5
I
arrived in Amman on the cusp of Ramadan, watching from the window of the plane as the new moon rose over the desert. Like anything that has grown too fast, Amman lacks grace. It slouches across a series of hills in a tumble of pale boxes, slapped together from cinder block and reinforced concrete. The one neighborhood that should be a gem—the aging downtown, with buildings from the 1920s set along wide boulevards, marketplace alleys, and a huge Roman amphitheater—has been smudged beyond recognition by soot and grime.
My destination was Jebel Amman, a hilltop district of old stone villas with gated lawns and scrawny pines. Decades ago it was the preferred neighborhood of royalty, diplomats, and British officers. Now it was home to the city’s poshest hotels, although mine was of the smaller, cheaper variety, mostly because I didn’t yet know who would be paying the bill.
For forty dollars a night I got a drab but clean room on the third floor, with a dripping sink and a view of the street. Throwing back the curtains, I saw a large mosque just down the block. Big green loudspeakers sprouted from its tall minaret, meaning I could rely on the muezzin for a wake-up call at first light.
I wasn’t due to meet Omar until morning, so I decided on a walk to collect my thoughts for the job ahead. The desk clerk smiled dutifully as I crossed the empty lobby. The streets were also deserted. Everything was closed for the beginning of the month-long observance of Ramadan, and the daily fasting would begin at sunrise. The only shopkeeper in evidence was a grocer stringing holiday lights, the ubiquitous crescent and star blinking in red and green like Christmas decorations.
My last time in Amman, King Hussein had smiled down from posters all over town. Now the reigning face belonged to his son and successor, Abdullah, whose pudgy cheeks reminded me of a middle-aged Jerry Mathers. He, too, was everywhere. On a stone wall draped with fragrant jasmine he stood proudly in white flowing robes and a red-and-white kaffiyeh. On a nearby lamppost he marched ramrod straight in full-dress military uniform. I peered into a darkened toy store and spotted him on a wall by the register, this time in a business suit. Three doors down, in an optician’s, he relaxed in blue jeans and an oxford shirt alongside his pretty Palestinian wife, Queen Alia. The man of a thousand faces, stalking my progress.
During my first trip to Jordan, when I helped set up tent camps for Gulf War refugees in late 1990, the profusion of royal images had at first seemed sinister. Big Brother is watching. Then I came across a poster that convinced me otherwise. In it, a smiling Hussein in a black leather jacket sat astride a big motorcycle with his ravishing
Vogue
queen, the blond and blue-eyed Noor. Behind them were the red bluffs of Wadi Rum, the spectacular desert backdrop featured in about half of
Lawrence of Arabia.
Hussein was bareheaded, with a trim silvery beard. Noor’s long mane was in sensual disarray, as if tousled by the breezes of the open road, or perhaps by the roving hands of her admiring king. The effect was stunning—two parts Brando, one part Ali Baba. It must have appealed deeply to any Jordanian yearning to believe his homeland was a cut above the neighbors in style and substance. Come to think of it, wasn’t that Big Brother’s strategy? To boost morale with watchful benevolence, reassuring even as he intimidated.
Small nations, like small men, must be resourceful to stand out, especially if they don’t offer the oil of a Kuwait or the numbered accounts of a Switzerland. Jordan tries winning you over with heaping doses of Bedouin hospitality. I had been reminded of this earlier, the moment I climbed into the airport taxi.
“Welcome in Jordan,” the driver gushed. It is a phrase a visitor hears often, as if everyone is saying, “Don’t worry, we’re friendly and sane. Not like all the nuts in Syria, Israel, Iraq, and Saudi. So kick back and tell us your troubles.”
More often than not, visitors oblige. Thus has Jordan’s capital become a city of loose talk and stealthy listeners. In the thermal pool of babble known as the Middle East, Amman is the drain into which anything worth repeating eventually swirls, and the city has become a listening post for every government that is still a player in the games of oil politics and Holy Land intrigue. With that in mind, I decided on dinner at the China Dragon, a known gathering place for chatty foreigners. It also happened to be the place where Mila and I had last met Omar.
Chinese restaurants offer a comfort zone for wandering Americans. I have sought solace beneath their tasseled lanterns in Zagreb, Freetown, Khartoum, and countless other locations. They offer the same dishes, the same teapots, the same plinky music—all the brand familiarity of a McDonald’s minus the grease and the corporate stigma.
