“Please, sit!” The man says to our backs. “The general will be with you in a moment!”
I hope he didn’t notice Sam’s startled response but I did. She picks the most ornate of the sofas, the one facing the entrance to the salon, and I take a seat next to her. She runs her hands down the velvet and back again, towards her bag, which is sitting open, the notebook on top.
“Can you believe this?” Her voice is a hard whisper, like the winter stormwinds from Turkey “It’s like Louis Quatorze meets Qatar. On crack.”
I shake my head. More of her American slang. In fact, I do not think I have ever seen a home like this. Everything is coordinated with the opulent blue velvet furniture. There are waste-paper baskets and tissue boxes and flower vases made to match the furnishings. There are also, let me count, at least one, two, three, four, five pieces of Japanese artwork, and painted folding screens that also look like they come from the Far East. Several carpets are rolled up in a corner, in addition to the enormous silk rug, which must be from Isfahan, under our feet. I have the urge to suggest we take our shoes off rather than dirty this carpet, but I think Sam would find that strange. She writes quickly in her notebook.
A man enters the room and instinctively, we stand. General Akram has an extraordinarily thick head of hair which is greying, but coarse and full as a broom. His face is just on the verge of getting jowly below the moustache, drooping in such a way that makes me think he must be my father’s contemporary. But Akram’s body is harder, without my father’s paunch and rolls. He is wearing a tan suit that is in perfect condition — considering that it was probably made over twenty years ago, judging from the style.
I reach for my handkerchief to mop the sweat on my forehead. But I’ve forgotten it again, so instead I use my hand, and I have to stop myself from playing with the thinning hairs on my head out of nervousness.
He holds out his hand to motion to us to sit back down, and he takes his place in a large armchair, with a beautiful marble coffee table creating a barrier in between. He is at a comfortable distance, but it suddenly feels as if he is breathing in my face.
Sam seems for a moment to have lost her words. “So...so, so please tell him I say thank you for agreeing to see us.” I translate this and he nods, saying that we are welcome anytime.
“Just go ahead,” I say. “I’ll translate everything just the way you say it.”
“Well,” Sam begins, “I’m an American reporter working here in Baghdad. I understand that you have been providing important documents to some of my colleagues.” I translate it just like she said, without any embellishments or commentaries. Just like she taught me to do. Don’t pad things unless I tell you, she said. Don’t
candycoat.
Most importantly, I did not say exactly
who
Sam is — or who I am. I have never seen her start off an interview this way before. She also hasn’t presented her business card.
“Yes,” Akram clears his throat. “This is true. I have many documents that are in demand with the foreign media, and with the Americans and the British. Maybe I can help you.” He crosses one leg over the other and leans on his left elbow, sinking into it comfortably. He is taking in Sam with an ogling stare, and then converts his gaze into an artificial smile.
“Oh?” Sam lifts. “Are you working with the Americans? Officials, you mean?”
“Yes, of course. Ah, but wouldn’t you like some tea?” Sam understands this much, I know, but I translate it anyway, and Sam says yes and he yells out to the hallway for three glasses of tea.
“I was in touch with the Americans before the war and as they were coming to Baghdad,” Akram continues. “I was known to them as an opponent of the regime. You see, many members of my family were killed by Saddam, and even I was almost killed on many occasions. So, we helped the Americans by showing them our information about the palaces and the villas of Uday and Qusay. We gave the Americans information about their positions. Two days before the fall of Baghdad, we found the place where Uday and his staff were hiding. We raided it and killed fourteen Ba’athists hiding there. We missed Uday, but we’ll get him.”
Sam’s pen bounces across the page like a car in a hurry on an unpaved road.
“We all suffered from Saddam’s regime, so we formed a commando unit, all of us former military people,” Akram says. He leans towards the end table perched to the right of his chair, a scaled-down version of the expansive coffee table, and picks up several files. “This one shows that Saddam had planned to have me executed,” he says, holding up a folder. He takes a page out and hands it to me. “Read it,” he says.
