Arriving at the bottom of our building’s front stairwell, I unlock the metal gate and find a place on the street where I can watch the angry faces pass. The crowd comes slowly around the corner with signs for President Ben Ali in Arabic, and, for the cameras, in English and French. Ben Ali must go, they say, though not always with such polite phrasing. I lean against the wall and search the crowd for my flatmates.
The crowd has begun to change, I see, growing to include more university students, fewer old people. These young men and women walk together, some even holding hands. No fear of the Islamists. Like Baghdad University just before the war. A hint of freedom. Do jihadis mix with this crowd? Rifles hidden under their clothes? Waiting for their time? When the police and the army start to kill these people, will it become like that day in Ramadi?
It is all I find when I search for the mulasim’s name, that day in Ramadi. An article from the American news that calls him a hero, and this is fine. Someone should be called a hero.
I think of Hani and can almost see his face in this crowd. Foolish, for two reasons: First, he is not here. Second, he would never protest, never march in the streets. There would be no profit in it, nor any sensible gain to be made. It was always Hani’s peculiar fault, his good sense.
It was February when the university canceled the spring semester and Hani convinced me to flee Baghdad. It had become so regular by then, his demands that we flee the death squads and the fighting, the gunfire and the hidden bombs, that when I heard him sprinting down the corridor after curfew, it hardly distracted me from my book. I turned the page to the next adventure just as a new thought occurred, and I reached for my pen to make note of it.
Hani bounded into Professor Al-Rawi’s office and collapsed at the foot of my cot, where I’d taken refuge since my father and brother left the city.
“They killed the tennis coach,” he wheezed.
I did not look up. “Who?”
“The tennis coach.”
“No, I mean who killed him?”
“Some guys in masks,” Hani scoffed. “What kind of question is that?” He waved his hand in the air. Sadrists. Al Qaeda. Washed-up Baathists. The masked fog. Men with guns. It made no difference.
Hani had been gathering stories like this for weeks, and with the stories came the grim, new facts of Baghdad life. Headless bodies in the street. Each week, victims more absurdly innocent than the week before. Ice vendors beheaded for selling during the hours of prayer. Barbers tortured to death with nail guns for shaving beards.
Hani asked after every new militia. He learned when new Shia mullahs tried to outdo their rivals. When one started using pliers, another would say, “Pliers? Fuck pliers. I have this welding torch.”
He learned when a former army officer created a volunteer brigade to protect our old neighborhood of Mansour, after concluding that the American soldiers using my father’s abandoned villa as a patrol base could not, or would not, protect the vulnerable Sunni elite from the Shia death squads wearing police uniforms. That was when Hani stopped going home and came to live at the university like me. If he had gone home, to the empty house left behind when his parents became trapped in Jordan, he would have been expected to fight. And Hani was too sincere for war.
“They pulled him from the car and shot him in the head,” he continued. “And they killed two players in the backseat, too.”
“So, those were the shots I heard earlier?” I put the book aside and sat up on my cot. “Were they collaborators or something?”
“It was the shorts. The shorts they wear at practice.”
“The fashion police!” I coughed, queasy at my own reflexive attempt at humor. “Did we know any of these guys?”
“I am not sure, Kateb. Have you been hanging around with the tennis team? Have you been harboring a secret ambition to play tennis professionally?”
“Fine. Be an asshole. I would simply like to know why you came running to tell me this. People get killed every day, Hani.” I gestured at Dr. Al-Rawi’s empty desk with the same flourish of theater that Hani seemed to enjoy, then lay back on my cot and opened my book.
“You want to know why I ran to tell you? Why I thought of you first?” Hani moved to my laundry pile in the corner. He dug around and came up with a T-shirt. “AC/DC.” He threw the shirt between me and my book. He bent down and came up with two more. “Gwar. Though Gwar might be just their style, this one. Bad Religion? This is a real problem. One of these guys is bound to read English well enough. A number of interpretations, my friend, none of them good.”
“You gave me that shirt for my birthday, for one thing. And for another, your English is shit.”
“Kateb, they killed three guys for wearing shorts at tennis practice. What do you think they will do to you? Or me, since I will probably be standing next to you. Or Mundhir? Think about Mundhir!”
I laughed. “Mundhir can bloody well take care of himself. But you? Yes, you are probably fucked.”
