Escape from Baghdad! (2 page)

“Because he is a torturer.”

“Yes.”

“Then you become a torturer as well, and therefore you deserve a similar death, by virtue of your own logic.”

“Which is why I am hesitating,” Kinza refilled his glass. Next to the bottle was a 38 caliber revolver, police issue, now black-market issue, soon to be Shi'a or Sunni or Coalition issue—so many issues it was impossible to decide. These days, every house in Ghazaliya had a confused gun. “Would it fundamentally alter our relationship, professor, if I tortured and killed Hamid?”

Dagr smiled sourly. “I am a market parasite. I help corrupt soldiers steal medicine from the Thresher, our friendly neighborhood American military base so I can sell it at huge profits to needy people who were once my friends. I have shot at a 14-year-old boy who was probably related to me, just for jumping out of an alley. I have…”

“Ok,” Kinza held up a hand. “I am not speaking of you now. I am speaking of the professorial you. Would the man who taught economics at the Abu Bakr Memorial have a problem with what I want to do?”

“That fool would have shit his pants.”

“Yes, but the problem is, when normalcy returns, then the pants shitters are all back on top, and I would probably have to answer to all of them for everything I do today to survive. And in that time, my friend, I would hate to have you pointing a great shitty finger at me.”

“Today, I would help you kill Hamid,” Dagr said finally. “Tomorrow I would hate myself for it. The next day, I would hate you for it as well.”

“Then what do you suggest for comrade Hamid?” Kinza asked. “Seriously, I want to know.”

“He should have a trial,” Dagr said.

“A hanging trial or a firing trial?” Kinza asked.

“A fair trial.”

“What the hell is that?”

“I'm not joking,” Dagr shrugged. “Give him a trial. Round up a few dozen people from the neighborhood and try him.”

“I like it, a kangaroo court.”

“A
fair
trial.”

“How do you give a torturer a fair trial?” Kinza asked. “What possible judge would be predisposed to favor him?”

“He followed orders didn't he?” Dagr shrugged. “Everyone followed orders.”

“Look, he didn't shoot a bunch of random Kurds,” Kinza said. “He killed our own people. Academics, professionals, businessmen. People like you, in fact. What if it was your father he had his cigar into? Wouldn't you like to be the judge then?”

“I agree with you,” Dagr said wearily. “It's just that in passing judgment, in executing that judgment, you become tainted yourself.”

“So you're saying pass it on to someone else?”

“Precisely,” Dagr said. “That is why we have professional judges.”

“Difficult to find an impartial judge at this point.”

“Unless we find one from the old days,” Dagr said.

“They'd probably be friends with him,” Kinza said. “Look, let's at least interrogate him a little bit.”

A bell at the door then, the Ghazaliya bell, they called it, the knock of rifle butts against splintered wood, the three-second grace time before boots and flashlights, lasers and automatic rifle barrels. Better than the Mahdi Army, who didn't bother to knock, and who had never heard of the three-second rule. Dagr surged toward the front of the house, already sweating, thrusting Kinza back. It was his job to face the American door to doors because he still looked like a professor, soft jawed, harmless, by some chance the exact composite of the innocent Iraqi these farm boys from Minnesota had come to liberate. And Kinza…with his hollow-eyed stare, Kinza would never survive these conversations.

He barely got there in time to save the door. Sweaty, palsied fear, as he jerked his head into the sunlight, facing down two of them, and three more in the Humvee behind. They were like big, idiot children in their heavy armor and helmets, capable of kindness or casual violence as the mood took them, unreadable, random, terrifying.

“Door-to-door, random check, sir,” a Captain Fowler said.

“Good morning,” Dagr said. Panic made his voice a croak. Door-to-door searches…they would find Kinza, and then Hamid, and it would be a rifle butt to the mouth, burst teeth, no Guantanamo for them, just hands tied behind the waist and a bullet to the head, right here…

“Had some violence down here this morning,” Captain Fowler was saying. “Understand the Mahdi Army came down this road, had a tussle with the boys from the SGD. Know anything about that, sir?”

