Sam nods twice before saying “yes”, as if working up to it.
“So you don’t need to wear this
hejab
here,” he says, pointing to her headscarf. “This is not necessary.”
Sam puts a hand to her scarf. “I like wearing it. I have great respect for Muslim tradition.”
“Sorry,” I say, knowing that I’ve interrupted, but not wanting to let him begin a treatise on
hejab.
“What was your name?”
“Ali,” he says, giving a sideways nod to Mustapha, almost imperceptible. “Some people call me Technical Ali, because they say my work is so good, I’m almost technician.” He laughs in a way that is more of a sneeze and then points to the chairs, which put our backs towards the windows. He sits down at the other side of the desk, in a swivel chair unlike the others, facing the river and the sunlight.
“I understand you wanted to know more about the work I do,” he says. “Mustapha here says that you already have done a lot of your own research.” He raises his face, which is more Lebanese than Iraqi, sharply angled to the point of being bony, the kind of Arab looks that can pass for Italian or Greek.
“A little bit.” Had I arrived earlier this morning, as I should have, I would have gone over things with Sam, discussed every possible direction the day could move in, working out in advance what Sam would want to do so that I wouldn’t have to turn to her and have her seen to be making all the decisions on the spot, which might not look good for either of us.
“Ya Mustapha,” Ali calls, as if Mustapha and Brutus were standing somewhere far away, instead of near the door, where they stayed even after we sat. Mustapha steps forward.
“Aren’t you hungry for lunch?” Ali asks.
Mustapha puts a hand over his belly. “In fact, very.”
“In that case,” he says, switching into Arabic after having greeted us in English, “you must go over to the Nabil Restaurant on Arasat Street in honour of this young man and pick up lunch for all of us. Our treat, of course.”
I feel a wave of fear, but I know I have to let it level out here, inside my head. Mustapha leaving us here?
“Of course,” Mustapha says. My body moves to rise, but I press it back down. What would Sam expect?
“Well, really, you’re so generous, but that’s not at all necessary,” I say. “In fact, we really were only expecting to make a short visit and then we’re off for some other appointments.” I turn to Sam, switching to English. “You have an early deadline today don’t you?”
“Yes, that’s right,” she says, looking at her watch. “I do.”
“Do we have time to stay for lunch?”
“Oh. That’s so kind of you,” Sam smiles. “I hate to refuse but—”
“So don’t,” Mustapha says. He gives a sympathetic but patronizing look that says,
don’t fight it.
In Arabic, he says: “Clients and foreign guests always get treated to a meal, Nabil, you know that. It’s natural. We’ll be back soon.”
Natural as the sound of another explosion somewhere, the kind you feel under your feet like a tiny tectonic tremor. Mustapha walks out, and Brutus closes the door behind him.
“Terrible, all of this violence, is it not?” Ali says to Sam, who seems nonchalant about our escorts’ departure, or is simply putting on a very good show of it.
“It’s horrible.”
“Maybe your America government don’t send enough of soldiers here to make security. Why not?”
Sam shrugs and shakes her head. “I don’t know why. I guess they’re trying.”
“Trying,” he says, giving his “g” an exceptionally strong ring, as if he is trying to imitate Sam.
Ali reaches into the front drawer of the desk and takes out a file. He opens it, and on top is a document that I immediately recognize. It looks exactly like one of the photocopies Sam has in her bag, the order from Saddam to pay $2 million to Congressman Jackson.
He passes it across the table, facing us.
“Is this one of the documents which is interesting you?”
“That’s right,” I say.
“You have a copy of this document already, I understand.”
Naturally he knows by now — Mustapha must have told him. I nod, waiting for him to ask whether we have the documents with us, knowing that they’re sitting in Sam’s bag.
“So let me ask you, if I may, Mr Ali,” says Sam.
“You may call me Ali.”
“Okay, thank you.” Sam is jumping on Ali’s English, which I find myself cursing. It is better — safer, really — when the conversation flows through me, where I can play filter and arbiter. Censor. “Are you the one who made these documents?”
“Yes,” he says. “I made them. Are you impressed with my work?” I have been trying to place his accent, trying to figure out where he learned his English. He almost sounds like he’d have learned in Germany or some Scandinavian country.
Sam pulls the page closer to her. It is a much better, clearer copy than the one we have, but obviously not the original, which you can tell from the signatures and the flatness of the government seal. “I am very impressed,” Sam says. “You can hardly tell this from the real thing.”
“It is the real thing!” His tone startles me. “Maybe I can even show you some more of my works, if this interests you.”
“Okay,” she says. “But what I’m mostly interested in right now is this set.”
Ali blinks at her a few times, the bottom of his face in a sneer.
Sam, I’m proud to say, is calm. “Can you tell me why you made this set? And who asked to have it made?”
Ali looks perturbed. “Why I made them?”
“Yes, I want to know, why make up a document trying to make an American politician look bad?”
“Not make up!” Ali shouts. He oscillates rapidly in his chair. “We don’t just make up!”
I want to put my hand on Sam’s arm or her back, to tell her to slow down, to not push so hard, but in view of everyone, it would be totally inappropriate.
“We are providing the documentation for the crimes which we already know have been committed. Do you know that? Do you understand the difference?” Ali rises rapidly from his chair. One of the guards moves towards him.
“We are not criminals,” Ali says, calmer now. “No. It is your country’s fault that you must always think you need to have something on paper to prove that someone is a big criminal, and so we give you that. We give you evidences, because that’s what you want,” he says, drawing imaginary lines with his finger across his palm. “And you are even liking to pay for it, because otherwise you think it is not real.”
Sam takes her notebook and pen out of her bag.
“No!” He shakes a finger towards Sam’s face. “No. Not for writing.”
She puts the pen back.