Just then, as if summoned, Mundhir poked his head around the door like a great hawk. Seventeen years old, with a size, a resting power, that entered the room even before his body. His face, sharp and still, more than hinted at the grown man’s beard that would emerge if he neglected the stubble even a single day. This gave him an advantage. Was he a lazy Sunni neglecting the razor? Or was he a burgeoning Shia militiaman, a boy growing his first beard? Who could say?
“Mundhir!” I threw the book across the room. “We were just talking about you!”
Mundhir moved into the doorframe, filling it. “I did not hear. What were you saying?”
“Hani thinks I will be killed by the Islamists this week. Him, too. Maybe you, as well. What do you think?”
Mundhir shrugged. “Is this about your T-shirts?”
“Hani! You went to Mundhir behind my back? Shameful.”
Hani stepped to Mundhir’s side. “We have to leave, Kateb.” Hani put his hand on Mundhir’s shoulder, acting as if he spoke for both of them. “People know your father.”
“Fuck my father.” I stood, walked across the room, and grabbed a Coca-Cola from the windowsill. I drank it hot. “He worked for the Ministry of Agriculture, okay? He is not on any list.”
“Have you heard from him? Or from your brother? Do they know the Americans are using your house?”
“What about your father, Hani? When was the last time you heard from him? Doing a lot of surgery in Amman, is he?”
“At least I know where he is. What kind of son are you?”
“I am the second son of an old man. And he is outside Fallujah, somewhere, as far as I know. Like everyone else.”
In truth, I knew much more than this. I knew with some detail how my father and brother were spending their days outside Fallujah. I knew because they had asked, if not demanded, that I participate. Why I did not simply admit this to Hani, I cannot say. What cause did I have to feel such shame?
Unwittingly, Mundhir helped me change the subject. He stepped all the way through the door and walked over to Dr. Al-Rawi’s desk. “My uncle says Ramadi is the next Fallujah, filling up with all the foreign jihadis who survived and escaped.” He sat on the desk, feet still touching the floor. “This time next year the Americans will burn Ramadi down, just like they did Fallujah.”
Hani furrowed his brow, as if searching Mundhir’s face for intent. Then, satisfied that his big friend was not just making an offhand comment, Hani brightened. “Yes. Thank you, Mundhir. You are right. And this is why we must leave now, before it is too late. We leave now, okay? Before we run out of money and are trapped in the city. Before the Americans launch another offensive in Anbar and cut us off from the Jordan highway. Before a death squad takes an interest in the university and finds us living here. We will not survive that, Kateb. And you know it. So we leave, find your father, and get enough cash from him to complete the journey.”
I rubbed my eyes. “Hani. Please tell me this is not your beach-resort plan again?”
“Yes. Yes, it is. Okay? This is phase one. Next, we go to Jordan, get more cash from my father, and then we go to Tunisia with it. And, yes, we open a bar on the beach.”
“Every time I hear this it sounds dumber.” I crumpled the can and tossed it on the pile in the corner. “Mundhir, you are the muscle in this arrangement. Your thoughts?”
Mundhir shrugged. “I go where you go.”
“Then I will go to sleep.” I fell onto my cot and pulled a pillow over my face.
Hani kicked the frame. “Kateb, this is over. Mundhir has his uncle’s taxi. Do you hear me? I am done arguing. Meet us downstairs at six tomorrow morning, if you like, or bloody well stay here.”
Hani kicked my cot again and waited for me to reply. I did not indulge him.
Finally, after a moment’s pause, Hani walked out. Mundhir followed him, leaving me the choice. I could remain in Professor Al-Rawi’s office, hoping Baghdad might improve, pretending that I could safely remain in this little room forever.
Or I could follow Hani and Mundhir into the western desert, feign an honest search for my father, and subtly herd them away from Habbaniyah, where, tucked neatly between the twin Sunni strongholds of Fallujah and Ramadi, it was rumored the old generals and ministers had gathered.
I waited until the footsteps faded away, pulled the pillow tighter around my face, and spat an English word into the feathers. “Fuck.”
The next morning, we packed small gym bags, leaving plenty of room. Easier to keep hidden, that way. No bulges. No obvious weight. Nothing to suggest we were going any farther than across town.
