“Well, then. Sorry,” Sheikh Mumtaz says. The tea arrives, held aloft on the hands of a ten-year-old child. Sorry for stopping you, does he mean, or sorry for my son’s behaviour? The young boy places a steaming cup in front of me, then gives one to each of the men. The glass burns my hands a little, and then my lips, but I am glad for it, glad for anything to buy time to think.
Sheikh Mumtaz. If you wrote an English fairytale about him, he’d be named Lord Excellent. What did Sam say that day when Sheikh Faddel asked who she was working for?
I’m for the truth.
Just tell the truth.
And I do, and it starts to spill out, most of it, anyway, the parts that seem relevant. Trying to escape some people who may or may not be trying to kill us...forged documents...just trying to get to the truth...trying to get Sam to the border safely...my father asking for the letter, with Safin’s help, just as precaution, like a talisman, a hand of Fatima, a
mashallah khamsa.
Just in case. It seemed like a good precaution at the time. That’s the trouble with life. You have to prepare, have to make provisions, just in case. In case of an accident. A catastrophe. A misguided bullet. But how do you know which accident to make provisions for?
Sheikh Mumtaz takes the letter in his hand. Smiles. Looks at me. “Did you really think you would be able to pass for a Duleimy?” I can hear a helicopter overhead. He folds the paper up again. “You might want to keep this,” he says, “just in case.” He hands it back with pale fingers that seem unusually long and delicate, like an angel’s.
I decide to come clean, or virtually clean, with Sheikh Mumtaz: all the important points of the story. I repeat for him a
hadith
I learned from my mother: No man is true in the truest sense of the word but he who is true in word, in deed and in thought. “That is what our Prophet Mohammed, Peace Be Upon Him, wanted us to strive for, I believe.”
Sheikh Mumtaz seems satisfied. I also notice the slightest smile on Sam’s face. But she is probably lost in her own painkiller dream, and hopefully, not feeling too much.
One of the young boys appears at the door. “They’re coming!” he yells excitedly. “We can hear them already.”
I jump up, worried that they will miss us somehow. “We must start moving her up.”
“Not at all. The medical team should come to get her and put her on a stretcher. That will be better.” Sam’s eyes open and look up at the ceiling, and then search for me.
“My father is right,” says Hassan. “It’s probably worse if we move her any more than we already did.” Sheikh Mumtaz stands and Hassan follows, as does the other brother who never said a word.
“I’ll take the boys out to flag down the helicopter and find a safe place to land,” Sheikh Mumtaz says. “You can just wait here with her.” He places his hand on my shoulder and I am thankful for it. I can hear the fluttering of it now, the helicopter propellers whirring like desperate hearts beating out of sync, and the sound of the men hurrying up the stairs.
I move closer to Sam, hovering over her so she can see me. I think this is the closest to floating above Sam as I will ever be.
“Sam?” I lean in closer. “I want you to stay as still as possible and be brave. They will take care of you and everything will be all right.”
She blinks, more of a wince, says nothing. I wait, gazing at her, and suddenly fat tears well up in my eyes. I blink and a tear spills on to her face. How embarrassing.
Tafil-baka,
I hear Bassem’s bullying voice call.
Tafil-baka.
Cry-baby.
“I love you.” I cough it out, almost blubbering. How could I let her see me like this? She’s the one who’s injured, who has the right to cry. When her eyes close again, tears run towards her ears. With her eyes shut, she can see everything now — all my weaknesses. I wipe the tears on her face with my sleeve.
“I know,” she says.
I say nothing, frozen.
“Kiss me once more.”
“What?”
“Kiss me again. Just a little.”
And my mouth moves over the curve of hers, first hovering and then, the pleasure of my lips meeting hers, just a brush of pink skin on skin, a softness, a sweetness. Blood and love and tears. Her mouth open, ever-so-slightly, to mine.
I stop and pull away, afraid I could hurt her. I kiss her forehead instead, then put my lips to her ear. “You’ll be okay, Sam.
Inshallah.
