The Tobacco Keeper (8 page)

We all moved slowly through the hall towards the wooden barrier with the wide golden stripe. When we entered the departure lounge, the crowd grew larger and more diverse. Monks dressed in black cassocks sat on a distant bench. One of them had snowy white hair and wore a small, black cap. His head was turned towards a woman sitting near him as he listened to the voice of
her playful child. There were Kurds in their baggy trousers and distinctive clothes. Near the barrier stood a tall woman leaning against the wall, looking very sexy in her tight trousers and light pink shirt that revealed the roundness of her breasts. She placed a camera tripod and a blue holdall full of various equipment beside her on the floor. She had the look of a reporter. Although I couldn’t tell where I’d seen her before, it had been in more than one place.

In the farthest corner, a group of passengers was moving around, murmuring and gesticulating in a tense, nervous manner. Suddenly a group of American Blackwater guards passed through the small gate, carrying their luggage. This was the American private security company that specialized in providing security services to foreign embassies and US companies in Iraq. The way they looked stood out; you couldn’t mistake them for anyone else. It wasn’t only their uniforms that distinguished them – their bulging trousers and black shirts that revealed their chests – but also their burly, powerfully built figures. Their bare, muscular arms, their tanned skin, their broad, thrusting chests and their shaved heads gave them the look of actors taking part in a Hollywood action movie.

I suddenly noticed an old acquaintance of mine who worked for a local television channel. He was talking to the woman reporter in tight trousers whom I’d seen earlier and who was chewing gum in an overly sexy manner. He was bombarding her with rapid-fire statements, but when he saw me he waved and smiled. So I went over. As soon as I reached him, he introduced the woman, saying her name in a low voice, ‘Nermine Haidar.’ I didn’t know where I’d heard the name before, but he told me that
she directed documentary films. ‘I might have seen a film of yours at some time,’ I told her. It was unclear to me whether he knew her from before or had just made her acquaintance. But she seemed rather put off by him. Nevertheless, he dragged her by the hand to the duty-free shop and came back half an hour later, laden with bags of drinks, perfumes, belts, prayer-beads, jewellery, scarves and religious books. He told me he’d bought the items to make his work as a journalist in Baghdad easier.

We waited for around two hours. There was nobody that we could ask about the reason for the delay. The journalist, whose name I’ve forgotten, called several people in Baghdad, asking basic questions about his hotel or requesting help for his work there. When he spoke on his mobile, his voice was drowned by the voices of the other passengers. Then he hurried off to the cafeteria and returned with a tray full of cups of coffee. He gave me one and offered Nermine another. At the gate, we drank and chatted.

On the plane it was even more crowded because the seats were unallocated. Families and clerics were seated first. We put our little briefcases and bags in the overhead compartments. I took a seat next to the window. The nameless journalist pushed his way to the seat next to mine. In the aisle seat sat Nermine Haidar in her tight trousers and full blouse. She lifted her arms and with a rubber band tied back her hair, which was cascading down her shoulders. Then she took some papers out of her handbag and put them on her lap. Across the aisle from us sat three Marines who were returning from leave. It was clear from their looks and their language that they were of Mexican descent. Two soldiers from Fiji occupied the seats in the row in front of us. A plump woman soldier sat beside them. She was blonde and her hair was bunched
with a khaki hairband. She’d left her khaki camouflage jacket open, revealing a khaki vest. In the seats near us sat young men from Iraqi families and three women soldiers. One of the women soldiers was very tall and blonde, with blue eyes and a small tattoo on her arm. A black officer stood beside her, talking. It was clear that his seat was elsewhere, but he was spending as much time as possible talking to her before the plane took off. Every time the air-hostesses hurried past to carry out the required procedures before takeoff, he would squeeze himself harder against the seat of the woman soldier.

When I’d finished drinking my cold beer, I dumped the can in a black bag beside me. The anonymous journalist turned and asked me if I wanted another one. I made a sign of agreement, so he reached into a large bag and brought out another can, which he opened and handed to me. The outside of the can was cold and covered with droplets of water.

‘Where are you staying?’ he asked me as he wiped his forehead with a handkerchief.

‘Do you know Faris Hassan?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ he answered.

