After I translate this, Akram rises and goes to an armoire in the far corner of the room. He lifts a key from his jacket, unlocks the cabinet door, and pulls out a small cardboard box. He carries it back over to his chair and sets the box beside his feet. Inside, it seems, is another batch of documents.
“My goodness!” says Sam. “How many documents did you get when the regime fell?”
“Many. Many, many documents.”
“Could you estimate?”
“About twenty sacks. We put them in sacks because we were in a rush. Saddam and his sons took some of the most important documents from the presidential palace and put them in these villas for safe keeping.”
“But didn’t the INC take most of the documents?” Sam asks. “That’s what was reported.”
“No,” he replies. His tongue seems to be shifting back and forth inside his mouth, as though he is growing annoyed but knows he shouldn’t show it. “I gave them a lot of documents from the Republican Palace, just to be helpful.”
“You mean, you had documents from there, too?”
“We have access to whatever documents we need.” Akram bends to pick through the files in the box at his feet. “There are others here you may want to see.” His voice is muffled. When he comes up, his face looks flushed, almost burnt.
“So, do you remember Harris?”
The general smiles leisurely. “Of course I remember him. I met him many times. He told me he lives in Beirut.”
“Yes, that’s right. Didn’t he get these very same documents from you, these ones on Billy Jackson?” Sam holds up the papers he handed her a minute ago. “Isn’t this exactly what you gave Harris?”
The general signals for Sam to hand them back, and she promptly does so. “These are not the same documents,” he says. “You must be confused. Harris took the documents about the weapons facilities, not these.”
Sam sits up straight. “You also gave him information about weapons sites?”
“That’s right.”
“Did he buy those?”
The general coughs, and reaches for a tissue. With a screeching hack that makes my ears hurt, he expectorates something from his lungs, crumples the tissue and puts it into the waste-paper basket beneath the end table. He tilts forwards to take his tea then looks up at me. “Smoke?”
“No, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. It’s better. I would have been tempted to ask you for a cigarette. My wife made me quit.”
“Your wife?” I ask.
“Yes.” He looks at his knees. “I remarried only last year. It has taken me many years to get over the death of my first wife.”
“Allah yarhamha,”
I say. God’s mercy be upon her.
“Thank you.”
Sam turns to me. “Did he say if—?”
“No. I’ll ask again.” And I pose the question, once more, if Harris paid for the documents about the weapons sites.
“Yes. But he didn’t pay for them in full. He paid a small amount and then he said, ‘I’ll come back and pay for the rest of the documents.’ He’s an honest person, I’m sure, so even if he’s late, I’m sure he’ll be back.”
“And the documents on Jackson? Did Harris pay you for those?”
“No, I told you, I didn’t give Harris those documents. I have them right here with me.” He shifts. “When will our friend Harris come back to Baghdad?”
“I’m not sure. So how much did Harris pay for these documents about the weapons sites?”
Akram sits back in his seat. “You know, I’m just one man. Many of the people in this unit, the people who are the caretakers of these documents now, were made very poor by this regime. Saddam took away everything we had. We lost our income and we suffered greatly. That’s why the money is necessary. It gets distributed to many families.”
“I see. How much did Harris pay?”
“Harris paid, it was around $10,000 or $12,000. I think he was expecting to get a lot of money for this information, from other people he could provide it to.”
I’m beginning to wonder where Akram is lying and where he’s telling the truth, if anywhere at all. I wonder why Sam doesn’t tape-record the conversation.
“Also, we have documents on the meetings between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. We have a set of about fifty documents that show the training of seven members of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. The documents show how they were trained to fly planes and to do those attacks in America. We have an American television station coming tomorrow to take these documents.”
“Really? So when was this meeting between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden?” Sam is sounding breathless.
“In 1999. That was when Saddam accepted seven members of Al-Qaeda to train inside Iraq, learning to fly aircraft and to use chemical weapons. These are the same people who hit the World Trade Center.” He hands a few documents to me and says
fahim-ha; fahim-ha.
Make her understand.
“You’re saying seven of the nineteen hijackers were trained in Iraq?”
“Yes. Then they participated in the attack on the World Trade Center.”
“And how much will these TV people pay?”
“They agreed on $20,000.”
Sam makes an “o” with her lips. She blinks at Akram. “That’s quite a lot of money.”
The general nods. “But very important for the Americans to know.”
I read Sam the names on the list. “Nawaf Alhazmi... Mohammed Atta...Ayman al-Zawahiri...”
“Wait, Ayman al-Zawahiri is Bin Laden’s number two. He was not one of the hijackers.”
“Yes, correct,” Akram says. “Six were hijackers, but the seventh was Zawahiri. He was also trained here in Iraq, but he was not a hijacker. They trained for one year in Iraq in 2000. See the signature here,” Akram says, pointing vehemently to the scribble on one of the pages.
“Hmm. It’s a lot of money,” Sam says. “But also a very compelling story.”
Compelling?
Should I say that? She’s behaving as if she, too, might be interested in buying documents. Was that what she’d planned?
“The money you collect for these documents,” Sam continues, “to whom does it go?”
“Our group, as I told you. We’re about thirty people. Many have been through desperate times. Their families didn’t even get food-ration cards during the sanctions because they were enemies of Saddam. Imagine, people from educated families who have had their lives ruined, people who believe in freedom and democracy.” Akram shakes his head to convey his dismay, and then smoothes his jacket.
Sam turns to a new page, and draws two lines across the top. “If you’ll forgive me,” she says, “I want to go over this again. Harris
didn’t
take documents from you on Congressman Billy Jackson?”
Akram shakes his head. “He only wrote down the information. You know, the money is secondary. I want people in America to know what Jackson did.”
