Baghdad Central (18 page)
“They're over in Ibn Sina. Citrone got them admitted there so we could talk to them.”
“Should I go talk to them?”
“Yeah. You and Citrone. That's what he said.”
“All right, I'll wait till I see him then.” Khafaji goes back to the files on his desk. Out of habit, he reaches into his pocket for his cigarettes, but realizes they're in his jacket. He pulls out a pack of Rothmans and also the picture of Zahra Boustani. The soldier at the computer doesn't say anything. Khafaji finds a coffee cup on the assistant's desk and uses it as an ashtray. He smokes and closes his eyes and finds that Sawsan is still there, looking straight at him. He blinks and starts staring at the picture of Zahra Boustani instead. He stares until his cigarette is done. His headache is almost gone.
“Is there an office for the interpreters?” Khafaji wonders out loud.
Without looking up from the screen, the soldier calls back, “I'll check for you.” He picks up the phone and a moment later calls out, “The linguist pool has an office trailer over in the West Villas. If you go there and ask, shouldn't be hard to find.”
Khafaji looks at his watch. He stuffs the Rothmans in his shirt pocket and announces that he'll be back in an hour or so. As he walks down the stairs, he looks at his cracked leather shoes and imagines how odd they look with his uniform.
Lighting a cigarette, he wanders around the side of the palace until he arrives at the back, then he starts walking. When he gets there, he finds a dozen white trailers sitting behind a cluster of eucalyptus and jojobe. It takes some work and a cigarette before Khafaji finds the right one.
Maybe because the only image he had of interpreters was the black hood, when he opens the door Khafaji is surprised to find humans at desks and in cubicles. No one wears a mask. Khafaji shows his ID to the American at the front desk, and asks if there are any interpreters he can talk to.
The man points to a small group sitting in a cubicle, sipping tea in the back.
Khafaji greets them, and they shake his hand. There are five of them â three men and two women â and they are all in their early twenties.
“I'm Muhsin Khafaji. I'm here to ask about one of your co-workers. Zahra Boustani.”
“Yes?”
Khafaji decides to start from the beginning. “One of the people you work with is apparently missing. Did you know that?”
Two of them shake their heads. One answers, “No one is missing from our group.”
“Not that we've heard, at least.”
Khafaji shows them Zahra's picture, and at first no one says anything.
“I recognize her,” one of the women says. “She used to work with us, I think. But that was before my time. I'm pretty sure she works for the Army now.”
The others nod and Khafaji asks, “Who do you work for?”
“This is the CPA group.”
Khafaji frowns, and one of the men explains, “The Army has its own pool of interpreters. And so do the Marines. And the other countries. And security companies.”
“Where are their offices?”
“On the bases, mostly. Some are probably over at Prosperity.”
Khafaji asks, “Where's that?”
“Al-Salam Palace. Army HQ. But they keep us separate.”
The other girl looks directly at Khafaji and adds, “Sometimes we end up working with interpreters from the other pools, and so we meet them. But they keep us all separate.” The others nod.
“Why?”
“They're pretty strict about security,” the man adds.
“Of course it's impossible to keep us totally apart. Once in a while, we run into them eating at the cafeteria or en route. When that happens, we talk.”
“But not too much.”
“Yes. Anyway, I might recognize translators from other groups, but that doesn't mean I could tell you what name they use, let alone what their real name might be.”
When he sees the look on Khafaji's face, one of the young men explains, “Look, you don't use your actual name, do you? So why should we?”
A woman says, “Look, our work is dangerous, isn't it? Who is the first target they go after? Us, that's who.”
Another one continues, “There are two ways to eliminate interpreters. The first is at the checkpoints.”
One of the women gets up and walks back with a bulletproof vest and a black mask. “That's why interpreters get to wear the latest fashions even before the Americans do.”
“What's the second way?”
“Infiltrate. Stick one or two in with the rest of us and wait for someone to talk.”
“Like you're talking to me right now?”
“No. This doesn't mean anything. You don't know anything about me. Nothing dangerous about this.”
“So, you assume they're already here and whatever you say goes straight to them.”
“Everything. Or at least the things they want to know: who you are, where you live, who your family is.”
“Of course, it's hard to not talk,” a young man with long hair and glasses adds. “You work with someone for months, you're going to want to talk about your real life.”
Khafaji takes out a cigarette and taps it on his knee while he looks at his notes. “So let me get this right,” he finally says. He turns to the first woman.
“You
recognize this girl. She's an interpreter, you think, maybe for the Army? And you're sure she doesn't work for the CPA?”
“Yes.”
“Good. And now for the hard part. If I told you her name was Zahra Boustani it might not mean anything even if you knew her?”
“Right,” two others answer at the same time. Another adds, “None of us use our real names. Ever.”
Khafaji looks at his notes, and then writes down some questions:
What is Zahra Boustani's real name? Who knows their actual names? Does somebody actually know these things? Does Citrone? If Zahra Boustani doesn't work for the CPA, what am I doing asking about her?
When Khafaji looks up, he sees five young faces anxiously studying him.
Suddenly, they all laugh at once, even Khafaji. Nervous laughter, the kind that happens spontaneously when you're talking to someone about your problems and you realize their life is even more screwed up than yours. They're laughing together, but the way they look at Khafaji makes him squirm.
The throbbing in Khafaji's head is back. He decides to end the conversation as quickly as he can. “Would you mind me reading a list of names? Could you tell me if you recognize any?”
He flips the pages of his notepad and reads: “Sally Riyadi.” Silence. “Candy Firdawsi.” Nothing. “Sawsan Faraj.” Nothing again.
