Redeployment (8 page)

The landscape out there was desolate. No trees, no animals, no plants, no water—nothing. Often, when people try to describe Iraq, you hear a lot of references to
Mad Max,
the postapocalyptic film trilogy where biker gangs in S&M gear drive across the desert, killing one another for gasoline. I’ve never found the description particularly apt. Aside from that weird Shi’a festival where everybody beats themselves with chains, you won’t find much fetish gear in country. And out there, not seeing a single living thing, I’d have welcomed the sight of other humans, even a biker gang in leather face masks and assless chaps. But war, unfortunately, is not like the movies.

Kazemi wasn’t there when we got to the plant, a large, blockish structure with a row of enormous concrete cylinders topped by metal pipes. We went to the main building, but when we tried to get inside and out of the sun, we couldn’t open the front door. It was large, metal, and so rusted that it wouldn’t budge.

“Here, sir,” said a burly Army sergeant. He smiled at his fellow soldiers, no doubt thinking he’d show them how much stronger and better at door opening the Army was than the State Department. He pushed at it. Nothing. Still smiling, with the eyes of most of the soldiers on him, the sergeant backed up a step and launched himself into the door. The primary effect was a loud booming noise. Now red-faced, he started cursing, and with everybody, even the Professor, watching him, he backed up about fifteen feet and then ran into the door at full speed. The crash of his body armor against the steel was enormous, and the door opened with a screaming metallic creak. A few soldiers cheered.

Inside was dark and rusty.

“I don’t think anyone’s been here in a while, sir,” said the sergeant.

I looked back at the convoy of soldiers. I’d risked all their lives bringing them here.

“Professor,” I said, “we need to get Kazemi on the phone. Now.”

While he called, I daydreamed about beekeeping. Images floated through my head of Iraqi Widow Honey in U.S. supermarkets, of Donald Rumsfeld helping out by doing TV ads: “Try the sweet taste of Iraqi freedom.” After about thirty phone calls, the Professor assured me Kazemi was en route.

The Iraqis arrived from the south in a small convoy of pickup trucks. Chief Engineer Kazemi, a thin little Iraqi with a bushy mustache, waved and spoke in Arabic for about ten minutes. The Professor nodded and nodded and didn’t translate a word until the end.

“He greets you, and wants to take you to his office,” he said.

I agreed, and we followed Kazemi through the dark hallways of the plant. This entailed a lot of backtracking.

“He would like you to believe,” the Professor said after our ninth or tenth wrong turn, “that he normally comes in through another door and that is why he is not knowing where to go.”

When we got to the office, one of the police officers with Kazemi made tea that he served in a dusty cup with a sludge of sugar congealed at the bottom. I tried, while drinking it, to come to the point in my best American manner.

“What do we need to get this plant operating?” I said.

The Professor reiterated the question, and Kazemi smiled and started fumbling under the desk. He mumbled something, and the Professor looked concerned and asked what sounded like a few sharp questions.

“What are you telling him?” I said.

The Professor ignored me. After a minute or so, Kazemi pulled something from under the desk, dislodging papers and spilling office supplies all over the floor.

“I do not think this man is very intelligent,” said the Professor.

Kazemi held a large box in his hands. He placed it on top of the desk, opened it, and carefully pulled out a scale model of the water treatment plant, constructed of cardboard and toothpicks. At the four corners of the plant, though, were thin cardboard towers. Kazemi pointed to one of these.

“Mah-sheen gaans,” he said.

Then he smiled and cradled his hands as though holding a weapon.

“Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat,” he said, shooting the imaginary gun. Then came another stream of Arabic.

“Your military,” the Professor said after a pause, “failed to approve funds for the construction of machine-gun towers. They are not standard on U.S. water plants.”

Kazemi said something else.

“Also, your military built the wrong pipes,” said the Professor.

“What does he mean, the wrong pipes?” I said.

This time the discussion went on for some time, the Professor getting increasingly curt. He seemed to be berating Kazemi.

“Your military built pipes for the wrong water pressure,” said the Professor, “and they built them across the highway.”

“Is there a way to deal with the water pressure—”

“The water pressure is not the problem,” said the Professor. “The ministry is Jaish al-Mahdi.”

