Baghdad Fixer (21 page)

“Look bad for them?”

“Not necessarily them. The family, the company, the country. It doesn’t really matter. At heart, people generally want to please. In this part of the world, especially, it seems that people want to please foreigners. They want to seem hospitable at all costs.”

I think of the time when, as a kid, my parents found out that Ziad had stolen another boy’s bicycle.
Aib,
was all my father had to say.
Aib alek.
Shame on you. My brother returned the bike immediately.

“Is a schmuck also a spy?”

Sam is on the verge of a laugh, and she looks away. “Sometimes. Sometimes a schmuck is also a spy. But in general, a schmuck is a jerk.”

“Like a wanker?”

“Yeah, exactly. Like a wanker.”

The checkpoint comes out of nowhere. Sam sticks her arm out of the window, clutching her American passport and a plastic card that says PRESS in large letters. An American soldier with hair lighter than hers, thick but cut close to his head like a carpet, is holding his gun with both hands while he approaches the car.

He takes her passport and opens it, turns a page and hands it back to her.

“What about them?” he asks.

“My driver, my translator,” she says, using her two index fingers to indicate Rizgar and then me, like windshield wipers on a car.

“Do they have IDs?”

“They’re Iraqis,” Sam says. “What kind of ID do you want them to have?”

“We need to see some ID. Driver’s licence, passport, something with a picture on it. I can’t let you pass otherwise. This area’s under surveillance.”

I explain to Rizgar what they’re looking for, and he pulls his driver’s licence from his back trouser pocket. I open up my wallet to find that all I have with me is my expired university identification card.

“Wait here for a minute,” the soldier says, walking off with our IDs. He walks back to the small encampment set up beyond the road, surrounded by piled-up sandbags and topped with swatches of sandy-toned, netted fabric that reminds me of an animal’s lair. There, another soldier is speaking into a black device that looks a bit like Sam’s Thuraya, only bigger.

Sam lets out an agitated sigh. “As if these guys can even read an ID in Arabic.”

I shrug. “Maybe they have pictures of wanted men,” I say.

Rizgar’s foot is tapping nervously on the car floor. He reaches for the gearstick as if he is tempted to just throw it into first and go. Sam looks at him, and he sits back and sighs.

“Isn’t there anything you wouldn’t do to get a story?” I ask.

“Lots of things. First of all, I don’t lie.”

“No?”

“Well, I try not to. Not unless it’s a really dangerous situation. It’s mostly about convincing. You don’t break rules, you bend them.”

Rizgar points. The soldier is coming back. He taps on Sam’s window and she rolls it down. “Here y’go,” he says with a pleasant tone. He stoops a bit to address her. “You can go ‘head, but if I’s you I’d be careful out there.”

“Thanks!” she calls, and begins to crank the window back up. It gets stuck, as usual, near the top of the frame. She puts her hand against the glass to help it up, adding, “And if I were you, I would have gotten posted to Guantanamo Bay.”

~ * ~

18

Adding

Adeeb’s house is situated in a way my mother would have never tolerated: directly above a small grocery store and a butcher. In Birmingham, these stores were mostly run by Muslim immigrants, and although she would shop there for the halal meat, she looked down her nose at the people — mostly Pakistanis or Afghanis — who ran them. She thought there was something unclean about living above a place that sold food, as if untold numbers of filthy creatures would be living in the walls and pipes as a result.

But inside, Adeeb’s house is nicer than I would have expected for a barber. The only thing that gives away the slight unseemliness of the location is the neon sign outside the window. Despite his wife’s apparent efforts to dull it with a curtain, it shines a reddish light into the room, bathing his children’s faces in an unnatural cherry glow.

They are four boys, and they sit in order of age next to Adeeb, who has the comfortable spot in the corner. Each child looks uncannily similar to the next, each a more tender version of the one before him. They remind me of one of those famous Russian dolls, the kind my father once bought Amal for her birthday, where each is a little smaller than the last.

Adeeb offers Sam and me seats covered in bright red carpets on the opposite side of the wide room. When he calls his wife in to meet Sam, a thin, pretty figure rushes in. Sam stands up and Adeeb’s wife kisses her on both cheeks. Sam seems charmed. Adeeb doesn’t say what his wife’s name is.

“She doesn’t speak any Arabic, right?”

“Very little,” I reply.

“Arabic no?” he says, looking at Sam.

She smiles as if a little embarrassed. “
Inshallah
.” She cocks her head in my direction. “Nabil here promises to teach me, but he’s not doing such a good job so far.”

I translate this and everybody laughs.

“I’m sorry to make you come at night. People are watching me during the day, and may be listening as well. If anyone saw you, they’ll think you’re only relatives or friends.”

“No problem,” I say.

I am surprised to hear Adeeb’s wife speak up. “Is she a Muslim?” Her voice is genteel, almost delicate, as if she knows that this could be an inappropriate question.

“She wants to know if you’re Muslim.”

Sam is expressionless.

“No,” I say. “She’s Christian.”

“I thought so,” his wife says. “So she doesn’t have to wear the scarf. Please tell her she is free to take it off if she likes.”

I pass this on to Sam and she touches the black silky scarf that draws a dark border around her hairline. Against it, her skin seems fairer than usual. “I don’t mind it, actually,” she says. “It’s very comfortable.”

I tell this to Adeeb’s wife and she smiles, pleased with Sam’s answer. She must start getting the children to bed, she says, and begins by whisking the smallest one away, eliciting a cry of protest.

Adeeb pulls a short string of beads out of his pocket and leans back into the cushions. “How did you get to Subhi?”

“Subhi? We got to Subhi because...” I must ask Sam. I don’t know how much to reveal. “How did we get to Subhi?” I ask her.