The China Dragon was a few blocks off the First Circle, the easternmost of eight traffic roundabouts along Amman’s east-west spine. This end of the route follows along Rainbow Street, and its last few blocks were about a mile from my hotel. By the time I reached the red-curtained entrance I had quite an appetite. Although it was the prime dining hour of 9 p.m., the place was so empty that for a moment I worried it had changed hands, but then the familiar face of the proprietor appeared.
He was known to one and all as Mr. Lee, a former military attaché from the Taiwanese embassy. The gossips said his true role was more intriguing. He had opened the restaurant in the late ’70s, and had immediately established its credentials by hiring away a pair of embassy chefs.
“Table for one?” he said, picking up a menu. Then he smiled with dawning recognition. “You are old customer, yes? Gulf War?”
I had come here a lot back in ’91, part of a regular wartime clientele of aid workers and journalists, but I was surprised he knew my face. A trick of his old trade, perhaps.
“Yes. Freeman Lockhart.”
The name didn’t register, but he nodded anyway.
“Yes, yes. Where you like to sit?” He gestured toward vacant tables. The only other party was four men in a corner, speaking French. “Business slow. Ramadan. Always like this first few nights. During Gulf War, never empty. Many journalists. You remember?”
“Oh, yes. And I remember you couldn’t get a beer during Ramadan. That still the house rule?”
Mr. Lee lowered his eyes, the bearer of bad news.
“Still rule. Out of respect.”
“Of course.”
He led me to a small table along a near wall. A few minutes later a tall, thin waiter materialized at my side. He was clean-shaven, and his black hair was trimmed short.
“You are ready, sir?”
He was probably in his twenties, and his manner was pleasant enough. But something in the sharpness of his coal-black eyes seemed to be lying in wait for an opportunity to disapprove.
“Hot-sour soup, the crispy chicken, and the stir-fried vegetables.”
“And to drink, sir?”
Without beer, I supposed I’d have to wash it down with a soft drink.
“A Coke.”
That drew a look, followed by a remark that from him sounded like an admonition.
“There is only Pepsi.”
I immediately recalled the old rumor about Coke that had once swept the Arab world, something about the logo saying “No Mohammad, No Mecca” in Arabic if you turned it backward. Coke hired an Egyptian grand mufti to debunk it, but the taint persisted, and I had always noticed lots of Pepsi signs in the city’s more benighted quarters.
“Yes, Pepsi would be better.”
His departure was a relief. I had forgotten what it was like working in a place where even your most innocent choice might be held against you. In Jerusalem I had once affronted an Israeli scholar by admitting to enjoying the novels of Thomas Wolfe. He assured me in the gravest tones that Wolfe was a raving anti-Semite, but said he would attribute my error to youthful ignorance.
Up to now I had never been overly concerned by such snap judgments, mostly because I had never taken sides. Even while watching Palestinian boys confront tanks with stones, or haggard Bosnian men shuffle out of Serbian concentration camps, I had operated by the rules of official neutrality. Less in the sense of a journalist than in the sense of someone who knew he might well have to tidy up once the shooting stopped, and would need the cooperation of both sides.
Now I no longer had that protection, or dodge, if you prefer. I was taking sides, and against a friend, no less.
Just as the soup arrived, my attention was drawn to a table by the entrance, where a fifty-something American with a gray buzz cut had sat down with his taxi driver to await a take-out order. The American proclaimed loudly that he had just arrived from Baghdad.
“And what is your name?” his driver asked.
“Dick.” He held out his right hand for a shake.
“Oh, yes. Like Dick Cheney.”
“There you go.”
The American seemed pleased by the association, which pegged his politics. I noticed that my waiter had taken up a watchful perch nearby, and from time to time his eyes flicked toward the American. Mr. Lee must have overheard as well, because seconds later he fluttered up to their table.
“You working in Iraq?” Mr. Lee asked.
The big man nodded.
“Contractor for USAID, restoring the electrical grid. Here for some R and R.”
“Many Americans coming here from Iraq. Good place to relax. Good place to eat.”
“Yeah, they gotta couple Chinese restaurants in Baghdad. Pretty good ones, too, until one of ’em was bombed. Then Mr. Bremer told us, ‘No more.’”
Dick then began name-dropping companies whose logos you saw all over the world. Mr. Lee answered by name-dropping his way around the fringes of the royal family. All the while my waiter stood very still, like a signal tower awaiting the next transmission.
Later, returning to the hotel on a full stomach, I detoured to the edge of Jebel Amman and stopped by a concrete stairway that plunged steeply toward the heart of the city. There was a view across the chasm toward some of Amman’s poorest neighborhoods on a facing hill to the southeast. On rooftops here and there were TV antennae shaped like miniature Eiffel Towers. It had long been one of Jordan’s favorite affectations, although wealthier homes now sported satellite dishes.