We each carried two sets of identification. Our university cards, with our full, Sunni names, and then the taxi licenses Mundhir’s uncle made for us with Shia first names. We could expect checkpoints whichever route we took to leave the city, so it was important to have the right name.
Our old passports we kept hidden in the spare tire.
Meeting on the street before dawn, it was agreed that Mundhir, who could pass for a cabdriver, should drive. He looked older and had been raised by uncles who drove cabs. He knew their habits and could fake the right kind of disinterest. Just a cabdriver taking two rich kids on a long fare.
I took my spot in the front seat without putting the matter up for discussion. “We will try the Karada Road first,” I told Mundhir. “If we cannot get through that way, we will jump over to Abi Nawas and try to cross the river farther north.”
Hani took his place in the backseat. I looked at him in the rearview mirror. He was hurt. Typical. “Sound good to you, Hani?” I asked.
“Fine.”
“You have a better idea?”
“I was going to suggest we take the Abu Ghraib Expressway and sneak south of Fallujah.”
I laughed. “I veto the Abu Ghraib Express on principle.”
Mundhir looked at both of us in turn. “So . . . Karada, then?”
Hani waved his hand. “Fine. Karada.”
I slapped Mundhir’s big shoulder and smiled. “I feel better about this already.”
We passed under the university gate and turned onto Karada Street. The sun came up. Curfew ended. We passed through the first checkpoint, manned by Americans from the Green Zone concerned only with guarding the bridge over the Tigris and protecting their little American city. Our Sunni cards got us through with no problem.
We weaved in between the parked trucks and overturned donkey carts, stores, and cafés bombed out or boarded up. Even the shops not targeted by militias were wrecked by gunfire and abandoned. Our taxi was the only car on the road.
We reached the Iraqi Army checkpoint at Amar Square, and, as planned, shoved the Sunni identification into our underwear.
The soldier on watch accepted our story that we owned the cab in partnership and were taking it to Dora for repairs. Hani and I did not speak much, and the squealing timing belt supported Mundhir’s claim. But when the soldier asked to see the trunk, Hani shifted noticeably in his seat. The soldier, becoming suspicious now, told us to get out.
Off to the side, before we were separated, I bumped against Hani’s shoulder and whispered in his ear, “The beach, Hani. Think about the beach.”
The soldier poked around the trunk with the barrel of his rifle, slid underneath the car, tapped the gas tank, and kicked the tires. Another soldier kept his rifle aimed at Hani, Mundhir, and me as we stood with our hands interlocked behind our heads.
I sighed and tapped my foot, trying to look impatient. Not scared or nervous, just put out. Mundhir stood rock still, his face impassive as a sphinx’s. Hani stared at the pavement and smiled.
Finding nothing, and confident we were merely cowards, the soldiers finally let us leave.
“Well done, men,” I said. “Way to keep your heads.” Then I laughed, not having intended the double meaning.
Mundhir now turned north onto Abi Nawas. Before long traffic on the river road slowed to a crawl and then stopped completely. We could not reach a bridge to take us west. Fearing we might be caught on the road past nightfall, we turned onto a side street, ever mindful that the farther east we traveled, the closer we got to the Shiite militias of Sadr City and the more certainly our Sunni names would get us killed.
We reached the expressway a little after noon and turned north toward Taji. We began the long crawl through the center of Baghdad, where turning off the highway anywhere meant checkpoints manned by government troops or Shia militiamen. The trip north took us deep into the afternoon. As dusk approached, we were committed to the Highway One bridge over the Tigris. Too far north to reach Ramadi before dark.
“We will need to find a place to camp,” Hani said. “There is nothing up there. And I do not know where we can find petrol. The Abu Ghraib Expressway on the other hand . . .”
“If I admit you were right, Hani, will you feel better?” I rolled down the window and felt the cooling afternoon air on my face.
“No. But you can say it anyway.”
Mundhir perked up. “There is a good road that runs west along the Grand Canal, past farms and little market towns. You can get petrol there. I drove it once with my uncle all the way to Lake Thar Thar.”
“You see?” I exclaimed. “It has all worked out.”
Hani fumed.
We reached the river, and, after waiting for an hour at the checkpoint, crossed the bridge. A lorry bomb some months earlier had reduced the eastbound span to one lane, with soldiers and highway patrolmen in blue shirts now directing cars around the charred blast hole one at a time.
