She looks at me with bewilderment. “Wouldn’t it be better if we were at least consistent in our lies about where I’m staying?”
At Fateh Square, the traffic slows to the speed of an ant crawling across the pavement. What if Suleiman gets there before we do?
“Do you remember when I asked you if you trust me? You said I have an honest face.”
“I remember.”
“Well, I think you have to trust me now, even though I haven’t been so honest with everyone. I don’t know if we can trust either of these guys, so it’s better they don’t know where you’re living.”
Sam puts her back against the car door, folding up her left foot into the inside of her right thigh, facing me. “You’re right. They don’t need to know that.” Does she only put on make-up like this when she’s going to be on television? Or would she put it on, for example, if she were coming to dinner at my parents’ house? To a wedding?
“Maybe it was good thinking,” she says. “You gotta go with your gut. So what actually happened today?”
“Well, this guy,” I say especially for Sam, because she makes fun of me when I say bloke and chap. “This guy says that he is pretty sure he can help us, but he wants to see the documents we have from Akram. And he knew who Akram was.”
“Huh!”
“It seemed like Akram has nothing to do with making the documents, he just sells them. But he’s probably one of several who do this. There might be many others.”
“Others involved in making these documents?”
“No, other people selling the work of the forgers. It sounds like a competitive business.”
Sam’s eyes widen with wonder. “Brilliant,” she says. “We should do a story about Baghdad’s new cottage industry: the forgery factories. So what he was really saying is that Akram is sort of a retailer and marketer, and then there are some middlemen who are wholesalers, and they buy it from one of the producers — and that’s who actually draws the thing up.”
“I don’t know, I suppose.” This evening, I’ll have to look up all of Sam’s business terms.
“And you know what would really kill me? If we could find any indication that some of these forgery artists were at work before the war and were producing made-up documents related to WMD. If we find that,” she says with a dreamy smile, “we’re golden.”
It takes a minute for this to wash over me, both the concepts and the words — that killing in this case is meant to be a positive.
“Excuse me, Miss Samara.” Rizgar peers in the rearview mirror. “You want Al-Faqma?”
Sam glances at me. I find myself shaking my head, enjoying the chance to make all the decisions. “We really don’t have time, now.”
“Sorry, Rizgar. Thank you. Maybe later?”
Rizgar nods, disappointed.
“This guy thinks you’re at the Sumerland, so I’m going to go over there and will pay the receptionists something to pretend you live there. He says that he’ll get in contact with us there, somehow, later in the day.”
“Nabil, you know how I feel about paying bribes to people. It’s not the right way to go about getting the truth.”
I imagine Sam having a tiny holy book somewhere, the way we have tiny Korans that we, especially religious people, sometimes put on the dashboard. Hers would be a bible of journalism, with rules about the right way to do everything.
“It won’t cost a lot, Sam. Something small. It’s not like a real bribe. I’ll take care of it. If anyone finds out, you can blame it on me and say you didn’t know.”
She looks at me sympathetically. “That’s not the point. It’s just not a good idea to get people used to that sort of thing. You know, you end up encouraging these people and raising their expectations so that every time they do something, they expect some kind of kickback, a little
baksheesh.”
Sam speaks like a parent who thinks she can prevent her child from getting accustomed to eating sweets. Maybe she can’t help it: it’s how America as a whole looks at us. Us in Iraq, us in the Middle East, us in the Muslim world. They know what’s good for us, what mix of dictatorship and democracy is acceptable, how many weapons we are allowed to have. What is that word? Patronizing? No...Paternalistic.
I’m tempted to remind her that the favour we’re asking involves them lying for her, but it hardly seems to matter now, since I’m the one who made up the lie.
“Also, there’s more than that,” I explain. “This guy, Mustapha, he is also going to want to be paid. And I don’t think we will have a choice in that either, because it will be work for him to get us the answers we need.”
Sam tilts her head. “Did you promise this guy you’d pay him?”
“No, of course not.”
Negotiable.
How could Sam understand? “But it was very much implied.”
“And do you trust this guy? Do you think he’s really going to be able to get us definite answers?”
“I went to university with him.”
“Oh! So you know him.”
“Not really.”
“So let me get this straight. This guy you sort of know from college, your cousin sent you to him. He wants to see the documents and he wants to be paid if he can find out for us where the documents come from, who ordered them made, and whether they made other documents that might be even sexier.”
“More or less.”
Sam rakes her hair around the crown of her head, then unclasps the barrette holding it neatly in place. She shakes the locks out, massaging her scalp as if tying back her hair that way makes her head ache.
“Sam, I found out today that one of the other fixers was killed. Taher, for Sky News.”
“Who?”
“This nice young guy named Taher. Handsome-looking? He was often sitting around by the windows in the first tower lobby when we come in. The American army shot him and four others in a car at a checkpoint for no reason. Or they say because the car didn’t stop.”
Sam shakes her head. “That’s awful. Jeez. Why the hell didn’t the driver stop?”
Why the hell did they shoot? Why doesn’t Sam ask that? Maybe the car was rushing for good reason. I feel a frustration banging in my chest. She doesn’t really seem upset about Taher, doesn’t realize that an innocent guy, someone just like me, is gone.
And Louis’s friend, who was killed last week? Did I feel anything when Louis mentioned him? Some sympathy for Louis, perhaps, but behind it, a malicious voice is keeping score: a lot more of ours have been killed than yours. And you bloody well started it.
We round the corner towards the Hamra car park. Sam gazes down the street in the direction of the Sumerland, where she occasionally meets her friends for dinner, and the Duleimy Hotel, which is reputed to have been a hotel for prostitutes. Now, young freelance reporters on tight budgets stay there.
“Let’s go up and talk through things. And maybe eat,” she says, putting a hand to her belly. “This is too much running around on an empty stomach.”
