Gods Without Men (41 page)

That evening the villagers hung out in the hall and watched TV. On the news was a story about Nicky Capaldi. They showed pictures of him coming out of a police station and getting into a big black Suburban; he was wearing dark glasses and looking annoyed. She couldn’t believe it: Apparently he’d been questioned about the disappearance of a child. They showed some concert footage and a few shots of him at an awards show, then cut to a photograph of the missing boy. Laila was shocked. Obviously Nicky had nothing to do with it. His management had released a statement calling on the abductor to bring the kid back, and a disappointed-looking sheriff came on, saying they’d eliminated him as a suspect. There was even a shot of the main street near her house, which was full of news vans and photographers. She wondered if Samir had been there.

Still thinking about Nicky, she went to the dormitory and wired up her record player. Ignoring the strange looks she got from the other women lounging around reading and writing letters, she plugged in a pair of big padded headphones and lay down on her cot to listen to the first side of the Ashtar Galactic Command record.

It was like no other music in her collection. It started with a quivery electronic drone, the kind of noise made by the equipment you saw in old science-fiction movies, with big metal dials and wavy lines going up
and down on little screens. It was joined by a scraping of guitar strings and primitive drumming that sounded like it had been recorded inside a shoebox, a relentless dull thud that went on and on without changing at all. Sometimes there were other noises, bangs and clankings, little bursts of feedback or sounds like stringed instruments being dropped on a hard floor. Very low down in the mix, almost at the edge of hearing, there were voices whispering half-intelligible words:
We speak in the names of all sentient beings in the thirty-three sectors of the Universe, in the name of the Ascended Masters and the Conclave of Interdimensional Unity.…
The effect was scary and boring at the same time, like a crazy person sitting next to you on the bus. The first time she played it, she thought it was the worst music she’d ever heard. That was probably why she put it on the deck again. Surely nothing could be that bad. Why would anyone make music that sounded so … unmusical? No one would buy it. Probably no one ever did. The Ashtar Galactic Command wasn’t exactly a household name.

Listen. We repeat, listen …

So she’d listened. She had nothing better to do. On the second, third, fourth plays, she started to hear weird things—chanting, crying and screaming, people gurgling as if they were being strangled. The record seemed to be some kind of jam session, just a bunch of musicians playing and letting a tape run. And while they played, something truly strange had been going on in the room, a party, maybe. Something. Often the background noise was obscured by more musical sounds, electronic runs and trills that seemed to have been played by someone following the beat of a completely different drummer from the one banging away on the record, as if the players could hear something she couldn’t, something significant that she really wanted to hear, that she
needed
to hear, if only to satisfy her curiosity.

Lying in the dormitory, she shut her eyes and listened to a passage that was now as familiar to her as Nicky Capaldi’s first album. The pulse of the drums was joined by a high-pitched whistling and a sinister rumble that rose up and up until it sounded like a rocket taking off. Out of the rumble came a bass, which was doubled by a guitar and some
other instrument that might have been a keyboard. Cocooned inside her headphones, her eyes tight shut, she felt as if she were inside a capsule, heading out into space.

There was a howling sound, like a dog. There was a child’s voice, calling out a word, perhaps a name. There were horse’s hooves, an engine, a man coughing, bare feet running across sand. There was gunfire.

A whole world.

The next day the villagers of Wadi al-Hamam started work. It was a strange routine. Every morning they gathered in the hall to hear about the day’s schedule. Sometimes a patrol would be due to pass through and they had to man their imaginary homes and businesses, so they could be searched and questioned and occasionally shot at with bizarre-looking laser-guns. Usually the soldiers just walked around with shit-eating grins on their faces saying
Salaam alaikum
. This seemed to be the main plank of their counterinsurgency strategy. When violence was on the menu the villagers had to wear special harnesses over their traditional ethnic clothing, so the laser-guns could register hits. When you were shot you had to lie down and place a card on your tummy, showing details of your wound. Sometimes a makeup artist would come and sprinkle on some blood, for extra realism. Then the medics would run over and treat whatever injury was on the card, or just put you in a body bag and carry you away. There were scorekeepers who tallied up the net effect on the hearts and minds of Wadi al-Hamam, and, depending on how things had gone, they would be told in the next day’s briefing whether they felt more or less pro-American.

