Barefoot in Baghdad (17 page)

***

By the end of the week Yusuf had confirmed the plans to move the girls to Sulaymaniyah. Just as I was getting ready to thank him for his spectacular work, I received a phone call from Captain Murphy. Her voice was a bit shaky, and I braced myself to hear that the brothers had died in prison. But she wasn’t calling me about the brothers in Baqubah at all. Instead, she was calling to cancel the transport of the girls to the north.

“Don’t take this personally,” she said, “but the colonel wants you off the case.”

“Why? What’s happened?” I was shocked.

This wasn’t the ending I had expected. We were so close to having closure on the case. I was bewildered. One minute the colonel was begging me to take over their case, and the next he was pulling the plug?

Anne hesitated. “How well do you know the staff member that came for the intake interview?” she asked.

Without hesitation I responded that I knew her very well and had complete trust in the way she operates. Muna had more than proven her dedication and commitment for Women for Women International.

Anne said that the colonel believed she had threatened the girls, and now he wanted all NGOs off the case. It would be handled by the military.

“How?” I asked. The colonel had offered no solutions previously. What did he think he could do now?

She told me it was classified. I thanked her for the update and hung up the phone. I could not imagine what could have gone wrong. I had underestimated Zeena. Somehow, she had managed to get her way.

I called Muna and told her about the colonel’s decision. She seemed as surprised by the news as I was. I asked her what happened in the last meeting and asked if she had said anything that could have been misinterpreted. Muna explained that she had followed the intake interview exactly as Khanim had outlined. The girls reiterated their desire to stay with the U.S. Army and emphasized that they would only go to the north as a last resort. Muna had grown frustrated with them and told them they were being insolent and ungrateful to those who were trying to help them.

I kept asking if she had lost her temper, but she insisted she had remained calm the entire time. Suddenly, all I could hear on the other end of the phone was breathing.

“Oh, no. Now I remember I said something that could be twisted into a threat,” Muna said. “They were so rude, I told them that if they were my daughters, I would have given them a
rashdee
—a slap.”

Bingo.

That’s all Zeena needed to get us out of the picture. She had won her battle. I wasn’t so confident she would have the wits to win the war.

***

The next morning, Yusuf joined me on the office balcony for a cigarette. I wasn’t a smoker, but I woke up that morning desperately wishing I were. I had asked my driver to stop by the cigarette kiosk on Haifa Street on the way to the Shawaka office. They sold single cigarettes, but I decided to buy a whole pack of Marlboro Lights. Now I was beating the pack against the back of my thumb. I wasn’t sure why. I had seen professional smokers do it before opening a fresh pack, and I found it oddly soothing.

“So why are you so upset?” Yusuf asked. He took the pack from my hands, peeled off the plastic wrapper, opened the flip top, and handed me a cigarette. “You got what you wanted. You are off the case.”

I stared at the flowing expanse of the Tigris River below. Our office’s location along the river’s edge made it one of my favorite places in Baghdad. I thought about what Yusuf said. In a way, he was right. I wanted off the case because I knew it could only end badly. On the other hand, I also knew there was no way of ensuring the younger girls’ safety. And now I would never find out what happened to the wrongfully imprisoned brothers. I remember Abdullah’s words about knowing when to intervene. I knew this was a fight I would have to sit out, but it didn’t mean I had to be happy about it.

I trusted Abdullah enough to know better than to make further inquiries about the girls. Such questions would link me to their disappearance and start rumors.

I later learned that not only was I suspended from the case, but so was Captain Murphy for having recommended me. We were thereafter denied access to information about the case. To this day I have never been able to find out what happened to the runaway girls or the two young men accused of kidnapping them.

I had envisioned my death in Iraq many times.

It started off as my own anxiety manifesting itself into the form of worst-case scenarios. The scenarios usually centered on wrong-time and wrong-place deaths. I wasn’t the only one. Over time this kind of thinking developed into a sadistic game between the expatriates as we all competed about the worst way to go.

As I stood straddling the toilet, yelling out the window for help, I could not help but realize I had a winner.

Thirty minutes earlier I had managed to lock myself inside the bathroom of one of our Baghdad women’s centers, which we were renovating. Apparently the stalls were the last on the engineers list, as the door to my stall was jammed. The first ten minutes I had been paralyzed with horror as I realized that I had not only locked the stall but also locked the front door to the bathroom as well. There was no logic to the fact that I had locked not one but two doors except that I was so exhausted that I was no longer thinking. And now I had to pay the price. After the initial shock wore off, I started to bang and yell on the stall, but to no avail. I then noticed that I still had a sliver of luck on my side, and the bathroom window was right above the stall in which I was locked. I climbed the toilet and started yelling.

Nothing.