Desperate, Khafaji digs into his pocket and takes out
Sawsan's picture. He passes it around the group. One girl draws her breath and sighs, “This one I do know. Her name's Suzy.”
The other girl nods her head. “Yes. She works for the Army.”
“The Army prefers girl 'terps,” one of the men jokes, but no one laughs.
Khafaji asks again, “Are you sure you know this girl?”
They both nod. “Pretty sure,” one of them murmurs.
“How do you know?”
“Like I said, once in a while you end up meeting each other by accident. I met her a few times at an Army base. She always talked to us, always. I am pretty sure she worked there with the Army group.”
Khafaji digs around his pockets before he remembers he'd left the other girls' IDs back in his apartment. He makes a note to return to this office with those pictures.
Topzawa was a vast camp that looked more like a busy petrol depot than what it really was. The early-spring air froze in their lungs when they went out to meet the new arrivals. Balagjar village, in the Qara Dagh region. The backs of the cattle trucks opened and steam rose up from the huddled crowd inside. Soldiers jostled the first line of villagers, and an old woman fell to the mud. Two younger men hitched up their baggy pants and climbed down to help the others.
The men were separated to one side. Sixty in all. The women and children were led away somewhere else. Then the process began. They had them remove everything. Watches and rings. Then hats, scarves, belts, and shoes. Piled onto a canvas tarp that was bundled up and sent off.
When, finally, the men were cuffed to each other in pairs, the officers set down their teacups and began to go about their business. The intelligence officer from Tikrit went first, stripping the men of their wallets and identification cards as the man at the table matched each with the names on the lists.
“Omar Askari. Father, Ozer. Mother, Khadija.”
“You know what you've done, don't you?”
“Sir, no. I have done nothing.”
“You have been found in prohibited areas.”
“That is my village. That is my home.”
The officer slaps the boy to the ground. “You are subversives.”
“No sir, we are farmers.”
The officer turned to the man at the desk and said,
“Peshmerga
. Next!”
An old man fainted and the officer ordered him back on his feet. The teenager cuffed to the old man tried to plead. “He is still suffering from breathing the â”
The boy did not have a chance to finish. The intelligence officer began beating and kicking the two men savagely until both fell motionless to the ground.
At some point, the man from General Security tapped the intelligence officer on the shoulder. “Let me have these two.”
Something about the way he said it made the Tikriti walk away. He knelt down in the mud, and asked for someone to bring them water. When the men could stand again, he walked them over to the office where they drank hot tea and talked in hushed voices. He had hot meals brought in, then cigarettes. Every now and then, the Tikriti came over and he waved him away again. He went over the names on the lists twice before letting the prisoners go to sleep. When he saw the boy could read, he sent the old man off. He shared the documents in the folder and together they read them out loud.
The next day, he continued his conversations with the boy. He didn't interrogate. He didn't threaten. He just continued reading with the boy by his side. By nightfall, he had the names of all KDP operatives in the village, including two who also worked for intelligence. After that, resistance in Qara Dagh crumbled. After that, the men from Tikrit gave him more respect.
Back in the office, Khafaji tries to stare at a dossier. His head still throbs, and he leans back in his chair, looking for a distraction of any kind. Fumbling through his wallet, he comes across the number of the man who drove the taxi. On a whim, he dials it, with the idea of offering the man a job. The man picks up before Khafaji knows what he's going to say.
“Good afternoon, Karl. It's Muhsin. You gave me a ride a couple days ago. Rusafi.”
“Glad to hear from you. Still alive? How are your American friends?”
Khafaji laughs. Remembering Citrone hasn't authorized him to hire his own driver, Khafaji is vague. “I've got an idea I want to run by you. It involves a regular salary. And you'd get to keep driving.”
Karl chuckles. “Personal driver, huh? You paying in dollars?”
“Could be. Can we talk about it in person? When's a good time?”
“Tomorrow, 8 p.m. Dijla Café. Outside the gates. Backgammon?”
“
Mahbousa
. Loser pays. See you there.”
*
Khafaji walks over to the DFAC and eats a late lunch. The food is heavy and warm and he realizes it won't help him stay awake on the job, but it helps his head. As he eats, he watches the large television screens on the wall. Someone changed the channel. No more sports. There's a report on the falling dollar. Commentators offer terse pronouncements that scroll across the bottom of the screen: “Nervous investors”, “Concerns over impact on oil markets”. Transfixed, Khafaji decides to keep watching even after he's finished his lunch. He pours a cup of American coffee and gets a piece of cake. By the time he returns, the news programs are running a story about a street battle that took place yesterday in Samarra. More than fifty people killed in a gunfight. Gang attempts hijacking of US Army trucks carrying load of freshly printed Iraqi dinars.
Khafaji takes a sip of the watery coffee and spits it back into the cup. He walks back to the counter and asks for a cup of tea. The man brings him a paper cup of the milky sweet confection. Khafaji smiles and offers him a cigarette. The man touches his chest with his open hand and goes back to his work.
Walking over to Ibn Sina, Khafaji remembers the poetry anthology he brought to read to Mrouj. Sitting right on his desk in the palace. A panic sets in and it takes Khafaji a few cigarettes to understand why he's so upset. It's only when he asks himself what he'll talk about with Mrouj that it begins to become clear.
Sometime in the last day he'd made a vow with himself not to tell his daughter anything. Not to talk about his arrangement with the Americans. Not to talk about being forced out of their apartment. Not to talk about the interpreters, neither those who came to work nor those who disappeared.
Not to talk about the girls whose cold bodies he touched. Mrouj didn't need to hear any of it. Only now does it occur to Khafaji that at some point he'll have to tell Mrouj about her cousin.