Laila’s role was mainly to stand in the shipping container labeled
CLINIC
, though sometimes she had to come out and mill about on the main street, looking hostile. The soldiers would arrive, sometimes just a few in an armored vehicle, sometimes a whole convoy of Humvees accompanying the major, a little man in a neatly pressed uniform who looked more like a sales clerk than a soldier, a sort of middle manager of warfare. When the major came, his troops would fan out and point their guns in various directions while he gave out ballpoints and toothbrushes as morale-boosting souvenirs. Then they would all surround the mayor’s office while he took a meeting with Uncle Hafiz. The meetings
usually ended with Uncle Hafiz announcing some new bribe for good behavior, a tube well or sanitation project or girls’ school. Sometimes the major would make a speech, which was translated into Arabic by a female interpreter who spoke some Maghrebi dialect no one could understand.

Most of it was easier than Laila expected. The stressful part was when the soldiers conducted raids. The villagers had to assemble in various locations, which were supposed to represent their houses. Even though this wasn’t where she actually slept, it was too close to reality to feel like a game. She still had nightmares about Baba, and one night was shaken awake by the woman in the cot next to her, who’d been disturbed by her moaning and thrashing about. Everyone was very understanding, but she didn’t want their sympathy. When there were night raids she tried to stay in the background, listening to her iPod until it was time to be hooded and cuffed.

One day, about three weeks into the exercise, some soldiers shot all the customers at the café, and Heather announced that in response Wadi al-Hamam would mount its first riot. The major came, looking worried, handed out pens and MREs, and bustled into the mayor’s office to consult with Uncle Hafiz. The villagers gathered outside, pumping their fists in the air and shouting “Down with America! Down with George Bush!” Laila felt ridiculous, pretending to be angry about something that hadn’t actually happened, but some of the others were getting really into it, yelling in the faces of the soldiers and ad-libbing all sorts of colorful Arabic insults. Back home she’d seen many demonstrations, of unemployed men or activists from the religious parties, and they were nothing like this, but she supposed Wadi al-Hamam was supposed to be a country place, so perhaps it was realistic enough. It certainly spooked the soldiers, who looked like they wished they had real ammo in their guns.

Mixed in with the demonstrators were insurgents, who’d come out to make trouble. Unlike the ordinary villagers, they were played by American soldiers, who swathed themselves haphazardly in robes and yashmaghs and bandannas and generally looked as if they were attending a frat-house toga party. As planned, when the riot got under way one
of them set off an IED, killing a lot of people. The troops responded by killing a few more. Cutting short his meeting, the major fought his way back to the Forward Operating Base. Then everyone broke for coffee and pastries.

Later Heather came bouncing down the main street in her Humvee to give notes and explain what would happen next. Apparently, Wadi al-Hamam’s hearts and minds had now been definitively lost, and until the end of the rotation they should do their best to make BLUEFOR’s lives as difficult as possible. The insurgents chuckled and high-fived one another. Laila moved as far away from them as she could.

The insurgents lived in a shipping container at the edge of town and passed their days (most of their ambushing was done at night) sullenly shooting hoops, using a plastic crate they’d nailed to a board on the side of the mosque. Since it wasn’t a real mosque, most people didn’t have a problem with it being used for recreational purposes, though one or two of the villagers seemed to think it was disrespectful, and the imam took it very badly. For his role as local religious zealot, he’d designed himself a fantastic fake beard, a long silky chin covering that he donned every morning in a complicated procedure involving a big mirror and a tube of spirit gum. Swathed in his clerical robes he looked very impressive, and when the beard was fixed to his chin he tended to behave as if he really was a respected spiritual leader, lecturing the village women on modesty of dress and giving fiery speeches through the speaker attached to the minaret. One afternoon there was a wail of feedback, and he began railing against the presence of the hoop, declaring it an insult against God (peace be upon Him) and a hateful symbol of the arrogance of the invader. He would tolerate it no longer, he said, and called upon all believers to take a stand against ignorance and join with him in tearing it down. Filled with righteous fury, he propped a stepladder up against the building and began to climb, only realizing his miscalculation when he saw he was surrounded by toga-clad men pointing M-16s at his chest. He climbed back down again. After that everyone gave the insurgents a wide berth.

