Fives and Twenty-Fives (31 page)
My father reached out and took my hand. “You do amaze, my son. You have thrived without us. Nothing matters more than this. I am proud, Kateb. You should be proud, as well.” He pulled me into an embrace. “Now, would you like to see?” he whispered.
I stepped back. “See what, Father?”
“How your father has become a businessman.” He led me by the hand, around to the side yard where the workers had gone, and I understood that the generators did not power such luxuries as lights or air-conditioning for the villa. They powered industry, the backyard factory spread out in front of me.
“This is what your father does for money, now.”
Cement mixers churned while rows of square molds waited for the wet mix. Two dirty men sat on low stools. One chipped away at the plaster encasing blocks fresh from the molds. The other man washed and painted them. Equal stacks of yellow and black stones sat behind him. The third man emerged from a shed in the back, pushing a cart piled high with more stones, still encased in plaster.
Focused on their task, or at least wishing to appear so, these men took note of my father without looking up to acknowledge him.
“Did you notice the highways on our way into town, Kateb?” my father asked. “And how clean the streets are kept?”
“I suppose. Better, at least.”
“Sheikh Hamza is keen on this. Anbar should show these signs of improvement. He has the provincial governor pay him to replace the broken curbstones. He has men for this. We make the curbstones and sell to him.”
“Ah, very clever.” I remembered all the times my father took me to see the canal as a boy, and how he watched the construction work with such satisfaction. Honest work, unlike politics. Perhaps in this new Iraq he had left politics behind completely and become a simple businessman.
“Clever.” He grinned. “Yes. So clever.” He took my shoulder. “Let’s go inside and see what Umm Ibrahim has cooked for us.”
We left the men to their labor and entered the kitchen from the side door. Little Ibrahim latched onto my leg at once. “Uncle Kateb, are you home now?”
I picked him up and kissed his cheek. “Yes, I am home now.”
“Good, because everyone here is too old to play with me.”
Nasim walked over from the stove and pulled him away. “We must let Kateb rest before he can play with you.” She held me in a long embrace. “So joyous to see you, Kateb. And safe.”
“Wonderful to see you, as well. Cooking for all these men, Nasim?”
“Trying.” She laughed and returned to the stove. “Breakfast and lunch for the workers during the day. Dinner for our little family when they leave.” She carried Ibrahim to a mat in the corner of the kitchen, near the entrance to the sitting room, and placed a tray of bread and cheese in front of him.
I wondered about her dreams of medicine and how they had been traded for the role of cook and maid.
My father came in from the sitting room and stood behind her. He smelled the lamb roast and gave her a little smile. He walked over to the little mat and sat down with his grandson. He placed the boy on his lap and made a show of enjoying the flat bread in an attempt to trick his grandson into eating.
Ibrahim smiled and snatched the bread from his grandfather’s hand.
I heard Muhammad debating with his colleagues in the next room. I moved to the doorframe near my father and Ibrahim. Feigning interest in their activity, I cast a sideways glance into the sitting room.
“Should we watch first or talk?” the fat man asked.
“Watch,” Muhammad answered.
The stone floors squealed as the men pulled their chairs into a circle. The fat man retrieved a camcorder from his bag and played a video on its tiny screen as the other men leaned in close to watch.
The little speaker strained and squeaked. I recognized the sound of vehicles on a highway, of trucks stopping and men yelling. I heard the sound of breathing, too. The cameraman, a scared child by the sound of his whispering, told another child to remain quiet and stop moving.
“See there,” the fat man said, “they all get out at the same time, using their radios to coordinate this.”
“Yes,” Muhammad answered.
“And there. They fan out. About three lengths of a truck.”
“Hmm.”
“But see, they are not fooled. They do not get their robot. It is too obvious. But if we can hide one here, out front, poorly enough that they spot it, well enough that they believe, we can put another bomb in the curbstone behind it. Right where they stop and get out.”
“This is not new thinking,” Muhammad said. “But, yes. True.”
Down at my heels, sitting on my father’s lap, Ibrahim finished his flat bread and looked around the kitchen for approval. First at my father, then at Nasim. She smiled and patted her leg, and Ibrahim sprang from my father’s lap to run to her. She started a kettle boiling for tea.
My father stayed on the mat and watched his grandson play.
The sitting room hummed. The fat man spoke above the chorus. “You see how they send one man forward to check the old tire in the road? You see how they pull the trucks to the side farther down? We hit the man up front or we hit the trucks behind.”
The other men whispered support, but only to one another. No one addressed the room at large.
My brother cleared his throat and they all stopped talking. “You should discuss that with your men. I am going for cigarettes.” Muhammad saw me and smiled as he crossed the room. “There is a shopkeeper I must go see.”
He stepped through the front door. One of the guards, a young man with a Kalashnikov slung inside his long shirt, hurried after him.
My father, still on the floor next to me, reached up for my hand.
The fat man took over the sitting room, the responsibility given to him by my brother’s departure. He instructed his men, pointing at them in pairs.
“You two. Mark the attack site. Chalk on the curbstones. Use the old pattern.”
My father’s weight moved up my arm as he struggled to his feet with a fantastic groan. He pushed down hard on my shoulder and let his weight settle into his heels.
“You two”—the fat man pointed—“leave the new stones loose so the bombs and detonators slide in easily. The triggermen are not here. You won’t know them.” The fat man saw that my father and I were watching and listening. He stood and spoke to my father. “Abu Muhammad, we are ready. Should we leave now with the stones?”
“Yes,” my father said. “They are outside. The workers will leave soon, too. You should leave with them, together.”
The men pushed their chairs back to the corners of the room and filed out through the kitchen.