To save petrol, we coasted down the back side in neutral. I looked south into the expanse of the city. Columns of smoke rose from Mansour, Dora, and Adhamiya.
I thought of Professor Al-Rawi, and the day I told him of my father’s plan to flee west into Anbar. I would have to go with my father, I told my professor, not aware that I was crying, having only come to tell him that work on my thesis would have to be postponed. While I flailed about with my apologies to him, seeking to make myself understood, Professor Al-Rawi moved about his office silently. By the time my embarrassing speech had ended, his couch had become a bed. My bed. I did not return home that night.
I thought about the Baghdad University campuses near each column of smoke on the horizon and wondered which had seen death that day. How many students. How many professors. I said good-bye to my city.
Mundhir’s road, the one he remembered from childhood, ran parallel to Saddam’s Grand Canal. Saddam had commanded that the canal be constructed on a line exactly east-west and not one degree off. My father had talked about this absurd requirement while the canal was being dug and how very difficult it became as work progressed.
We passed dry farms. Homesteads the canal had promised to irrigate before the pumps rusted and the water grew putrid. Dusk fell into night, and for the first time Mundhir acknowledged the petrol gauge.
“We have to stop. Twenty kilometers left. Maybe.”
“Then it is simple,” I said. “We stop at a market or a house, whichever we see first, and ask if they will sell to us.”
“Right,” Hani snorted. “Simple.”
“Or we park and wait for an American patrol. Let them think the car is a bomb and watch them blow it up. Which would you rather, Hani?”
Hani said nothing and merely waved his hand. His new favorite thing to do.
Mundhir stiffened in his seat. “Look.” He gestured with his great chin.
Green sodium lights spilled into the road from a cluster of buildings on the left, half a kilometer ahead. At least one, a squat building with a fixed awning, looked like it had been a petrol station at some point in the recent past. A regular souk with all the commerce and danger three young men could want.
“This is it,” I said. “Get ready.”
“Shia or Sunni?” Mundhir asked.
I had not considered our identification since crossing the bridge. We were well west of Baghdad, firmly into Anbar Province. Still, we were far enough from Fallujah and Ramadi for doubt. Serious doubt. A run-down market could be a net. A place to catch Sunni fighters fleeing west. Or it could be a gateway manned by Sunni loyalists meant to keep Shia out of Anbar. Who could say?
“Sunni,” I said quickly, because there was no good choice. We fumbled with our papers, hands diving into our underpants, as Mundhir coasted into the market and turned off the lights. There was no one walking, no signs of trade. But lights meant a generator. A generator meant petrol and possibly men willing to sell it.
“Who goes?” Mundhir asked.
“We all go,” Hani answered. I was tempted to argue, just for the sake of it. Just to frustrate him. But I could not. He was right.
“Yes,” I said. “We all go. On the count of three.”
Mundhir stepped from the car and closed his door without waiting for the count.
“Or now,” I said as Hani and I followed him.
“Hello?” Mundhir called out, fearless. “Are you selling petrol?”
“We have money,” Hani echoed, his voice too high. A voice that sought to appease. I wanted to choke him.
I heard movement in a building nearby. Footsteps on broken glass. Men whispering to each other. Then the sound that made my stomach turn. A Kalashnikov bolt snapping rounds into a chamber. Then another, and another.
“We are not armed,” I called out in a panic. “We only wish to buy petrol!”
Men emerged from the darkness carrying rifles. Men with new beards. Shia men. Men of a militia looking to kill Sunni boys just like us.
I put up my hands. “Just looking to trade, cousins. Please.”
A fat man with the thickest beard among them stepped forward and pointed his rifle at me. “Your papers, dog.”
“We left them in the car.” I said. “Apologies. We did not know this was a checkpoint, commander. Please, let me go and get them.” I turned around and pointed at the car. Mundhir and Hani had their hands up, too. “Mundhir,” I said, as calmly as I could, “go and get our papers.” So calm. So innocent and harmless that it would not occur to me that I should not talk to my Shia friend.
Maybe, in the darkness of the car, he could sneak the Shia papers from his pants.
