Redeployment (18 page)

Closer in, immediately in front of me, was an open stretch of road and field and a bright jumble of limbs lying twenty feet out from the nearest building. A black strip alongside must have been the rifle, and I could see the poor bastard clearly hadn’t gotten off a shot. A burst would have heated up the barrel, but all I saw was cold black next to the white heat of the body.

“Why’d you look?” Zara asked.

“Who wouldn’t look?” I said.

“You wanted to see.” Her voice was hard, accusing. “Why’d you look?”

“Why are you here, listening to this story?”

“You asked me to come here,” she said. “You wanted me to hear.”

It was difficult to explain to her how I’d both wanted and not wanted to see, and how the little Marine so clearly didn’t. There was a mix of voyeurism and kindness in me stepping down and looking through the scope. And once I was on the scope, the thin black corporal told me to watch for the heat signature dying, the hot spot fading to the ambient temperature. He told me, “That’s when we’ll officially call in the kill.”

A few kids on skateboards came rolling down the street in front of Zara and me. They looked young. High school, probably. Townies, definitely. You forget not everybody in Amherst is
in college. I had no idea where the kids could be going, and we waited until they rolled past and the sound of them disappeared. Then I continued.

“It happens slowly,” I said. “I’d look up for a second and then back, to try to catch a change. The corporal kept looking at the doorways, as if he were worried some senior Marine would see me there and chew us all out. The little Marine kept saying, ‘He’s dead. He’ll fade for sure,’ but I couldn’t tell, so I held my fingers out in front of the optic. They made this searing hot spot, glowing white against the grays of the background. There’s no color in the scope, but it’s not like a black-and-white movie. The scope tracks heat, not light, so everything, the shadings, the contrasts, they’re off in this weird way. There are no shadows. It’s all clearly outlined, but wrong, and I was waving these bright white fingers across the scope, my fingers—but looking so strange and disconnected. I was waving them in front of the body and trying to compare.”

“And?” said Zara.

“And I thought I saw him twitch,” I said. “I jumped back and that sent all the Marines into alert, the corporal screaming at me to tell them what I saw. When I told them the corpse twitched, they didn’t believe me. The little Marine got back on the optic, saying, ‘He’s not moving, he’s not moving,’ repeating it over and over, and the lanky one asked if they had to go out and treat the hajji’s wounds. But the corporal said the corpse was probably just settling. Gas escaping or something.” I looked down at my hands. “The little Marine was angry now, they all were, and at me.”

“Was he alive?” Zara asked.

“The corpse?” I said. “If he was, it wasn’t for long. The little
Marine put me back on the optic and it did look darker. That’s what I told them. And the corporal told the little Marine he did good, while I stared into the scope and tried to see the life going out of him. Or the heat, I guess. It happens so slow. Sometimes I’d ask the little Marine if he wanted to look, but he never did. He was an unusual sort of Marine. The adrenaline was fading and he was just left with this thing he’d done, and he didn’t want to watch.”

We took in the late afternoon for a moment.

“So that’s yours now,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“You watched him die.”

“Just the heat signature,” I said.

“That’s yours now,” she repeated. “You took it from him so he wouldn’t have to watch.”

I didn’t say anything. Neither of us had used the hookah in a while, so I grabbed the hose and started pulling smoke into my lungs.

“And now you’re telling me,” she said.

I blew out smoke.

“Why are you telling me this?” she said.

“You asked me how I could kill my people,” I said.

“And what?”

I put down the hose and she picked it up. I didn’t have a real answer for her, and now that I’d told the story, I didn’t feel I’d actually told her anything at all. I think she knew it, too, that the story hadn’t been enough, that something was missing and neither of us knew how to find it.

“Who do you think he was?” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“The guy that Marine shot,” she said.

I shrugged. “Some kid,” I said. “A stupid death. That’s what we were out there to prevent.”

She let out smoke in a slow, sensual way, but her face looked concerned. Upset. “What do you mean, ‘prevent’?”

“I was PsyOps,” I said. “Psychological Operations. I was supposed to tell the Iraqis how to not get themselves killed. And I actually spoke the language, so it was me on those loudspeakers, not a translator.”

“Right,” she said. “You spoke Arabic growing up.”