“I think I should go and talk to someone at the Sumerland first. How about you wait here in the car for a few minutes.”
“Fine,” Sam says. She goes into her wallet and takes out two fifty-dollar bills, handing them to me. “You shouldn’t have to pay for your bribes out-of-pocket.”
“No,” I hold up my hand towards hers. “I don’t need it.”
“Take it, Nabil. I’m not going to let you pay for it.”
I shake my head, pushing her hand back towards her bag. “Not now,” I say. “You’ll pay me back some other time. I’m counting on it.”
~ * ~
41
Counting
As I walk into the Sumerland Hotel, I try to suppress the guilty feelings Sam conjured up in me about paying bribes. Some bribes are necessary, no? The only person at the desk is a middle-aged man named Munzer, whom I’ve noticed once before.
I’m gonna just give you the headlines,
Sam said to me recently, when I asked her for an explanation and she was in a rush. Headlines only.
And so I tell Munzer that I need to protect Sam, that nice foreign lady I work with. The one with the red hair? And he says yes, he’s noticed her. And I say that if anyone asks I need him to pretend that she stays here, because for her own honour, we don’t want certain people to know where she lives — she’s a very important person and we need to keep that information private.
Honour I said, not security, and I think he could understand that, just in the way that some men will never mention their wives’ and daughters’ names in front of people they don’t know well. Women’s names are part of the family’s honour, and why should a stranger have access to information like that?
Munzer understands, I see, and he takes the small stack of dinars as I pass it behind the counter, which probably came out to somewhere around $30. Munzer smiles, and as this is probably a week’s salary for him anyway, I feel like I have a friend for life.
I ask him which room he will pretend she’s in, and he says how about 125, and I say that’s fine, just make sure it stays the same. And he promises to send a message over to Sam’s room at the Hamra if he hears anything, and to be quiet about it. And I tell him he’s been very kind and he nods and reaches behind him and sticks a folded white piece of message paper into the box for 125, taping it in as if conjuring up imaginary guests is something he has been doing forever.
~ * ~
Sam and I agree to send Rizgar off for a lunch break, and to have ours inside. In the lobby, my eyes focus on the chair where Taher used to sit while he was waiting. But Sam keeps heading straight for the courtyard and tower two, and after a moment of contemplating his empty seat, I follow.
In the shaded corner, I can see Joon facing us, chatting and nodding. Across from her is a fellow who screams “American” with his big broad shoulders, and as we move a few steps closer I can see the profile of his face: Franklin Baylor.
Sam strides ahead of me, and pretends to be pleasantly surprised.
“Joon, hi!” Sam says as Baylor rises to greet her by holding out his hand.
“Miss Katchens. Nice to see you again.”
Sam’s mouth is slightly ajar. “Likewise.” On the table, we both notice, is Joon’s recorder and a mini-microphone, though they don’t appear to be turned on.
“You done that electricity story yet?” he asks.
“Not yet,” she says, staring at him and forcing a smile. “I’ve got so many stories on my plate this week.”
I glance at Joon, who has a barely perceptible air of annoyance at our arrival.
“Well, you better step on it or this here Joon Park’s going to do the story first,” he says, sitting himself back down.
Sam smiles at Joon, Joon smiles back. Sam rolls her eyes in a way that almost seems authentic, but not quite. “No problem there,” Sam says. “We’re not competitors, we’re friends.”
Joon nods as if she agrees. And then her Thuraya phone, sitting on the table, begins moving with a buzz, and finally begins to ring. She looks at the number of the incoming call and makes a sour face. “Damn. Washington Q&A at the top of the hour. I have to take this. Frank, would you excuse me for a few minutes?” She avoids Sam’s gaze and brushes past her, heading to the other side of the pool, where there is reception.
Frank gestures to us to take a seat, but Sam remains standing, although moving closer.
“What are you doing, Frank?” she whispers in a voice that sounds flirty, but also aggressive. “You tipping off every reporter in the Hamra?”
“Easy there. I came here to see you. I tried calling you three times on that Thuraya thing but couldn’t get through. And I was on a little errand in the neighbourhood anyway, so I thought I’d stop in.”
“And how the hell—”
“Don’t forget your friend there was also at that party the other night at the Sheraton, and so she thinks that I’m actually working on electricity. In fact, I’ve spent the last ten minutes explaining what we’re doing to fix it, because apparently everyone and their mother wants to know why Iraqis have been sitting in the dark since we came to town.”
“Oh.” Sam looks over at Joon, who from the way she’s answering questions, loudly and clearly, sounds like she’s being interviewed live.
“Listen,” he says in a low voice. “Chalabi is not responsible for the documents, but someone with a similar mindset is. And the man who made them, is named Ali al-Yaqubi al-Sadr.”
Sam moves to uncap a pen.
“Don’t write. Just listen.” And then to my surprise, he turns to me, and in perfectly accented Arabic, repeats the man’s name and spells it for me, as if to emphasize.
Sad-dall-raa.
“Related to Moqtada?” I ask.
“Unclear,” he says. “But not a bad guess. Either way, I don’t suggest you go looking for him further. You’re a reporter, not a police force. You have enough to go on now.”
“Well,” Sam says. “Not exactly—”
“I don’t want to tell you how to do your job, but you’d better watch yourself.
Dir Balak
,” he says. “Because furthermore—”
Out of the corner of my eye I see Joon heading back in our direction.
“Because furthermore, you have to realize just how much more power we’re going to be able to generate from the South Baghdad Power Plant in Dura. That plant will be generating a thousand megawatts a day when our emergency rehabilitation plan is implemented, starting next week.” Baylor lifts his eyes to acknowledge Joon’s return. “That’s going to have this town buzzing with more power than it ever had under Saddam.”