Baghdad Fixer (3 page)

“Samara Katchens,” says the woman with the fiery hair. She offers her hand. It feels warm and soft in my palm, so much softer than I would have expected from a woman with such strong bones in her face, and such a loud voice. “You can call me Sam,” she says. Her teeth are bright white and I realize now that maybe it’s true what they say about the Americans, how you can spot them from their perfect smiles, because when people smiled in Birmingham they never looked like this.

The freckled man holds out his hand for more of a slap than a shake, then presents me his closed fist of knuckles, which I belatedly realize I’m meant to meet with mine. “Raphael,” he says. I smile and press the button a few more times.

The doors part, presenting Dr Hamza, one of Baba’s colleagues. He walks out and, on recognizing me, his eyebrows form an arc of pity, a well-traced shape I am sure he’s honed over the years of working here.

He grabs hold of me to kiss me on both cheeks and behind him, as I tilt my head from this side to that, I see that we are missing the lift. “I am praying hard for your Noor, and
Inshallah,
we’ll do our best.”

I gaze at him and don’t know what to say in return except
Inshallah
again. God-willing.
My
Noor? Why not Dr Mahmoud’s Noor?

I tell him I need to help these foreigners find a friend, and with another arc, which feels more artificial than the first, he points us in the direction of the morgue.

I hear Baba’s admonitions replay in my head. “Don’t tell me
Inshallah
,” he used to say when we were children, “tell me you’re going to do it.
Inshallah
is a euphemism for abdicating responsibility.”

~ * ~

I am worried that I will not be able to tolerate the smell and the sight of the bodies, so I implore the nurse to search for us. And while she is explaining that she is too busy, I fish around in my pockets and take out a wad of cash — at least 50,000 dinars — and even though this is probably half a month’s salary for her, it’s worth it for me. When I place the money in her hand and call her
uhti,
my sister, and say please, please, help these nice foreign people who are suffering alongside us in such a time as this, she nods and says
tab’an,
of course. I remind her that I am Dr al-Amari’s son and that we will be in the fifth-floor reception area.

Raphael, who trails behind the women taking notes, comes forwards.

“Hey, wait, this doesn’t make sense. That nurse isn’t going to know what Jonah looks like. I mean, Sam, not that he’s there. What are the chances? But still, if they don’t even have a name ID on him...someone’s got to...I’ll go down with her.”

Sam turns towards Raphael and wraps her arms around his shoulders and gives him a hug. I look around to see if anyone’s watching, though I’m not sure why. “That’s a good idea,” she says after she lets go. “If you can’t find us, just meet us—”

“On the fifth floor,” I interrupt. “We’ll be on the fifth floor.”

Raphael nods and leaves, loping down the hall in the direction in which the nurse disappeared.

In the lift, the women smile politely at me but then talk only to each other. They run through the places they’ve checked for their friend. The places they’ve yet to check. The time it will take to get back to the hotel in order to “file a story”. A story. Is that the same as an article for the newspaper? Isn’t “story” the word one uses when it’s made up?

We walk down the hallway towards the cardiology unit, but when I open the door nothing is as I expect it to be. The waiting room has been turned into an overflow space for patients, and there are about fifteen of them in various states of injury, a patchwork of flesh in disrepair. Nothing is as it is supposed to be, the machines are beeping too loudly in their cacophony of life-support and there’s no fresh air. I feel a sense of relief when I see my father walk out of one of the consulting rooms. He smiles as though he is surprised to see these foreign women alongside me.

“I thought you were resting,” he says.

I try to focus on his eyes, to avoid seeing the dried blood on his shirt which I know is Noor’s. Just as the splatters of blood on my shirt are Noor’s. I am glad that the foreign women cannot understand Arabic, and that they probably won’t detect my father’s less-than-enthusiastic reception.

“These are foreign journalists who got lost looking for a missing friend,” I say to him in English.

My father turns to them and introduces himself, and I find myself wishing that his words could sound perfectly English like mine, instead of his rolling Arab accent that reminds me of being ten years old in Birmingham and suddenly feeling conscious of the way my mother sounded when we went round the shops.

