Saif came the next morning to the patio, where I was watching the pink-and-purple light of the seven o’clock hour blink out. The Sultan was rising again, a new day. I hadn’t slept, and held a cigarette that wouldn’t stop quivering.
“She’s here,” he said, handing me a photocopied map with a red circle on it. “Can you hear me, Loo-tenant Porter? This is where she is.”
We went to her. I needed to do something with the day.
She lived in a hamlet west of the Villages, just across the Anbar border. I coordinated with the marines, since they were the landowners there, which suddenly sounded like such a ridiculous term.
Captain Vrettos commended me for my initiative when I said I needed to talk to a source outside our area. He looked almost healthy for once, even had color in his face. The news of the Cleric’s death had already ricocheted up the command—we’d received congratulatory messages from the Big Man and brigade commander, and were expecting one from the division commander. Captain Vrettos thanked me again for what we’d done the night before.
I didn’t say anything, because I couldn’t. He asked if I was okay. I said I was. He said he was always there if I needed to talk about the rigors of war and leadership. I said that was cool to know.
“One more thing,” he said.
“Oh?” I said.
“It’s the first day of Ramadan,” he said. “Just so you know.”
• • •
We left Ashuriyah. I saw the Barbie Kid on the roadside, alone near the northern fringe of the market. He leaned against a crooked utility pole and his pink sweats shined in the morning like a fallen star. He still didn’t have any shoes on his feet. I waved, but he just watched us and texted on a cell phone. We passed under the stone arch. Though I didn’t turn around to face the dead cleric and his beard of snow, I felt his glasses on my back. Somehow, I thought, he knows I’m off to find his daughter.
We drove west, the countryside melting into shades of dun. Berms rose and fell like ocean swells. This is the desert, I thought, free and true. I took a gulp of Rip It from the back hatch and breathed in baked air and laughed because it didn’t feel so strange anymore. None of it did. The soldiers asked what was wrong, and I brought up Ramadan.
“The Muslim fasting month,” I said. “We should do it with them.”
We hit an IED. One of the tire-popping kind that rattle the brain cage but fail to actually pop tires. A few months before, it would’ve caused an uproar, stirring the bantam energy of men yet untested. The vehicle’s emergency system was the only one who spoke. “Exit the vehicle immediately,” she said. We got out, checked our ears for blood, and made sure the Stryker still worked. Then we kept going.
At a dried-out reservoir bed, we turned south onto a thin road made of silt. Everyone seemed nervous, the radios clear of chatter, limbs taut and stiff. No one liked unfamiliar areas this late into a deployment, and before the mission I’d overheard some of the joes bitching about me “glory hunting.”
I was surprised by how little I cared what they thought.
A herd of one-humped camels wandered onto the road, and we stopped. The men asked if we could drive through them, because it could be a delay tactic for ambushers, and who cared if we ran over a camel or two? I told them to shut up and wait, because they were just camels. The shepherd, a teenage boy wearing a Guns N’ Roses concert tee, frowned as we passed, even though we’d waited for him and his herd.
About a mile down the dirt road, we spotted a half moon of five small mud huts. We parked there. I dismounted, tapping Snoop and Batule to follow. There was a small, square garden of green shrubs and dandelions in the middle of the houses, marked by two strands of barbwire and four wooden poles at each corner. The air was windless and smelled of wildflowers.
The three of us walked by the huts. Nothing stirred, and the only sound I could make out was our own strained breathing. I searched the windows for peeking eyes or fingertips holding back curtains. Thoughts of an ambush flitted through my mind. I took off my helmet, grabbed the hand mic on Batule’s back, closed my eyes, and waited for the sniper’s shot I’d never hear, let alone see.
I counted to ten and thought of a train ride with Will when we were boys, all infinite hopes and forever dreams, play-fighting with our hands around each other’s shoulders. We were pretending to be antiheroes like good postmodern American boys, he Batman, me Wolverine, watching the sleepy coastal towns of California blur by, slowly at first, then quicker and quicker until we couldn’t even make out the names of the towns being passed, let alone the streets or mailboxes.
I’d worshipped my brother my entire life, though it sometimes came out wrong, like as resentment. Five and a half years’ difference in age could do that. He’d been a tough act to follow, and I figured the last thing he needed was more people telling him how smart and capable he was. I knew everyone thought I’d joined up because he had, even our parents. Maybe he felt that way, too. But that hadn’t been it, not exactly. It wasn’t to be him, or to be like him. It’d been to believe in something the way he had. To know idealism as something more than a word. That had been what I wanted.
He’d lost that belief somewhere along the line, somehow. I doubted I’d ever had it.
Now he was learning to be a goddamn businessman. And me? I didn’t even know anymore.
I opened my eyes, took in a deep breath of dust, and cursed. Ignoring Snoop and Batule, I walked to the center garden and studied the dandelions.
The sound of kicked pebbles brought my eyes up from the garden. A small woman in an ankle-length gray dress walked across the half moon spinning an umbrella above her. She wore a shawl but no veil, and hair fell from her head in black waves. Her complexion was fair for an Iraqi. A coffee stain of a mark splashed across her left cheek, and an arrow nose pierced out at us. I lapped her up like water, lingering at the curves of her hips and again at the small dip in her neckline. It wasn’t until I made it to her eyes, though, two jade ovals shining defiantly, that I knew we’d found her.
“Well-come,” she said. Behind her, two boys wearing matching striped shirts clutched her dress. Neither stood taller than her knees. A small pink scar the width of Silly String ran down the elder’s left earlobe to the top of his neck. He scowled at us while his little brother stared.
“Hi,” I said. “My name’s Jack Porter.”
“Hello.”
I pointed to the black umbrella and switched to Arabic. “What’s with that?”
She smiled, revealing a set of blocky teeth stained light brown. A dimple sank into her cheek, under the birthmark.
“It seldom rains here,” she said. Her English was awkward and slow, but clear. “But we need many umbrellas.”
She kept spinning the umbrella in circles, clockwise twice, counterclockwise once, again and again. I watched with my mouth agape until Snoop coughed.
“Would you and your men like any water?” she asked.
“No, thanks,” I said. “It’s Ramadan, you know.”