Baghdad Fixer (68 page)

“Nabil, we can’t do this.”

I don’t answer.

“We can’t. This has to stop.”

“Because of Jonah?”

“Jonah? He has nothing to do with this.”

“Because I’m Muslim and you’re Jewish?”

“Nabil.” She shuts her eyes tight, as if she might cry again, or maybe because she wants me to go away. “We just — we can’t. We can’t be together. I can’t be your lover.”

“Your lover? You think I just want to
use
you like that?” I feel tears, oh I can hardly believe it, my own real tears, and I blink them back.

I wait a moment, until I know I can speak without my voice breaking. “Sam, I would spend my life with you if you would let me.

She doesn’t respond. I can feel how much she wants to lean on my shoulder again, to let me hold her. She shakes her head, looking towards the date palms. “Nabil, I think we work together incredibly well, professionally, and I, I’ve learned so much from you.”

I watch her and feel myself growing angry: a little at her and a little more at myself. I want to make her shut up, to stop her from explaining why she doesn’t want me.

“I do care about you. But you know it can’t work. It can’t work because…” She stops herself and sniffles into the edge of her shirt, and pushes the wetness of her face into the hair beyond her cheekbones. “It just can’t work. We’re too different. And you know, this is really, what we have is a professional relationship that started to become an important friendship as well. I’m sorry if I made you think I wanted more than that. In another world, I would have loved...look, why do this? I’m leaving Baghdad tomorrow, right? I don’t even know when I’m coming back. If I’m coming back. I’m leaving, Nabil. You don’t want to be with someone who’s leaving.” She wraps her hand around my hand and kisses me softly in the crook of my cheekbone, just beyond the corner of my left eye. And then she stands to leave, bending over to pick up the empty ice cream containers.

~ * ~

55

Bending

I pack my overnight bag. I lay down and try to sleep, but my eyes stay wide open, sore but alert. I imagine Sam and myself travelling together in Istanbul, taking pictures by the famous mosques, the royal-blue waters of the Bosphorus stretching out behind us, just like in the photograph of my parents on their honeymoon. And then I kiss her and she falls into me, a warm wrap around my chest.

But I’m not going to Turkey with her. I feel the invisible, internal tears starting to shake me again, that shuddering in my chest. I’m living on my own fault-line, weathering small tremors that might one day burst wide open, split the ground beneath my feet, swallow me whole.

It’s my mother’s tap on my door — I know it from the weight of her fingertips, thicker and sturdier than Amal’s. She opens the door. There is a saffron light coming into my room at an angle that tells me it’s very early. “Nabil, it’s 5.30,” Mum calls softly “You said you wanted me to wake you now.”

I sit up. “Let me go and wake Sam.” My throat is like a plant on the terrace that hasn’t had a watering for weeks, my voice hoarse.

“She’s already up. She has been arranging her things and she went to have a shower. I’ll put out some breakfast for you.”

“I don’t know if we have time.”

My mother glares at me from the doorway. She appears to have grown new lines beneath her eyes in the past few weeks, and the ones leading from the middle of her lip to her nostrils have cut themselves deeper into her skin.

I squint at my watch and reach for my glasses. “You’re right. There’s time.”

I have to lean towards the edge of the bed to gather enough energy to stand on my feet. Faced with falling, I will rise. My mother points to the glass of water she left on my desk. When its contents disappear into my body, I feel a little closer to being able to speak and to get dressed.

I hold my hand up to knock on the door that was once Ziad’s. How is it that we can feel nostalgia even for the parts of our childhood we hated most? He was my older brother, but in my young adolescent years, I saw Ziad as more of a warlord — a dictator to call my own. I was far more frightened of him than I ever was of Saddam. Among other things, Ziad wanted me to knock on his door and receive permission before entering. He, on the other hand, could strut into my room at any time he wanted and push me around.

I tap lightly on the door and hear Sam’s voice call out quietly.

