“Hmm.” I pictured the map imagery of southeast Ashuriyah, then its wide, dusty streets, its sandstone mansions with balconies. It wouldn’t have been where I’d hide out.
“Bullshit,” Snoop said. I turned toward him. He was rubbing the top of his head with both hands. “Think about this, LT. Would a terror men leader walk around the middle of the day? He’s not the Cleric. Someone wants us to think he is.”
I turned back toward Alia, her face dropping again to the floor. She’s being forthright, I thought. Nothing like the last meeting. Old questions forged within.
“Sig-ue mi ej-emp-lo,” I said to Snoop slowly, telling him to follow my lead. I recalled Dominguez teaching our terp conversational Spanish at some point, though my own was worse than my Arabic. “Comprende?”
“Sí,” he whispered.
“Tell her we know Haitham is the Cleric,” I said. “And that we appreciate this information.”
Snoop translated.
“But my friend here, Snoop. He’s more skeptical. He thinks it’s stupid to believe someone who’s lied to us. He thinks you must be telling more lies.”
“I’m no liar!” Alia waited for Snoop’s translation, but barely. “Haitham’s a bad man. You must find him.”
“Alia.” I shook my head. “Maybe that’s true, maybe not. But why should I believe someone who forgot to mention she’d worked for Sheik Ahmed?”
Her lips pursed tight.
“A lie, which is half a truth, is ever the blackest of lies.” Tennyson might’ve been too much, but I didn’t care. “You worked for Ahmed, and guess what? So did Haitham! And now you’re here, telling us he’s hanging around the dead man’s house. What a coincidence.”
“Haitham never lied to us,” Snoop added, first in English, then in Arabic.
She rolled in her chair like an angry ball. Long, hot seconds passed. “You must get him,” she finally said. I could barely hear her. “He’s there. I swear by the shrine.”
I reached into my cargo pocket and threw down five ten-dollar bills. “All yours. But the truth. All of it. If not, you’ll never work in this outpost again.”
She pushed the money away and tipped her head, eyeing me and Snoop with open disdain. “The people are wrong,” she said, her Arabic like darts. “You’re nothing like Shaba.”
“I know,” I said, biting my bottom lip. “I’m not dead.”
“Though Allah will never forgive me,” she said, “I’m no traitor like Haitham.”
Behind fierce chestnut eyes, her long, elegant fingers gripping the table, this was the story she told us:
“It was the winter of the Baghdad snow. Sheik Ahmed invited the Horse soldiers to visit, like he always did with new Americans. It was always the same talk about power, about electricity, about peace. Just talk.
“The Horse soldiers came at dusk. There were three of them, and a translator. A captain, a lieutenant, and a sergeant.
“Yes, the first two were named Tisdale and Grant. They were like every other American officer, white with pink faces. But the sergeant was different. Even before he became Shaba, we knew that.
“He was small. And brown. And quiet.
“I watched the meeting from the hallway, behind a curtain. The sheik’s daughter was with me. Yes, Rana.
“The first hour, the meeting was normal. Lots of promises, lots of jokes about women. Then Shaba looked at the sheik and asked about the rumors of his al-Qaeda son, in Arabic. Everyone became quiet. None of us had ever met an American who spoke our language so well.
“The sheik asked how he knew about Karim.
“ ‘By listening,’ Shaba said, pointing to Ashuriyah. ‘They say the father wants peace. Then they say the son wants war.’
“The sheik said the rumors were true. We hadn’t seen Karim for months, though, not since his father ordered him to leave his house for dishonoring the tribe.
“What was Karim like? Like his father. Prideful. He’d grown up believing he would be an important man. Before the Invasion, he studied engineering in Baghdad, which brought honor to the tribe. But after their mother died of chest cancer, Karim became angry with everyone, and with the world.
“Rana wasn’t allowed at meetings. The sheik made her stay away from Americans. He believed they would go crazy from her beauty and rape her. But after I brought out the apricots and hummus, Rana asked if the new sergeant was handsome. I knew then she was up to something.
“She was always a brave child, but on the third visit of the Horse soldiers, it became something else. She walked through the curtain and into the sitting room, defying her father’s law, wearing a blouse and American-style jeans. With no face cover! She sat between her father and the sergeant, put her hand out and said, ‘Hah-loe,’ like she’d seen in movies.
“How old? She was — sixteen that winter. Beautiful, like only a girl that age can be. Had the same circle mark on her cheek that her mother did. She wasn’t angry like her brother, but had his temper when things didn’t go her way. She thought the young men here were beneath her. Long before Shaba, she wanted to marry a man from Baghdad, maybe Basra, to get away.
“Shaba nodded at Rana, but didn’t take her hand. He knew not to violate the sheik’s law. But when the sheik asked her to leave, she didn’t move. Her father was enraged but didn’t know what to do in front of the guests. So she stayed and listened.
“The eyes of Shaba remained on Rana the rest of the meeting, and she looked back, smiling and twisting her hair. Neither spoke. The lieutenant, Grant, reminded me of a sad cow, he didn’t know what to do. Eventually, even the sheik became silent. The translator talked about the weather until the meeting ended.
“That night, the servants and guards gathered in the courtyard to listen to Rana fight with her father. She said she believed in love at first sight. That she knew she would marry Shaba. He said no; he forbade it. She said she would have many babies with her beautiful soldier. He said she would have many babies with the son of a Ramadi sheik, as he’d planned. She said she would run away to America with Shaba and leave Iraq and the al-Badris forever. He said nothing to that.
“What did the sheik think? Probably that it was just the foolish wishes of a girl. But Shaba felt the same. He came to the gate the next night, no armor or helmet. Only a dishdasha that hid a small pistol. He and Sheik Ahmed talked for many hours.
“I listened at the curtain as much as I could. They spoke of Babylon and caliphs and the empire of the Turks. They spoke of al-Qaeda and Jaish al-Mahdi, of tribes from Anbar to Diyala. Sheik Ahmed said most of the Iraqis who shot guns and planted bombs didn’t hate Americans, but that they’d been hired for that by men from other towns.
“ ‘They need jobs,’ he told Shaba. ‘The key to peace is jobs. Idle hands find the trigger.’
“Shaba agreed. Then he explained to the sheik that he would seek the hand of Rana, but only if he was permitted to. He promised not to dishonor the sheik or his daughter. He said the most important thing was to bring peace to Ashuriyah. The sheik asked many questions — of Shaba’s family, of his life in America. Shaba said he hated where he came from, that he’d never had a home. That was why he wanted peace in Ashuriyah. To make a home here.
“When I heard what he said about Rana, I went to her. She’d been locked away in her room, under guard. Her eyes shone brighter than anything when I told her. ‘Go back,’ she said. ‘Learn more.’
“When I returned to the curtain, the sheik and Shaba had come up with a plan for the Sons of Iraq — the Sahwa. There needed to be checkpoints, they agreed, many checkpoints that gave Iraqi men purpose and means to provide for their families.