My father took my hand and led me to a window looking out onto the garden. We watched the men direct a flatbed truck through the gate, over to a spot where they could load a batch of curbstones.
“We have a problem, Kateb,” my father said.
I said nothing as he let go of my hand.
“The Shia in the south want to give our country to the Iranians. The Sadrists in Baghdad kill men like us for spite. Out here in the desert, Saudi and Egyptian brats who joined Al Qaeda in a fit of boredom kill good men for nothing. The Americans and the Kurds kill us all.”
The fat man directed his men to carry five specially marked curbstones to the open trunk of the Mercedes.
“We are the honorable resistance, Kateb. Ansar al-Sunna. The last Iraqis. We fight the jihadists who leave heads in the street. We assist the Shia with their blundering into chaos. And we bleed the Americans. Not because we hate them, mind you. Only because they are the invader. They must be driven out. The more they bleed, the sooner they go home.”
The little convoy rolled through the gate, the flatbed truck followed by the Mercedes.
My father reached into his pocket and produced a stack of dinar. “Our next action is very near your beach house, Kateb.” He handed the money to me. “God willing, the Americans will blame the Sadrists down the road. You will help us, yes?”
I first became aware of
Corpsman Pleasant’s erratic behavior on or about 25 June, when the platoon sergeant informed me that Corpsman Pleasant had withdrawn socially and, after returning from convoys and route clearance missions, would disappear into the barracks until dining hall hours. At meals, he ate very little and showed signs of
significant weight loss.
Early in the deployment, Corpsman Pleasant earned a reputation for enthusiasm by seeking out Marines for specialized instruction in subjects beyond the scope of
his duties.
However, by the end of
June, Corpsman Pleasant became known more for his deteriorating morale and slovenly appearance.
Respectfully submitted,
P. E. Donovan
“It’s my car,” I tell my mother. “It needs work that I can’t afford right now. I don’t think it can make the trip, how it is presently. And it’s too late to buy plane tickets.”
Of all the things I never thought I’d do, I’m lying to my mother so I won’t have to go home for Christmas. I grit my teeth and hope she doesn’t offer to pay for the flight.
She sighs, and for a moment I think she might be trying not to cry. I couldn’t be more wrong. She comes back with her strong teacher’s voice, asking, “Do you want to tell your father that? Or should I do it for you?”
I don’t hesitate. “You can do that.”
She gives me a moment’s quiet to change my mind, a chance to grow up and tell the truth. When I don’t, she says. “Well, merry Christmas, then. I love you.”
“I love you, too.” Guilt overtakes me. “I’m really sorry. I’ll make it up to you guys.”
She denies me the satisfaction, ending the conversation with a terse “I’ll call you on Christmas morning so you can talk to your nephew. Try to answer.”
The timed fluorescent lights click off in sequence across the cubicle floor as I return to the research assignment on my desk. The knowledge that I’m alone in the office sets me at ease. But the relief is short-lived. My cell phone, sitting on a stack of files, announces with a rattle that I have a message from Empathy: “?”
I type out a quick response: “Sorry. Busy at work. Call you soon,” and my stomach twists as I hit send.
I return to the assignment in front of me, finding solace in how proficient I’ve become at this stuff. My speed is growing into an office legend. A machine, Sullivan calls me. No matter how many files he drops on me in a day, he always finds solid reports waiting on his desk the following morning. I think he’s taking bets with the partners behind my back, searching for a limit to how much I can take.
I suspect Major Leighton played me similarly, placing bets with the officers at regiment. There’s no limit to the number of potholes my company can fill. My Marines are supermen. There’s nothing they can’t do.
Major Leighton heard about the mission from some friends at regiment. Majors in command of other, more glamorous companies. They told him about a platoon on dismounted patrol in the abandoned employee-housing development near the Muthanna Chemical Complex. The grunts had been looking for weapons caches, instead finding an open pit stacked neatly with steel drums, sealed and left to molder in the sun. Someone had left in a hurry, before covering the pit with dirt.
Regiment had dispatched a chemical team to investigate, and the colonels must’ve held their breath thinking maybe they’d found the goods. The almost-forgotten reason we’d made the trip. Whispers flew up the chain, all the way to Baghdad with the best kind of bad news.
But, after testing residue on the drums, the chemical warfare team came back with nothing special. Just an assortment of common, industrial products. Caustic acids and pellets of concentrated pesticides. Dangerous and problematic, for sure. But nothing of interest to Baghdad, so the strategic, theater-level assets en route to assist turned around. The chemical-disposal teams. The civilian experts. They all went back to the Green Zone and left regiment to deal with the drums alone.
The drums couldn’t stay. Over time, the steel would corrode. The contents would seep into the groundwater and eventually into the river. Or the bad guys would get hold of the stuff and put the chemicals to some clever use to make us hurt.
Regiment couldn’t decide who had responsibility for hazardous chemical disposal, so Major Leighton volunteered his company. Supermen. Engineer Support doing a job no one else could, or would.
He announced the mission a day later, in the daily operations briefing: “This is what we came here to do. We enable our trigger-pullers. Because of the work we do, the grunts are able to fight the terrorists without distraction. This is a mission tailor-made for us.”
His staff sat silent and still. The lieutenants kept their eyes on their notes. The gunnery sergeants, less intimidated, looked at each other with arms crossed in disapproval. But we all avoided eye contact with Major Leighton. No one wanted the mission.
“We have the State Department lined up to support, fortunately,” Major Leighton continued, calmly rubbing his bald head. “A project officer from the provincial reconstruction office will meet us at the site with trucks and local nationals to haul away the drums. All we have to do is secure the scene, remove the sealed drums from the pit, and transfer possession.”