few of her friends were crowding around Tricia.
“France,” Tricia said. “Je suis Francaise.”
The old woman grabbed at Tricia’s
hijab to tug it off her face. A man had come out of the school and the old woman yelled to him, jabbing her finger at Tricia. When Tricia failed to respond to his question, he stood in front of her, next to the old woman, and pointed at her hijab, motioning for her to pull it off.
The old woman grabbed at her again and yanked at her scarf. When Tricia grabbed the woman’s wrist, the man grabbed Tricia’s and yelled at her. His breath smelled like pastry. A second later, the scarf had come off and most of her field of view was filled by the woman’s fingers, jabbing toward her face. Tricia couldn’t get enough oxygen.
She was grabbed from behind and pushed forward. It was Yasmin, who yelled back at the old woman and the pastry-breath man as she pushed a shocked Tricia back up 14 July Street toward the checkpoint. Tricia thought she heard one of the boys in the crowd use the word faggot. The yelling ceased when they had walked half a block up the street. Tricia began to cry.
“It is okay, you are safe now,” Yasmin said.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
“They don’t know you. That’s all. They are frightened at a strange person being there today.”
“I shouldn’t have come.”
“Oh no, I have gotten ink on you.”
Tricia looked down to see the purple smudges on her sleeve and laughed a little. “It’s your jilbaab,” she said.
“Yes, it is,” Yasmin said. She laughed and gave Tricia a quick tight hug. A weight lifted from Tricia’s forehead. She was fine. She had been quietly imagining crawling back to Luc, apologizing, saying how right he’d been. But she was fine. He wasn’t right. She had taken a risk, and she’d witnessed something important. That was the whole point of being here.
They reached the checkpoint and were waved into the Pedestrian Search lane. Tricia wrapped her hijab back around her face.
Then she heard his voice. With all the exhilaration, she had nearly forgotten why she’d insisted on Checkpoint 11.
She wasn’t sure what she would say to him or even how she would feel around him. Their night together, apart from the bloody nose, had fit the standard hookup routine. It began with the man circling, testing the waters, her hunger for sexual attention, which itself was almost sexual. Then the climactic act in which she left her mind and inhabited her body, giving herself to unadulterated pleasure, like licking a sugar cube. Then there was the afterglow, pleasing for a brief moment, until she began to reenter her mind, to analyze her performance, his performance, the quality of their intimacy—would he want to do it again, would she want to? And then to crush these anxieties: abrupt separation. Time to leave. Nice knowing you. Where are my socks? Let’s hope we don’t run into each other on campus. Hal’s blimp-pilot friend had been a good hookup because he was from out of town, a one-night stand from the get-go, and no lack of phone calls or contact could be attributed to his interest or lack thereof. She had been able to enjoy the afterglow without falling into anxious analysis. They were airships passing in the night. Seeing him now, a stranger who had seen her naked, she expected the usual anxieties to well up—but instead of falling into the nerve-racking and involuntary mental review of the entire history of their contact, she found herself fixated on a still frame: the two of them laughing, blood dripping off her chin onto his chest.
“Mickey!” she said.
Montauk cocked his head like a threatened animal. Tricia revealed her face and he blinked several times, unable to recognize her out of context.
“Tricia, remember me?” she said, giving a little wave.
“Holy shit, Tricia! What? How are you . . .”
“I’m on a grant from the Investigative Fund with— Well, I’m reporting for the Inter Press Service and Truthout, which— Hal told me Second Platoon, so . . .”
“Crazy.” Montauk became self-conscious of the fat plug of dip in his lower lip. And of the fact that their conversation had caught the attention of Sodium Joh and Sergeant Jackson, who were looking on with interest.
“You weren’t . . .” He noticed that the Iraqi woman with Tricia had a purple index finger, and that Tricia herself had purple ink smudged on her clothing. “Did you go to the polls?”
“Yasmin voted. I went with her to watch the election process.”
“Americans are barred from getting even close to the polls today.”
“You mean American military are. I’m not military.”
At once, Montauk’s rage almost boiled over. It was that attitude of civilian privilege, her careless violation of, if not the letter, at least the spirit of a very sensible prohibition. But he liked Tricia. He admired her audacity. Which meant he couldn’t be unequivocally angry, though he wanted to be. He wanted to break something. The desert had taken hold of him and he knew it. In the past weeks, he had witnessed this tendency toward anger taking residence in his skull like some kind of deadbeat relative he couldn’t turn away. He bit his lip, thrummed his fingers against Molly Millions, and stared upward for a moment, trying to rein it in. You like this girl. Be nice to her.
