War of the Encyclopaedists (31 page)

“Well, yeah . . .” Luc said.

Tricia raised an eyebrow in his direction. He looked away.

“I gotta run,” Kate said. “See ya 'round.” She nodded toward Luc, glanced at Tricia—probably didn't even remember her name—and left.

It was becoming clear to Tricia that Luc wasn't as respected or connected as he'd made out back in Boston. Worse, it seemed like all the mainstream journalists regarded the unembedded Inter Press Service types as backwoods ideological hacks, like evangelical Christians at a Cato Institute soiree. Tricia found it hard to blame them. They were professionals. They actually knew what they were doing.

39

Iraqis all had the same three or four names, just arranged in different orders. They adhered to a bizarre, dogmatic, almost theological conspiracy theory in which the invisible strings that moved almost every event in the world were clutched by Saddam, who was an agent of the Americans, who were secretly controlled by the Jews. They lied like a gaggle of third-graders waiting at a bus stop on Opposite Day. They wiped their asses with their hands, probably, with the help of cut-up water bottles they left lying around in the port-a-johns. These were a few of the perceptions that US Soldiers of the occupation had of their refractory charges.

There were as many stereotypes on the Iraqi side: American men walked around sucking on candy like teething infants. They became confused and agitated when no one spoke their language. They sent boys barely out of school to parlay with sheiks. They gave their women rifles and let them strut around like whores. But one of the most damnable things about the Americans was that it was difficult to tell who was in charge—none of them had beards—and their most senior commanders trooped around in the same combat gear as everyone else; they rolled around in the same dusty Humvees.

Even the Americans themselves had trouble recognizing senior officials—Americans like Private Ant, who could sometimes tell by the size of an entourage that one of the Humvees had someone important in it. Today, manning Priority Search for the special election-day traf
fic checkpoint, he could have craned his head into the window of the first of ten Humvees.

But Ant was lazy and withdrawn, thinking about the lives of his
Sims
characters he would manipulate after his shift. Not having leaned into the window, he did not see the embroidered black eagle sewn onto the passenger's armor and thus did not realize he was waving through none other than Greywolf Six, the commander of the entire 3rd Brigade Combat Team, the couple thousand troops tasked with securing the center of the capital.

Greywolf Six, otherwise known as Colonel Moretto, had been running a sleep deficit since before the brigade left Texas, and the lead-up to the election had put him further in the hole. At this point, the next best thing to his cot was the canvas passenger seat of his Humvee, which was also known as Greywolf Six. The constant beeping and muttering of two radio nets, the stiff suspension on the rutted streets, the shuffling of the turret gunner's feet against the turret sling: these had become a lullaby signaling precious moments of nap time between meetings and the million other things on his view screen. He slouched in the seat and let his Kevlar collar hold his head still as he relaxed his neck muscles in a meditative sequence.

When Greywolf Six the Humvee was stopped at the checkpoint, Greywolf Six the person almost failed to open his eyes. But when he did, this was what he saw behind Private Ant's expressionless face and apathetic thumbs-up: strung between the whip antennae of two parked Humvees, a banner made from cut bedsheets with green duct-tape letters exhorting the reader to VOTE FOR PEDRO.

One day far in the future, Greywolf Six would find himself watching
Napoleon Dynamite
with his grandson and would finally understand this moment. In the present, however, the reference was lost on him. Finding it inexplicable, he found it inexcusable. Rage began to percolate behind his eyes.

The morning of the elections was pleasantly cool—about fifty Fahrenheit when the sun came up. Tricia had slipped out early to avoid Luc. He'd shut her down the previous day when she'd asked about observing
the elections. He'd said that foreigners weren't allowed anywhere near the polls. Besides, it was far too dangerous. They were expecting many polling locations to be targeted by suicide bombers.

But they were in Baghdad. Everything was dangerous. And this was an historic moment. The big-time embedded journalists were covering it. Maybe Luc didn't have enough sway to get them an official pass from the Iraqi Interim Government. But did they really need an official pass? They were doing this DIY. Unembedded. Didn't that mean bending the rules where they could? Rather than try to convince him, Tricia resolved to go anyway, without telling Luc or Adan. Maybe Luc was a great photographer, but he had an underdeveloped sense of journalistic ethics and obligation, of proper research methods—he didn't know when it was worth taking a risk. With Yasmin along, she'd be fine.