It does have his name on it and several words are highlighted, including “death sentence for treason”. Sam’s eyes switch from Akram to the pile of files on the table next to him. “Who’s in this group?” she asks. “I mean, the commando unit?”
“We are a group of thirty members. Some of us are relatives.”
“So how did you get out of being executed?”
“When I was in prison in 1991, Saddam’s brother-in-law came to my brothers and asked if they wanted a pardon for me. They asked for 200 million dinars, and my brothers paid. We had money back then. I come from a very established family, thank God. I was released and discovered that my own family was finished: my wife and my two daughters were killed. When I came home, I asked the neighbours where they went and the people said, ‘After you were arrested, they took your family.’ They never came home again.”
Akram puts a hand over his eyes and shakes his head.
“Ya Allah al-Mimtaqim,”
he says, invoking one of God’s divine names — the Avenger — sometimes called out by one whose loved one has been murdered. “Do you see how evil this man was?”
Akram gets up and walks out of the room, and Sam is about to say something to me but already he is back, holding another folder of documents. He sits down again in his chair. “This is the intelligence file on me. They were trying to prove I was a traitor and that I had a link with the monarchy in Amman. They accused me of trying to bring back the Iraqi monarchy, because my father once worked for the king.”
I’m surprised by this information, because I was under the impression that most of the senior people who worked for the monarchy left Iraq in 1958, right after King Faisal II was dragged through the streets of Baghdad. But Sam is copying everything he says without any indication that she doubts a word of it.
“My father also had Jewish friends who left Iraq in the 1950s, and he corresponded with one of them. After he died they found the letters and accused me of conspiracy with the Zionists, and for this I was held in prison and tortured for five years. Five years! From 1995 to 2000, I was held in a secret prison by the intelligence services. I, an Iraqi general. You understand, I was a general in the Iran-Iraq war. You should know how much we have suffered. I’m lucky to be alive. When they thought I was totally broken — and my brothers were able to pay the ransom
—
they decided to let me go.”
Sam nods, pulls in her lips the way she does when she wants to show sympathy. “How awful. This country’s history is
—
tragic.” She lets a few moments of quiet pass. “So, may I ask you, when did you start helping the Americans?”
“Two weeks before the war. Some undercover agents were sent from Kuwait to see me and they asked me for the location of key regime members. They were with an Iraqi who had left Baghdad many years ago. He said, ‘We need your help.’ I agreed. The Americans wanted Saddam and his sons, dead or alive. But the man I wanted was the man who took my daughters and my wife and killed them — and he was one of Uday’s aides. He was in charge of thousands, maybe tens of thousands of executions.” Akram sighs. “And that’s why I was after Uday’s house, and along with that, I came into possession of these documents.”
“Where was this house?”
“Behind the As-Sa’a restaurant,” he says, pointing over his shoulder. “Near the Embassy of Oman.”
Sam shakes her pen, and draws blank circles on her page, pressing harder until the paper emits the brusque sound of a tear. She begins searching in her bag. Akram reaches into his breast pocket and pulls out a green felt-tip pen. He leans forwards and offers it to her with a graceful turn of wrist. “
Tfaddli
,” he says.
“
Shukran
.”
“Do you speak Arabic?” he asks her slowly.
“Shwaiy shwaiy
,” Sam grins, signalling very little.
Akram sits back in his chair. “I have a lot of information that would be of interest to you. For example, some of the documents show that one of your important politicians, Mr Billy Jackson, took millions of dollars from Saddam.”
Akram opens another folder and pulls out a page with a light-blue background. There is an Iraqi government crest in the centre of the page, and some kind of stamp at the bottom. He holds the document on the table, facing us. “Look here,” he points. “Here is Jackson’s signature.” The document looks like some kind of an order to a finance department manager, ordering that Billy Jackson receive $1 million in cash. The document is signed and dated the 15th of January, 2003. Akram lays out another dated the 23rd of June, 2001. Then he reads off the dates of numerous other payments, stretching back to 1995.
