A Disappearance in Damascus (12 page)

She had recently agreed to serve on the governing council for northwest Baghdad. Captain Pape, who was responsible for rebuilding the local political system from the ground up, had taken note of her leadership qualities: she was educated, fluent in English, a take-charge person—and despite coming from a rural Sunni community known for its conservatism, “she came across as very liberated,” he later recalled. Her position on the council allowed her to expand the contacts she needed in her work at the GIC. One day, at a council meeting, she met the general in charge of the military base at the Baghdad airport, where many prisoners were being held. She introduced herself as a councillor and humanitarian worker and requested a moment of his time. Families
were coming to her to look for their relatives, she explained, and she had no information to give them.

“Please put yourself in these families' places,” she told him. “They have no idea if the missing person has been kidnapped or killed or imprisoned. Telling them where their family members are held will improve the American reputation in the eyes of Iraqis. I don't need their charges, I just need their names.”

“I'll do my best,” she recalled him saying. “I am not the only one responsible for this, but I'll do my best.” He ordered her supervisor, Major Adam Shilling, to give her the names. And each day a list of the latest detainees arrived by email so she could inform their families.

A kilometre from the GIC was Camp Justice, which housed a prison that had been used to torture political prisoners under Saddam Hussein, and would revert to that purpose after the Americans handed it over to the new Iraqi government. She tried to convince the commander there to give her the names of the prisoners and he promised to deal with it, but nothing happened. She knew the Iraqi translator responsible for registering incoming prisoners at Camp Justice, where they were detained until transferred, so she invited him to a meeting in her office. She told him she had a problem he could help her solve. She told him of the old men who came looking for their sons, how she watched them lose weight week by week until they shrank inside their clothing, slowly dying before her eyes; of the women who wept in her arms, not knowing whether their sons or husbands or brothers were alive or dead; of the professional women, distinguished professors, arrested on anonymous reports. She explained that she had asked the Americans for help
and been turned away, that they were ignoring the growing anger their actions created.

She knew what she was asking him for was dangerous. “Because he would be in big trouble, actually. He would not only lose his job but be detained himself and face a trial.” She would understand if he was too afraid, and would not ask him again, but if he agreed it was not only she who would be grateful, but all the families who had someone inside.

He promised to think about it. “If I call you tomorrow, come to see me at the gate. I'll ask you a question. Then you shake my hand.”

The next day he called her. She met him outside the main gate of Camp Justice. “Do you have the medicine for the prisoner?” he asked her loudly in English. It was a perfect cover. She replied, in English, that she had the medicine and would bring it for him. Then they shook hands. In her palm she felt a twist of paper. She surreptitiously tucked it into the pocket of her jeans.

After that they met each day at noon outside the gate. They exchanged pleasantries, always in English so the soldiers on guard would not be alarmed, and shook hands before going their separate ways. If those in charge of the prison wondered why people no longer clamoured outside the gate, demanding information about their relatives, they said nothing to her. These meetings continued until she was kidnapped. After her ransom had been paid, she could no longer stay in Iraq. She would have to build a new life in Syria.

THE OPENING CEREMONY FOR
the school in Ahlam's apartment turned out to be much more fun than I'd expected. I had envisioned a sad little affair—demure war-shocked girls like those who watched silently while I talked to their mothers or fathers. And I had to admit that part of me had doubted whether the launch would come off at all. People often talked about doing things here, and even planned them, but follow-through was another matter. There were a million obstacles to getting anything done in the refugee community.

It was a stifling blue-sky Sunday afternoon in late August, and the apartment was an un-air-conditioned hotbox even without the twenty or so teenaged girls who crowded in excitedly, along with at least that many adults. The white walls ricocheted with conversation and competing perfumes. The girls had all dressed for an occasion: colourful frocks, chunky necklaces, bright scarves, lipstick. They must have
borrowed the finery from sisters or mothers, taken makeup tips, absconded with eyeliner pencils.

The preliminaries were short. After everyone had finally settled into the white plastic chairs lined up in neat rows, and the stragglers standing at the back quieted down, Ahlam stood up at the front to address us. Her face was beaming, her dark eyes glossy. To rapt attention she outlined the schedule—a roster of times and teachers, classes in English and French to be held on weekends so those who were enrolled in Syrian schools could also attend. This was followed by a solemn moment when one of the parents in attendance, a dignified-looking doctor in a grey suit, stood to give a small benediction. “Some people want to turn back the centuries,” he said. “That is why they murder our teachers and professors. We want to cooperate with each other to protect our children, girls
and
boys, from the looming darkness of the future.” Then an interlude of silence, after which the room broke into what felt like a garden party.