“Why does that matter to you?”
Akram frowns at Sam. “He gave Saddam legitimacy. You see, the aim is not the money, but to expose all the world politicians who kept trying to prop up Saddam. And as we punish them for this, we will aid our suffering people in the process.”
“Right, I can understand that,” Sam says. “But you know,” she taps the pen against the notebook, then grasps it tightly. “What I don’t understand is, I think that my editors told me that Harris e-mailed copies of these documents to my newspaper headquarters, and then sent them the originals you gave him. Now, how can that be?”
“It’s impossible,” he says. “Harris is lying. Or, he’s confused.”
“But that’s what my editors have, copies that look just like these.”
Akram’s eyes narrow, drawing out rivulets of wrinkles around them. He waits. Waves a finger back and forth. “Oh,
now
I remember. We put the documents on the table and Harris photographed them. I didn’t know that in this way he could try to avoid having to buy them.” He begins to laugh. “If I had known, I wouldn’t have let him do that.”
“And he didn’t pay anything to do that?”
“Well, Harris gave $1,000 the first time he met the men in the unit. I took him to one of their houses and he couldn’t believe how poor these former generals were, so Harris asked if he could give them money to help them.”
“He volunteered to give it?”
“He considered the information they gave to him a great benefit, so he gave the money as a compensation for the information.”
“Wait, I’m a little confused. You’re saying that Harris paid you $10,000 or $12,000 for documents on the weapons sites, and another $1,000 to compensate the men in the unit?”
General Akram pauses. “No, the $1,000 was part of the $12,000. That’s why I said ten or twelve. It was $10,000, plus the $1,000 that he paid separately, and then some extra money, around $1,000, to get all the documents translated. So that’s $12,000 in total.”
Sam is running out of room in her notebook. I can see that she only has a page or two left, and that her handwriting is getting smaller than normal.
“My job is to publicize the truth about all those people who made Saddam into an angel. And I’m already succeeding because our stories are in the newspapers.”
A
muezzin
releases his sombre voice into the air, inviting the faithful to midday prayers.
“Sam? It’s my prayer time,” I say. “I think we should go soon.” I turn to Akram. “I hope you’ll excuse me, but I must pray
dhuhr
.”
“Of course,” he says. “You can come back later after you decide.”
Sam sets her notebook on the sofa between the two of us. She interlaces her fingers like a net and rests them on her knees. “You know, I’ve really appreciated the time to talk to you. But in terms of anything more, moving forwards, I will have to speak to my editors. I don’t know what they’ll want.”
She is being purposefully vague. And the only way I can think to say this is to say that she is speaking
an il mustaqbal il qaribe,
regarding the near future. From this, I fear he’ll think we’re coming back to buy something from him.
Akram nods. “Which of the documents are you most interested in?”
“Oh, I’m really not sure,” she says. “They’re all very interesting. But paying for documents is a complicated matter. It’s usually not allowed.”
“I understand,” he says.
“You know what?” Sam sits up, looking happy again, her scarf slipping off her head. She reaches to put it back on.
“It’s okay,” Akram says, patting the air. “We are not fundamentalists here. This isn’t Iran, despite Tehran’s efforts.”
Sam laughs before I can translate. She runs her fingertips through her hair playfully, like she’s out joking with friends. I find myself wishing she would put the scarf back on immediately, but what does it matter now? Once it’s on, I should have told her, you can’t suddenly take it off, right in the middle of things.
“I like to take pictures of everyone I meet, everywhere in the world,” Sam says coquettishly. “It’s just what I like to do. Can I photograph you?”
Akram stiffens, and I can see the muscles in his throat at work. He shrugs. He coughs again, reaching for another tissue. Sam is already reaching into her bag for her camera. “Just one or two?” he inquires.
“Yes, just a few,” she says, and she is already twisting herself beyond the coffee table, fingers manipulating buttons and dials, closing in on Akram’s face. He folds his arms. His mien is stern.
Sam is snapping away, her finger pumping on the button, the fake shutter-sound of her digital camera fluttering against the silence. “Keep ‘im talking,” Sam mutters to me. I wish she would tell me what to keep talking about. Continue the interview, perhaps the most intense we’ve ever done, or try to get him talking about something else?
“It must have been amazing to be in Uday’s house the night the Americans arrived in Baghdad,” I say. “What did his house look like?”
Akram turns away from Sam and towards me with a deliberate and controlled stare that conveys he’s taking me in fully, watching me.
“He lived like a king. Pure opulence,” he answered, drawing his hands out in a circle to suggest how big. Sam clicks furiously while he’s in mid swing, the rattle of picture-taking popping like a distant spray of gunfire. His gaze shifts back towards hers, the left side of his mouth twitching, making his moustache dance.
The beefy man who had led us in enters the room, followed by one wearing an eager smile. Akram stands, holding his hands out in greeting. The man embraces Akram and then puts his lips close to his right cheek, kissing it sideways three, four, five times. He exchanges warm words and then turns to Sam and me. I stand up, and Sam follows, putting her camera on the sofa.
“I’m Suleiman,” he says, holding out his hand to me. Sam extends hers as well and he takes it, smiling at her with what seems like too many teeth. His eyes are an unusual pale blue. I offer my name and introduce “Miss Samara.” He turns back to Akram.
“Oh General Akram! If only a man like myself could have such distinguished guests as you always do.”
Akram laughs with an air of self-deprecation, and this Suleiman laughs with him. Something about his accent is different. Something of the Levant, either Syrian or Lebanese.
“I am glad for your gracious visit,” Akram says. I can see his attention flitting from Suleiman to us.