To Be a Friend Is Fatal (19 page)

The itch was tormenting. I bashed my casts together, hoping to somehow stop it, but it persisted, unfazed. I crawled into bed and turned off the news.

I had resisted it as long as I could but finally submitted to the conclusion that I had failed in Iraq. I had not been good enough or strong enough to keep a grip on things, my brain had tumbled, and now I was obsessing over Google Earth images of my hometown infrastructure.

A sympathetic lieutenant colonel gathered my clothing, toiletries, and the Christmas stocking my mom had mailed to Fallujah and shipped them back in two large gorilla lockers. When they arrived, I pried them open and searched eagerly for my green government-issue notebooks,
containing months' worth of notes and contacts, but they had likely been tossed into the burn pit before the Second Marine Expeditionary Force cycled home. The agency never sent a replacement to Fallujah. The canal-clearing initiative unraveled, and its funds were diverted back to rubble removal. Despite all of my efforts, not a single thing remained. It was as if I had never even been there.

I mailed the worthless cell phones back to USAID, threw out my notes for the briefing book, and stopped following the war.

Insurgent maps of West Chicago gave way to cover letters and résumés. I was unemployed, after all, and a huge portion of my savings from a year abroad had been distilled into IV bags, dispensed into orange scrip bottles, and transferred into the bank account of the doctor who mangled my wrist. I was staring at tens of thousands of dollars' worth of bills.

The medical center in Bournigal had prepared a thorough discharge folder for my American insurance provider, Clements International, including doctors' notes, typewritten lists of procedures, X-rays, drugs, and medical supplies. I was comforted by the thoroughness of its records, the thickness of the folder, and was relieved to know that I had insurance from a company that specialized in covering expats and aid workers.

Except: I had neglected to call Clements from the emergency room in Bournigal and therefore failed to obtain a preauthorization number. The customer service representative clucked as he informed me that the insurer would not reimburse me. In an appeal, I FedExed my entire discharge folder to the company, which then indicated that it would not honor any claims because the hospital paperwork was in Spanish. When I called to receive preauthorization for a series of upcoming root canals and a procedure to remove the wiring from my jaw, I was told that my policy covered only medical costs incurred abroad, not domestically. I pulled out the surgical to-do list, estimated the cost of the remaining procedures, and figured I would be penniless in two months.

The horizon of depression is stripped of contour and color. For months, I trudged across its baked fields in search of relief, past occasional mirages of minor achievement (stitches removed, infection subdued), and through a fog of stomach-eroding painkillers and antibiotics and more surgical complications.

While sitting in the endodontist's waiting room, I found a quote of mine in a dated issue of
Time
magazine, uttered months earlier on Election Day in Fallujah, in which I spoke about the fledgling reconstruction efforts in the city. The doctor asked me, “What was it
like
over there?” as he slid a black rubber bit between my jaw and prepared a series of root canals. After several shots of Novocaine, though, he removed the bit from my mouth and told me there was a problem: the scar tissue around the roots of my teeth prevented him from fully anesthetizing the area. If I didn't want to feel a lot of pain, he said, I could reschedule for a general anesthesia session in a month. Sick of waiting for procedures, I told him to just get it over with. He drilled away into my four front teeth while “Love Potion No. 9” warbled through a small speaker overhead and tears streamed down.

After the oral surgeon missed one of the steel wires wrapped around my front tooth as he removed the bracket holding my jaw together, I decided I was done making new appointments and filling out more insurance forms, so I drove up to the hardware store, bought a wire cutter and a pair of needle-nose pliers, and yanked it from my gums.

When my arms were finally exhumed from their fiberglass caskets, they looked as though they belonged to someone else, slender and frail and jaundiced. One wrist made a popping sound whenever I turned a doorknob.

I would need braces once again. The chairs in the orthodontist's waiting room were designed to resemble huge white molars. Surrounded by anxious and acne-besieged thirteen-year-olds, I stared up at the “Before and After” wall and its neat Polaroid rows of patients' smiles, and found my scarred face glowering from within the adolescent jungle. When the orthodontist asked if I wanted any special-colored rubber bands—maybe red and white for the Bulls?—I grimaced my no, and he began to hoist my dead teeth back into place and ensure the postponement of any dating life.