Inside the Green Zone, life carried on as usual. They rode in Yasmin's Opel down the main drag, past rows of T-walls topped with razor wire, past a column of Humvees and a few Bongo trucks, past the newly opened pizza café and the bronze statue of a soldier from the Iranian war.

Outside the Green Zone, Baghdad's streets were closed to civilian auto traffic in an effort to protect voting stations from car bombs. They parked the car at the Green Zone side of the 14 July Bridge and got out to walk across. Yasmin would have taken them a different route, but Tricia had insisted on Checkpoint 11. She'd e-mailed Hal, and he'd provided the crucial information: 2nd Platoon of Bravo Company. Once she knew that, it had been easy enough to find out where Mickey was stationed.

Tricia kept her head down as they passed through the checkpoint, discreetly looking at the soldiers to see if there was a blimp pilot among them. She swam in the folds of the long black jilbaab that Yasmin had loaned her. She pulled the fabric to her body to show a hint of her figure. Still no sign of Mickey. Her face was shadowed under a hijab. She'd accepted the fact that it would be much easier for her to maneuver in Baghdad if she covered up like this, but she still felt a deep hostility toward the practice and the cultural coercion behind it. Yasmin wore a puffy coat and had a lavender hijab over her knit Puma hat. She
seemed to wear the hijab with pride, like a new pair of earrings, which made Tricia feel ignorant and sheltered.

She met the eyes of the American soldier who checked her ID.

“Tricia, huh?” he said. “Looks like you've gone native.”

“Are you in Second Platoon?” she asked.

He sized her up as if she'd offered to buy him a drink. “Third,” he said. “Second has the next shift.”

She and Yasmin descended the stairs in silence and stopped for a moment to take in the eerie emptiness of Karada Dahil. They could hear the Tigris moving languidly behind them, punctuated by the sound of mortars exploding in the distance.

The polling location was in a nearby school gymnasium. As they approached, they saw men in suits ushering a line of prospective voters through sandbags, concrete blocks, and razor wire. The Iraqi police at the door were searching people. Yasmin stopped Tricia before they were within earshot. “Everyone is very nervous,” she said. “They do not trust people from outside. They are told that it is only Iraqis here. You must act Iraqi, okay?” Tricia nodded, swaddling herself further under her hijab
.

They waved Yasmin and Tricia through just as an old woman with a satisfied mug walked out, her right index finger freshly stained with purple ink. Tricia didn't think the elections would change much of anything. But seeing that old woman, she felt a swelling sense of admiration for the Iraqi people. Even if the violence continued to worsen, they were turning out. They were voting, despite threats from the insurgency, despite the fact that their country would fall apart without the sloppy care of the United States Armed Forces, which had caused the chaos to begin with, shattering the old stability (yes, Saddam's stability, but stability nonetheless). Tricia took a mental snapshot of that creviced old woman and her purple finger and imagined seeing the photo grace the cover of
Time
magazine, and inside:
Cover photo by Tricia Burnham.
She shook her head instinctively, reminding herself what an honor it was to witness this moment of social evolution, the Iraqi people like curious fish crawling out of the seas of dictatorship up onto the shores of democracy. No. She clenched her jaw, annoyed at herself for thinking like such an asshole, looking down on them. It was
an honor to be here precisely because they were confronting risks she would never have to face, in order to have their voices heard. She was in awe of them. Tricia had convinced herself that as a white American, her default attitude was to be an asshole, that it took constant vigilance to see through the lens of her privilege. She could sometimes see herself overcorrecting, but wasn't it better to err on the side of humanism and generosity?

They reached a small table where a poll worker checked Yasmin's ID and had her sign her name on a clipboard. Another poll worker held out the inkwell for people exiting the booths.

Yasmin was speaking with the first poll worker in Arabic. He seemed displeased. Tricia tried to wear a face of stoic comprehension, though she understood nothing.

“And who is this?”
the poll worker said.

“She is not voting today,”
Yasmin said.

“Is she eligible to vote? Who is she?”

“She's not eligible to vote . . . she has a mental problem and can't understand things. Can she please wait in the hall for me?”

