Baghdad Central (31 page)

Khafaji hears a man cough behind him and then a voice. “Brother Muhsin, Peace upon you.”

He turns to see Ali, who is standing at the open door. “Upon you peace, Ali. What can I do for you?”

“I hope I'm not bothering you, Brother Muhsin.”

“Not at all.” Khafaji looks at his watch and waves him into the room. Ali takes two steps forward. Khafaji asks, “Have you come for the keys?”

Ali shakes his head, but says nothing. Khafaji looks at him again and adds, “You'll find them over there next to the door. On the table, right there.” Khafaji points, but Ali ignores him.

Khafaji goes back to looking through the books on the shelf. Without turning around he calls out, “I hope you don't mind, but I can't offer you anything. I'm in a hurry. I'm leaving in a few minutes.”

“That's what I wanted to talk to you about, Muhsin. You're not leaving.”

“Pardon?”

“Muhsin, I mean, we've reconsidered.”

Khafaji sits down, and puts his head in his hands. He stares at the floor and says nothing.

“Look, you do not have to leave. I hope this is good news. But I can understand if you're not in a mood to thank me. In any case, I hope this makes things right. We can't force you to stay, but I hope you do.”

Without a word, Khafaji gets up, walks back into the bedroom and picks up the suitcase. He drags it down the hall and past the living room. He sets it down next to the front door. Only then does he come back and extend a hand in Ali's direction.

“Thanks for telling me, Ali. And yes, it is good news to hear that I'll be allowed to stay in my own home. Should I bother asking why you changed your mind?”

“Brother Muhsin, let me know if there's anything else I can do. We are neighbors.”

Khafaji looks at him. He stares behind Ali at the bookcases.
He sees the empty bookshelf, then says, “There is one thing you can do for me, Ali. I don't care about the couch. I don't care about the chairs or the pots or the pans. You can have them. But I want my poetry back. All of it. If you can do that, then you can be my neighbor.”

Ali nods and puts his fingers together.

“Oh. And another thing. I'm going to be gone for a little while, but I am coming back. Can I count on you to keep an eye on my place while I'm gone?”

Ali smiles. “Sure,” he says as he gently takes the suitcase from Khafaji's hand, and then carries it downstairs. In the foyer, the two men shake hands. Ali tells one of the guards to help Khafaji with the suitcase. The man carries it all the way to Abu Nuwas Street.

RED ZONE

       
And lightning burst across the sky, like a lily of fire,

       
Opening above Babylon, lighting the valley.

       
A spark shot through our land,

       
Laying bare its seed and root and its dead.

       
And clouds poured down rain upon rain. Were it not for the city walls, the waters would have quenched our thirst.

       
In the eternity between one thunderbolt and the next,

       
We heard not the rustle of wet wind through the palms,

       
But the clamor of hands and feet,

       
A murmur, the sigh of a girl seizing a moth-like moon, or a star, in her hand.

       
Seizing the tremor of water, of a raindrop in which whispered the breeze

       
To tell us that the sins of Babylon will be washed clean.

B
ADR
S
HAKIR AL-
S
AYYAB

Sunday–Thursday

7–11 December 2003

The helicopter takes off vertically into the night, then widens into flat zigzags out of the city. Two long rows of men, strapped to the ribs of the aircraft, each looking at the man facing him. The man opposite Khafaji goes to sleep as soon as he sits down and doesn't wake up until they land in Kirkuk.

Fifteen years since Khafaji rode in a helicopter. Fifteen years and a lifetime since he was in the north. Khafaji closes his eyes but is wide awake throughout. The vibrations of the machine shake his bones.
For the first time in months, you are where you are because you chose to be. Fate dealt you a good hand this time. One so good you made Nidal take it and leave the game. Deal yourself a new hand and play again
.

It is early morning when they arrive. Everyone but Khafaji carries a large green backpack. Khafaji walks behind them, dragging his old suitcase across the tarmac. There is nothing beyond the wide fields of cracked concrete. Only now does it dawn on him that “Kirkuk” means a base somewhere nowhere. Olds taps his shoulder and he turns to see a black Suburban pulling up. They drive to a cluster of white trailers.

