Authors: Roy David
McDermott gestured to three of the men closest to the building to rush it, two others to mount a covering position. Leading the way, P.J. barged into the door, lunging with a hefty shoulder charge to finally force it open. Alex just caught sight of him disappearing through the doorway followed by the rest.
Several minutes passed. She could feel her heart thumping as she tried to suck in air. She braced herself. There could be more shots any second. Was she still a sitting duck?
‘Stay here,’ McDermott said, making a dash for the building.
She tried to protest, but only a weak, cracked mumble came out of a throat seared dry with terror. Now facing the open street, a dull, aching dread took over. A feeling of desolation grabbed at her, tormenting her insides. For a moment, she had never felt so alone, so vulnerable.
Closing her eyes only exacerbated her alarm, for she could feel the blood coursing through her head, pounding her ears.
McDermott reached the building’s entrance and she watched him lean his shoulder against the doorway, his rifle pointing inside.
Impulse gripped her. She ran after him. Gripping her camera
close to her midriff to stop it swinging, she hurtled forwards, catching up with him. He turned round, annoyed to see her at his shoulder.
‘Couldn’t bear it on my own any longer,’ she heaved.
‘You’d have been okay back there,’ he snapped.
Sergeant Rath bounded down the stairs. ‘All clear, Lieutenant – empty.’
McDermott surveyed the street, pressed the button on his radio. ‘You got anything, Herman?’
‘All quiet this end, sir.’
He turned to Alex. ‘In the Bradley, quick,’ he demanded.
The vehicle was still a distance away, blocking the end of the street. Should she run to it? The rear hatch opened. She could see Joe Herman beckoning her forward. McDermott urged her, ‘Go, go.’
She sprinted towards the Bradley, any second expecting the sound of a shot. Just feet away from the open hatch and Herman’s outstretched hands, she felt her legs starting to give way. Gritting her teeth and with a final surge, she managed to scramble aboard.
On the floor of the Bradley, shaking and bathed in sweat, she refused Herman’s offer to help her up.
‘Please, just leave me for a minute,’ she pleaded.
‘It’s okay, now – you’re safe in here,’ he whispered gently.
She looked into his eyes, searching for reassurance. He offered his hand. Letting out a deep, shuddering, sigh, she sat up and allowed him to guide her to a seat.
A minute later, McDermott’s all-clear message crackled on Herman’s radio. If she trusted the lieutenant’s judgement, it meant she was safe to go back out. Totally shattered, she couldn’t summon up the nerve.
The safety of the Bradley cocooned her. Eyes closed, she leant back, exhausted, eventually curling up into a self-protecting ball. When she eventually came round, she realised she’d been sucking her thumb like a baby.
It was at this moment she decided she must leave Iraq.
* * *
Alex phoned the major the next day saying she was unwell. She wasn’t lying, she felt wretched. The attack on the patrol had left its mark and, in the night, the Kandahar dream’s severed arm tried to choke her.
Running a bath – hot water at last – she sank down in the tub to think. She wanted out of Iraq. Not because of the people or the country itself, but what it had become, a maelstrom. As sympathetic as she felt about the shambolic state of the nation, she had to leave for her own sanity.
Whether Kowolski liked it or not, there was no other choice.
* * *
He put the press cuttings down on the table of the Palestine Hotel lounge area with a bang that startled her. ‘And what the hell is this, Alex?’
She looked at the picture, her picture, of the shooting incident. ‘Ooh, you’ve even printed it off in colour – you shouldn’t have,’ she countered sarcastically.
‘Listen, sweetheart, I’ll have you off this case and back home chasing ambulances or whatever you do. There’ll be no more embeds, no more Iraq,
nada
. This is bullshit, entirely against the rules and you know it… no clearance, no confirmation, no official spokesman line.’
‘It’s what I do, remember?’
He leaned forward, towering over her. Several people sitting nearby cast their eyes towards the raised voices. ‘And who did write this piece of shit – your boyfriend?’
‘Everything’s a true reflection of the incident. The truth bother you?’
‘Let me ask you something, Alex. You a bleeding heart liberal or something – or are you just so way left of the Democrats it clouds your thinking?’
She stared at him, a look of indignation, her eyes narrowing. What did he really know about her? Was he goading her into something else than this? ‘I simply happen to believe in democracy – and in my book, that means the truth. I’ll leave the ugly politics and the scheming to the likes of you.’