I shook my head. “Egyptian Arabic,” I said. “The soaps and the movies mean a lot of non-Egyptians understand it, but still, it’s different.”

She nodded. “I knew that.”

“The Army didn’t,” I said. “My unit thought they’d hit the jackpot. They didn’t even have to send me to language school. I tried to argue that they should, but then Sergeant Cortez came back from Monterrey speaking Modern Standard Arabic and I realized that U.S. Army mental retardation was a general problem.”

“So what, you learned Iraqi on your own?”

“Yeah, I got books from an office friend of my father’s,” I said. “And I’d go out and tell the Iraqis what was what. These imams were up there getting everybody excited, telling them to fight us. And the teenagers ate that shit up. You’d have a bunch of kids with no military training who’d seen too many American action movies try to go Rambo. It was crazy. An untrained kid against a Marine squad in camouflaged positions with marked fields of fire?”

“But of course that’s gonna happen,” she said, “when you send an army through a city.”

“We tried to limit the damage. The generals had a bunch of meetings with the imams and sheikhs to tell them, ‘Stop sending your stupid fucking kids against us, we’re just going to kill them.’ But it wouldn’t change anything.”

“In their eyes the problem wasn’t the kids,” she said.

“Things were crazy then. And we were fucking that city up.”

“I’ve read there were hundreds, maybe thousands of civilians killed.”

“There was propaganda on both sides. But I was trying to help people avoid getting killed. And not everybody was kids.”

“But a good number were.”

“Some,” I said. “That one I saw fade, it was a small body. Hard to tell. But I always think, That was one I was supposed to save.”

“Save?” she said. “By convincing him not to fight the soldiers invading his home?”

I laughed. “Yeah,” I said. “It was such bullshit. The Marines would be sitting there waiting, hoping some dumb muj would make a suicide assault. Nobody wants to be the guy in the squad who hasn’t killed anybody, and nobody joins the Marine Corps to avoid pulling triggers.”

She nodded.

“That’s not why I joined the Army,” I said.

“So why did you?”

I laughed. “‘Be All That You Can Be’?” I said. “I don’t know. That was the slogan for me, growing up. And then it was ‘Army of One,’ which I never understood, and then it was ‘Army
Strong,’ which is about as good a slogan as ‘Fire Hot’ or ‘Snickers Tasty’ or ‘Herpes Bad.’ A better slogan would be, ‘You Can’t Afford College Without Us.’”

She seemed to be sizing me up, deciding how to take what I’d told her. I sat and smoked and didn’t say anything. Eventually she leaned back into her chair and gave me the sort of straight look she’d use in class before tearing someone apart.

“So that’s your story,” she said. “The story you wanted to tell me. Now what?”

I shrugged.

“Do you tell this story to other girls?”

“I’m being honest,” I said. “I’m not honest with other girls. It hurts my chances.”

She shook her head. “You say you joined for college? I don’t believe you.” Then, imitating my voice, “Nobody joins the Army to avoid pulling triggers.”

“You got no idea why anybody joins the military,” I said, the words coming out angrier than I wanted. “No fucking clue.”

She smiled and leaned in, enjoying my anger. It was her, the old Zara.

“I know what you think,” I said. “I know your type.”

“My type?” she said. “You mean Muslims?”

“Why’s it always Muslims with you?”

“I know you don’t like us.”

“That’s not true.”

She shook her head. “We say things for a reason,” she said.

I sighed. “I’ve been hated as a Muslim. The last time my father hit me was after a kid at school called me a ‘sand nigger.’”

“What?” Zara said. “Your father hit
you
?”

“It’s how I handled it. The fight . . .” I stopped for a moment, tried to figure how I’d explain it to her. “Look, I went to a nice high school in northern Virginia, in a town too expensive for us to live in. My father moved us there when I finished junior high. He wanted me to have the best education. Which was great, I guess, though I really didn’t fit in.

“The fight turned out to be a big deal because a teacher overheard the kid using that word. The n-word. This was after 9/11, and it wasn’t that kind of town, you know? They didn’t see themselves that way. It became a big incident, and there was a lot of sympathy for me, because I was Arab, and because of 9/11, and because of what he said. I hated all of it. I don’t like pity.”

“What did you do to the kid?”

