“It means ‘the seal’,” I say.
“Oh?” Sam reaches over to the corroding silver canister on the table for a napkin. “What is this, wax paper?” She dabs the corners of her mouth and crumples the stiff paper into a ball. “Like a seal on an envelope?”
“No. Like this,” I say, and proceed to demonstrate, clapping and making the appropriate sounds.
Sam laughs a bit and shakes her head. “You’re too cute, Nabil. You crack me up.”
If I don’t say something soon, it might be obvious that I feel embarrassed.
Rizgar, sucking on the banana shake he chose instead of an ice cream, probably with some intent to demonstrate that my choice of parlour was not the best, makes a short whistling sound. When I look over at him, he signals for us to get in the car. Something in his eyes says
now.
“Let’s go, Sam.”
Without saying more, we make our way back to the car and not until we’re pulling away do I ask Rizgar why he wanted us to leave so quickly.
“Yeah...
shaku maku?”
she asks.
“Shaku maku?”
We both repeat, laughing.
“Shaku maku!”
It would be as if someone who hardly knows any English ran about saying, “What’s up, dude?”
“Where did you learn that?” I ask.
“Oh, you know. I’m picking up a little lingo here and there. It’s not rocket science. So what was the deal? Did you see someone suspicious?”
Rizgar shrugs, says he just had a feeling it was time to leave.
“Good. I’m all for going on hunches,” she says. “Ach, Nabil!” She touches the back of my shoulder, then quickly pulls her hand away. “Miles is going to hit the roof when he hears the whole run-down about what Harris did. How is it that Harris’s bullshit detector didn’t start screeching when he met Akram? I mean, how could anyone meet that guy and not walk away feeling like you’d just met a used-car salesman?”
We’re close to the Hamra now, just passing the Karma Hotel. But instead of turning in as he usually would, Rizgar keeps going straight. He then turns off to the left, in the wrong direction, and speeds up, quickly taking a right and then a left, in a direction we’ve never taken before. Sam seems not to notice, and Rizgar glances at me in a way that says not to ask.
“Hey,” Sam interjects from the backseat. “I know we’re almost at the Hamra, but I want to go to the press conference at the Convention Centre. Rizgar, sorry, can you turn around?” His smile tells me he’s perfectly happy to take her there rather than back to the hotel.
~ * ~
As we approach the Convention Centre, soldiers stop Rizgar and tell him he can’t go any further. “New security regulations,” is all they say. But it’s at least a mile’s walk to the spot where the press conferences are, which is a place I’m curious to see. I offer to walk Sam there. “Sure,” she says, slipping on her round sunglasses. I never can tell if such a terse response belies reluctance, but I hop out of the car to follow her anyway.
Sam, despite being a head shorter than I, always seems a pace ahead. “Sam,” I ask, a little out of breath in the heat, “if your editors say they want you to just focus on Akram, why bother going to these press conferences?”
“Oh, for the fun of it. And to get you in shape. It’s a good workout, isn’t it?” We both laugh. “They’ll say they want you to focus on one story, but the truth is that they’ll still be thrilled to have other stuff coming in. And what if nothing pans out with this Akram angle?”
“Do you think that could happen, after what we just saw today?”
“Actually, no. But it’s only just after 7 a.m. in Washington, which means Miles isn’t in yet. He’s probably just getting up, if that. So what else do I have to do at three in the afternoon? And besides, it’s good for keeping up with sources.”
I can think of lots of things to do, in the old Baghdad. Take her to one of the riverside cafés. Or browse in the bookshops on Mutanabi Street.
“What time does it start?” I ask her when we reach the entrance.
“Three-thirty.”
“Well it’s only three-fifteen now. Can we sit here for a minute?”
Sam shrugs and smiles. “Yeah, sure. We can watch the camels go by.” This doesn’t strike me as funny and when I don’t smile back, she gives my upper arm a push. “Kidding, Nabil.”
One never sees a camel in Baghdad, only out in the tribal lands. But I know this is the image Westerners have of us. In Birmingham some kid called me a camel-jockey, and I went home that day and punched a stuffed animal, pretending it was him.
We seat ourselves on the stone bench, which is very warm but tolerable, since it’s in the shade.
“I still can’t believe what happened back there,” Sam says. “I almost feel ashamed to give my editors the run-down on what we learned about Akram. That man is slimy!” She shudders. “I can’t wait to have a shower.”
“Why ashamed?”
“Between you and me, and this is really not to go beyond this bench, I feel like I’m ratting out a fellow reporter, even if it’s not someone I particularly like. I had sort of hoped Harris’s story would hold up. But this — buying documents from this Akram
—
it’s outrageous.”
“I see.” I hesitate, thinking of the way she’s begun to touch me at times, like she did in the car earlier. “Would you mind if I asked you something personal?”
“Ask me anything,” she says.
“Are you with Carlos, or with Jonah?”
Sam looks at me with confusion, her mouth half-open.
“That day at the hospital, when you were looking for Jonah, you were so upset. And you said he’s sort of your boyfriend, and obviously you must be speaking to him all the time because he told you to go to see Sheikh Duleimy. But Carlos is living with you and he seems very...close to you.”
“Nabil, Carlos is just a friend and colleague. You know that there are two bedrooms in the suite. So there’s room for other reporters. You understand that, right?”
“Yes, but as a woman, they would have to respect your need to have your own room. Because to anyone who would see it.
“What?” Sam seems angry. “I don’t have to justify my living arrangements to you!”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean — I was just trying to understand.”