He turned on her again. ‘You just don’t get it do you? It’s only a game to you guys. You breeze in here, report any old stuff like it’s the definitive version of events, then you’re gone. It’s the likes of me who has to pick up the pieces, try and repair the damage.’
‘Damage! That’s a laugh. It wasn’t the media who shot this poor mother’s son. I saw it, I recorded it, it’s what damn-well happened – with or without your permission.’
He slumped into the seat beside her.
‘Anyway, I’m going home.’
‘What? But you haven’t finished.’
‘I’ve had enough, ten days, it’ll have to do. I’ll email you the picture file when I get back to my room.’
She got up to leave. He reached out and held her arm. His voice was lower, almost a whisper, a hint of pleading.
‘You’ll be letting me down. This is really important.’ His tone was no longer combative. ‘Listen, let’s talk again in the morning after you’ve slept on it – okay?’
He watched her leave the room, his eyes returning to Alex’s picture. Studying it, he was drawn to the blood on the mother’s hands, the last traces of her only son’s life. He felt his face flush and, for a second, a lump rose in his throat.
* * *
Kowolski beamed a wide smile as Alex approached his breakfast table, standing up and pulling out a chair. He couldn’t help but notice the dark shadows under her eyes as if she’d hardly slept.
‘Coffee?’
She nodded, grim-faced.
‘I have to admit, I was all set to twist your arm about staying – until I saw the portfolio of photographs you sent me. They’re fantastic, really good work.’
‘Thanks,’ she said, a little brighter. ‘I could have stayed another two weeks and not really improved on anything.’
‘So you’re going home?’
‘Yep,’ she said resignedly.
‘Listen,’ he said, lowering his voice a notch, looking around him. ‘Personally, I don’t blame you. I never figured things would be this bad out here – but I’ve taken on the job so I’ll have to see it through.’
Kowolski’s admission and his conciliatory nature caught her unawares. She’d been expecting another row; a scene; people staring.
In reality, he felt relatively relaxed about Alex’s picture of the shooting incident. None of the major US papers had used it. The newspapers were full of the President’s speech, simply lapping up the ‘mission accomplished’ line, devoting pages to the occasion.
Tossing a packet on the table, he leant back in his chair. ‘Three weeks’ work in cash – and there’s more.’
‘But I…’
He raised his hand, halting her. ‘I’ll need some of your pictures blown up big, real big. You work with a good lab?’
Alex nodded, twisting the package in her hands.
Kowolski pointed to it. ‘If you did find you needed to come back here, there’s a ticket in there to Kuwait and a pass that will get you on to any military aircraft coming up this way.’
She managed a half-smile. ‘Sorry, but I very much doubt I’ll have reason to set foot in Iraq ever again.’
But she couldn’t have been more wrong.
9
Alex had the rest of the day to say her farewells, Kowolski having bagged her a ride to Kuwait on a C5 cargo plane that was leaving late afternoon. She wanted to visit Aban and Farrah al-Tikriti but they said they had no electricity. Instead, she invited them to the Palestine.
The couple greeted Alex like old friends.
‘I have an interview this afternoon with the Coalition Provisional Authority,’ Aban beamed.
‘That’s great news, Aban,’ Alex said, ordering coffee. ‘I’m sure you can help the country’s recovery. And how is everything else?’
Aban paused until the waiter was out of earshot. ‘There is great unrest in the community. We have no electricity, no water, no gas, the infrastructure is in ruins.’
Alex nodded her head in sympathy. ‘I can see things are getting tighter and I’ve only been here a short time. I can’t imagine what it’s like actually living amongst it.’
Aban continued in full flow, his voice occasionally cracking with emotion. Farrah’s eyes darted between them like she was watching a tennis match, hanging on his every word and anxious to endorse his take on the situation at the slightest hint of hesitation.
‘The Americans think Iraqis will be grateful to them for deposing Saddam, but we do not take kindly to any invasion. It is historic – the Ottoman Empire. The Turks ruled our country for almost four hundred years and it has never been forgotten. I fear there are many problems to come.’
‘What about this guy Muqtada al-Sadr and his followers?’ Alex said.