“Welcome to Chooville, folks.” An officer comes out to greet them in the middle of the night.

Olds looks over at Khafaji and explains. “Customized Housing Units.”

“That's right, CHUs. We choose only the best when it comes to our guests. I'll show you yours.”

The man takes them to one end of a trailer, opens the flimsy plastic door and turns on the light. Khafaji looks at the plastic floor tiles.

“Well, not so lucky, yours don't come with toilets. Gents, you'll find your cans over there,” he says as he points behind another trailer. Olds claims one bed, and Khafaji throws his suitcase on the other and begins to unpack. He hangs his suit up in the closet, then his shirts and his ridiculous uniform. When he finishes, he realizes that he must have forgotten to put al-Maarri's diwan into the suitcase. He goes outside and eventually finds the latrine. He washes his face in icy water. He walks back to the room, breathing night air so cold and dry it burns. Khafaji looks up and sees a canopy of stars he hasn't seen in years. Stars stretching out forever. He begins to name his favorites. Yedelgeuse, the hand of Gemini. The Warrior. Rigel. Saiph. Nairalsaiph. Alnitak. Alnizam. Mantaka. Almisan. He looks at the Bull, at Aldebaran. Althuraya. The brightest part of the sky. The hunter's arrow that never flies and never strikes its target. And the enemy that only ever appears on the opposite horizon.

Khafaji says goodnight to Olds and climbs into a skinny bed. He turns out the small reading light on the nightstand and tries to wrap the blankets around him. He gets out of bed a few minutes later to search for more blankets. When he can't find any, he puts on a second pair of socks, then pulls the covers over himself again.

He wakes up in the early morning to find that the blankets have fallen onto the floor. He pulls them over his body
again, but cannot go back to sleep. He looks at the glass of water on the nightstand. He stares at the metal lamp one foot from his pillow. He looks at his wristwatch and listens to the ticking. Outside the blankets, the air feels like ice. It almost hurts to breathe. He stares at the condensation around the window. Olds turns over, his mouth-breathing a roar. Khafaji is now wide awake, his thoughts like lines connecting dots, making constellations out of the dark sky. He lies thinking about Sawsan, then Nidal. Then Citrone, then Zubeida. He tries to steer the lines back to Suheir, but they do not go in that direction. Each time he tries to imagine Suheir, her eyes, her lips fade into Zubeida. Even though they look nothing alike. The more Khafaji thinks, the hazier Suheir's silhouette becomes, the clearer Zubeida's becomes. Khafaji tries to think about anything else. About Mrouj, and then about Uday, but always he arrives back at the villa in the cane fields.

And then it gets worse. Suddenly, he is in Kirkuk. Then in Sulaimaniya. Then empty mountain villages. Empty green hills. Greener than anything Khafaji ever knew. He dreams of thick carpets of wildflowers. And fields of freshly-turned dirt. So much dirt. The dirt of trenches dug by engineers. The dirt of graves turned in the night. Of flowers and grass, and dull roots stirring with the late rains. Cruel spring bred from a forgetful winter. The ground churning with hunger.

Khafaji opens his eyes and tries to think of poetry. To remember anything. Another word. A phrase. An image. A sound. An association. One line that might open up the flood. Poetry to bury memory. Poetry to soften the past. Poetry to turn corpses into fields of flowers.

Nothing comes. Not a line. Not a phrase. Khafaji's mind feels like a long trench of dirt packed cold and hard. Barren earth, with no flowers, no roots. Hours go by as Khafaji
stares at his water glass and reading lamp and wristwatch. He falls asleep again only after dawn begins to crawl out of the bloody eastern hills.

They spend the morning in meetings. As Khafaji walks into the meeting room, a man with a thin moustache hands him a small folder filled with pamphlets, and a small envelope. When Khafaji opens it later in his room, he finds crisp hundred dollar bills.