It was almost sunset. The official opening of the women’s centers was the next morning, and we had been working late hours to make sure the center would be ready in time. I shook my head as I realized that nobody could hear me. My imagination ran wild as I realized that it would be easy for the staff to think someone else had taken me home. I prepared myself to be alone for the next twenty-four hours in the Baghdad bathroom stall. A part of me was actually relieved at the thought of my staff thinking I was home and leaving me behind. It would be far less embarrassing than their figuring out their brilliant boss had locked herself in the bathroom.

Just as I accepted the idea that I had been left behind, I heard the outer door of the bathroom rattle. Then there was a knock. I started to yell.

“Manal?” It was Yusuf. He must have noticed I was missing. He must have combed the center room by room. I was so happy to hear his voice. I could actually feel tears welling in my eyes.

I anxiously waited in my stall as I heard pounding on the door. Yusuf must have been kicking in the door. Somewhere in the excitement I climbed back on the toilet, mentally cheering him on. Finally, the bathroom door swung open and Yusuf charged in. I could feel my face grow red as I imagined the sight that greeted him. There I was, my head peering over the bathroom stall, thrilled that I had been saved. Well, partially saved.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

I was tempted to give a snide response but realized I was not in the best position for it. “This door is locked too,” I offered feebly.

Yusuf shook his head as he looked at the bathroom stall. By now Mais, Fadi, and other staff had arrived to witness the scene. I avoided Fadi’s eyes, knowing that he would never let me forget this.

As it was impossible for Yusuf to kick in the door without the stall door bashing me, he went into the stall next to mine and climbed on the toilet.

“What are you doing?” It was my turn to ask him.

Yusuf did not respond. He waved me off my throne and started to climb over the bathroom stall. He plopped down in my stall and instructed me to squeeze myself against the back wall. He then kicked the door from the inside out. Everyone clapped as the stall swung open.

I smiled at him. I knew I should show some more gratitude, but I was embarrassed to the core. Here I was developing a center to empower women, and I was already playing a damsel in distress. With the worse setting possible.

That was the first hint that the eve of the women’s center opening was headed for disaster. The next thing was a phone call from the U.S. Embassy. We had planned for the women’s center to be opened on March 8, International Women’s Day. It was also the day scheduled for the signing of the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL). There were a lot of debates over the TAL due to its weak language about protecting women’s rights. Some genius in Ambassador Paul Bremer’s office had recommended that he attend a women’s center opening as a symbol of his dedication to Iraqi women. Our women’s center opening.

My heart stopped the moment the press officer explained the plan. I closed my eyes, refusing to allow panic to sweep in. I calmly explained that the opening of the women’s center was an event for Iraqi civil society, and we were not planning on having any U.S. government officials present. I also explained that we had officially invited Iraq’s human rights minister, Abdel Basset Turki, for the ribbon-cutting ceremony. A polite discussion followed, and a lot of talk about the importance of the U.S. government highlighting its short-term wins. I tried to remain insistent that the ambassador’s presence would deflect from the main objective—the Iraqi women. I pointed out that his attendance at the opening would eclipse all other activities and speeches. It was not the introduction I wanted to present to the Iraqi women. The press officer very calmly responded with the words I had been dreading since the moment I had accepted the women’s center project.

“It’s our money,” the press officer said.

During the first months of my time in Iraq I been cynical about cooperating with the military and dedicated myself to working directly within the communities. Yet the reality was that nonmilitary delivery was too slow.

I was having nightmares of all the girls I had been unable to help. Yusuf would remind me over and over of our successes, but the fact remained, we had not been able to make a direct difference. This was why the women’s center project was so important to me. It was clear that women did not have any place of their own to go. I had traveled to Karbala and Hillah to see Fern Holland’s work on the women’s centers, and the impact was immediate. You could see the joy. The women’s faces glowed with excitement as they floated between the computer and training rooms.

I wanted the same solid results. I was desperate for tangible change, so desperate that I became blind to the cost.

I spent the next four hours trying to negotiate that cost. I would not let the women’s center be hijacked. It belonged to the Iraqi women, and the Iraqi minister of human rights was going to cut the damn ribbon. Nobody else. Even Capt. Anne Murphy stood on the opposite side, desperately trying to get me to understand that this was a good thing. The fact that Ambassador Bremer would attend the opening would garner attention from Washington’s highest levels and could lead to broader support for women’s issues. But I wasn’t buying it. It was a Kodak moment that would jeopardize the future of our project.

In the end, we made a compromise I thought I could live with. Ambassador Bremer would not attend the official opening of the women’s center. Instead, he would appear three hours prior to the official opening for an informal breakfast with some Iraqi women. I went one step further and insisted that we choose the women. He had already met with some elite women; it was time for him to meet some marginalized women from the areas of Baghdad he had never seen. Women from Shawaka, Sadr City, Shaalah, the neighborhoods I worked in every day.