While I am translating this for Sam, Akram sips his tea. Then he pulls out yet another folder. He reads that so-and-so is ordered to give a $1 million gift from Saddam to...Jacques Chirac for his support of the Iraqi people...signed by Uday Hussein and Abdel Rahman Mansouri, treasury department.
“Down here,” Akram says, “you have the signature of Jean-Marc DuBois, who is an assistant to Mr Chirac. Most importantly, they are all signed by Uday, who ran the finances, as I am sure you are well aware. And Mansouri, he was Uday’s money man. He held the keys to the vault, which of course, they raided before they disappeared.”
Akram reaches into the pocket of his trousers and pulls out his wallet. He opens it and takes out a 10,000-dinar note, spreading it out on the table. “Look,” he says, tapping on the bottom left corner of the note. “Show her. You can compare Uday’s signature on the documents to the one on the bill. They are exactly the same.”
“Amazing,” she says. “But why would an American congressman or someone in Mr Chirac’s cabinet agree to sign something like that? Wouldn’t they be afraid to leave a trail?”
Akram’s eyebrows crash in a small ditch above his nose. “Afraid? No, they weren’t afraid. This regime was in place for thirty-five years. No one could touch it. No one thought it would fall, so who would know?” He pauses. “You understand what these men have in common, don’t you?”
Sam shrugs. “I’m not sure.”
Akram’s lips spread flat and wide. “They were opposed to the Bush campaign to overthrow Saddam! All along, they were supporting Saddam and trying to prevent the world from sanctioning this war against him. Ah! Also Kofi Annan.”
Sam’s eyes open wider. “The head of the UN?”
“Yes, we can show you documents that demonstrate that Kofi Annan was also receiving money from Saddam Hussein. In return, he fought very hard to allow Saddam to sell oil when they said the restrictions on the Iraqi people were too tough.”
Sam corrects my translation. “Or sanctions? You mean the Oil-for-Food programme?”
“Yes, yes,” General Akram says in English before returning to Arabic. “Exactly. Saddam was allowed to sell oil again, so he gave Mr Annan a very nice tip for his help. About $3 million. What’s important is to expose all of these people who made Saddam a leader with continued legitimacy. It’s their fault he stayed in power as long as he did.”
“I see.” Sam nods. She breathes in and exhales, then lets the tip of Akram’s pen fall on to her notebook, leaving bleeding green dots wherever it lands. “I want to talk more about Billy Jackson—”
“Yes, Mr Jackson,” Akram interrupts. “I know personally that he received about $15 million since the early 1990s. I know a driver named Karim al-Azzawi. He was in charge of driving Mr Jackson from Iraq back to Jordan. He was told that if he didn’t get Jackson safely to Jordan with the money, he’d be executed. Then they deposited the money in a bank there.”
Sam tilts her head to one side. With much of her hair covered by the white scarf, which she chose to wear after all, she looks younger. Simple and curious. “How do you know all this?”
“If you want to verify what I say, I can arrange for you to interview him. This is how all the money transfers were done. There was no other way to get such a large sum of money out of Iraq. It’s not as if Saddam could wire it to New York or Paris,” he laughs.
A young teenage boy comes into the room with a plateful of diamond-shaped
baklawa,
a bottle of orange soda and three glasses. Akram thanks him and pats him on the back. Sam accepts the orange soda Akram pours for her, and takes a birdlike sip. I drain my glass in one shot; the translating is wringing me dry. The general pours me another glass.
She turns to me. Her eyes seem to search mine for cues, but she gives up and looks back at Akram. “You know, this is all really fascinating. But we got right down to talking about the documents and in fact, I wanted to ask you more about one of my colleagues.”
Akram nods, sorting through his files as she speaks, looking up only when I am giving my translation.
“Now, I have this colleague named Harris, Harris Axelrod, and I believe he wrote about these documents for my newspaper I’m not positive, but I think,” she pauses and looks at me, “I
think
that Harris has written about these very same documents for the same paper I write for. And I believe he told my editors that he got these documents from you.”