A half year after the fall, my checklist was finished, but I had given up on returning to Iraq. I no longer wanted anything to do with that part of my life, and my cynicism about international development work clouded out the desire to work anywhere else. Why bother?

I decided to disappear into law school for a few years and make a nice salary when I got out. I drove to the library of the community college where I had first studied Arabic and waded through LSAT prep books and practice tests. I was done with Iraq.

H
ayder leaned toward the mirror and ran a comb through his jet-black hair. He hummed a melody as he shaved. The pitch was a little off, but he didn't notice and wouldn't mind much anyway if he did. His eyes were deerlike, deep and black and wet. He was good-looking, one of the most handsome guys in his neighborhood, and he knew it.

He never had a problem landing dates. He dressed smartly, and though he was five foot nine, he sauntered through the Tunis quarter of Baghdad's Suleikh neighborhood as though he were six two. He was on his way out for the night, and in a good mood.

The Tunis quarter was once a lousy place to him. He was born there, but when he was four, his father was admitted to a program in international law in Wales, so the family moved to Cardiff. When his dad graduated, he took an important job with Lloyd's of London, the British shipping insurance colossus, so they stayed in Britain.

Hayder was twelve and happy in England, barely spoke any Arabic, and didn't remember anything about Iraq, but two forces beyond his comprehension summoned the family back home. The first was unchallengeable and came from Saddam Hussein's government: when the war with Iran started, the regime ordered all Iraqis studying abroad to come home to serve the country. Although Hayder's father was worried about returning with his family—they had developed habits and customs that might be problematic back in Baghdad—there was little choice in the matter. He was conscripted into the Iraqi Ministry of Transportation.
He tried to make the best of the situation and told Hayder, “I want you to know who you are and where you come from. You have a proud history there.”

The second force summoning them back was just as unyielding but altogether hidden from Hayder. His mother, in her early forties, was ravaged with breast cancer and was going home to die.

Hayder was miserable. Gone were the green streets of Cardiff and his friends at St. David's Primary. Now he lived in a city that had enemies, rocketed regularly by Iranians. He used to listen to the music program
Top of the Pops
on the BBC, and Duran Duran, and even knew a few break-dance moves. He hated Iraqi music. He didn't know what they were saying and certainly couldn't dance to it. He wore shorts, and the other kids on the street made fun of him and said he was gay. They stared at his BMX bike, which his father had shipped from England, as though it were a Rolls-Royce. He sat in school and couldn't understand more than three or four Arabic words. The kids taunted him for living in Britain, calling him
ameel
,
ameel il-ingleez
. When he asked his mom what it meant, she told him to ignore them. She had heard the same thing when she was growing up: her father served as a military officer on the staff of King Faisal, who had been installed by the Brits.

One day his mom told him to take care of his brother and sister and to be good. His thirteenth birthday wasn't far off. He didn't know what she meant. That night, his uncle came to gather Hayder and his siblings for a sleepover that lasted for days. When Hayder returned home, his mother was already in the ground, buried at the Karkh Cemetery on the western outskirts of Baghdad.

Not long after, his father was injured by a bomb blast down south in Muhammara, and Hayder's first year back in Iraq came to a close.

Over time, Hayder adapted. He learned Arabic and found new friends who liked Madonna and Michael Jackson. They traded cassettes, posters for their rooms, and VHS tapes of American movies like
Rambo
and the James Bond series. One of his friends even had a porno on VHS.

Hayder made the Tunis quarter his own. After he graduated from the Oil Training Institute of Baghdad, he found a job as a translator for international companies that came into Iraq to sell products under the UN's oil-for-food program in the 1990s. Russian, French, and Indian companies, they all spoke English and liked Hayder. He made about $5 a day, which wasn't great, but it was work. He spent it on cigarettes and on his dates.