Girls talking; girls laughing; girls snapping up books from the lending library and tucking them into their handbags. One girl stood out from the rest, as much for her aura of reserve as for her loveliness. I realized I had met her briefly, through Ahlam. I recalled what her parents had told me at their apartment, speaking softly only when their daughter was out of earshot. She had married an engineer a year ago, when she was just sixteen. A month after their wedding, her husband had kissed her goodbye in the morning and left for work. He was shot that day along with four of his colleagues by an unknown gunman in his office at the Baghdad electricity department. After that she had moved with her parents to Damascus.

Today she was standing and talking to another girl her age. When the other girl said something, a subdued smile brightened her serious face. It may have been the first day in a year that she had worn a pretty dress, or talked to anyone of anything other than tragedy.

I had taken a seat in the back row, where it was a surprise to discover that I was only one of many Westerners Ahlam had invited to the event. In total there were about a dozen of us: journalists, photographers, anthropologists, aid workers. Ahlam, I realized, had a gift for making friends. We were all in our thirties, dressed in jeans and button-down shirts like members of a visiting tribe. And we were all here to witness something rare: a small triumph.

She had been to the intelligence headquarters to talk to Captain Abu Yusuf. He had, quite remarkably and fully out of character, granted her permission to hold the classes. “I have a feeling he will want something later,” she told me, before turning back to her girls. But I paid no attention. Because it was remarkable to see this one thing, this thing that had been talked about like a daydream, actually happening.

Marianne was there, back from her travels, with her Italian-Dutch fiancé, Alessandro. Ahlam told me how they had bought the chairs, along with whiteboards and markers and books for the library, and I was pleased to meet them. They were a striking young couple, at once aristocratic and down to earth. Marianne was willowy, even statuesque, yet the kind of beautiful woman who would rather no one noticed. She radiated a gentle shyness that contrasted with Alessandro's gregarious nature. While Marianne had immersed herself in fieldwork with Ahlam, he had spent the
summer working on an educational project for Palestinians in Damascus and studying Arabic. Between the two of them they had six or seven languages.

Marianne tucked a strand of fair hair behind her ear and talked, so soft-spoken I had to strain to hear her, about the rationale for setting up the school. It was about education of course, but it was also about creating a community for vulnerable girls who had so few opportunities to leave the house. It was a chance to make friends with others who had been through similar experiences, and perhaps find something to hold onto, the possibility of a different life. “The school is a small measure in the face of great need,” she said, as the party swirled around us, “but it addresses their isolation and loneliness while allowing them to learn.”

“Two targets with one rocket,” was how Ahlam had put it.

Ahlam's children, Abdullah and Roqayah, were there, their high spirits muted in the presence of sophisticated teenagers. And for the first time I met her husband. Tall and thin, with a shock of white hair, he had a gentle face marked by worry.

No one else that day seemed worried. For the Westerners as for the girls, the opening ceremony was a social occasion. It was refreshing to be around people who didn't need any explanation for what you were doing here, in the middle of Little Baghdad on a ferociously hot day. Refreshing to not have to answer questions about what you were doing with your life that you could hardly answer yourself. And to be here to celebrate something all of us wanted: a better future for the people we had come to care about.

As the noise level rose to a conversational roar, I chatted to a tall blond Frenchman who had recently left his job
with the Red Cross in Iraq. He was spending a month in Damascus to work on his spoken Arabic. “Where to next?” I asked. He shrugged. “Not Iraq,” he said over the din. Next to us a woman with an intense expression was taking pictures with an impressively lensed camera. This was the American war photographer Ahlam had told me about, a close friend who was living in Syria. Ahlam had told me she hadn't been by in a while because she wasn't feeling well. She looked well. Lowering her camera as I introduced myself as another of Ahlam's friends, she told me the real reason she wasn't coming around anymore: “Ahlam's name is a red flag.” She had been warned by a Syrian official to stop associating with her if she wanted to renew her visa. She had come today, just this once, because she didn't want to let Ahlam down by missing the opening.