Standing out more were rings of green neon marking the minarets of mosques. I counted seven on that hillside alone, just as the night’s call to prayer began. I had always enjoyed this moment, thinking of it as a bedtime story with the narration jumping from one muezzin to the next. Not so different from listening to church bells in small-town America, I supposed. Except there the nuts and hotheads shot up high schools, or roughed up a few homosexuals. Here they joined holy wars.
Walking back, I noticed the smell of jasmine, stronger than ever, and my spirits lifted. Perhaps things would go smoothly. With any luck, the suspicions of Black, White, and Gray would prove to be unfounded, and I could give Omar a clean bill of health.
The lobby was still empty. The desk clerk sprang to his feet, holding an envelope in his right hand.
“There was a message for you, sir.”
“Someone called?”
“Hand delivery.”
Had Omar dropped by? The envelope was sealed.
Inside was a typed message on hotel stationery. No name. No signature: “House for rent just off Rainbow, on Othman Bin Affan Street. Available Thursday. Phone tomorrow to say you are interested.” Then there was a phone number, and nothing more.
“Did you see who left this?”
“No, sir. I must have been in the back. I found it on the counter.”
“Sealed like this? In a hotel envelope?”
“Yes sir. Is it bad news, sir? Anything we can arrange for you?”
“No. I’m just curious who brought it. I’d like to speak to anyone on your staff who might have gotten a look.”
“I will ask, sir.”
I had been wondering when and how Black, White, and Gray would get in touch, and I supposed this was my answer. They had said I would be my own boss, the only part of this assignment I liked, but now I wondered. I had a feeling that wherever I went these people would be watching, just like the smiling face of the king.
6
M
ila woke me before the muezzin could. I groped for the ringing phone in the dark, knocking the receiver off the nightstand. Her voice came up from the floor like a bulletin from a distant radio.
“Freeman? Freeman? Are you there?”
“Yes, I’m here. I was asleep.”
“I’m sorry. I know it’s early, but I’ve been up for an hour.”
I checked the bedside clock.
“Mila, it’s 5 a.m.”
“I was worried you’d leave early for breakfast, with Ramadan and all.”
“I’m sure they’ll still have something for me. You sound upset.”
“I’ve been checking around with people on the island. And making some calls.”
“This morning?”
“Yesterday. And last night, while some of the offices in the States were still open.”
“Mila, no.”
“It’s all right. I’m being discreet.”
As if such a thing were possible on an international phone line, or in a place as small as Karos. My last worry before dropping off to sleep had been that she would do exactly this, poking around to find out more about what had become of our night visitors. She must have started her inquiries even before my plane left Athens.
“The Opel was rented to someone named Dillon, with an American passport,” she said. “The counterman told me, at Emborios Rentals.”
“He rented it?”
“No. He found out from their competitor, at Island Rentals.”
So that was at least two people on Karos who knew something was up between us and some strangers from America. And you could multiply the number by at least two for each successive day. Within a week everyone on the island would know that I had departed in the wake of some mysterious visitation.
“Mila, you’ve got to stop. These aren’t the kinds of people we’re used to dealing with.”
“We’ve dealt with worse.”
Yes, and look at what happened, I wanted to say, but didn’t dare, because then I might have to explain.
“Worse, but different. These are people who cover their tracks. If they hear you’re sniffing around they’ll be back.”
“It’s you they’re interested in. You and Omar. They couldn’t care less what I’m up to.”
“This probably isn’t the right forum for discussing this.”
“On this line, you mean?”
“On any line. And you should stop. Just let me do what I’m here for, and then we can both try to figure out what’s really going on. Okay?”
“I can’t just sit here doing nothing while something happens to you.”
“Nothing will happen unless you
make
it happen. I’m fine, and I can take care of myself. Just don’t stir them up. I’m almost afraid to ask who you called in the States.”
“Pretty much who you’d expect. No one had heard of them. Or you, either, of course. I guess they have to say that. I called the embassy, too, in Athens.”
“The American embassy?”
“Yes.”
“Good Lord. What did you say?”
“I asked for their intelligence liaison. They told me they didn’t have one.”
“You didn’t give your name, I hope?”
“No. But I guess it would be easy enough to get my number.”
“Maybe they won’t try. They must get plenty of calls like that.”
“Cranks, you mean.”
“That’s not the word I was going to use.”
“I’ll bet.” I knew from her tone of voice she was smiling—a sign of progress. And who knows, maybe the information she had learned on the island would even be useful.