I looked at him blankly. “But water would be good for—”

“They will not turn on water for Sunnis.” His accusing stare suggested that, somehow, this was my fault. Of course, given that the United States had split Iraqi ministries between political parties at the outset of the war, allowing the various factions to expel the old Baathist technocrats in favor of party hacks who carved the country up between them, it sort of was.

Kazemi spoke again.

“I am sure of it,” said the Professor. “This man is not intelligent.”

“What does he say?”

“He would like to pump water,” said the Professor. “He has
had this job for many years without pumping any water and he wants to see what it is like.”

“If some of the water is going to Sunnis,” I said, “he will need machine guns?”

“He will need them anyway,” said the Professor.

“Okay,” I said.

“He will get himself killed,” said the Professor.

“Ask him what it will take to get the plant working,” I said, “aside from machine guns.”

They spoke in Arabic. I stared at the wall. When they were finished, the Professor turned to me and said, “He will have to assess. He has not been here in many weeks.”

“Where has he been?” I said.

The Professor asked him, and Kazemi smiled, looked at me, and said, “Ee-ran.”

Everyone knew that word. The American soldiers with me had looked tense from the outset; now they looked murderous. Iran was the major importer of EFPs, a particularly lethal IED that sends a hot liquid metal bullet crashing through the sides of even the most heavily armored vehicles, spraying everybody inside. One EOD tech told me that even if the metal didn’t get you, the change in pressure caused by the sheer speed of the thing would.

Kazemi continued speaking. Occasionally the Professor would frown and say something back. At one point he took his glasses off and rubbed them while shaking his head.

“Ah,” said the Professor. “He went to get marriages.”

“Marriages?” I said. I turned to Kazemi. “Congratulations.” I put my hand over my heart. I was smiling in spite of myself. The soldiers behind me all looked relieved.

“Iranian women are very beautiful,” said the Professor.

Kazemi pulled out a cell phone. He fiddled with it for a bit, then showed it to me. On the screen was a picture of a pretty young woman’s face.

“Madame,” said Kazemi.

“Very lovely,” I said.

He pushed a button and flipped to another picture of another woman, then flipped to another, and another, and another. “Madame. Madame. Madame. Madame,” he said.

“Why is her face bruised?” I said.

The Professor shrugged, and Kazemi kept flipping through pictures.

We talked more about Iranian women and their beauty, I congratulated him on his marriages again, and then another forty minutes of discussion left us with the agreement that I’d figure out a security solution for Kazemi if he’d figure out what it’d take to get the plant on line.

On the drive back, the Professor explained the marriages to me in the tone you’d use to speak with a mentally deficient golden retriever.

“
Nikah mut’ah,”
he said. “Shi’a allow temporary marriages. Shi’a marry a woman for an hour, the next day marry another.”

“Oh,” I said. “Prostitution.”

“Prostitution is illegal under Islam,” said the Professor.

•   •   •

Two days later,
I got back to Taji. As I turned down the road toward the plywood hut we called our office, I saw Major Jason Zima and one of his CAT teams unloading a bunch of boxes
from the pickup truck they used to drive around the FOB. I immediately had the sick and certain realization that whatever was in those boxes, it was going to be my problem.

“Sir!” said Major Zima, smiling. “Just the man I wanted to see.”

Zima ran the brigade’s Civil Affairs Company and was thus my closest U.S. military counterpart. He was a stocky man with a bizarrely spherical head that he shaved to a smooth shine each morning. It gave him the appearance, in bright Iraqi sunshine, of a lovingly polished bowling ball resting on a sack of grain. With no hair on his head and eyebrows so fair they were invisible, Zima had no discernible age markers and could have been anywhere from thirty to fifty-five, his cherubic smile making him seem the former and his what-the-hell-is-this-civilian-telling-me frown the latter. In all my interactions with him thus far, he had projected an idiocy so pure it boggled the mind.

“What’s this?” I said.

Major Zima dropped his box to the ground, sending up a dust cloud. Then, waving his right hand with a magician’s flourish, he pulled a Leatherman out of his pocket, bent down, and proceeded to cut open the box.

“Baseball uniforms!” he said, pulling one out to show me. “Fifty of them. Some blue, some gray—like the Union and Confederacy in the Civil War.”