‘He’s coming to collect me from the airport,’ I said to avoid any further questioning. I didn’t ask him where he was going. He took the handkerchief out of his pocket, wiped his mouth and started drinking beer from the can in his hand. In the other hand he held a packet of Lays chilli-flavour crisps, which he was devouring eagerly. I drank my cold beer. Every now and again, he shook the packet of spicy crisps towards me. It was illustrated with a red chilli. I stuck my hand in the packet, took a few crisps, put them in my mouth and downed a sip of cold beer to soothe the burning sting.

I never answered the anonymous journalist’s question nor disclosed to him the nature of my mission. I evaded his curiosity by pretending to be asleep until the pilot ordered us to fasten our seat belts for landing.

The descent was terrifying. The plane came down in a tight spiral, trying to keep immediately over the airport, because the militias would target slowly descending civilian airplanes with portable, shoulder-mounted, Russian-made Strela missiles. After the aircraft had landed and come to a complete halt, we all stood up. There was heavy spring rain. The Marines and Asians were the first to disembark and head for the terminal building. They were all complaining about the rain, except for the blonde woman soldier with the tattoo. A young man helped carry her heavy bag. He lifted it up for her to put on her shoulder. She thanked him without looking at his face and asked the others to make way for her. She then sprinted off.

As the crowd moved in front of me, I turned and took the newspapers that had been left in the seat pockets. I put them in my bag and stuck the empty beer can in a seat pocket in their place. I took my passport and mobile phone out of my small leather bag, which I then slung over my shoulder before leaving the aircraft.

All three of us stood in the queue: the anonymous journalist, Nermine the documentary director and me. The soldiers, Marines and Asian workers all went to the other side, except for the woman soldier with the tattoo. She’d been held up by the large bag she was carrying on her back. She finally caught up with them and left the place, accompanied by the black officer. Outside, the weather was terrible and we saw a flat green area, the portico of the building, and the wreckage of an aircraft still left behind from
the days of the war. We all ran as quickly as possible towards the bus to take shelter from the rain.

Nermine was talking non-stop to a family with two young women. One of them was dark and wore very tight knee-length trousers. The other one was prettier, but rather plump, and wore a check skirt and blue blouse. She’d tied her hair with a ribbon as blue as the colour of her eyes. The mother was around fifty, very slim and elegant and with long hair that fell to her shoulders. She wore round glasses and carried a book in English. She told us that her husband was also a journalist working for a recently established paper in Baghdad. They’d been living in Stockholm for twenty years but had gone back to live in Baghdad after the fall of the Saddam regime. She talked about the hardships of life and compared the Baghdad of twenty years ago with the present day. I wasn’t really interested in what she was saying, and didn’t listen. Every now and again I’d check out the crowds of passengers of different ethnicities in the terminal. Then I’d gaze out of the window at the space outside. The clouds had partly cleared and the sun’s rays fell warmly on the American soldier who stood holding his gun and looking in our direction. In the other direction, it was still raining non-stop. Our turn came at the passport control booth. The officer smiled at me and stamped the passport quickly without uttering a word.

We moved a few steps inside the hall and then stopped in front of the luggage conveyor, which was going slowly round. All eyes were fixed on it. Three tall, slim employees from the Fiji Islands appeared, accompanied by sniffer dogs trained to detect explosives. They moved around the bags with their dogs that sniffed one suitcase after the other. A soldier dressed in khaki then came out of the gate opposite. He walked towards us, buttoning his shirt
up, examined our papers and passports, and then allowed us to move to another hall. The windows were very tall and revealed a large garden of fruit and willow trees, surrounded on all sides by a chain-link fence that was hard to get through. The only exit was through a gate guarded by a Marine checkpoint, beyond which stood a car from a convoy.

Faris was waiting for me in the hall as I emerged, pushing my luggage trolley. To my right walked Nermine and the anonymous journalist, also pushing their trolleys. As soon as Faris saw me, he waved and I waved back. When he came closer, he shook my hand. Then he shook hands coldly with the journalist, but shook Nermine’s hands with great warmth. He stood with me for a while to allow Nermine and the journalist to leave with their trolleys. When they turned to me, I waved goodbye.

‘Do you know him?’ Faris asked, referring to the journalist.

‘No, but he asked me about my business. So what’s his story?’

‘A suspicious character. No one knows his story.’