It must have been the festive mood, or the fact that Alessandro and the Frenchman were conspiring to find us some beer and a place to drink it—this neighbourhood was
dry
—but I didn't give much thought to the photographer's concerns. As we prepared to leave, Ahlam's husband called her over: he asked us to please be careful when we left the apartment building, to take different routes so as not to be seen. Ahlam rolled her eyes, giving the impression she was only humouring him, but we listened, nodding agreement. The problem was there was only one route out of the dead-end of the alley where she lived.

The sun was already falling behind the rows of low-rise buildings as a group of us made our way downstairs. I realized that this would be my last visit for at least a few months. I was heading home soon—I had other assignments to juggle and would return in the winter to follow up—and this was
the best possible note to leave on. Whatever the future held, whether the concerns of the war photographer or the fears of Ahlam's husband were justified—and paranoia was normal here, how could it not be?—something good was happening. I was glad to have seen it for myself. The school had grown up by dint of hard and thoughtful work from the grassroots. If Marianne and Alessandro had helped to set things in motion, it remained an organic achievement, created by a woman who was not sitting around awaiting rescue, because rescue, as all of us knew, would never come.

The night before I was due to leave Damascus I threw a dinner party. I wanted to invite everyone who had made my work here possible, all of whom I considered friends. I wanted everyone to meet and to like one another for the reasons I liked them. And I wanted to use the flamingo-pink terrace for what it seemed made for. I bought wine, for those who drank, from the nearby liquor store, pickled mushrooms from the downstairs grocer who used to live in Paris, and, using the limited utensils in the tiny kitchen, made a fettuccini Alfredo that I could serve from a single pot.

Kuki, my interpreter, showed up first, wearing his uniform of skin-tight black T-shirt and artfully distressed jeans, carrying a bootleg CD of James Blunt as a going-away present. He was followed by Rana, the schoolteacher-interpreter who usually accompanied me anywhere that required dealing with Syrian officials, where Kuki certainly wouldn't do. She was elegantly dressed as always in a lime green skirt that matched her headscarf that matched her handbag.

Rana was a natural diplomat, but I worried that Kuki, who hadn't met Ahlam yet, wouldn't get along with her. Generally
speaking he liked nothing to do with other Iraqis, hating to be mistaken for a refugee except when he was recognized (“Aren't you that model from Baghdad?”). It was dangerous to be photographed, I would tell him, lifting my hand to shield him from yet another fan's camera phone. But vanity, I realized, can also be a survival strategy. It allowed him to exist as an individual, to remember himself as he had been, be greeted with admiration rather than resentment or pity.

I had given Ahlam taxi fare so she could join us, but she took a collective taxi anyway to save money. Soon Kuki, Rana, Ahlam and I, plus a handful of Westerners I knew, were all sitting in the cool of the evening on the large terrace beneath the stars, exactly as I had imagined. I set my laptop on the edge of the roof, the music tinny on the speakers. I handed around plates and refilled glasses for all but Rana and Ahlam, who didn't drink. The streets below pulsed with the carnival of Damascus nightlife.

“You'll be back?” everyone asked.

I smiled at them all. “In three months.” I knew I wasn't finished here—I like to follow stories over time. “I'll fly to Jordan and come in by land, probably, rather than flying direct. I had to talk my way onto a Syrian Arab Airlines flight to get here that'd been booked for months—I don't want to go through that again.”

It was strange to see Ahlam outside of her native environment, in this upscale neighbourhood where the party never ceased. For a moment I could see her as others might: her clothing shabby, the same well-worn jeans and men's shoes she had worn since the day her son died; her exuberant laughter ringing out. But I could see she didn't care, didn't even notice. Ahlam fitted into this neighbourhood as she did
anywhere, because it didn't cross her mind to think that she didn't.

I have found this in journalism too: that if you believe you have the right to be somewhere, or talk to anyone no matter how powerful or barricaded, nobody blinks. It's a certain aura or manner that erases questions. As I watched, Ahlam made herself at home, but without changing herself, without adapting, as if she was accepting everyone else rather than the reverse. Rich or poor, urban or rural, Western or Eastern or Martian, we were all the same to her. I have never met anyone so oblivious to the social divides of our modern world. It could have been seen as a kind of blindness, but I realized it was a kind of sight.

She borrowed Kuki's lighter and lit a cigarette. The two of them were soon talking as if they had known one another a long time. She was in the mood for a celebration. The music was turned up and the conversation flowed.