I know you will. I know you’ll come back.”
“I’m sorry about everything, Nabil. Your father’s car—”
“Don’t even think about that now.”
“Would you tell him sorry, too? I feel bad that—” she gasps for more air. “And can you call Miles to tell him what happened?”
“Shh,” I say, smoothing back the hair on her forehead, and as I hear them rushing down the stairs, I kiss each of her eyes. “
Ayouni
,” I whisper.
There are several soldiers wearing white armbands and red crosses standing over us, and they pull me aside as if I were a child. They lay down a stretcher, and Sam cries out once as they lift her. I follow them up the stairs, and as we rush through a huge reception room on the ground floor I see two bags from our car. One is mine, and the other is a duffle bag stuffed with the food Mum made. No sight of Sam’s bag with all her equipment.
Outside, a small crowd circles likes a football scrum, the youth of the Albu Baz tribe gathered around to watch, the men keeping them back, the women peeking out from doorways and windows, the children jumping in the excitement, shouting to the soldiers, “Hallo, Mista, hallo. What yo name? I lav yoo,” with their hair whipping in the wind kicked up by the helicopter. The soldier who appears to be the head of the medical crew checks Sam’s US passport, which she’d been wearing in a moneybelt around her waist. And if she were an Iraqi? If it were Amal? What would they do then? Is there something that they’ll do at a hospital in Europe or America that is so different from what they would do at Al-Kindi?
I keep trying to speak to the soldier in charge, but he ignores me. Perhaps he can’t hear me with all the noise, or perhaps the growing crowd around the helicopter feels threatening to him. I put a hand on his arm, he yanks it away and pushes me with both arms, and I stumble backwards. “I just want to tell you that I’m with her. I’m working with her. I’m her...fixer.”
“Good for you!” he yells into the whirlpool of dust. “But we need to get going, so if you want to fix something you’d better help clear this crowd out so we can take off.”
“I think I should go with her!” I shout back. “She shouldn’t be alone.”
He looks at me like I’m barking mad, and tells the other soldiers to start pushing the crowd back, with force if necessary. He turns back to me. “Afraid not, partner. We’re not authorized to bring Iraqis with us.” The soldiers succeed in widening the circumference by a few metres. Some of the tribesmen, armed with Kalashnikovs and AK-47s that double as batons, help push it further. As if suddenly regretting his gruffness, the soldier in charge comes back over to me. “You can ask after her at Ramstein Airbase in Germany,” he says. “She’ll be in good hands there.”
The circle stretches wider, the groan grows louder, the propellers disappear into a blur. A mission to save Sam is born, defying gravity and mischievous boys, who leap up to catch a ride on the landing skids before being yanked down by older brothers. We watch them lift into the sky, the children waving, the dust-cloud thickening, the noise deafening. I feel it coming, that sensation as if I am losing my balance. I press my hand into my forehead to try to make it stop.
Inside, Sheikh Mumtaz and Hassan force me to drink a third cup of tea and a bowl of vegetable soup made by the lady of the house, whom I’ve not met.
“Are you sure you want to go back now?” Sheikh Mumtaz asks again.
I sip the tea, of which I’ve had more than enough, wishing I could find a way to dump it without their noticing. My hands are shaking, probably from having had too much of it. Too much of other things as well. “Yes, I should go home.”
“But you passed out,” he insists. “Maybe you are not feeling well because of the accident. And the shock of your ladyfriend being injured. Maybe you should rest here.”
“I’m fine,” I say. “I always pass out.”
“Always?” Sheikh Mumtaz seems baffled.
“Not always. Just at inappropriate times.” I smile to show it is a joke, but he doesn’t smile back. “It’s a problem I have.”
“I see,” he says. “So for you this is a natural response to such a terrible event.”
“I suppose you could say that.”
“Rest for now,” he says. “When you’re sure you feel up to travelling, Hassan will drive you back to Baghdad.”
“There’s no chance I can take my father’s car?”
Hassan laughs. “The one we found you in back there?”