“I was hiding, lying on the floor here,” Dagr said. He looked desperately from face to face, sunglasses, helmets, flashlights, all hard edges. Where the hell was Hoffman? Kind, innocent Hoffman, who shared cigarettes and jokes and tipped off Kinza about door-to-door searches…

“You sweating, my man,” Fowler casually shifted his weight, his foot blocking the door open, his gun angled just so, changing everything.

“It's hot, we have no water,” Dagr said. “No water, nothing in the tank, no flushes working, no electricity either. One fan, and the bastards shot it today…”

“Ok, sir, we're rigging the electricity back. We've had reports of this problem,” Fowler stared at him for a little while. “Sir, who else lives in this house? Are you alone in there?”

“Alone,” Dagr felt his voice give way. “My house. I live here. Do you want it? Take it, take it, just shoot me, and take it. No water for three days, toilets blocked up for two months, I have to shit in a bucket, bullet holes in every damn wall.”

“Calm down, sir,” Fowler tapped his gun on the door. “We are looking for one man known to be an arms dealer. We believe he has a safehouse somewhere in this grid.”

Dagr sagged against the door, the sweat pouring out of him, his mind a panicky Babel of voices, eyes swiveling from helmet to helmet, trying to find some weakness, some glimmer of the folksy charm they used when they weren't in the killing mood.
Hoffman, where are you for God's sake?

“You seem to be looking for someone, partner,” Fowler said. “Looking for Sergeant Hoffman by any chance?”

“Hoffman? I don't know him. Maybe. He gave me a cigarette once I think. Tall and white? Don't know any Hoffman. There was a nice black man before.”

“Hoffman ran patrols here,” Fowler said. “He got busted for fooling around with a very bad man. An arms dealer called Kinza. Don't happen to know him?”

“Kinza? Sounds Japanese. I don't know, I hardly go out, Mahdi Army shooting up the streets every day, I've eaten bread and eggs for the last three days, can't even get out to the store, it's three blocks down on 14
^th
, not that they have anything there anyway.”

“Alright, sir.”

“Please, so rude of me, please come in,” Dagr began to step back. “I have a nice couch, no TV though, got robbed last week, I could hear them from my bedroom, but I just stayed in my blanket. I could make you a cup of tea, no milk or sugar, I'm afraid, but, well…”

Fowler stuck his upper body into the room, swiveling his head around. The flashlight on his helmet cut a tight swathe through the gloom, illuminating the pathetic attempts at normalcy: a faded couch, a table loaded with coffee cups, a radio, a pile of textbooks hugging the floor along one wall. The moment hung on a seesaw, Dagr staring at Fowler's foot, willing it to inch back, dreading the one step forward that would signal the end.

“Alright, sir,” Fowler stepped back. “You be careful now. Give us a call if this Kinza is spotted anywhere. You can ask for Captain Fowler at the Thresher.”

“Yes, captain, yes, I will,” Dagr said. “Absolutely. I hope you catch him. He sounds like a bastard Sadr sympathizer. You're doing a good job. Long live America!”

They left and he sagged against the door, aghast at how weak his legs felt. And then he stumbled back inside, remembering that he had left Kinza and Hamid alone for far too long, Kinza drunk and brooding, a man capable of anything. They were in the bathroom, Hamid fetal in the cracked bathtub, hands and legs bound, a filthy handkerchief choking his mouth, two inches of tepid water sloshing a pink tinge. Kinza had a screwdriver and pliers, and his bottle in the crook of his arm, humming.

“Kinza, they're gone,” Dagr said, out of breath.

“I think he's ready to tell me all sorts of things,” Kinza said. He removed the gag.

“Fuck you,” Hamid said. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Holding back are you?”

“Fuck you. You haven't asked me anything yet.”

“Right,” Kinza laughed. “I don't believe you. You're lying.” He started again with the screwdriver.

“Kinza, stop it,” Dagr said. “The Americans are looking for you.
They know your name.”

“Hoffman?”