“Shut your filthy mouth. And you.” The fat man pointed his rifle at Mundhir. “Remain still.” The militia leader did not believe. He turned his rifle back to me. “You. Talker. Tell me where you are coming from and where you go.”
Mundhir’s face held a look of despair only I would recognize, his eyes grown a little wider, his shoulders uncharacteristically sloped. He neither moved nor spoke. Meanwhile, Hani shook with fear, his jaw hanging slack.
I heard a man laugh like a demon in the shadows. “Mansour, I bet. Rich Baathist kids.”
So this was it, then. And we had only just started to run. All our plans snuffed out. I considered sprinting into the desert if only to receive a quick death from the bullets and thereby avoid the pliers, the nail guns. But with Mundhir and Hani standing there, I could not. I swallowed hard and resolved not to say another word.
Then I heard chickens, and the sound of cages bouncing on a rickety cart as it turned from the pavement onto the dirt.
“Ali?” an old man’s voice called out.
Though I sensed he was speaking to me, I did not turn around.
“What are you doing?” he continued. “I told you come directly to my house on the lake. No stopping. Why did you stop here?” The old man walked up behind me and patted my back. “Foolish nephew,” he spoke into my cheek. “And I’ll bet you ran out of petrol, too.”
The militia leader lowered his rifle. “You know these boys, Haji Fasil?”
“Yes, commander. This is my nephew, Ali. From Sadr City. He is coming to visit me on the lake. And these are his friends. Very convenient for us. Their car saves Abu Abdul and me the dark walk home. Still, foolish of you, Nephew.”
I took a chance and lowered my arms. The man with the rifle did not object, so I took another chance and turned my head. I saw the old man for the first time. Shorter than me, with cheeks shaved close. He wore the clean white robes of a bedouin. An elder, judging from his checkered kaffiyeh, a man who had made the hajj. He planted a hand in the small of my back, speaking to me with the pressure of his palm. Play along, boy, he told me with his fingertips. Save your life.
“I am sorry, Uncle,” I said. “So foolish. Yes, I ran out of petrol.”
He smiled warmly and nodded.
Another old man, older and shorter with an unkempt beard, shuffled past us, carrying two live chickens, wings tightly bound. He handed the chickens to the militia leader, who slung his rifle over his shoulder to accept them.
“Thank you, Abu Abdul,” the militia leader said to the old man in a loud, slow voice, raising the chickens up with one hand while placing the other hand over his heart in thanks.
The little man, Abu Abdul, grinned, bowed his head, waving his palms as if to say, Take them, take them; you are my friend. I understood from this Abu Abdul’s silence, from his grin and the motion of his hands, that he could not speak. Just as surely, I understood from the militia leader’s oddly abiding patience with Abu Abdul that he was simple, or at least widely considered so.
“We have your rice, as well,” Haji Fasil said, removing his hand from my back and walking over to his cart. He took two corners of a rice sack. “Nephew”—he laughed—“what is wrong with you? Come here and help me.”
I walked over to Haji Fasil’s cart, floating. My legs had disappeared. I grabbed two corners of the heavy sack and lifted.
Abu Abdul walked over to Mundhir and hugged him, like he had known the great big youngster forever. Mundhir hugged back, game if stiff. Hani let his hands drop, but kept his mouth shut.
Haji Fasil pulled me along at the other end of the rice sack. We stopped at the militia leader’s feet.
“Well,” Haji Fasil asked, “where should we put this?”
“You can drop it there. Your nephew needs petrol?”
“Yes,” I said as we dropped the rice. “Just enough to get to the lake.” The words tumbled over my dry tongue. Haji Fasil took my hand, like an uncle would his nephew’s.
“Five liters for the taxi,” the militia leader shouted to one of his company.
“We will be back next week,” Haji Fasil said cheerfully, pulling me by the hand toward our taxi. Time to go, he told me with his grip.
“Good. Next week then, God willing,” the militia leader replied, stepping back into the shadows. Two of his men bounded over to take the rice.
Meanwhile, Abu Abdul dragged Mundhir by the arm and motioned for him to lift the pushcart. Mundhir lifted it easily and followed Abu Abdul around to the trunk. Mundhir gave me a pleading look with his eyes. Open the trunk. Hurry.
A militiaman with a jerrican casually poured the precious fuel into the tank, yawning.