I nudge the door. “Sam?”

“Come in,” she says. She’s sitting on the edge of Ziad’s bed. Her body is lost in the black
jupeh
Mum lent her. Around her neck is the white scarf, hanging over her chest instead of covering her hair. With the white on black, she looks something like a judge.

I sit down next to her, a respectable distance away. “Did you sleep?”

“A little. Probably five hours, but not much more. You?”

“Same.”

I have the urge to put my hand into Sam’s damp curls, not wet but just a bit moist from the shower, to touch them just once more. Instead, I reach into my pocket to take out the box I have been holding on to for three days now, ever since I picked out a gift for her from the souvenir seller in the lobby of the Hamra Hotel. I hold it out to her.

Sam’s face lights up and she opens the box quickly. She pulls the watch out, and from the look on her face, I can see she almost wants to giggle, but the urge to do so is overwhelmed by the need to be gracious. But now, in her eyes, I see a shimmer of it — a sense of delight.

“Oh...my goodness.” She holds up the watch to the light. She turns it over, looking for what, I wonder. A designer label?

She turns it back, and examines the face. “It’s beautiful. Is that...is that supposed to be Babylon?”

“Yes. It was this one, or the one with a picture of Saddam on it. But I wasn’t sure if you were serious about wanting one like that.”

She smiles, her mouth open enough for me to see the pink of her tongue. “No! I mean, those are funny, for a joke, but this is just adorable. I mean, it’s beautiful.”

I look at her put the watch on her left wrist and carefully fasten the buckle. It perfectly encircles the flesh and bone that is her hand, once bound and now free. Free to wave goodbye to me in a day or two. Had we gone to Babylon, she’d have been so dazzled, she would have fallen in love with everything here -including me.

She turns her wrist to look again at the watch, already set to the right time. Nearly a quarter to six. Not fully light yet, and the best time to leave.

“Does it really still look like that?” she asks. “Or is that some kind of idealized version?”

I stand, holding out my hand to pull her up off Ziad’s low-lying bed. “You’ll have to come back some time and find out.”

~ * ~

Sam and I force ourselves to eat the eggs and
gemar
cream and
samoun
Mum laid out for us, more than either of us would want. Amal helps Sam pin her headscarf so that she looks authentic. In the past, whenever Sam wanted to look local, she would just wrap the scarf lightly and let it slip backwards on her head, which didn’t achieve much. But Amal picked out her favourite
dambab,
a scarf pin that I think was Grandma Zahra’s, and placed it perfectly along the right side of Sam’s face. Now that she is done, Sam almost looks like she could pass unnoticed.

Then we wait, ready to go, feeling impatient. Safin isn’t on time. We discuss the possibility of leaving now, leaving it to Baba to explain to Safin, and then decide against it. We hover near the window, watching out for the jeep.

Mum sighs. “You could have gone to the Imam Kadhum shrine for prayers by now.”

“Stop that,” Baba orders. He then looks at her sympathetically, like he wishes he hadn’t answered by trying to shut her up so quickly. He puts his hand on her back. “
Ayouni
,” he says more softly. “They’ll leave soon.”

“Maybe you’ll go to the shrines in Samarra,” Mum says. “She’ll like that. You can go to the al-Askari Shrine and then take her to the Malwiya Minaret. Yes!” She talks excitedly, tapping my shoulder. “You must!”

“Zeinab, this isn’t a honeymoon trip!” When Baba says that, I feel my heart sink, and I avoid Amal’s stare.

“What’s your Mom saying?”

I turn to Sam, who is beginning to look like a fundamentalist’s wife, and find myself unable to hold in a laugh.

“She says I should give you a tour of Samarra.”

Sam smiles at Mum. “I certainly would have loved that.”

I turn back to the window. “So let’s do it. A quick stop for you to take pictures,” I say, without turning around to look at her. “It’s kind of a religious thing. People make pilgrimages there.”