“Caught, reprimanded, I don't know,” Dagr said. “Busted. We have to run, Kinza. They know about the guns.”

Hamid started laughing, a whistling sound because he had recently lost a tooth. “You two are the stupidest fuckers alive.”

“No problem,” Kinza put away his tools. “I'll shoot him and then we'll go.”

“Where, Kinza?” Dagr asked.

“North, to Shulla,” Kinza shrugged. “I have a friend. Or maybe head over to Baqouba. Start again.”

“Idiots,” Hamid spat out blood. “I know where to go.”

“Where?” Dagr asked.

“Shut up,” said Kinza.

“Take me to Mosul,” Hamid said. “And I will show you the secret bunker of Tareq Aziz.”

“Like a sightseeing tour?” Dagr asked, momentarily puzzled.

“It's full of gold, you fool! Bullion bars and coins. I am the only living man who knows its location.”

“How?”

“I once served on his personal staff. I'm the only survivor. Everyone else died in peculiar accidents.” Hamid seemed particularly proud of that.

“Do you believe this idiot?” Kinza looked at Dagr.

The insectile head of the American soldier haunted him. “Who cares?” Dagr said. “Let's go to Mosul.”

2: BARRIERS

“T
HEY
'
RE LOOKING FOR YOU, BUDDY
.” H
OFFMAN WAS SMOKING A
joint, slumped in the rubble of a destroyed house.

“I know,” Kinza took it off him. “You in trouble?”

“Verbal reprimand,” Hoffman shrugged. “All them old boys appreciate how much hash I've flowed their way.”

“Not for long,” Kinza threw a small packet to his friend. “We're off. Make it last.”

“Yo, where you all going?”

“North. Anbar. Mosul maybe. Who knows?” Kinza said. “Want to come? There might be a bunker full of gold. We'll cut you in.”

“Sure,” Hoffman said. “Professor, you gonna teach me some more math along the way?”

“We need some help, Hoffman.” Dagr had taught him calculus for the past two weeks, at first as a joke. The Marine looked deceptively stupid,
was
stupid in all likelihood; yet he had picked up integration unerringly. “Get us past the checkpoints into Shulla.”

“Sure,” Hoffman said. “Hell, I'd go all the way with you boys, but they'd probably nail me for desertion. Call me when you find that bunker. I'll fence it for you.”

“Hoffman, you really think there's a bunker in the desert waiting for us?” Kinza laughed. “Who knows, maybe it's filled with 72 virgins as well. Stranger things have happened. We can't stay here anymore. That's for sure.”

The Iraqi Army 2
^nd
Cavalry Battalion checkpoint was built into the rubble of no man's land between north and south Ghazaliya, Shi'a and Sunni, the bewildered Iraqi soldiers trying to keep calm and courteous, desperate to still believe the drumming message that there was one Al Qaeda, one insurgency, one enemy. In truth, they kept panicky
fingers tight on their triggers, wary of women and children, knowing they were the eternal target, nobody's friend, traitors in every book. Dagr and Hoffman stayed to the front, Hoffman doing the talking. After a desultory search, they were through, parting ways with a slap and a casual smile.

“They should put Hoffman in charge of Baghdad,” Dagr said, as they cleared the searchlights into the relieving darkness of evening. “We'd have a lot less tension.”

“Forget it,” Kinza said. “They should give him Rumsfeld's job.”

“Maybe he'll be president one day.”

“He could be the joint president of Texas and Iraq.”

“Imperialist lapdog,” Hamid mumbled.

Hamid was not a happy man these days. His face had puffed up to a misshapen Quasimodo lump, where eyes, nose, and mouth were swimming in irregular proximity to each other. A once vain man, he could no longer bear to look at any reflective surfaces and thus wore dark glasses at all times. He was in constant nagging pain, a condition Kinza was in no hurry to leaven. Too, he had a clearer idea now of the route Kinza planned to take, hopping from bastion to bastion of Shi'a dominance. Not a Saddam sympathizer in sight, his life worth a toothpick in a gunfight in these streets.