“Let’s see your badges,” Montauk said.
Tricia stepped forward and pulled out the plastic access badge from a lanyard around her neck. Montauk took it in his gloved hand. It was probably warm, the same temperature as her breasts. He regretted wearing his gloves.
40
* * *
“Heard you got chewed out by the CO, sir,” Thomas said.
“Sorry, sir,” Joh said.
Montauk held a stoic face, basking in their apprehension. Dinner was almost over as the three of them entered the DFAC. “Vote for Pedro . . . I took it in the ass for that,” he said. “And I would have recommended you two for an Article Fifteen.” His face broke into a smile. “If it wasn’t so goddamn funny.”
They laughed, relieved.
“Why did the brass freak out so much?” Joh asked as they stepped into the chow line.
“Yeah, it’s not like the Iraqis would even know enough to be offended,” Thomas said.
“You know how everything bad that happens in Iraq is our fault?” Montauk said. “No matter how fair the elections are, people will say the US rigged it.” He could feel her eyes on him. She was seated at a table right there in the DFAC. A part of his other life, the college-kid one, the one he shared with Corderoy. “They’ll point to any evidence,” he continued, “no matter how stupid.” Right there across the dining hall. He met her eyes. “That’s why the brass is pissed at the Pedro banner. That’s my take, anyway.”
Montauk took a tray and went to the entrée section. The Paki servers were dishing up “tacos,” which turned out to be burritos, the same ones you would find at an upscale buffet in the outskirts of Atlanta. Get ahold of yourself. You banged this chick. Montauk stood a little straighter and looked back at her table. She was still looking. He gave her a small smile, then turned to the server to accept his tongful of carne asada. After several ingredients, Montauk realized that the tortilla would not be large enough to wrap it all into a clean bundle. He considered skipping the crema to avoid messiness while eating next to Tricia and whatever dude was next to her. Calm the fuck down. Sit over there like you own the place and eat a giant messy burrito.
“Tricia Burnham, I presume.”
“Lieutenant. Montauk.”
“Hi there,” he said to Luc. “Mickey. Nice to meet you.”
The guy nodded curtly, chewing slowly as if that were a sufficient placeholder for his name. Montauk set his tray down and went to the drink machine.
“You know this guy?” Luc asked Tricia as soon as Montauk was out of earshot.
“Kind of. He was my roommate’s best friend in Boston. Only met him once.”
“Strange.”
“Yep. Small world.”
Montauk returned, slurping an icy soda.
“So we visited this local family the other day,” Tricia said. “There was an unexploded mortar in thei
r backyard. I wrote up an article about it for Truthout. We contacted the Aussies but haven’t heard back . . . think your platoon can get rid of it?”
Luc glared at her. “Maybe they put it there,” he said with a hint of self-satisfaction.
This particular brand of bullshit was almost too stupid for Montauk to take offense at. Almost. “Unlikely,” Montauk said. “We haven’t fired a mortar into central Baghdad since 2003. Plus, if it was American ordnance, it would have exploded. Also, if my guys are aiming for a civilian house, we hit the house, not the backyard. But anything’s possible. Give me the address and I’ll contact EOD.” Montauk took a huge, sloppy bite of his burrito, carne asada falling back onto the plate, an oozing thread of cheddar cheese hanging from his lip. He chewed slowly with his mouth slightly ajar while looking at Luc, letting the sounds of mastication slursh out in an alpha-male display of territorial dominance. Montauk felt powerful as Luc glanced down at his own plate, until he noticed that Tricia, unlike Luc, looked disgusted. Montauk swallowed and wiped his mouth.
He half participated in small talk for the rest of the meal, trying to eat through his mild embarrassment at his own aggro behavior. When they’d all finished, he stood first and reached for their plates, saying, “Let me get those for you.” This offer of generosity surprised him as much as it did Luc and Tricia. Montauk knew he was acting weird, but in seeing Luc’s bewildered expression, he quickly came to accept his own confusing behavior. Kill them with kindness. As he carried their plates to the dish bin, he imagined both of them thinking: Lieutenant Mickey Montauk . . . who the fuck is this guy? He was under the impression that this sort of exasperating mystery made dudes angry and got chicks wet.
War of the Encyclopaedists Page 30