Baba walks the three of us to his office, down the hall past the labs. The small office feels familiar: the worn-out medical textbooks, the picture of the five of us on holiday in Dubai, a poster illustrating the chambers of the heart, which always made me nauseous if I looked at it for too long, all arteries and ventricles ending so abruptly in mid-air, as if they could be cut off from their natural attachments just like that. There is the same shiny black sofa, the one I can remember jumping on to as a boy, but which now seems tiny. My father points politely to it and says, please, please, you are welcome. Sam almost falls into the chair rather than carefully placing herself into it like a lady, like an Arab lady would have done.

“Baba, have they said anything yet about Noor?”

He looks at me and shakes his head, then turns to the foreigners. “You are most welcome to wait here. I wish I could be more help to you, but I’m afraid I’m needed right now in the operating theatre. I leave my good son to you,” he says to them in his oddly lilting English. And then to me, “I’ll be back.” And he leaves, and I don’t know what shaking his head means. No, they haven’t said anything? No, she isn’t going to make it?

June Park plucks a small notebook from the bag on her lap and starts flipping through it, circling things. “I’ve gotta file soon, Sam,” she says, not looking up from the page.

Sam runs a long finger beneath her nose and sniffs. “Let’s just see what turns up. We have to at least rule things out.”

June Park turns away from Sam and me, as if she wishes we weren’t here, and sinks into a mumbling trance. She takes a set of headphones, places them over her ears, and lets her hand rest on the metal gadget sticking out of the top of her bag.

“June does radio.” Sam’s face bends into an apologetic smile.

“I beg your pardon?” I ask.

“She’s a radio reporter, for NPR.”

“NPR. Is that a television station?”

“No. National Public Radio.”

“Also from America?”

“Yep. Based in Washington.” Sam interlocks one hand with the other in her lap. Her hands appear unusually strong, but her fingers are elegant, the nails painted with a light-brown polish.

“She’s also American?”

Sam smiles. “But don’t hold it against us.”

“But, if you don’t mind my asking, where is she from, before America? From China or Japan?”

June lifts the headphones off her ears and turns towards me. “I’m Korean.”

“Oh, I see, you are from Korea.”

“No, I’m from New York and my parents are from Korea.” She looks at Sam with widened eyes, and I sense I have said something irksome. She pulls the headphones back on to her ears.

“I, I’m sorry,” I say. “I hope I haven’t said something...I just didn’t think she looked American.” June again glances at Sam, then at a manly watch on her wrist, and turns away “I mean, of course some Americans come from somewhere else, I assume. But I mean, the real American looks, I mean, well. June Park. Such a beautiful name. Like poetry.”

Sam laughs and shakes her head. “It is, but I guess you’re thinking of June, like the month. Joon spells it J-O-O-N. It’s a Korean name.”

“It’s...so they spell the names of the months differently there?”

She rolls her eyes. “Forget it. But you know, I like people who ask questions. That’s how you learn things. It has nothing to do with the month of June.” She is looking me over now, and remembering that my clothes are blood-stained I suddenly feel ashamed. But she doesn’t seem to be focusing on what I’m wearing. She smiles at me and says, “How come your English is so good?”

“I lived in Birmingham, England for about a year and a half. My father worked there as a hospital registrar when we were children.”

“Nice.” And then there is a crash somewhere to the south, like half a neighbourhood collapsing, and as it meets the ground the floor trembles and the windows rattle. We all look at each other.

Sam stands and peers out of my father’s office window. “Do you know where that came from?”

“Maybe near Baghdad University, or Jazair, or Al-Dura. South of here.”

“Yes, well, of course from the south.” Her eyes flash at me, as if to warn me that she doesn’t need help telling east from west.

“I do know the city a bit.”