The next day was a blur of activity. The morning breakfast with the ambassador went incredibly smoothly, with the main photo opportunity not being the women but the scene when the ambassador was forced to take off his infamous combat shoes to sit on the floor with the women. The Iraqi women asked him questions and primarily focused on the time line for the delivery of services. One woman from Shawaka grilled him on electricity. Another woman asked him what he was going to do to give widows access to their husband’s pension. Paul Bremer smiled, drank tea, and avoided the direct questions with polite ambiguities. Nonetheless, it was deemed a success by all.

Just as the ambassador’s land-and-air entourage disappeared, our other guests began to arrive. It went just as I had planned. There was no overlap between the invited Iraqi guests for the women’s center and the ambassador’s visit. The ribbon remained intact. Later in the day, we learned of a major victory for women’s rights: the Iraqi Transitional Administrative Law—which included the goal of including 25 percent representation of women in the government—was signed. We hoped that the signing of this historic document on International Women’s Day would not go unnoticed and would symbolize the role women would play in the future of Iraq.

The day ended with my sending out a silent prayer. I was thankful that it had been a smooth and joyous day. For a moment I actually believed I had averted a disastrous outcome.

***

By midmorning the following day my joy was destroyed in one fell swoop. As a team of my Iraqi staff traveled from Baghdad to Karbala on a training mission, two cars attacked a cargo truck in front of my staff’s vehicle. It was pure serendipity that saved their lives. The attackers had driven past the team’s car, and our driver had glanced over as the car passed. He noticed that all the passengers were wearing black and white checkered scarves wrapped around their faces like ski masks, with all but their eyes completely covered. Instinct kicked in, and he pressed on the brakes. Within seconds, the attackers shot at the cargo truck a few cars ahead of the trainers’ vehicle. The truck jackknifed and created a roadblock.

Our driver’s instinct to tap his brakes prevented him from slamming into the cars ahead. He quickly maneuvered a U-turn and sped away. The trainers later described their fear to me as they watched the attackers gun down each car that had slammed into another vehicle in the convoy, creating a highway slaughter.

Although the team had gained an extra few seconds to make a U-turn, their nightmare was far from over. A second car pulled out from the long line of cars and began to chase them. Gunshots were fired, and our driver expertly drove back via a familiar return route. This was the second instance where chance was on my team’s side.

On an earlier trip to Karbala, our driver had been fighting off sleep. To keep himself awake, he had invented a game of counting potholes. After the ambush, his subconscious remembered each pothole, and he was able to swerve around them, gaining a needed advantage over the attackers.

In subsequent months, this roadway would be nicknamed the Triangle of Death. It was a road that Fern Holland traveled frequently. My first impulse as soon as I heard about the attack on the convoy was to send Fern an email: “Fern, my team was attacked on the road between Baghdad and Karbala. Please be careful! Call me when you get this.”

Fern never read the email.

The next morning I heard the news that Fern had been brutally killed on the same road. She and her assistant, Salwa, were found dead in the trunk of an abandoned vehicle. It was speculated that they had been stopped at a false check point and assassinated. Later I learned that their bodies had been riddled with bullets.

Nothing could have prepared me for this shocking news. In the beginning I refused to believe it. I was convinced there was a misunderstanding. I could not believe that any Iraqi would want to harm Fern.

Even though all my contacts in Karbala confirmed the news, I still held on to an absurd hope that everyone was wrong. It wasn’t until the captain of the local Iraqi police in Karbala called Yusuf that I began to accept reality. Then I collapsed.

Yusuf took me to my home in Hay Al Jammah. All I remember was that I cried myself to sleep. I learned firsthand how quickly an event could strike at one’s very core and change one forever. In two days, I was transported from an emotional high of bliss and accomplishment to a low of complete terror and loss. The depth and feeling of loss were overwhelming: the loss of life, the loss of friends, and the unbelievable loss for Iraq. Although I stubbornly held on to the notion that our work needed to continue, blinded with a new sense of determination to ensure that Fern’s and Salwa’s deaths had not been in vain, from that moment my life in Iraq changed.

For weeks after Fern’s brutal murder, I had recurring dreams of exchanges between the two of us. Sometimes my dreams focused on her threats to expose corruption in the CPA and among the contractors. I would caution her not to make too many enemies within the system. I would remind her we were still in a war zone and very much vulnerable to the external players surrounding us. But the most common dream centered around the days we had traveled together on site visits for the women’s centers. I remembered with clarity our argument over the building in the Hillah city center. In my dreams I argued passionately with Fern about reasons to reject that building. I would beg her not to make enemies. The dreams never lasted to a final conclusion, but the message was clear. I should not have stayed silent.