“You know, even when I see a woman dress like you do today, I know there is nothing true underneath it because you are not a Muslim inside. You don’t have the modesty of a Muslim woman.”
Sam stares at him.
“You know, a lot of people are glad you got rid of Saddam, but now they want you to go. Because if you don’t, you’ll bring here all of your infidel ideas.”
Sam lifts her pen towards her notebook again.
“No writing!” He shouts, one hand slashing beneath the other in a motion meant to convey that something is forbidden.
Hararti.
He stops, breathing deeply, and I can feel my heart rate accelerating inside my ears. “I think you want to make our society sick, like your society is sick. Isn’t it true that a woman in America cannot walk anywhere at night without getting raped? Or that the men feel they are free to take her because she is all the time dressing like prostitute?” He leans towards her, his eyes wider. “Or maybe the American woman like being treated like that.”
Sam’s hands hold each other stiffly. The Thuraya phone in her bag starts ringing.
“Tell me,” he says, taking in the length of her body and the curve of her breasts, so much so that it’s making me nervous. “Is it true? What they say about American women?”
Sam stands. “Would you excuse me? That’s an urgent call that I need to take, but I need to be outside to get reception.” I rise, too. Three of the men casually walk around the desk, fanning out.
Ali smiles. “Why don’t you sit down and stay with us for a while, Miss Katchens?”
It must be part of the act. Saleh trusted Mustapha enough, and Mustapha led us here. It must be just an attempt to scare us.
“I need to go downstairs, or even from the roof—”
“This is your problem, Miss Katchens,” he says, sounding entertained. “This is what is wrong with your culture and what will make everything go wrong for your people in Iraq.”
“I’m sorry if there’s been some misunderstand—”
“You think you make all the decisions. You are guest in our country and you begin to act like you own it. You are one woman among the men here and you think it is for you to decide everything.”
“Pardon me,” she says, putting her bag on her shoulder, prodding at me to prepare to move. “If you’ll forgive me,” she says, putting a hand across her heart. “I have a story on deadline and my editors will be wondering—”
The sweep of the gun from the back of his trousers moving into his hand. The sight of the metal there, pointing right at Sam’s head. The snap of the latch, like the cracking of a small animal’s bones when you accidentally run it over.
His grip is firm around the pistol. The barrel is inches from Sam’s head.
Two of the other men with their pistols are turned on me. The third, whom I thought was not armed, trains an AK-47 on us.
“Maybe the deadline is
you
.”
Ali lunges closer and grabs Sam’s scarf under the chin and yanks it off. What was an almost-scream stops and Sam is speechless, staring at Ali open-mouthed and I am shouting “don’t, don’t don’t, don’t hurt her” and “we didn’t do anything” and I’m saying everything without knowing what I’m saying at all and another guy comes from behind me and knocks me sharp in the back of my head and barks, “Shut the fuck up!”
I know it will hurt soon, but right now it feels light and numb, like everything in my head spilling out and spreading itself into the air.
And all is silent, just Sam’s mouth half-open, and me feeling the heat in my eyes and ears, the way I do sometimes just before I go under, and please God, don’t let me go.
But I guess he must have banged me with his fist and not a weapon, because if he had, I would definitely be on the floor by now.
Ali keeps his gun trained on Sam, and with his left hand pulls away the chairs we have been sitting on, dragging them to the middle of the room, facing the windows and the river. “Both of you, shut up and sit down!” Ali shoves me down into one of the chairs, pushing my shoulder and palming my head like a football. “Put your hands out in front and hold them together!
Now!
Don’t move or you both become deadline right here! Do you understand?!” He waves his gun from Sam’s face to mine and back to Sam’s. “Subhi, you have some tape for my friends?”
“Yeah, boss.”
Subhi?
“Bring it now!”
I know that in her head Sam is running through a thousand arguments about what to do, what to say, how to proceed. How to get the story, how to get out of the story. Sam always has a plan. She must be coming up with something. Samara Katchens, a beautiful foreign woman, working for an important American newspaper. They will not hurt someone who is pretty and young, someone who is a guest in our country.
Subhi el-Jasra?
I glance sideways at Sam and open my mouth to say something, but Ali grabs my face hard and pushes my jaw so that I’m facing the window straight ahead.
“Face forwards and put your hands out in front of you. Your wrists together.”
I’m afraid to turn, afraid to get whacked again. But when he’s standing over me, I glance up with no movement of my neck and see that it
is
him, that same Subhi who was our first point of contact in Mustansiriyah, the one and only connection that Harris passed on to us when we first got into this mess.
In Subhi’s hands is a roll of heavy duct tape. He catches my eye for a millisecond, then looks away, handing the roll to Ali and taking a pocketknife from his back pocket. Sam is staring straight ahead, not looking at him or anyone at all, as if in a trance. Deep in thought, sorting through her plans to get us out of this.
What if Sam has no plan at all?
Ali starts to bind up my wrists with the tape winding it rapidly six or seven times. On the screen in my mind, I see myself tackle him with it, strangling him. I let him go just as he is on his last breath, choking himself purple. Even in my fantasies I cannot kill. What a pathetic soldier I would be. Ali takes the knife from Subhi and cuts the tape from the roll.
He wraps Sam’s hands with the tape and I feel her wince. I want her to tell them that they’re doing it too tightly, to plead nicely the way I know she could, but she says nothing. When Ali is done, he walks back to his desk, leaving the others watching us.
“Please,” I say. “I think there’s been some misunderstanding.”
Subhi looks at me again, quietly shaking his head, half-frowning. Ali is back, the roll of duct tape in hand. I close my eyes when I see his hand coming, raising my tied fists a moment too late. The slap stings across my face, reverberating in the near-empty room. “I’ll let you know when I want to hear from you,” he says.