“And I’m honoured to be in the presence of such great beauty,” he says, indicating Sam but bowing his head slightly towards me, as if asking my permission to say so. It has to be. It has to be Suleiman es-Surie, or al Mutanabi, or whatever his name is, the man Adeeb mentioned among the web of fixers Harris worked with.
Sam turns to me and raises her eyebrows gently. “I think we’d better be going,” she says. “I don’t want to be responsible for you missing prayers. Please offer our deepest thanks for all his time.”
I translate this and I see Akram’s jaw tense. His eyes shift to Sam and then come back to mine.
“What about the documents?” Akram asks. “Which of the documents did you say you were interested in?”
“He wants to know which ones we want.”
Sam puts her camera back into her bag. Closes her notebook and wears her enigmatic smile, her lips tight against one another. A little bit kind, a little bit condescending. “I really need to check with my editor first to see what they want. I won’t know until I speak to them.” Her wording is ambiguous and it probably feels quite comfortable to her — walking the thin line between hiding the truth and telling outright lies. Could Akram be so daft that he hasn’t figured out by now that he
is
the story?
“How much would they pay for documents on the biological and chemical weapons production facility?” Akram asks. “We can give you information on the ones in Al-Kut and Al-Diwaniyah. That is a very important story that hasn’t been reported yet.”
What else can I do but just feed it to her straight? Like she said — a two-way radio, no static blocking the airwaves.
“Well,” Sam says. “That is very interesting. I will have to think about that and see what my editors say. I don’t know if — how much they would pay for that.”
We stand there uncomfortably, everyone waiting for the next move. “He’s very reliable,” says Suleiman, raising a tiny
tut
from Akram, a diplomatic signal to shut his mouth. Akram follows Sam’s motions, the bag over her shoulder, the hand held out to say goodbye to the two of them, and he escorts us to the door. He is still asking questions.
“He wants to know how he can be in touch with you about this,” I tell her.
“Just, uh,” her upturned hand suggests a shrug, “just tell him now that we know where to find him, we can come back when we have some kind of answer.”
“He wants to know where you stay.”
“Oh. Well, the Sheraton.”
Akram is trying to smile, but the twitching side of his mouth pulls his face into more of a scowl. “Come in here with me,” he signals to us to step through the hallway and into an inner room, the one that visitors are usually not invited to enter. “Come and let me show you something.” I tell this to Sam and she says fine. My heart speeds up as I consider the possibilities.
He shows us in, indicating that I should go first, with Sam following, and he comes in after us. It is dimly lit and mustier than the big room with the fancy furniture. I can see a corridor leading to the kitchen, a dining table. A glimpse of the back of a woman retreating as we enter the room.
“Come here,” he says, leading us towards the right, where the sofa faces a television set with wavy lines moving across it. “Here,” he says, and flicks on the lightswitch near the wall.
I hear Sam suck in a quick breath: on the carpet is a mound of weapons, piled on top of each other like worms: bazookas, RPG launchers, ammunition belts, Kalashnikovs and, I think, AK-47s. Maybe mortars too? Many of the guns are old, and one has a knife attached to the end of it.
“What the — is he running a militia too?”
Akram crosses his arms. “They’re the weapons we used to raid Uday Hussein’s house. The night I told you about, when we killed Uday’s men and took these boxes of documents.” He leans against the wall, seemingly pleased with himself. “Do you want a picture of these, too?”
“No,” I answer for Sam without consulting her. “I don’t think that will be necessary.”
“Whose weapons are these?” Sam is drinking in the cache. Her eyes are skipping over every inch of it and back to Akram. Now he’s at ease and she seems nervous.
“Our men. We’re a very reliable group of friends, very loyal men.” He begins to move towards the door now, and I can see his guard brooding in the corridor. “I only wanted to show you some of what we used that night to break into Uday’s house. So you... “ he says, pauses. “So the good lady will see how we helped the Americans when they came to Baghdad. And so she will understand, and so she can tell her boss in America how we were able to obtain such important documents.”