‘Your government would be wise to pay him full attention. He is not strong at this moment – maybe he has a few hundred followers of his extremist Shi’ite views. But only six weeks have past since the Americans invaded. In a few months, the people’s growing discontent could easily turn those hundreds into thousands.’
He leaned forward in his chair, speaking more quietly. ‘You remember I said that Iraq, under Saddam, at least was a secular country. Shi’ites and Sunnis worked together, married into each other’s families. No one cared about such things. You were just Muslim – or maybe Christian like Saddam’s deputy Tariq Aziz, who was Catholic. Our tribes were mixed – the al-Janabi tribe was Sunni and Shia, so too the Dulaimis. An Iraqi’s first loyalty was to his family, to the neighbourhood, then to the tribe. Religion came lower. I think it is not dissimilar to how it is in many Western countries. But, now…’
He waved his hands in the air in a gesture of helplessness. ‘It might not always be so. The al-Sadrs, the Sistanis, threaten to create their own kingdoms based on their religious extremism. Intolerance and bigotry will come to the fore.’
‘Jeez – it’s extremely depressing, Aban.’
He slowly shook his head, a look of defeat on his face. ‘Once the lid is off the box who knows what will crawl out?’
* * *
On checking out of the Palestine, Alex took a ride to the Green Zone in a Chevy SUV with armed guards from a private security firm riding shotgun. Each minder was tall, laconic. Lazy gum-chewing jaws suggested everything was cool. Black impenetrable shades refused to reveal otherwise.
She’d been sorry not to have seen the British journalist, Charles Toller, whose alarming take on events opened her eyes to the daunting uphill task facing Iraq. She left him a note.
McDermott, on a morning off, had agreed to their rendezvous. She told him she just wanted to say goodbye. In reality, a
burning desire had consumed her since the last patrol. She felt she needed to excuse her behaviour after freaking out. Curiosity about McDermott also played a part. Although he’d declined to talk about his exploits, she was interested in hearing why he thought he was fighting in Iraq. If McDermott was representative of the young men and women laying down their lives for America, Alex felt it important to know his reasoning.
One of her minders, a Brit, who’d been silent, suddenly turned to her. ‘I hear your buddies shot a family to pieces at a checkpoint last night,’ he said. ‘Serves them fuckin’-well right.’
‘You’ve gotta stop, man,’ the driver rowed in, shaking his head. ‘Could be friggin’ insurgents with an RPG or something.’
Toller was right; the streets were getting bloodier.
Alex’s anger suddenly took over. ‘For crying out loud, you guys. Someone in the distance shines a flashlight – how the fuck does an ordinary Iraqi know who it is? Could be a sectarian death squad who’d kill you for having the wrong name. Get real for Chrissake, you’ve got no idea.’
The Brit looked at her with disdain. He raised his submachine gun from his lap, pointed it at the window and laughed coarsely. ‘Pow, pow, pow,’ he mimicked, while shooting his own imaginary Iraqi family.
Alex looked at him, disgusted. ‘Yeah, very clever – it figures.’ She pressed back in her seat with an exaggerated sigh.
Death from US troops, death from insurgents, death from extremists. The threat was omnipresent. And dead was dead in any language and for whatever reason.
Outside, the atmosphere looked normal enough at first glance; plenty of traffic, people walking, shopping – even if consumer goods were growing ever more scarce. Except that, these days, normality in Baghdad was a commodity in short supply.
The SUV picked up speed, just clearing a junction on a new red light. ‘Stopping’s a mug’s game in this town,’ the driver said.
‘Unless you’re an Iraqi family at a checkpoint?’ Alex replied, hoping they’d be half intelligent enough to see the irony.
* * *
Alex spotted McDermott sitting alone at the far end of the officers’ mess. Giving her a wave, he pulled out a chair.
‘You okay now, Ma’am?’ McDermott sat upright, running a hand over his head self-consciously.
‘Thankfully,’ she said, glancing about her, shifting.
He followed her gaze. ‘You’ll have to excuse some of my fellow officers – they haven’t seen a civilian woman this close in a while. The local girls are covering up, much to the guys’ displeasure. Headscarves and cloaks seem to be growing in popularity.’
‘Religious clampdown. I hear a girl was threatened in the street recently – acid in her face if she didn’t conform,’ Alex said, shuddering. ‘Listen, about the other day, I…’