I was still wearing my flak jacket and helmet. I took the helmet off. It felt like I’d need the maximum amount of blood circulation to my brain to make sense of this.

“They’re for you,” Zima said. “Somebody dropped them off with Civil Affairs by accident.”

“What the hell do we need these for?” I said.

He smiled one of his stupidly beatific smiles at me. “They’re for the Iraqis to play baseball in,” he said.

“Iraqis don’t play baseball,” I said.

Zima frowned, as though this complication had just occurred to him. Then, as he looked at the uniform in his hand, his face lit up in a grin.

“Then they can play soccer in them!” he said. “They’ll love it. They play on dirt fields anyway. The leggings will protect them.”

“Okay,” I said. “But why are they here? Why am I looking at fifty baseball uniforms in the middle of Camp Taji?”

Major Zima nodded, as if to let me know he thought it was a valid question. “Because Gene Goodwin sent them to us,” he said. “Gene Goodwin thinks baseball is just the thing for Iraqis.”

“Who is Gene— You know what? It doesn’t matter. Am I supposed to take care of this?”

“Well,” said the major, “are you going to teach the Iraqis baseball?”

“No,” I said.

“That’s a problem,” said the major, frowning.

I put my face in my hands and rubbed my forehead. “Are
you
going to teach the Iraqis to play baseball?” I said.

“I don’t think they’d be interested,” he said.

We stood staring at each other, me scowling and Zima smiling angelically. I knelt and looked at the package. There was a sheet inside detailing the contents. It said the uniforms were sized for boys eight to ten. I figured the malnutrition in our area meant they’d fit best on thirteen- to fifteen-year-olds.

“There was a convoy just for this?” I said.

“No,” he said. “I’m sure they were carrying other Class One supplies.”

“So . . . energy drinks, Pop-Tarts, and those muffins nobody eats?”

“Fuel for the American soldier!”

I rubbed my forehead. “Who exactly is Gene Goodwin?” I said.

“The mattress king of northern Kansas,” said Major Zima.

I wasn’t sure how to respond to that.

“I’ve never met him,” Zima continued, “but when Representative Gordon was here, he made a special point of telling me one of his key constituents had a spot-on idea for Iraqi democracy.”

“Of course he did.”

“He said it in front of everybody. Including Chris Roper.”

“I see,” I said. Chris Roper was my boss. He generally didn’t make it out of the Green Zone but when a congressional delegation swung through, Roper tagged along to do a bit of war tourism. Nobody wants to do a year in Iraq and come back with nothing but stories about the soft-serve ice-cream machine at the embassy cafeteria.

“What did Chris Roper say?” I asked.

“Oh, he told the congressman how ‘sports diplomacy’ was the new thing, and they’d been setting up matches between Sunni and Shi’a soccer teams. It’s all the rage at the embassy, he said. It’s been very effective.”

“Very effective at what?”

“Well,” said the major, beaming, “I’m not sure, but they make for some great photos.”

I took a deep breath. “Chris Roper thinks this is a good idea?”

“Absolutely not,” said the major, an expression of outrage on his face.

“Then Representative Gordon . . . ,” I said.

“I don’t think so,” said Major Zima. “But he did tell me and the colonel what a key constituent Mr. Goodwin was, and how angry Mr. Goodwin was that no one seemed to take his baseball plan seriously.”

“And you told him the ePRT guys could handle it.”

“I said you’d be honored.”

•   •   •

Bob thought the uniforms were hilarious.
About twenty times a day he’d look up at them, crack a smile, and then go back to playing solitaire on his computer. Cindy was less amused, and she carefully pointed out that since they were boys’ uniforms, they were not in her purview as women’s initiative adviser. Also, she was too busy because her agricultural initiative had been taking off.

“Really?” I said.

“Yep,” she said. “They don’t have modern farm knowledge over here.”

“And you do?”

“Well, I know getting the imam to tie a verse of the Koran to your cow’s tail won’t cure the poor thing’s bloating problem. Besides, there’s a reservist here on Taji who’s a farmer in real life. He’s helping me.”

That made sense. I refused to believe that Cindy with her
Googling could get an agricultural initiative off the ground on her own, though she did have a knack for networking. Najdah, the social worker at the women’s clinic, spoke very highly of her.