By the time Khafaji goes to the American Zone, the sun is sitting high in the sky. And so is the pain in his head. The air is unseasonably warm, even hot. The wait at the gate looks daunting, so Khafaji retreats to the Dijla Café. He drinks a cup of coffee and looks across the road, glad that he is not standing there.
At first he thinks of sitting outside in the air. But his head forces him to move into the shadows. At this hour, the square is cluttered with people and traffic. Hundreds of automobiles and trucks. Most driving west, out of town. A few pulling over to wait in line to enter. Pedestrians cross the melee in all directions. It looks like a parking lot. From a distance, the people standing in line look no different than the fluttering plastic bags caught in the spools of razor wire. Khafaji picks up some discarded newspapers and begins to read. The front pages are filled with conjecture about the seven Spaniards killed outside al-Hilla. Spanish military intelligence? CIA? Mossad? Inside, Khafaji reads about the killing of two police sergeants in Mosul. He folds the papers and throws them back on the table. His head hurts too much to keep reading. He stands and decides to try his luck at the gate.
Khafaji is most of the way across the intersection before the chaos erupts. The first sign there’s something wrong are the gunshots. Then all at once everyone ducks onto the ground. Pedestrians dash behind large vehicles. At first, car passengers try to lean under dashboards and seats. Then they open car doors and flee. The shots stop, but now there is commotion at the gate. Sirens explode and soldiers appear on the ramparts. A loudspeaker barks commands, too garbled to make out. But it doesn’t take long for the simple message to travel: leave the area now.
Khafaji jogs back to the café, and orders a tea. Within a minute, the tables around him fill with people anxiously watching the street. Pedestrians stream away from the gate. Cars and trucks and buses back up and then speed off. Twenty minutes later, the street is empty except for a dozen abandoned cars. Periodically, the garbled announcement issues from a distant loudspeaker. Khafaji hears words, but their meaning dissolves in the wind. He notices that the line at the gate has vanished, and decides to seize the opportunity.
As Khafaji approaches, he sees a large water truck parked directly in front of the gate. The doors to the cab are wide open. A man in a thick armored suit slowly walks around, periodically inspecting pieces of the vehicle. To Khafaji’s right, a voice begins to shout, “Imshi minna! Imshi minna!”
Khafaji turns and sees one of the regular guards at the gate. Khafaji smiles and holds his hands over his head. “Hi there, Florida! It’s me – Moe!” He walks over slowly. “I am sorry, Florida. I could not understand what they say. Is everything OK?”
The woman studies Khafaji’s face for a moment and then notices the ID hanging around his neck. Finally she nods in recognition.
“We’ve got a situation. Probable bomb in that truck. It’s huge. Come over here.” She speaks into a radio and then waves Khafaji to come over. From this angle, they are separated from the truck by one hundred meters and a shoulder-high concrete slab. The minutes tick by slowly as they watch the bomb squad inspect the truck. The man in the suit runs his fingers along the shiny metal of the tank, feeling, listening, walking a few steps, then feeling and listening again. It takes a quarter of an hour of watching this before Khafaji notices the crumpled human form on the ground near the cab. One of its legs quivers and kicks. Khafaji turns and catches the eye of the soldier. She explains. “This guy cuts in at the front of the line, believe it or not, and the cars start honking. That gets everyone’s attention. Then, when somebody goes out to see what’s going on, the driver bolts. He leaves the keys in the ignition, and takes off running. Didn’t get very far.”
Khafaji watches as the man in the suit takes off the thick metal helmet. He waves with both arms a few times and walks away. A few minutes later, the soldier’s radio crackles. All clear. Not a bomb. A couple of medics exit the gate, and rush toward the man on the ground. But by then his body has stopped moving. Khafaji follows twenty meters or so behind the soldier, curious, but not sure what he’s supposed to do. One of the other soldiers nods when Khafaji waves. Khafaji sees two interpreters among them, now wearing fatigues and thick body armor. Curious, Khafaji walks over to where they’re standing. Within a few minutes, there’s a crowd of men and women in fatigues around the tanker. Among them is the soldier who first confronted the driver. “FODA! He was suicide!” The man is trembling with fear and excitement. His comrades attempt to calm him down, but he just paces back and forth yelling, “Fuckin’ A!”
When they open the seals on the tank, the escaping air makes a hiss. A soldier puts his face into the hole and peers into the darkness. The heat makes him come out and wait for a moment before putting his face in again. He frowns and rubs his nose and asks for a flashlight. Someone tosses one up to him. He aims it down into the tank and looks again. He looks for a long time, then shouts something into the hole. Finally, he shouts, “Sergeant, you better come up here and look at this. There are men down in there. It’s an oven. You better get the medics.”
One of the interpreters climbs onto the tank and begins to call out into the darkness. He calls and calls, his voice frantic, then weak. The soldier waves him off and sits down on the top of the tank. The interpreter slides back down the side, murmuring, “There are twenty of them in there. Like they’re sleeping. Twenty sleeping men.”
Khafaji decides to get away as fast as possible. He turns and walks up to the outer gate. No one is there, and he walks through without stopping. When he gets to the inside gate, they stop him and ask him to wait by the side until they receive orders to reopen the gate. Khafaji sits down next to a metal box with a hole in the side. A strong smell of cordite wafts out from inside. Khafaji lights a cigarette and reads the weapons clearing procedures on the side of the box.
Fifteen minutes later, they let him and some others through the second gate. He doesn’t break pace until he walks through the metal detector at the DFAC.
Khafaji picks up a paper cup of tea from the cafeteria and offers the man a cigarette in exchange. Speaking in halting Arabic, the man introduces himself as Noman. Khafaji follows him through the kitchen to a door that opens onto a loading deck. Noman mentions that he learned some Arabic in Riyadh.
“Ten years. I did Omra twice and Hajj once.”
“What was it like?” Khafaji asks.
“What?”
“Riyadh? What was it like?”
“Highways and mosques. Highways and malls,” he laughs. “I don’t know. We worked a lot and we weren’t allowed in.” He pauses and then adds, “Ten years driving a Cadillac equals one apartment in Delhi. That’s what it was like.”
They smoke in silence, then Noman whispers, “It was not so bad until the war came. My boss went to Europe for six months and fired everyone except me. Fired the gardeners, the cooks, the maids. God knows why they kept me on and left me behind to take care of everything until they got back. Gardening, maintenance, cleaning, car repair. Everything! I did the jobs of ten people. And when he got back and saw what I did, my boss decided he could save money. He cut back permanently. Only me after that. I never had a moment of rest after the war! No offence, but I wish Saddam knew how to aim better. Maybe the boss would never have come back!”
“Maybe you would have gotten to keep the villa!”
Noman laughs and insists on shaking Khafaji’s hand. Khafaji gives him two more cigarettes. At first Noman tries to put them both behind his ear. Then he slips them into his shirt pocket.