“Stop,” Sheikh Mumtaz whispers angrily, “can’t you see he’s confused? Let him rest.”
And because they insist, I do, laying out on the long floor cushions and folding my hands over my stomach, hardly able to listen to the last thing the Sheikh says.
~ * ~
Sam and I are running up the steps of the Malwiya, laughing, out of breath, and she keeps trying to run away from me, and when I catch up and try to grab her, I almost push her over the unprotected edge. How could I be so careless?
And then I wake up with a rush of fear, sitting up to find a young teenage boy watching me, and running off as soon as I am up. “Baba?” he calls. “Baba! He’s awake.” Sheikh Mumtaz appears at the door to what I presume is the rest of the house, its private quarters, and Hassan follows.
It all comes back to me, the tumbling, the tinkling of glass over our heads. I wonder if Sam is already safely in Germany. From the light outside, I can see it’s early morning. I can hardly believe I’ve been sleeping since yesterday. Maybe they put a drug in my tea. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I must get back home.”
“It’s very early,” Sheikh Mumtaz says. “You should have a little more rest.”
“Please. I must contact my family. Please take me home.”
“They don’t have a Thuraya phone you can call?” He sits down across from me, but Hassan remains standing.
“No,” I say. “No one I know in Baghdad has one, except for foreigners.” Then again, Mustapha had one, and Technical Ali must have, too. “Or maybe some of the politicians. And the criminals.”
“Do you find it necessary to differentiate?”
I smile at his joke. Until now, he didn’t seem at all like the cynical type. “My parents only have a landline.”
He clucks. “That won’t do. Thurayas can’t call those.”
“You must have good contacts with the military that you were able to get them to come here so quickly.”
“I believe in remaining on good terms with everyone. We are not strong enough now to fight the Americans, and we do not want to see more bloodshed, so we try to be co-operative with them and to see what they will do next. I keep asking them what their plan is now, and even the most high-ranking generals I’ve met say they can’t tell me, because they haven’t seen the plan either.”
“Because there is no plan,” Hassan huffs, leaning a hand on the wall. “The plan is to control us. Why do you think they’re taking this American woman to Germany? Almost sixty years since the end of that war, and the Americans still have their bases there!”
“Shh...” Sheikh Mumtaz says, closing his eyes. He seems to have much less interest in anything his son says than I do. “Do you want to take our friend back to Baghdad, or should I send your brother?”
“I will,” Hassan says assertively.
“Then please wait,” his father says, looking at me rather than Hassan. “Be patient and persevering, for God is with those who patiently persevere.”
“The second sura,” I say.
Sheikh Mumtaz nods. “Our visitor is obviously well-versed in the Holy Koran.”
The words soothe me. I catch Hassan’s eyes roll. Perhaps he’s heard his father’s religious quotations too many times before. “Let me know when you want me to drive him,” he says, and walks out.
“You must forgive my son,” Sheikh Mumtaz says. “He is young and impatient. He doesn’t like the fact I have chosen cooperation over conflict. He would prefer to be like the Al-Sud tribe, who are probably, by the way, the people who shot at your car and ran you off the road.”
“Really? But why?”
Sheikh Mumtaz looks over to his
sheesha
pipe sitting in the corner. “Do you smoke?”
“Occasionally,” I say, holding up my hand. “I don’t think I could right now.”
“That’s fine. You are invited to come and enjoy with us some other time. What I wanted to say is that people have different ways they like to smoke. Some like cigarettes because it is a quick rush, and easy to arrange, you just put it in your mouth and light it up. Instant pleasure.”
“For some people.”
“Yes. And some people, like me, would rather prepare and smoke
sheesha.
It’s a lot slower and requires much more maintenance. You must fill the bowl with water, keep the pipes clean, stoke the coals gently and wait for them to heat the tobacco. And then, even the process of enjoying it is much slower. It is not a smoke for a man in a hurry.”
It’s true. On the few occasions I’ve had any with friends at university, it seemed to be an hours-long affair, and I sometimes found myself wishing I was home, reading a book.