“To Subhi? Harris gave us his name.”

“Aah. Yes, Harris,” Adeeb says in English. “Very good man.”

Sam nods. She doesn’t mention that she has never met him, or that her editors have begun to think that maybe he is not so good.

“I...want help...you...” Adeeb shakes his head, starts again in Arabic. “I wanted to help him more but he didn’t have so much time for me.”

I tell Sam this, and she looks puzzled. “But wasn’t Adeeb his fixer?”

“Were you not translating for him? Working for him?”

Adeeb nods. “Yes, I was working only for him, but he had others. At least four, I think.”

“Four fixers?” Sam asks. “At the same time? Who could afford that?”

Adeeb shrugs. “He had a lot of money. But we didn’t get paid every day. We got paid only on the days when we got some good information for him.”

“They were paid for providing him with information, Sam.”

“How’s that work? No information, no pay?”

“He met us in the morning at the Palestine Hotel, gave us ideas, and said if we came to him at the end of the day with something good, he will pay for it. We were all competing with each other for the information so we can be paid. And for me I think this wasn’t a good way for working, but otherwise I think Harris is a good man and if you—”

“Nabil, can you translate?”

They’re both talking at the same time and it’s starting to make me frustrated. I tell Sam I want to speak to him for a minute so that I can get it right. And she says fine, and leans forwards to take the tiny porcelain cup of tea Adeeb’s wife has left on the table in front of her.

“So, many of you were working for Harris?” I ask.

“I think so,” Adeeb says. “At least four that I know of.”

“And he paid you whenever you could get him information?”

“Exactly. Fifty dollars a day.”

“And if you didn’t get any information that day?”

“He would give me about 30,000 dinars, just for the transportation.”

I reach into my shirt pocket and take out my tiny notebook. “And so what kind of information did you get for him?” I assume this is the question Sam would ask, although I am not entirely sure.

“Small things. The day-by-day news. Anything I could find on Saddam and his sons. He said he needed me to be his eyes and ears because he couldn’t be everywhere.”

“And that’s it?”

“Subhi said he had important information and documents that would help Harris get a big story that would prove that Saddam was very corrupt. So Harris was very happy with that. At the end, he owed me for a day of work that he hadn’t paid, but he told me that he was out of money and would pay me back some other time. I guess it was because he had to pay a lot to General Akram for the documents.”

“He paid? I mean, he paid General Akram for the documents?”

Adeeb looks at me as if I have asked a silly question. “Of course he paid. This is how it works for everyone who wants documents. Akram collected reams of documents. And a lot of beautiful furniture. You’ll see.”

“Everyone paid...you mean there were others?” I make a few notes and he seems unsure he likes the fact that I am writing down what he says.

“Are you writing about me?”

“You? No, no.” I turn to Sam. “Are you hoping to write about him in the story?”

“I doubt it,” she says. “But at this point, I have no bloody idea what the story is. If we even
have
a story.”

“She says no. You can trust her.” I proceed to give Sam the highlights of what Adeeb said. I can see in her eyes that she’s a little frustrated again with my translation, but I think she’s also realizing that sometimes she needs to let me figure out how to go about things. And I see that Adeeb is unsure whether to believe me, and that maybe trust is not the reason he’s trying to help us.

I start again. “May I ask you something on a different subject?”

He opens his hands wide and shuts them.

“Who was the young man working in your barber shop?”

He smiles and raises his eyes, as if I’ve passed a test that shows I’m smart.

“He’s a son of the most powerful criminal family in the neighbourhood. I have to pay money to them to keep my shop open and not have anyone attack it. On top of that, the head of this family made me take in one of his sons as an employee. They said they want him to work, to learn a trade. But I’m sure they sent him to watch me and listen.”

“So you agreed?”

“Do you think I could say no?” His voice carries resignation in it, as if he didn’t even bother to resist. “I come from a very small family. Even if we have enough money, thank God, it doesn’t help. In fact, it makes it worse, because they think we are rich and so they target us. What do we have? A barber shop and a few grocery stores. Do you think it makes a man rich? Do you see a Mercedes parked outside?”

“Nabil?” Sam is smiling calmly.

“Excuse me, let me translate this for her.”

“It’s not necessary,” he says. “You want to know about General Akram.”

“That’s true.”

“What else do you need to know?”

“Let me check with her, if you don’t mind.”

I quickly give Sam a rundown of everything he’s said, and she begins to fire off questions.

“How did you meet Harris?”

“Someone introduced me to him at the Palestine Hotel.”

“If you don’t speak much English, how did you and Harris communicate?”

Adeeb smiles, as if he’s acknowledging her for catching on to something out of the ordinary. “Deutsch. We spoke in German.”

“How do you know German?”

“I lived in Germany for three years when I was younger. I have some cousins there who run a restaurant in Cologne. Harris spoke German very well.”

“What stories did you work on with Harris?”

“We didn’t work on any stories together. He asked me to get him information and to bring it to him. And he wanted documents.”

“What kind of documents?”

“Any documents. Anything we could find that was coming from Saddam’s offices but he said it had to be something useful that could prove something.”

“What do you think he wanted to prove?”

Adeeb shrugs. “That Saddam has big bombs that he could use to destroy America and Israel. Or that he was working with Al-Qaeda. But it was difficult. Everything was a mess. Papers everywhere, everybody fighting to take a box of what he could and run away. People would kill you for a box of paperwork.”

“How did General Akram come into the picture?”

He stares blankly. “I can’t remember. I only remember that Harris had heard about him and had wanted to see him.” He holds out his hand to Sam to indicate he would like a piece of paper. “I can give you his address. Why don’t you just go to General Akram and speak to him yourself?”