“Tell her that if you pay a visit to the Hidden Imam, he will protect you,” Mum says.

Baba exhales loudly, losing patience with Mum’s otherworldly beliefs, and goes to check on the car again.

“Mum thinks visiting there can protect us.”

“Oh really?” Sam tucks an invisible hair into the scarf; it’s clear the snugness of it makes her uncomfortable. “Why?”

“I’ll tell you on the way,” I say. I look at Sam, so much more conservatively dressed than my mother or Amal, sitting in their sleeveless housedresses, and am struck by the oddness of it all. Me escaping from my own city with a red-headed American girl.

~ * ~

56

Escaping

When Safin pulls up outside our house close to 6.45, he immediately begins to apologize for arriving later than he should have done. The jeep looks more conspicuous than ever, gleaming in the early morning sun. He must have had it washed for the trip.

Baba invites him inside, treating him with a certain warmth - with arm around the back, words of welcome in his mouth.

“Your family has been so helpful to my son and Miss Samara. Rizgar worked so hard to protect them,” Baba says.

Safin looks worried, as if he knows bad news is coming. He swallows and shifts his glance from my father to me.

Baba smiles. “But this is the situation. Some things you can’t control.” My father sighs, and I feel as if I am breathing in what he’s exhaled, taking in some of his confidence. “Safin, brother, they must go without you. You know it will be safer for them. And you.”

Safin’s cheeks elongate with surprise. “Will it?”

“Well, of course. We really don’t know
who
killed Rizgar,
Allah yarhamo.
Maybe these awful people Nabil and Miss Samara got mixed up with are still looking for three people: an Arab man and a foreign lady — with their Kurdish driver.”

Safin’s head lolls to one side, a motion that acknowledges Baba has a point. He nods without looking at us.

“Also, that car you’re driving,” Baba says. “It is a car only foreigners or VIPs would have.”

Safin’s eyes dip with some hint of agreement. “I see,” he says. “But what happens when they get to Kurdistan?”

“Habib,”
my father smiles, putting his arm on Safin’s, “that’s where you can help them. Perhaps you could write them a letter saying they are under the special protection of some tribe which nobody will want to have to contend with later. Maybe your tribe?”

“Baba,” I look at my watch. “It’s late.” Yesterday he had suggested we leave as soon as the curfew lifts, at 6.00 a.m. In that case, we should have left three-quarters of an hour ago.

Baba glares at me. In our eyes a whole argument erupts without a word being spoken.

This is holding us up, Baba.

Don’t question me on this, Nabil.

You said you didn’t trust him.

I said wait.

“Nabil?” I can hear a nervous vibration in Sam’s voice. “What’s going on?”

“My father wants Safin to write us a letter to protect us when we drive up north.”

Sam’s arms are crossed. “Uh-huh. Okay.”

“Please,” Baba says, gesturing for Safin to follow him. My father goes to the old wooden chest and slides open a drawer in which I know he keeps better paper for formal letters, as well as small gifts in case of a last-minute occasion.

He comes to the table with a fine sheet of paper, and offers a seat to Safin. Baba sighs and makes a writing motion with an almost pleading look in his eyes. Safin nods, sits down, and reaches inside his jacket pocket, retrieving a ball-point pen.

“I will mention the Barzani family and the Dizayee family,” he says. “That should help.”

Baba nods. “I’m sure. I’m sure it will.” Baba stands over him and watches, while we wait at the other end of the table. I feel slightly uncomfortable with this whole scenario, this gentle yet explicit forcing of Safin to do what we ask. To write a letter on our behalf, like a couple of fugitives trying to gain entry to some ancient kingdom.

To produce for us a largely false document.

“So...which tribe is your family from?”

Safin answers my question with a glare.

“Just in case we get asked by someone.”

“You don’t need to mention me directly. That won’t do you any good,” Safin says, “But since you ask, Barzani. And the Dizayee are also our friends — almost as good as brothers.”