“So tell me about this Dillon fellow.”
“From the description it was the one named Black.”
“Dillon probably isn’t his real name, either.”
“No. But I got his passport number. It’s—”
“Mila, not now. But hold on to it.”
“Right.”
“Anything else?”
“No one else seemed to have noticed them. But I don’t think it was Stavros who took your shells. He said someone else had been poking around.”
“When?”
“Last week. Two days before we got back. He saw one of the windows was ajar, so he went inside to shut it. He said he noticed then that you could easily spring the window locks from the outside.”
“So maybe it
was
his cigarettes you smelled.”
“He quit smoking in May. Whoever it was must have stayed for a while. Practiced the whole thing.”
Some professional advance man, or a well-paid local. DeKuyper’s troll with the shovel, perhaps. I imagined him standing in the darkness of our living room, checking all the drawers and cabinets for anything that might have put a crimp in their plans. And for all we knew, Stavros had been aware of everything, no matter what he said now.
“Mila, I think you should arrange to have somebody close at hand, if necessary, and not just Stavros. Someone you can reach in a hurry, if, well…”
“If what?”
“If any of them come back.”
“You think they will?”
“If you keep asking questions, I know they will.”
“Then I’ll stop.”
“Good.”
“And I’m sorry I woke you.”
“It’s all right. It’s not so bad starting the day with your voice. Yours and the muezzin’s.”
The speakers on the mosque down the street had just begun cranking up. The first morning of Ramadan had begun.
“God, he’s loud. I can hear him like he’s next door.”
“Just wait ’til the midmorning prayers. He’ll go on for ages. I’d better see if the kitchen’s got anything left for a hungry infidel.”
“Say hello to Omar for me.”
I experienced a stab of guilt, anticipating the coming charade.
“Will do. And, Mila?”
“Yes?”
“I love you. But, please. No more of this. One sleuth in the household is enough.”
“I guess I was thinking of safety in numbers.”
“The moment I need reinforcements, you’ll be the first to know.”
“Take care, love.”
“You, too.”
I cursed myself for not having warned her off in advance. I suppose I hadn’t wanted to spoil my departure, but I knew from experience that Mila wasn’t daunted by the idea of tempting fate. It was leaving fate to its own devices that troubled her. Understandably so, given what had happened to her in Sarajevo, an event that forever shaped how she dealt with the world. It also gave us common cause, if only because I happened along at her most vulnerable moment.
She had already caught my eye in that winter of ’92, a season of snowfall and shellfire that drove everyone indoors with its grim smell of woodsmoke and carnage. Her looks were the immediate attraction. In that department I am as shallow as the next man. But what held my fascination was her brisk yet caring manner, a rare combination of warmth and efficiency. She was the sort of person you wanted alongside you when tempers were short and everyone was on the verge of breakdown. Yet it was the momentary failure of those good instincts that helped draw us together.
It began when a family of five came to visit her one morning. The father knew he would have to stay behind because he was a male of fighting age. But he was insistent on getting the others out of town in the next refugee convoy, even though they were well down the waiting list. The Serbs besieging the city seldom let convoys leave, and he knew it might be weeks before the next opportunity. But fair was fair, and that’s what Mila told him.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “But there are so many others who need to leave just as badly. Maybe the next one.”
“But my daughter needs medicine for her heart,” the father said. “Look.”
He held aloft the trump card, a pill bottle that rattled when he shook it, like a piggybank down to its last pennies.
“It will be gone in less than a week.” Then he gestured to a pale, drawn girl of perhaps fourteen who stood at his side, mustering her most pathetic expression.
Mila, nobody’s fool, had seen this ploy and dozens of others, equally convincing. It was almost always an act. Maybe the medicine wasn’t really for her heart. Or they had a few hundred more tablets stashed back at their apartment. The only way to get them aboard would be to knock someone else off the list who might have even greater needs.
I watched the scene unfold from a nearby desk. Mila and I traded conspiratorial glances, although to her credit she neither smiled nor openly played the cynic.
“Have you tried the Red Cross?” she asked. “They have been bringing in emergency medications. Maybe your doctor can help you get more.”
“Our doctor was killed by a sniper three weeks ago. We haven’t been able to get a thing.”
“Then I’m sure they will be happy to deal with you directly. In the meantime, I can do this for you.”
She scribbled their names on a pass that would give them priority on the next convoy, whenever that was. Like many of us, Mila sometimes offered a little help even in response to obvious shams, if only to reward the initiative. And, who knows, sometimes the sob stories were true. But in a city of 300,000 there were too many to choose from.