Tricia gave a small dignified nod in response to whatever had just been said.

“No, she cannot wait in the hall, she must go outside.”

“But please, she is my cousin and cannot take care of herself, that's why I had to bring her.
”

The poll worker shook his head. Yasmin turned to Tricia and said,
“Tania, you must wait outside . . . will you wait outside for me and then I will come back?”

Tricia saw Yasmin pointing to the door; she nodded and walked back down the hallway to the entrance. She had hoped this would not happen. She felt very American as she slipped out into the heat. Nearby, some kids were kicking around a soccer ball.

“It's good to see them playing in the street again.”

Tricia turned toward the woman who was saying something to her in Arabic. She tightened the hijab over her face and nodded stiffly.

“Why don't you vote, are you from Al-Karada?”

Tricia nodded and tried to turn away a little.
“La, la,”
she ventured, but the way she said it was wrong.

“Then why don't you vote?”
The woman's voice was changing.
“Who are you, are you Iraqi? Speak to me, what are you doing here?”

Montauk was in good spirits. There had been only a few minor bombings so far, a few dud mortars launched at checkpoints, and though it was still midmorning, it seemed like the doom-and-gloom intelligence reports—indicating massive attacks throughout the city and general hell from the AIF—were overblown. His mood quickly soured when he saw Captain Byrd storming into the CP. Intelligence had been silent regarding Anti-Montauk Forces.

“Vote for Pedro? Jesus, Montauk. If it even looks like we're interfering with the elections. What the hell kind of platoon are you running here?”

Montauk almost said
I don't know,
a reversion to elementary school if there ever was one, but he held it in. “I'm assuming it's down now, sir,” he said.

“Don't assume. Check on it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I just got a good twenty-minute ass-chew from Warhorse Six.”

Montauk imagined the veins in Rad Rod Houston's forehead as he stared down Byrd, his eyes bulging with some kind of Viking blood rage.

“Just so I get it straight, someone drove by it and told Lieutenant Colonel Houston?”

“Yeah, Montauk, and the guy who told him gave Houston his own twenty-minute ass-chew.”

“Then—”

“That's right, LT. Your idiot soldiers flashed their banner to Greywolf Six.”

Montauk imagined the veins in Colonel Moretto's forehead as he stared down Rad Rod Houston, his eyes nearly popping out of his face with some kind of Mongolian blood rage. And now that Byrd was chewing him out, he'd have to chew out Staff Sergeant Arroyo with his own blood rage and bulging Klingon eyes; Arroyo would in turn chew out Sergeant Fields, who would chew out Private Antonin Ant,
who probably hadn't made the banner—didn't seem his style—but who wouldn't mind taking the blame for it. Maybe Ant would chew out Monkey. Even Monkey probably had someone to rage on. It was turtles all the way down.

“Ameriki? Ameriki? Israeli?”
The old woman and a few of her friends were crowding around Tricia.

“France,” Tricia said.
“Je suis Francaise.”

The old woman grabbed at Tricia's hijab to tug it off her face. A man had come out of the school and the old woman yelled to him, jabbing her finger at Tricia. When Tricia failed to respond to his question, he stood in front of her, next to the old woman, and pointed at her hijab, motioning for her to pull it off.

The old woman grabbed at her again and yanked at her scarf. When Tricia grabbed the woman's wrist, the man grabbed Tricia's and yelled at her. His breath smelled like pastry. A second later, the scarf had come off and most of her field of view was filled by the woman's fingers, jabbing toward her face. Tricia couldn't get enough oxygen.

She was grabbed from behind and pushed forward. It was Yasmin, who yelled back at the old woman and the pastry-breath man as she pushed a shocked Tricia back up 14 July Street toward the checkpoint. Tricia thought she heard one of the boys in the crowd use the word
faggot
. The yelling ceased when they had walked half a block up the street. Tricia began to cry.

“It is okay, you are safe now,” Yasmin said.

“I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.”

“They don't know you. That's all. They are frightened at a strange person being there today.”

“I shouldn't have come.”

“Oh no, I have gotten ink on you.”

Tricia looked down to see the purple smudges on her sleeve and laughed a little. “It's your jilbaab,” she said.