There was a knock at the door. Professor Hureshi poked his head in.
“Professor al-Zabadi, a word.”
“Class, you’ll excuse me.” Qasim smoothed his mustache and followed Professor Hureshi out, closing the door behind him.
“I wanted to catch you before you left this afternoon. Have you reached your decision, Qasim?”
“Professor Hureshi…”
“Qasim, I need to know on whom I may depend. We must assume, God willing, that things—”
“I’m staying,” Qasim said. “I’m staying. I’ll be at my uncle Mohammed’s.”
Hureshi blinked and flashed his teeth. “I am pleased to hear it.”
Qasim thought of Lateefah—alone in the hole he’d dug her. The pain he caused. His mother’s shame. And when the war came? Could he stand it?
He hugged Hureshi and kissed his cheek.
“I’m glad to serve,” he said.
Salman sat smoking. He’d taught his elementary statistics class that morning and was now going through his students’ tests, but his mind kept wandering back over what he’d just seen. On the way down from Hureshi’s office, he’d noticed that weed al-Zabadi in the hall talking quietly—even intimately—with Anouf Hamadaya. Perhaps the way they were standing so close and whispering so ardently meant nothing. Perhaps it was merely class-related. She was one of his students, after all. But Salman had learned over the years to trust his suspicions: even if they weren’t always right, they almost always suggested opportunities.
Salman kept an eye open for opportunities. Unlike Adham, who came from a wealthy family in Fallujah, and Qasim, whose middle-class family stood solidly on their construction business and their date farms in Baqubah, Salman came from people little better than peasants. What was left of them, anyway, after the 1991 Shi’a uprising. Salman’s father, his two brothers, three of his uncles, and most of the rest of the men in his extended family had either died in the fighting or been butchered after Karbala fell. Salman himself, sixteen at the time, only barely escaped with his life. For nearly a week, while Republican Guard soldiers roamed the streets dragging men off to be executed and dumped in open graves, Salman lay hidden in a shattered groundwater pipe, drinking fetid water, dizzy with hunger, his heart thundering every time a jeep or tank rolled over the road above. When at last he crawled out, nearly dead from dehydration, he was the last living man in his immediate family.
He hated the men who’d murdered his brothers and uncles and father, it was true, but it was an abstract hatred locked so deep within himself that it was no more than a cold violet idea, having little to do with his day-to-day life. He’d recognized early that the strong and forceful climb to the top, and since he was neither, his only hope lay in cunning. Justice was for the mighty; Salman vowed to survive. So when his draft notice came up, he dutifully went away and served in the infantry, and when Lieutenant Azimaya approached him about serving the greater glory of Iraq, the only question in his mind was how far it would take him.
It got him all the way to Saddam University, and after he finished his BSc with a dual major in business and maths, it got him into the Economics Department at Al-Mustansiriya University to work on a master’s. While taking economics classes he worked as a TA in the maths department, but even what he got for teaching, added to what he got paid for informing, didn’t quite make ends meet. Not only was he supporting his mother and sisters back home, but he was trying to save up for a wife, so he drove a taxi three, sometimes four nights a week, and could be found for certain odd jobs if the price was right. He’d hoped when he finished his MA to get a cushy government position—maybe join the Party—then find himself a bride.
The upcoming invasion made a mockery of all that. He knew he’d survive, no matter what, maybe even thrive in the chaos, but nobody wants war except soldiers and fools, and Salman was neither. Salman was shrewd. Salman was observant.
Anouf, for example, he’d been watching for a long time, and not just because she had a face like an Egyptian movie star and a figure to match. The other students gossiped about her because of her modern clothes and her blue jeans, but also because of the men who picked her up from school, whispering that she supported herself as a prostitute for high-placed government officials and was an informer for the Mukhabarat besides. Salman had wondered himself, at first, but the truth, which he’d uncovered in time, was that her brother was of one of Baghdad’s biggest embargo cats—the loose gang of black marketeers and smugglers who made their money supplying people with everything prohibited by the UN and Saddam. The thuggish men who picked Anouf up from campus every day were her brother’s runners.
Salman doubted Qasim’s interest in Anouf had anything to do with her brother. Frankly, it was a miracle Qasim managed to get out of bed every morning without cracking his head open. He certainly wasn’t tough enough to hang with the likes of Hamadaya. Perhaps he needed something, though, some paperwork, a visa, or maybe with the war coming… what? Maybe it went the other way: he worked as an accountant for his uncle, so maybe Anouf’s brother was having trouble with his books? Most likely, it was just school drama. Qasim had a crush on Anouf or vice versa. Al-Zabadi wasn’t handsome, manly, or distinguished, he wore glasses, he had a crooked nose and a ratty mustache, he was unkempt and awkward, but for some baffling reason, his female students were always having crushes on him. Pity, Salman suspected—the same gush of emotion they’d feel for a sick cat.
So maybe they’re flirting. Maybe Anouf has a crush. Maybe Qasim has finally grown tired of living apart from his wife. Maybe he’s more of a man than he seems. Whatever it is, we’ll see. We’ll see what it’s good for.
Qasim barely caught Luqman as the rotund physics professor blew out the door for home. His wife had called, said the Hizbis were digging a trench right next to their house, and demanded he do something. She said they’d even threatened to lock her up. Lock her up! Luqman didn’t know what he could possibly say, but he hoped when he got home, somebody would listen to reason. It was too bad the Hizbis had picked his house to set up next to, but what could he do? They had guns! They were Hizbis!
“I will be glad, nephew, when the Americans have freed us from this plague.” Luqman turned down the radio, which was playing a patriotic song from the war with Iran.
“You really think it’ll work?” Qasim asked, staring out the window at the city streaming by in a blurred mosaic of brown and gray.
“Nephew! Look at MTV. Look at CNN. We’ll vote, we’ll have a constitution, we’ll elect our president. Think of it! No more Hizbis! No more secret police! No more Abu Ghraib! It’ll be like it was in the seventies, before the Mother of All Morons attacked Iran. I’m telling you, everybody had a new car and nice clothes. Not this shit I wear now, but good stuff from Egypt.”
“You don’t think they just want our oil?”
“Of course they want our oil! But they don’t want to steal it, they want us to sell it to them, just like the Saudis. They just want to make sure we’re loyal. Okay, then. We’ll be loyal. We’ll be good, loyal friends, and with the US behind us, we can stand up to the Zionists, we can stand up to the Persians, we can stand up to those pricks in Kuwait. And we’ll all have satellite TV. Freedom, Qasim. Freedom! And satellite TV! We won’t have to hide anymore!”