I thank Akram several times and promise that we will be in touch. Sam says a short
shukran
and puts her hand across her chest and nods, an appropriate gesture when men and women don’t want to touch. But even at that moment, and as we walk out of the door, I can see that the same trigger finger that kept pumping shots from the camera is still shuddering.
~ * ~
In the car, I feel out of breath, as if I’ve been running, my lungs heaving, my feet pulsing. Sam is simply shaking her head back and forth. When we’re safely down the block, she begins to shout. “Oh my God!” She lets out a squeal and begins to laugh. “Can you believe this guy? What a piece of work!”
Rizgar looks curious to know what happened.
I roll my eyes at him and hold up a finger, telling him that I will explain later. “Yes, he was lying a lot, wasn’t he?”
“Lying a lot?” Sam turns her back to the dashboard to face me. “Uh, ya think? For a guy who deals in forgery, he’s a pretty shitty liar. It’s too bad his story isn’t as seamless as his documents.”
“You think he makes the documents himself?”
“Who knows? I’m not even up to that yet. First we need to figure out what the hell this guy’s really up to.” Sam looks excited, her eyes lit and jumpy. “I mean, if he’s stupid enough to try to sell me the same set of documents he sold to Harris and claim that they’re originals, and he’s trotting out this whole round of other bogus stuff like it’s a friggin’ flea market, how was it not obvious to Harris that
something
was up?”
Rizgar says that the neighbourhood feels creepy and he wants out, quick. Does he have our permission to speed up?
“Problem? No problem,” Sam says lightly but Rizgar is serious. He steps hard on the accelerator and we are sucked backwards in our seats. I didn’t realize an old Impala could go so fast.
“He must know that we have him figured out, though, no? He is not that stupid,” I say. “You kind of trapped him in his own lies. Don’t you think he realized that?”
“Look, he’s not regular stupid. I mean that special kind of stupid,” Sam says, “when someone is smart enough to think of a really clever crime, but stupid enough to get greedy about it and want more. He tries to mass produce to expand his profit margin and ends messing up. That’s often a criminal’s downfall. They never get enough.”
“So all these people, Sam. Chirac, Kofi Annan. You don’t think they could have been receiving money from Saddam to support him, like Akram said?”
Sam rolls her eyes at me. “I really doubt it, Nabil.”
My stomach feels queasy from Rizgar’s sudden speed and fast turns. Sam picks up his packet of cigarettes, and shakes it, listening to the rattle. Then she flips open the box, runs it under her nose and inhales. “Why do you have to have these lying around?”
He laughs. “Sorry, Miss Samara.”
“Look, if he knows we’ve already got his game, then why was he telling me about all the other news organizations he’s servicing? We could end up derailing his big deals to come.”
“Maybe he’s trying to establish his reputation — to show us all the important clients he has.”
“Ah-ha,” Sam says, “that he’s in demand. But you don’t think he’s worried that we’ll put him out of business?”
“Actually, I do think...maybe. I think you have to be careful. Did you see all the guns he had?”
“Yeah, that was quite a collection.”
“I think it’s a subtle way of threatening you. Us.”
“The thought crossed my mind.” She picks up the cigarette packet again and takes one out. Rizgar smiles at her. She holds the cigarette between her fingers like a person who is smoking, but makes no attempt to light up. “You’re not going to start giving me guilt about it, are you?” she asks me sheepishly.
“Me? I don’t care. It doesn’t bother me.” I do and it does, but what business is it of mine?
“It’s this country of yours that’s driving me to it,” she says, putting the cigarette in her mouth for a minute, then taking it out. “Okay, here’s my theory. He wants to be the it-boy for documents. So when we walk in, he readily admits they’re for sale, and gives me a sample. Thinks I’m the next customer in line, right? It just happens to be a sampling that the
Tribune
has already tasted. But when he begins to realize that he’s shopping me a story that the paper’s already run — and how could he have known that — he goes and denies that Harris got the Jackson documents from him. And he says instead he sold Harris stuff on weapons, because he knows that’s definitely a hot commodity. Whether you want to uncover weapons facilities or smear unsavoury politicians — come one, come all! There’s lots to go around, and everyone wants a story.”