“I see. Did you come in with the American army, then?” We heard that the Americans have women in their tanks, which seems odd to us. Would they make their women fight the war with the men? Some people say the American tanks and soldiers are already inside Baghdad, but I haven’t seen either yet. It was reported on the radio, the bit about the women, as a way of showing the Iraqi people how immoral the Americans are. Infidel invaders, the radio announcer called them.

“Oh no. I’m not an embed, thank God. We’re unilaterals.” She pronounces the word, which I have never heard used in the noun form, in a funny accent, drawing out the
u.
“According to the army anyway. And you? You and your father both work here at the hospital?”

I see her looking at my shirt and realize that, with the dried blood on it, she’s probably mistaken me for a doctor or other hospital employee. “Oh no,” I say. “I don’t work here. I’m a teacher of English language and literature. At the Mansour High School, which is considered to be one of the best in Baghdad. But this, well, this friend of our family was shot tonight just before the air raid. Or during the air raid. We’re waiting to hear... something.” If I were working here, wouldn’t I be off trying to save someone’s life?

Her sharp cheekbones fall a little soft and her mouth opens. Her eyes search me and my shirt.

“I, oh, I didn’t know. I misunderstood why you...I’m so sorry. I hope he’ll be okay.”

“She. We hope she will survive.”

Raphael appears in the doorway, slightly out of breath. “Well, thank you, Raphael, for saving us the trip to hell and back,” he says in a high-pitched voice. He puts his hand on the wall and heaves. “Sorry for the sarcasm. They say it’s a normal reaction to nasty shit. Good news is, Jonah’s not there. Gave ‘em some more cash, too, so that they’ll keep his name on a priority list.” No one moves. Raphael leans over and snaps two fingers close to the headphone-covered ears of Joon Park. “Come on, ladies, let’s get out of here.”

Joon stands and begins to pack up her things without saying a word. Sam and I look at each other for a moment, and then we both get up too. She holds out her right hand and I take it, probably for longer than I should.

“I really hope your friend will be all right,” she says.

I take back my hand and put it across my chest. “You’re very kind.”

“Sam, let’s hit it,” Raphael says. He stands in the doorway of my father’s office and raises his hand in the air, looking at me. “Hey thanks, Nabil. Thanks for your help. Shukran.” He mispronounces it, with too much stress on the first syllable. SHOOK-raan. Joon nods and forces a grin in my direction, tossing silky black hair out of her face. Sam reaches into her bag, pushes things around with a frown, then pulls out a notebook. She writes her name on a blank page, and beneath it, Al-Hamra Hotel, Room 323. She rips the paper from its spine and holds it out towards me.

“Maybe we can be in touch,” she says.

“Oh? Thank you very much.”

“Don’t thank us,” she replies. “We should be thanking you.”

“Your friend, have you thought of checking Abu Ghraib for him?”

“The prison?” The others, walking at the double, turn the corner on the way to the lift, but Sam stops in the middle of the corridor.

“Yes,” I say. “When people go missing it often means they’ve been arrested, and I’ve heard that there are people there who can provide information from inside. You’d do well to offer tips when you look for him.”

“
Baksheesh
?” Sam grins, presumably trying to show off whatever Arabic she’s picked up.

“You can call it that. No one likes to work for free, to take risks, especially now in this situation. People are afraid. Otherwise, I mean, normally, we are generous people. Anyone would like to help you. We want everyone, even Americans, to feel welcome in our country.” I am surprised by this commentary tripping off my lips, by my sudden keenness to promote Iraqi hospitality.

Sam nods. She moves to walk away, then turns back. “I can see that,” she says. And she blinks at me again with both eyes, in a nice way that feels almost like a wink, and then heads towards the lift.

I stand there and wait, and listen to the people and the machines, and decide I will ask around downstairs for an imam or some other religious person who will know which prayer to say for Noor. I think it should be
Ya Latif
which one is supposed to recite in situations of great distress, or when praying for someone who is gravely ill. I think it’s also supposed to be repeated more than a hundred times. Could that be? But then my father turns the corner, and I see his face and stand still. He gestures for me to go back into his office, but I’m stuck here with the corridor narrowing on me, the floor moving all on its own.