While these words are being translated, the woman rolls her eyes and grimaces at the curtained wall off to the interpreter’s left. But when the interpreter stops, and a silence falls in the small room, the woman’s face crumples in on itself, as if her resistance to the ridiculousness of Hartz’s monologue has been the only thing keeping her features in place. She begins to sob.
“I’m sorry,” Hartz says. He pushes the letter forward with a gloved hand.
This at least gives the woman something to do. She flinches and flares away from his advance, striking out and swatting the letter to the floor. Relieved, Hartz bends over to retrieve it, is stopped by the resistance of his body armor, and, grunting, scoots his chair out and drops to a knee.
“Can you even say his name?” the interpreter is asking by the time Hartz regains his seat. “Ayad. My son is Ayad al-Tayyib. Do you think a letter brings him back? Do you wonder why people are not happy in the way George Bush has freed our country? For what? So my son can die and bandits can drive me from my own house?”
“Yes, about these bandits,” Hartz begins.
“Why don’t you shoot them?” This the woman says in English.
“That’s what we’d like to do, ma’am,” Masterson says. His back is to Fowler, who has stationed herself by the beaded door. She can feel the whisper of the room’s sheet wall against the back of her head like a shroud. Hartz laughs nervously, as if his fellow officer is a crazy uncle, friendly but given to overstatement.
“The reason we’re asking you to help us,” Hartz continues, “is that there were five bombs found buried in the field right behind your house, which we believe is your property. Is that correct, that it’s your property?”
The woman nods, almost imperceptibly.
“If so, these are very troubling charges, ma’am. Very troubling. If we were to find out, for instance, that you knew that your son — or anybody else — had planted those bombs there. And you did not come forward. That would be a very serious offense. And, well, I’m sorry to say we believe that an American soldier’s body has been hidden there. Buried, I mean.”
“Sorry to say!” Masterson bursts out. He opens a manila folder. From it he retrieves two sheets of yellow legal paper covered in handwritten Arabic. There’s a photo clipped to each page.
“These are sworn affidavits that your son was involved in an insurgent group dedicated to the resistance of the coalition forces. Can you explain to me why these Iraqi citizens would say your son was involved in the insurgency if he was not?”
“Hold on a second here—” Hartz says.
“Why would I do that, Captain?” Masterson says. “These documents are proof that this woman’s son engaged in anti-coalition activity.”
As soon as Fowler sees the affidavits, she knows they’re fake. One is from Masterson’s former interpreter, Faisal Amar, who is conveniently dead. The other is accompanied by a photo of a sheikh she recognizes, a man in his fifties, with a heavily lined face. She and Masterson had interviewed him at the schoolhouse in Bini Ziad the day of Beale’s abduction. He knew nothing about Beale — though at one point he spread his hands, a bargaining man, and explained that perhaps he could be more helpful if the captain told him whom he wished to blame. But the affidavits don’t matter. What interests her is the woman’s reaction to the files, the way her gaze slides contemptuously off to the side. Fowler wants a confrontation, wants her anger, wants the woman to dare to challenge their legitimacy. She leans forward until the woman meets her gaze.
Immediately, the woman speaks, abruptly, haughtily.
“These people are nothing,” the interpreter says.
“Nothing in what way, ma’am?”
“Her son was educated,” the interpreter says. “These are village people. They can’t even write. It’s an insult to bring her this testimony.”
The woman speaks with pure contempt, a clear, high-octane cook-off of hatred, which Fowler finds herself more than ready to meet.
“So you know them, then?” Fowler asks.
“Who is this?” the woman asks.
“Ma’am,” Hartz says, halfway rising, “this is Lieutenant Fowler, one of my subordinates. She was in the field when your son was … received his injuries. She lost three soldiers herself…”
But the woman has no interest in Hartz. She’s locked on to Fowler now.
“My son was deaf,” the interpreter says while the woman, loosening her scarf, pulls her ear as if she intends to rip it off and hand it to Fowler. “He was deaf. He was deaf. You are a woman. You tell me, what kind of animal would kill a man like that?”
“Ho now!” Hartz says. He’s up and out of his chair, sweaty and red, waggling his pale palms in her face, as if he might rub her away. “Let’s take a break, okay?”
“No,” Fowler says. “I’ll speak to that. I shot your son.” Hartz has collared her now, hauling her away. “But if I’m an animal, then maybe you can ask her where she was when I came looking for him. Why don’t you ask her that?”
The interpreter dutifully begins, but Hartz waves him off. “No, no. I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why not?” Fowler says. It’s ugly what she’s saying and she knows it, but she can taste Pulowski’s death in her mouth, choking her, and she will say anything to get it out. Even animals have to breathe. “Single males living alone are the people most likely to be targeted by insurgents. That’s the profile. She knows that. You leave a kid out there alone, with no clue what’s happening, nobody to speak for him — ask her what kind of animal does a thing like that.”
* * *
The backyard of Ayad al-Tayyib’s house is a mess of men. The Explosive Ordnance Disposal Team is rigging charges to clear the remaining IEDs from the field so that Fowler and her platoon can safely dig out Beale’s body. She exchanges nods with these men, brief waves. Pulowski’s body is long gone, on the first transport out the night before. Coming through the side yard, she has a couple of flashes of him scrambling away from her, as if she has become a person whom he does not know, or cannot see. It feels like she’s peering through the wrong end of a telescope at a universe from which she had been barred, passport revoked, papers out of date. She goes into the living room to get Eggleston, who’s watching TV. “Eggy, come on,” she says.
“I can’t believe those guys are dead, ma’am,” Eggleston says. The video is of a cricket match, a sport she doubts the sergeant has ever seen before. Or cares about.