Rather than take the group to the Erbil Sheraton, officially the Erbil International Hotel, Ken directed the group to the smaller, far less conspicuous Shahan Hotel. Unlike the Sheraton, with its six-inch-thick concrete walls and armed soldiers searching everyone coming near the hotel, the Shahan simply offered security and clean rooms. Centrally located in the city, the whitewashed building with the tinted glass front had a growing reputation with foreign business people, many of whom had started switching to smaller hotels like this one.
Erbil was a dusty city that sprawled outward from a mound of earth called the tell As they rode in from the airport, Ken played tour guide, informing them that what they could see atop the tell itself was an ancient Ottoman fortress, with its ancient walls dominating the city. Saddam's forces had completely destroyed the inside of the fortress, but poor Kurds had rebuilt there since. While Fahimah listened in silence, he told everyone that Erbil was said to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, with some of the artifacts found there dating back to 23 B.C. Erbil, in addition to being one of the larger cities in Iraq, housed the Kurdish Parliament.
Austyn had been surprised to see, while they were still in the air over this capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, that Erbil was obviously in the midst of a construction boom. When they landed at the International Airport, they were met with a huge billboard — written in Kurdish, Arabic and English — welcoming them to Kurdistan.
Driving toward the Shahan Hotel, Austyn could see the new construction projects everywhere. The landscape was peppered with them, and Ken told them that investors were pouring their money in, eager to get a piece of the boom.
After Fahimah was given a room and two guards were stationed on the outside of her door, Austyn and Matt met with Ken for tea.
Chairs and tables were set up on the shaded sidewalk next to the hotel. The afternoon air was still hot, but it was almost comfortable here in the shade. Although it was too early for dinner, the smell of roasting lamb mingled with the normal smells of a city. The steady stream of people, cars, delivery trucks and an occasional horse-drawn cart kept the air vibrant with noise and activity. Other guests of the hotel, Iraqis and foreigners alike, were seated at the tables, drinking tea as well. There were no gates or dividers stopping pedestrians from weaving between tables as they went by.
Matt, inseparable as always from his computer, opened the laptop. "No signal here, either," he said.
"No wireless Internet at all, unless you're on the base. The cell service is shaky, too. From what I hear, the Kurdish government has had a hand in scrambling the signals."
"What about a dial-up connection?" Matt asked.
"Maybe. You'll want to check with the attendant in the lobby," Ken suggested. "And I'd be careful."
There were a few leads on Rahaf that Matt had told him about at the end of the flight. Austyn knew that the other agent was impatient to report the information they'd gathered back to the team in Washington and get someone working on it.
As Matt went back inside, Austyn looked around him. A white SUV with large, light blue UN letters on the hood and the side was parked across the street. A couple of peacekeepers wearing soft caps were laughing with a street vendor selling pistachios a few steps down the sidewalk. Austyn realized that the soldiers weren't armed.
"Your first time here?" Ken asked.
"My first time in Iraq," Austyn answered.
"You're lucky. This is a good place to start."
There were no questions asked, no menus brought out.
Not even a minute after they'd sat down, tea served in small clear glasses sitting on white saucers appeared before them.
"You have to tell them specifically if you want coffee," Ken told him.
'Tea is fine with me."
"And they won't bring out any sugar, either, since it's rationed, unless you ask," Ken continued.
"This is fine the way it is," Austyn said, taking a sip of the hot tea. It was strong. He noticed that the saucer under Ken's tea had a couple of sugar cubes on it. A regular customer, Austyn figured.
A cart carrying propane tanks on the back slowly went by.
"I assume those tanks are empty," Austyn said.
"No, they're probably full."
Every news report from Iraq, it seemed, had to do with some bombing and a rapidly growing number of fatalities. Austyn looked around them, thinking about security. Those tanks could cause a pretty good explosion.
"It's hard for outsiders to believe, but this is absolutely the safest area in Iraq."
Austyn decided he'd been too obvious. He leaned back in the chair, watching the bicycle-drawn cart take a right at the next intersection as a small car careened around the antique vehicle and sped off out of sight.
"From the images of Iraq that Americans see on television, you wouldn't know that there's even one place left in this country that isn't torn up."
Ken nodded with understanding. "Living here, I see and talk to the locals every day. Delivery guys say they're not worried about ambushes. Shopkeepers tell me that security is not an issue. And they're not just blowing smoke up my ass. You'll see for yourself. The shops are open as late as people are on the streets… and that's way after it gets dark. The restaurants are full. I don't know how long we'll be here, but if we're here for a couple of days, you'll hear it from the locals yourself. None of the Kurds living and working in Erbil are thinking war — they're thinking peace and prosperity. Occasional violence or kidnappings are the result of disagreements between Kurds about independence, but that's a rare thing."
Austyn figured Ken was probably about fifty, maybe a little older. Short red hair going gray, freckles, low-key. He was easy to talk to and seemed like a guy a person could trust. He'd first come over as an army reservist when his unit had been deployed, but then his time here had continued to extend. Austyn could already tell that the other man had a strong attachment to the people and this area.
"While life in the cities to the south — like Baghdad and Falluja — is pretty much driven by the insurgency, Erbil is part of the other Iraq, the region that stays out of the headlines and where life resembles something close to normal," he continued. 'This is actually true for most of Iraq's northernmost regions. This whole area forms a thin, peaceful crescent around the upper rim of the country, extending from Duhok to Erbil and Sulaimaniyah, cities that are less familiar back in the U.S. precisely because they have largely avoided the violence down south."
Austyn knew that was true. The media wasn't alone in focusing on killings and disasters. The same went for the general intelligence briefings they received at Homeland Security. Reports were issued with the focus on trouble spots. Two tour buses drove slowly by.
"Tourists?" Austyn asked.
Ken smiled and placed one of the small sugar cubes between his teeth, then took a sip of his tea. "Yeah. The local businesses are promoting it heavily. They're trying to convince people that not all of Iraq is Falluja. They're trying hard to show that Kurdistan is safe. The new three-hundred-million-dollar international airport you flew into is just one sign of the changing times."
"Where do these tourists come from?"
"Turkey, Iran. There are some Europeans, too. And, of course, a lot come from south of the border."
"Border?" Austyn asked.
Ken laughed. "The Kurds maintain a hard internal border between what they consider Kurdistan and the Arab-dominated central and southern Iraq. They've had the border in place since the Kurdish uprising at the end of the first Gulf War."