Shortly afterward I left for some errands. When I returned later to meet another colleague, I dropped by her desk hoping to resume my flirtation. I didn’t really expect it to go anywhere, but in a war zone you tried when you could.
No sooner had I struck up a conversation than her Motorola squawked and she took it up with a sigh. It was some liaison officer from the UN Protection Force, speaking in an urgent tone that everyone in the room could hear, which only made it more awful to bear. Something about a family who had been hit by mortar fire only moments ago. A pretty nasty business, he said, but perhaps Mila could help with identification, because in one of the victim’s pockets they had found a form dated that day with her signature on it. Something to do with priority on the next convoy?
“Describe them,” Mila said, sounding as if she had just had the wind knocked out of her. “How many?”
“Five. Two adults, three children. We might save the mother, but I’m afraid the others are dead. They were waiting in line outside one of the med centers. Somebody said they were trying to get a prescription filled.”
Almost everyone in the aid business has suffered from guilt of one kind or another over the years. During the most trying times in the field you can never take a nap, a drink, or a moment of peace without wondering whether your indulgence is costing someone his life. But seldom are cause and effect so clearly and devastatingly linked, and no one in the room just then could have failed to note the crushing impact on Mila. She was glassy-eyed, speechless, and couldn’t function for the remainder of the afternoon. When it was time for sleep, her friends had to unstack her cot and smooth out her bedroll. They helped her undress as if she were an invalid.
The next day Mila announced her plans to visit the surviving mother, who had been taken to Kosevo Hospital. When I stopped by to check on her, her Bosnian friends were urging her not to go. The deaths were just another stroke of ill fortune, and not her fault, they said. Another blow of nasty luck in a city where death enjoyed all the short odds. They were right, of course, but they didn’t detect the need dwelling so deeply in her eyes, so I spoke up.
“You should go if you really want to,” I said. “But you shouldn’t go alone.”
She nodded, and her friends drifted away, too skittish to accompany this new angel of death on such an awkward mission. So I volunteered, and Mila nodded again, as if my assent were the most natural thing in the world.
We arrived after a chilly walk across the city, shellfire pounding as randomly as thunder, to find the woman barely conscious. She lay buried in a welter of bandages, sheets, and IV bags. The more difficult sight was the small shrine of family photographs that some friend or neighbor had arranged on a bedside table. The four faces lined up like accusers waiting to testify, each with a heartbreaking smile. All that was missing was the daughter’s bottle of pills.
Mila took a deep breath and leaned low to whisper in the woman’s ear. She never told me what she said, and it wasn’t the sort of question you would ask. When Mila stood she had tears on both cheeks. I’m not sure the woman heard a word, and she never opened her eyes. Which was a shame, really, because I think what Mila needed most was a tearful denunciation, any act of anger to allow atonement to begin.
We stood there for ten minutes longer, not saying a thing, and when it became apparent that Mila might remain all evening I gently led her away. We crossed back through the city hand in hand. I steered her into a café and bought her a coffee and a pastry—true luxuries in those days. I was gratified to see some color return to her cheeks, and her breathing seemed to steady.
In the weeks that followed we seldom went more than a day without seeing each other. And, as tends to happen between a man and woman of mutual attraction, one thing led to another. We would joke about it later, but there was almost a reverent overtone to our first lovemaking. It felt like a consummation in several senses of the word, a bond that we both sensed went well beyond the usual desperate coupling of people trapped between danger and tedium.
In her work, Mila henceforth became more of a questioner and an advocate. Although she never turned into what you would call a “soft touch,” which would have rendered her essentially useless, she was a tigress when it came to righting bureaucratic wrongs or neglect. And, so, when we later began working side by side on our sojourns into Africa, we were seemingly the perfect pairing: She was the outside agitator, always questioning the status quo, while I was the tinkerer within the system, making adjustments here and there. The dynamic served us well and, more important, served those who needed us even better. As we grew closer in love, we grew also in our respect for each other’s powers.
Until, of course, our one huge failure in Tanzania, when our dynamic proved to be perfectly engineered for disaster—unbeknownst to Mila, thank God, even to this day. And now here I was in Jordan, tempting fate once more, wondering if our combination of skills might again prove volatile instead of magical. Except this time we and our friends would pay the price.
The muezzin went silent, his prayers complete, and a stillness fell over the hotel room. It was still dark, but my stomach was empty, so I rose to shower, shave, and dress for the day ahead. Time to start searching for answers to all these troublesome questions. Time to do my part, come what may.