Besides Khafaji, there are three other Iraqis, one from Basra, one from Hilla, and one from Karbala. Their fatigues are as ill-fitting as Khafaji's. The British and American liaison officers in the room make a show of how eager they are to meet their Iraqi counterparts. Khafaji doesn't catch their names. A contingent of Kurdish officers sit on the opposite side of the table, all dressed in other uniforms.

“I will be candid with you. We are facing setbacks and challenges across the country,” one British officer begins in English. “CPA leadership has decided to regroup and focus our efforts on establishing the police force in Kirkuk. So we have brought you from around the country for a workshop, a summit if you will.” As he speaks, the words become slower, more deliberate. Khafaji notices a young man frantically scribbling notes. More than once, he leans forward as if to interrupt the speaker.

“Out of this, we hope to create a nationwide network of working relationships and, more importantly, the sense of trust and confidence that comes from knowing that you are not alone, but part of a team. Look around you – this is your team. We are your team.” When he finishes, he looks at the young man and nods. The young man takes a deep breath and begins to translate, mixing formal Arabic and
colloquial Baghdadi. His eyes never leave the page of notes he holds in his hands.

The British officer continues talking, and as he does, he makes a point of looking in each man's eyes for a moment before pausing and moving to the next. The interpreter comes in again, and hurries again through his notes. Next, Olds stands up and begins to talk about the need to identify problems, create solutions and set realizable goals. Each time the interpreter comes to the word “benchmark” he stumbles. At first he translates it as “the sign of the bench”, then “trace of the long seat”, then “imprint of the work table”, and so on. Other words like “synergy” and “entrepreneurism” wreak even more havoc. Olds talks for a half hour, and when he finishes, his audience is thoroughly confused. Olds hands out a work schedule, and for the first time Khafaji learns that he'll be staying in Kirkuk for a month. His heart sinks. He'd told Mrouj he'd only be away for a few days.

Besides ten British and American officials, the Iraq Police Reconstruction Working Group includes eight Iraqis, none from Kirkuk. “Paradoxically, this will be an asset to our work in Kirkuk,” a British officer tells the group. “Because neither you nor we are from here, we will all be more objective. We will be in a better position to see the reality of Kirkuk than a policeman who comes from here or an official who is too caught up in details to see the bigger picture. Any questions so far?”

No one asks a question.

During breaks, Khafaji talks with one of the Kurdish policemen, Salah. They vaguely recognize each other from the academy. Was it really forty years ago? They share cigarettes, and ask about others from their class. Salah remembers names and faces Khafaji forgot long ago. As he goes
through the list, Khafaji is struck by the fact that so many are gone.

For the most part, the other Kurdish officers keep to themselves. They are friendlier with the foreign liaison officers, as if they already knew each other.

In theory, they attend sessions designed to brainstorm. That word also poses problems for the interpreter. When he tries “tempest of the mind”, two people laugh out loud and the first British officer asks what is so funny. At some point, everyone switches to using English phrases.

Sunday and Monday are spent in meetings like this. In one morning session, a Ukrainian police chief lectures on civilian administration. After the coffee break, a British naval officer uses slides and graphs to discuss asymmetrical force. After lunch, there is more of the same. The interpreter begins to slip more and more. He starts cutting and editing out material, prompting one of the Kurds to interrupt constantly and ask for the deleted material to be added back in. “Not for my sake,” he insists. “But for those in the audience who might not speak English so well.”

Khafaji listens to it all and is struck by the fact that it makes no real difference if the interpreter adds or subtracts from the lectures. The message is always the same:
things have to get better
.

Each presentation unloads large amounts of data. Each presenter seems to have an enormous capacity for collecting and commanding data. One American MP cites census records from the Mandate Period. He occasionally uses Arabic phrases, and calls the Basran
“habibi”
. There is nothing to do but smile. Another presenter refers to figures indicating rising levels of primary education. Among girls. In the Kurdish region. For the period 1991–2002. Everyone smiles
again. After the first day, the group is taken around the base to meet various officials. The Americans drink coffee. The British drink tea. The Iraqis drink the tea and wish it were stronger. Conversation is light, polite and positive. Everyone practices their English. Everyone practices their Arabic. Khafaji keeps his mouth shut, except when someone asks him a direct question.