When his little sister was married, his father threw a huge party in their home. After the bride and groom signed the contract in the
katb kitaab
ceremony, he took Hayder aside into the storage room of the house and said, “Look, son, I've invited all of my friends. They're going to bring their daughters with them. I wish you'd pick one, because I want to see my oldest son get married.”

Hayder didn't want to get married. “I'm getting married every night to a different girl!” he said to himself, smiling at his joke.

“Son, I want to hug my grandchildren before I die.” Hayder bristled a bit and said, “Dad, okay, I'll look.”

He walked back into the living room. The ceremony had given way to celebration and feasting and Iraqi pop music. He saw Dina and within minutes made plans to take her out for a date.

There weren't any nightclubs in Baghdad. They went out to smoke narghile by riverbank restaurants such as Qamr al-Zaman and Al-Saha, where they ate kebabs and fish. Dina liked to smoke cigarettes but couldn't in public, so they mostly relaxed at home with his family.

In less than a year, they were married, on March 1, 2001. Hayder was twenty-seven.

Hayder and Dina moved into a small home in Dora, on the south side of Baghdad. There was a large refinery nearby and stretches of empty fields. They had a happy year, young and married, and by the middle of 2002, Dina was pregnant. They decorated their home with Louis XV furniture, gaudy and gold, and hung
kharze zarqas—
lapis lazuli–colored amulets meant to ward off the evil eye
—
on each wall.

When the regime's official television channels switched over to
Al-Jazeera on 9/11, Hayder sensed the approach of another war. Even though Hayder found no Iraqis in the list of terrorists who had hijacked the airplanes, he worried that it would be used as an excuse to attack Saddam. They used to be able to listen to
Amrika al-yawm—America Today—
on the radio, but the regime cut the frequencies as American forces gathered in the Persian Gulf. They knew that George W. Bush had said Iraq was part of an “axis of evil,” along with their enemy Iran, but it was hard to know more than that.

Hayder's brother-in-law managed to buy a satellite dish, though it was illegal. When nighttime came, they sneaked onto the rooftop with the Nilesat dish and pointed it up at the sky until the signal from the outside world poured in. They stacked some crates to conceal it and hurried back down to watch CNN, as though they were eavesdropping on a conversation about themselves. American flags always flapped in the corner of the television screen. Before the sun climbed back up, Hayder and his brother-in-law would slip back onto the roof to remove the dish.

For months they gathered to watch the secret news, until it was 2003 and not much of a secret anymore. They saw Iraqi soldiers scampering along the roof of the local grade school, and antiaircraft batteries were soon visible. Hayder and Dina watched as tanks rumbled through the fields of Dora, followed by massive trailers carrying helicopters and aircraft parts. The soldiers were everywhere, blocking bridges, digging ditches in nearby gardens.

Hayder was convinced there would be a massacre. Saddam would never surrender. Turkey had decided against letting American troops invade from the north, so the invasion would surely come from the south, with Dora as the southern entry point. Dina was swelling; the baby was due in seven weeks. He was afraid to move the family in her state.

On the first night of the war, at around five thirty in the morning, their home shivered from an explosion. Hayder ran to the roof to watch the bombers come but never saw them. They flew far overhead and disappeared before the bombs landed.

The ground forces were coming. Hoping to avoid being caught in the cross fire in Dora, Hayder and Dina moved in with her family in
a different neighborhood. The regime broadcast a message saying that Baghdad would be an American graveyard and that there were soldiers on every street corner, ready to defend their city.

But the soldiers disappeared. Hayder and Dina were packed alongside five families into one home, where they watched the news without rest. A couple weeks in, Al-Jazeera broadcast the American troops crossing a bridge that was only a block away, and Hayder cried out, “They're here!”

He found it difficult to contain his emotions. The fear that had patrolled most of his life in Iraq surrendered its weapons without a fight. He was overjoyed. The Americans would come, bringing in the best administrators to run the country. They would have democracy, they could start selling their oil again, they would have Kentucky Fried Chicken and Burger King and nightclubs. Microsoft would come to Iraq.