Faris was holding a cup of coffee that he’d bought from the airport cafeteria. He was wearing a pair of khaki trousers that I hadn’t seen him in before. He looked as though he’d shrunk a little and lost some weight. He appeared different, perhaps a little paler than before. His bones seemed to protrude as a result of tiredness or premature ageing, and he didn’t look well enough to be able to complete this assignment. His movements, however, were so swift and energetic that they seemed to be someone else’s. He couldn’t bear to stand still. While I went to exchange some dollars for Iraqi dinars at a bureau de change, he kept pacing round in circles. He polished off the hot coffee in three quick gulps, as though it were a magic potion, without saying a word. We stood in the queue again to exit through a narrow doorway. On the
other side, the Marines were also standing in a queue, with their clean-shaven faces, their blond hair, their open shirts and their khaki kitbags. Dealing with them was a female official who didn’t stop smiling, while we had a male official who frowned and pulled a long face. His hair was uncombed and he yawned incessantly, as if he’d just woken up.

As we left the airport, a grey Kia minibus was waiting for us. A fat driver was leaning on its bonnet, smoking. His head was shaved, his trousers were baggy and his shirt was buttoned to the top without a tie. His beard was unshaved. We placed our luggage quickly on the back seats. ‘Do you have your laptop with you?’ Faris shouted.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Don’t put it in the boot,’ he said. ‘And where’s the camera?’

‘With me too,’ I said.

‘Take it with you on the back seat.’

With a cigarette in his mouth, he carried his little bag on his back. From time to time he adjusted his glasses with his hand. He sat in front while I sat at the back. As the minibus gathered speed, we were met with tall concrete blocks and four- or five-metre-high barriers covered with an assortment of drawings: legendary heroes, trees and quails, luxury mansions and other colourful objects that were designed to disguise the lifeless concrete. Sparkling light flashed from electric lamps that hung here and there. As the daylight grew stronger, their light began to fade. There were cardboard paintings hanging down, posters that swayed gently in the breeze and political slogans of various types, attacking terrorism, advocating civil concord or calling for elections. There were pictures of politicians and clerics, of all sizes. Political posters and advertising predominated, some of them
imitating Iranian revolutionary and graphic styles. They were dominated by the bold, extremely bright colours so revered by the Shias, such as red, green and black. Many of the posters included writing as a complement to the image, in order to maximize the effect. This style of vulgar art or kitsch was prevalent during the Saddam era, produced mainly by amateur artists who filled the public squares with their own type of artistic expression. The recent posters, however, tried to redefine the cultural and social values of Iraq and express its new state of turmoil. They also represented a type of political protest, for they were designed to deface the walls that had been built earlier by the Saddam regime as emblems of its power and authority.

On the road, convoys of black cars passed by. Armed men in black suits and black glasses sometimes jumped out of their vehicles suddenly and urgently, pointing their guns at any approaching car. ‘Blackwater,’ Faris said and then fell silent.

The war had wiped the landmarks from Baghdad’s streets. The Tigris was dry, the flowers were withered, the branches of the trees were scorched and the air was filled with dust. The gardens had lost their greenness and the buildings and houses stood randomly. Dust covered the pale green trees while rubbish accumulated on the pavements. There were potholes and ruts filled with stagnant water and high concrete walls shaded by blighted yellow palm leaves. The orange trees were dry and without fragrance. Only the smell of death was everywhere and its image haunted everything. The windowpanes were smashed to pieces by the boom of explosions, the walls alongside were cracked open and the streets were blackened by blasts.

As soon as our minibus reached a thick, high, concrete wall I knew we were about to enter the Green Zone. We stopped at an American checkpoint, which was considered the gateway to the most important area in the Middle East. The barriers were staggered so that the minibus had to zigzag between them. At the checkpoint stood a group of US soldiers in full combat gear, with their machine guns pointing at us. The driver followed the instructions given to him and moved forward slowly until the vehicle stopped near a wooden hut. Two very tall soldiers in Marine uniform looked out of the hut and ordered us to get out of the vehicle. As we stepped out, three 130 SM military helicopters flew out from a point beyond the concrete barrier. Their rotor blades beat like drums as they turned northwards and moved off into the distance like black insects. The sunlight was getting stronger. The muddy colour that dominated life and what was left of it in Baghdad began gradually to disappear and was replaced by a bright green. My watch showed midday. The temperature was close to thirty. The humid air was stirred by a refreshing breeze coming from the direction of the river that set the palm leaves and their shadows in motion. The American corporal came closer and started scrutinizing our faces and examining our passports, identity cards and papers. The driver was first, followed by Faris. The corporal finally placed his machine gun on his shoulder and took my passport. His face was not completely visible because of his steel helmet and the strap around his chin. As he stood there, four other soldiers behind him examined our faces.