Sam shakes her head in disbelief. “Nabil, if a colleague who’s a good friend needs a place to stay for the night, and we’ve got an empty room here with no one in it, and there’re no vacancies in the hotel, of course I’m going to offer it to him. I even let Marcus stay one night last week so he could have a hot shower and a good meal. The man’s been living in a tent, for God’s sake. Most of the time, Carlos is off somewhere in Najaf or Karbala or some God-forsaken place.” She pauses a moment. “I understand this co-ed dorming thing isn’t so popular with you guys, but you have to realize, it just isn’t an issue for
us.
And right now, it’s really more of a practicality than anything else.”
“If one of my cousins did that, her brothers would kill her.” I was thinking of our distant relatives, of my cousin Raed.
“God. I just don’t get that.”
“I’m
not that way. Neither is my brother. But many people are, and they are from good families. The threat itself is a sign of love and respect.”
Sam sneers. “That makes no sense whatsoever.”
“It does make sense. If you really love someone, you want to protect them.”
“Uh-huh. So much that you end up killing them? That’s sweet.”
“I’m just trying to explain to you how people here think. People protect their family as a whole, not just the individual. It’s not simply about what one person wants.” I can feel that I’m speaking a little too forcefully now. My heart is banging in my chest. Sometimes Sam’s statements are so outrageous I cannot even find the words to tell her how far away she is from understanding our culture. Calling our holy cities God-forsaken! I have heard her meet someone new and say
tsharafna,
or “how do you do”, which means, literally, we are honoured. But perhaps she does not actually understand what the word
sharaf
means.
“Nabil? I don’t even want to be having this conversation now.” She glances at her watch. “Hey, I have enormous respect for Arab culture. But when an innocent woman gets killed for loving someone, I have to draw the line on my cultural relativism. So let’s just drop this, okay?”
I look up to find Joon Park walking over to us, and others trailing behind. Her translator, Daoud, waves to me. Joon, who looks mildly annoyed, calls out, “Hey, Sam. Press conference is cancelled.”
“Really? Well I’m so glad I’ve been wasting time sitting here. Couldn’t they have sent a text to our phones?”
Joon and Sam start walking back to the cars, and Daoud and I follow them, walking one step behind and saying very little to each other. Twice I’ve tried to start a conversation with him around the hotel, and both times I found it impossible. Either he has no personality, or he mistrusts me. Perhaps Joon told him that she doesn’t like me.
When we reach the cars the women give each other a quick kiss on the cheek, and Sam bounds back into the front seat, pulling the door shut with a bang.
After a few minutes’ silence, I try to clear the air. “I was just asking, Sam, for your own safety.”
Rizgar sees her glares at me. He can’t understand enough English to get the conversation, but our bodies speak a language which needs no translation.
“I just didn’t understand, that’s all,” I say, attempting an explanation. “In our culture if you were staying in the same room with a man, then it would be clear that these two people,” and I fumble for words that won’t sound crude, “that these two people are, you know, not just friends.”
“Nabil, we are not sleeping in the same room.”
“But he was staying in the same big room.”
“It’s a
suite.
That means it’s more than one room. Have you noticed that the suite has two bedrooms?”
“But then they should have you share with a female reporter.”
“I can’t believe we’re having this discussion.” She scowls at me. “I told you about Jonah, and that’s it.” A line of Bradley Fighting Vehicles is cutting in front of us, making scores of cars wait. “And Nabil, with all due respect, it’s really none of your business.”
I feel myself gulping for words. Suddenly all my English has been drained from me, and I’m drowning in a sea of Arabic. Waters in which Sam will never learn to swim.
No one says another word until I can’t stand it anymore.
“You’re right,” I say. “I apologize. I think I misspoke.” No reply. “Sam?”
She leans her head on the window. Her heated sigh makes the glass fog.
“It’s only because,” I blurt out, and then I stop myself. And what can I say? That every Iraqi in the hotel will just assume she’s sleeping with Carlos if she’s living with him, suite or no? And that they’ll notice there’s no ring on her finger? And that sometimes the handsome blond reporter flirts with her, and that she flirts back? Is Sam even going to care? Can I convince her that she should?
“Let’s just leave it, okay?”
When we reach her hotel, she gets out of the car without a word, and I follow. “Should I come up?” I ask.
“I guess so.”
We walk across the courtyard, through the atrium, to the stairs of the second tower, the tension between us like an electric field. Closer, further, closer. When I was a kid, I had a trick magnet toy like that. The two pieces were attracted to each other and then, once they were up against each other, each repelled the other’s force.
In her room she goes straight to her computer. Should I leave? Wait in the car?
“Sam, it was only that...” I stop and then try to start again. “I only want to help you, to protect you from having the men here see you like they see the other foreign women.”
Sam looks in the refrigerator. “Damn. No milk for coffee. Carlos probably...” She leans on the counter and crosses her arms. “Nabil, I am a foreign woman. Here, anyway. Who do you think you’re kidding? What, and if I don’t have a male guest for the night, they’ll see me as...maybe, what? A nice Muslim girl who’ll make a good wife? And what the hell would the point of
that
be? Am I trying to win some kind of popularity contest around here or get my job done?” Sam puts a hand over one of her eyes like it hurts and breathes in deeply.
I feel ridiculous. I should have stayed in the car.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to raise my voice.” She looks me up and down, like she’s never seen me wear these particular clothes before.
“Out there, out there in Iraq, I’ll play by your rules. But in here, inside this little hotel, it’s a totally different world, and a woman can do whatever she wants. That’s the deal, right? jeez, don’t you see the women swimming out there every night in the pool? If this place were such a fundamentalist stronghold, how could you have that going on?”
“People talk about it.”
“About what?”
“About the women who wear their bikinis around the pool, how they’re almost naked. How the culture of the West is shameful and we have to resist it. Their words, Sam, not mine. Maybe, maybe these journalists think it’s safe, but it’s really not.”
“That’s why I came to Iraq, because I thought it would be nice and safe.”