All the insurgent role-players had served tours in Iraq, so they knew what they were doing when they sneaked around, ambushing BLUEFOR
soldiers and planting bombs. They were never rude to the villagers, but they weren’t friendly either; they just kept themselves to themselves. There was one man Laila found particularly frightening. He was very tall and black and walked with a stoop, cradling his gun as if it were a child’s toy. He never smiled, and when any of the villagers got too close to the insurgents’ bunkhouse he’d raise his weapon as if he intended to shoot. The imam claimed he’d told him he would slit his throat if he ever touched the basketball hoop again. “He would do it, too,” he said. “I could see it in his eyes.” As they were debriefed after the riot, this soldier threw back his head and howled like a coyote, which made his buddies fall about laughing. Heather looked annoyed but didn’t say anything. Nor did Lieutenant Alvarado. Laila realized they were intimidated too.

As soon as the soldiers had gone for the day, Laila always made a point of changing back into her ordinary clothes. Most of the villagers seemed happy to have the chance to dress as if they were back home in Iraq. Several had made remarks to Uncle Hafiz, asking whether he minded his niece looking like a vampire. Though he’d always defended her before, at Wadi al-Hamam he seemed far less happy about her rebelliousness. I’m the mayor, he told her. You should think of the dignity of my office. No one else said anything directly to Laila, for the simple reason that she avoided talking to them. Her one friend was called Noor. She was in her early twenties, hardly spoke English, and before she became a role-player had worked in some shitty part of East L.A. packing TV dinners for a food company. She had come to the desert with her mother, father and two brothers. Sometimes she and Laila would listen to music together. Though Noor was older, she knew very little about American life; Laila liked playing the role of educator, telling her the names of the bands, explaining the meaning of slang words they heard on the TV. Most of the women Noor had worked with on the packing line were Hispanic, so she’d learned some Spanish; she taught Laila how to say pendejo and chinga tu madre, and tried to persuade her to listen to Ricky Martin songs. Noor liked pretty things, girly things—pink accessories and stuffed animals and sparkly nail polish. Laila was determined to change that, but Noor was stubborn.

“I don’t understand you,” she said to Laila one day.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re a beautiful girl. You could make something of your looks. Why dress like this? All this black?”

“I like it.”

“But what about your family? Do you think of them? Why do they allow it?”

“I do what I want, OK? Just because I don’t dress like a Muslim Barbie.”

There was a reason, of course. For the black clothes, the music. When Laila had first arrived in the U.S. she’d felt lost. All she could think about was her father. She couldn’t sleep, and didn’t eat, even when Aunt Sara tried to tempt her with her favorite dishes. She remembered with shame how she used to behave, pushing her plate away, telling her aunt that the biryani didn’t taste right, the burek was too salty. What she meant was that they didn’t taste like Mama’s cooking. She couldn’t understand why her mother hadn’t come to America. She’d been so keen to leave Iraq. When Laila could get through on the phone she’d try to persuade her to hurry. “I’m scared for you,” she’d say. “I miss you so much.” But somehow Mama always made excuses. Laila shouldn’t worry. She was fine. She’d come soon.

“When?”

“Soon.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

But she didn’t come. And gradually the tone of the phone calls changed. She started saying how things were getting better in Baghdad, how the city was safer, with fewer explosions and more regular electricity.

“So do you want us to come back?”

“No, darling. Not yet.”

“Well, then, when will you come here?”

“One day.”

What did she mean, “one day”? Auntie Sara and Uncle Hafiz were
kind and patient, but often in that first year Laila would wake up screaming in the middle of the night. Once she even wet the bed, like a baby. Jamila would sit up with her and Laila would cry on her shoulder and confess how much she missed her mom. Why wasn’t she coming? Jamila said it was to do with visas. Uncle Hafiz had a friend, some bigshot Republican who’d arranged things so she and Samir had a temporary right to remain in the country. This big shot was also helping them with their applications for permanent residence. But with Mama there were complications. Baba had joined the Ba’ath Party so he could get a promotion. His widow was listed as a “sympathizer.”