I opened the driver’s door and groped for the trunk release. Then, not knowing what to do next, I stepped in and closed the door behind me. I put my hands on the wheel.
The passenger door opened and Haji Fasil got in. “Home then, Nephew?”
I nodded while looking straight ahead.
“You remember the way—half a kilometer to the empty farmhouse and then a right turn on the dirt road.”
Mundhir and Hani piled into the backseat, with tiny, old Abu Abdul peaking out from between them, looking amused. I studied his face in the rearview mirror. A thick, ugly scar ran from his right ear, down his neck and boiled to a stop just above his sternum. He had few teeth left.
I had only driven a few times before. I pressed the clutch and turned the key.
“Easy left foot,” Mundhir said. “First gear is the most difficult.”
A force occupied me. A champion race-car driver from Germany. A taxidriver from Dora. I sent dirt and gravel flying as we bounced onto the road, free and alive.
Haji Fasil wasted no time. “You boys are very stupid.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Thank you. Thank you. Thank you,” Hani echoed. The words carried from him like leaves on a stream.
“Just drive normal,” Haji Fasil said.
“Thank God for you,” Hani said, suddenly religious. “God bless you. May the peace of the Prophet be upon you.” A good Muslim boy.
I glanced again into the rearview, wondering why Mundhir, always so polite, had remained quiet. It was because he was looking at Abu Abdul, trying to understand the old man’s gestures. Abu Abdul patted Mundhir’s cheek and opened his toothless mouth in a silent laugh. He poked at Mundhir’s arms and, pantomiming a strongman, scrunched his face tight. Mundhir smiled.
“We can give you money, Haji,” I said. “We have a little.”
Haji Fasil chuckled. “No. It is not your money we wanted. Had they killed you, you see, they would have left that safe house. We would have lost a customer. So no need to thank us. Just good business.”
“You sell them rice and chickens?”
“And cooking oil when we get it.”
“To Sadrists?”
“Of course. And to Ansar al-Sunna. And to Al Qaeda. That little market changes hands quite often.”
I remembered my Matthew Arnold and smiled. Where ignorant armies clash by night. Then I considered questions for a time before deciding on the simplest: “Who are you?”
“Turn here,” Haji Fasil said suddenly. After I did, he sighed. “We are two old men whose families live elsewhere. We have a house on the lake. We fish. We sell. We rescue stupid children from the blade.”
“Can we stay with you tonight?” Hani said, reaching up to the front with a fistful of dinar.
“Yes,” Haji Fasil said. “You are welcome. But put your money away.”
At their little farm by the lake, we arranged fallen eucalyptus logs around a fire pit and ate dinner by lantern light. Lamb, rice, and flat bread. We studied the stars as boys from hazy Baghdad are wont to do. We listened to the gentle lake waves lapping the shore just a few meters away on their little beach.
Abu Abdul pulled Mundhir by the arm and pointed to heavy things he wanted Mundhir to lift. Sometimes these things needed lifting. A valid farmer’s purpose. Other times Abu Abdul just wanted to clap and admire his new friend’s strength. After a time, he did not need to pull Mundhir’s arm. They walked together, shoulders close.
Hani stomped about the grounds alone and reported back from the darkness every few minutes to ask after Haji Fasil’s business. How much land did they have here? How many buildings? A well for water? A cistern? How close were they to the highway? Why did they bother to bring supplies to the markets? Why not make this place a market of their own?
Haji Fasil gave simple answers and feigned laziness.
He and I sat by the fire pit and waited for the others to tire.
“How did Abu Abdul lose his voice?” I asked.
“Cancer. Many years ago.”
“Ah. I saw the scar.”
“Yes.”
Cancer had taken my mother, so I knew he was lying. But I decided not to dig for the truth.
Mundhir and Abu Abdul went into the little mud shack with a lantern and emerged with Mundhir carrying a big stack of rugs and blankets. We spread them on the beach and readied for sleep while the old men retired to the house.
“Look at this beach,” Hani kept saying, the idea growing. “This could be great.”
I fell asleep thinking of ways to dislodge an idea I knew would kill us all. I wanted to crush it before it had a chance to mature. But I drifted into a dream before my thoughts, my heavy club of persuasion, could take form to do battle with his.
It was the best night of sleep I can remember.