“Yelled back a few names.”

“That’s not really enough, is it?”

“My dad didn’t think so. It’s why he hit me. Because I hadn’t fought the kid who was insulting me and, by implication, our whole family. Or maybe he was just pissed the school principal seemed to think we were Muslim, too.”

Zara looked down and fiddled with her head scarf. “My father thinks Islam is the religion of poor blacks,” she said. “He says people will think I picked it up in prison.”

“Is that why you joined?” I said. “To piss off Daddy?”

She sighed and shook her head.

“So why?” I said.

“I’m learning why,” she said. “The practice of it teaches me.”

“And the clothes?” I said. “The whole . . .” I waved my hands at her.

She touched her head wrap. “It’s part of the commitment,”
she said quietly. “What was it you said to the Special Assistant? Perception is reality?”

“Yeah.”

“Wearing this, people treat me like I’ve made a change in my life. Which I have.” She smiled. “That matters,” she said.

“In the military,” I said, “that’s part of why they give you the uniform.”

She nodded and we were quiet again. I could feel her slipping away. Her mind, perhaps, wandering off to other subjects. I knew I’d failed to communicate. Of course I had. I didn’t know what I wanted to tell her, just that I’d tell her anything to keep her listening.

Silence became awkward, then agonizing. She looked at me, her body relaxed but her eyes fixed on mine. Words, I thought, any words will do. If I were seducing her, I’d know what to say.

She broke the silence first. “You told the Special Assistant things turned ugly,” she said, “for you and your family, around 9/11. Is that true?”

“Yes,” I said, relieved we were talking. “If you saw my mother, you’d think she was white, but my dad’s different. He’s darker than me and he’s got that Arab dictator mustache thing going on. He looks exactly like Saddam Hussein.”

“Exactly?” she said. “Like he could be a body double?” She leaned in toward me. That simple movement, the physical expression of interest, excited me. “What I mean is, would you think that if your family still lived in Egypt?”

I laughed. “They look alike, especially with the mustache. And he won’t shave it. It’s a manhood thing.”

“And that caused problems,” she said.

“Some,” I said. “He’s so stubborn. And he became Mister
Über-America. He had flags flying at our house, and ‘Support Our Troops’ magnets all over the bumper of his car. Not that that changed anything, the way he looked. Or the way we all looked, and with our Arab-sounding names, going through airport security.”

“I can imagine.”

“No, you can’t. Because when they’d pull him aside to pat him down by hand, he’d tell them, loud so everybody could hear, ‘I know you get a lot of flak, but I want you guys to know I support what you’re doing. You are protecting our American freedoms.’”

Zara shook her head sadly.

“And my mother, Jesus. She came from a totally different universe than my dad. Copt, yeah, but not the type to have family in Garbage City. Growing up, her friends were all Muslim, even one Jew, rich kids who read Fanon and talked radical politics before getting real and marrying each other. But my mom was more radical than all of them. More radical than my grandmom, even, who was a straight-up Communist before the June War. She married my dad. And then he pulled his American freedoms act? I thought she was gonna kill him the first time he did it. That shit nearly broke their marriage.”

“Why didn’t it?”

“She’s religious,” I said.

Zara smiled. “What did you think?”

“I was seventeen,” I said. “You’ve got to understand—my father was there when his cousin died. He was badly beaten himself. And then the people my father had told me were bad all my life had finally got my country really pissed. And those stories he’d told me weren’t bullshit anymore. My father, I
mean, the man has never given two shits about me. He’s not a cuddly guy.”

“The Army was a way to make him proud?”

I winced. It didn’t sound so good coming from her mouth. “Make myself proud. But part of that would be in his eyes.”

“I imagine the Arab stuff got worse in the Army.”

“No,” I said. “Not at all. It was more direct, though.” I laughed. “One drill instructor, during inspection, he asked what I’d do if my brother joined al-Qaeda. Would I shoot him in the face? My own brother?”

“That’s awful.”

“I’m an only child,” I said. “I told him yes. Basic isn’t a place for subtleties.”

“What about the other recruits?”

“There was one guy, Travis. He had an uncle who worked construction, and after Travis joined the Army his uncle started refusing to work with this family of Muslim electricians. It was in Travis’ honor.”