I can follow most of Sam’s reasoning, and if she’s right, I’m thinking that there should have been some other way to go about it. She should have met Akram without making him feel as if we were trying to buy something. And then after all that, putting him on the spot with the truth. Photographing him. Or, on the other hand, maybe he was confused. Maybe he thought Sam was just asking a lot of annoying questions, as reporters do, trying to make sure no other journalist had the same story. Maybe for him, all that matters is that we came shopping in his personal market. He will make us a final price, and then he will expect to collect.
“So?” she asks. “Do you agree?”
I think for a moment. “What’s an it-boy?”
“Usually it’s an it
—
girl.
A model or an actress. Someone who everyone wants, you know, mindlessly.” She’s twirling the long, white cigarette between the fingers of her right hand. “Just like I want this cigarette.”
~ * ~
22
Twirling
“Excuse, me, Miss Samara,” Rizgar says. “You like eat ice cream?”
Sam’s eyes light up. “Really? Do they have good ice cream here?” Rizgar points out the Al-Ballout ice cream shop.
“That’ll keep me off nicotine a little longer,” she says. “It’s actually open?”
“Al-Faqma is better,” I offer. Rizgar’s eyes flash at me. But it’s the truth; I can’t pretend otherwise.
Sam looks to me and then to Rizgar. “Well, where’s Al-Faqma?”
“It’s by the next round-about,” I say. “The ice cream there is famous. Ten times better than Al-Ballout.”
By now Rizgar has stopped the car outside Al-Ballout, with those crude, cartoony pictures of children and animal figures painted on the wall. He gives me a look that makes it clear he’s annoyed, but when he realizes I’ve registered his discontent, he forces up a conciliatory smile.
“It’s much better,” I insist. “Nobody would go to Al-Ballout if they can go to Al-Faqma.”
Rizgar sniffs and shoots back into the traffic. No one says a word. Sam shifts uncomfortably, sensing Rizgar’s frustration and probably wondering whether she should have sided with him. He may have been working for her longer, may even be better loved: I can tell that Sam avoids the possibility of slighting him in any way. But no Kurd from the north is going to tell me he knows a better place to get ice cream in Baghdad than I do.
She tries to put our disagreement aside with a declaration. “We’re a team now, and in America, when the team wins the game they go out and celebrate with ice cream. Or beer, of course.”
She’s disappointed there’s no chocolate, but consoled by another favourite flavour, raspberry. Rizgar and I pick out ours but are more focused on arguing over the bill; he all but armwrestles me into letting him pay. We take a seat at one of the outdoor tables in the shade.
Sam runs the overturned spoon across her tongue and closes her eyes. “Umm. Not bad.” I haven’t been eating mine quickly enough, and in this heat, it’s already becoming like
chorba
— soup. “Did you think it would be bad?”
“No, Nabil,” she drops her jaw a bit, and as she does, I can see that her tongue has gone magenta-pink. “I meant, it’s really good. I had ice cream in Turkey once and it was, I don’t know, kind of weird and gluey. I thought maybe it was going to be like that.”
I mix my colours together — green for pistachio and orange for peach — until it starts to become a brownish, unappealing mess. I should have picked out the flavour Sam did, which suddenly looks very appealing. Her lips are now stained red, and they look a little pouty, almost swollen.
“This is definitely the best ice cream in Baghdad,” says Sam. “In fact, one of the best I’ve had anywhere in the world.”
“You don’t have to exaggerate.” I make myself take another spoonful.
Sam scrapes at the bottom of her cup, finishing off the last spoonful. “It’s a funny name, Al-Faqma.” She smiles at me with closed lips, coloured like a doll’s mouth. “Al FAQ-ma.” She says it like a foreigner who doesn’t know the difference between the letters qaf and kaf.