The room turned helter-skelter. Tribal leaders shouted at one another and at us, fingers wagging, fists shaking; the Big Man yelled at Captain Vrettos, who yelled right back, saying he was sick of ignoring the obvious. I pulled my knees tight to my chest and watched the triangle of light dance between my legs. I wondered what Rana was doing. Probably hanging laundry to dry, or demanding Karim lie down for his afternoon nap. She’d said her husband would be home all week. She’d have called otherwise.
I looked up at the portraits of the dead men and sighed. We said we wanted peace. What we really wanted was calm, something else altogether. They said they wanted peace, too. What they really wanted was power, which maybe wasn’t something else altogether. After we’d destroyed their mosque, it was tough to argue otherwise.
One of the tribal leaders, a younger guy I’d met at Abu Mohammed’s wake, started shouting, “Nina leven, fasil! Nina leven, fasil! Boosh! Boosh! Boosh!” I winced. Captain Vrettos flipped him off with both hands, which made the Iraqi yell louder.
Through all the noise, I smelled decay again. I watched a man with a large lip sore and a salt-and-pepper beard emerge from the corner to shush the other Iraqis. The stench seemed to be coming from his sandaled feet, his toenails little gnarled knives poking out at the world. Wearing a gray dishdasha and a red-and-white checkered turban, thick wrinkles splayed across his forehead, sagging in the middle. Yousef’s eyes studied the spaces between the men in the room, one a deep hazel, the other the cloudy brown of cataracts. I realized where I’d seen him before, even before the patrol through the sandstorm. He’d been the man demanding fasil at the car accident in the spring. I wanted to ask why a falafel man had been invited to this meeting, but stayed quiet.
“This isn’t the time for blame.” Snoop translated for Yousef with taut exactitude, as if he were afraid to neglect even a syllable. “We’ve all lost friends, American and Iraqi. While it seems wise to keep the American Muslim away, we must remember the death sentence was also placed on brave Iraqi soldiers.” The IA major nodded vigorously. “And we must remember the neighborhoods of Ashuriyah are being covered with lists of targets stuck to telephone poles. Sunni and Shi’a. Not all are just threats.”
While Yousef continued, I watched the faces of the other men in the room. Wasta isn’t a thing to pursue, I thought, or even possess. It’s not just power. Yousef knows this, and that’s why he has it. Despite the Sahwa contract, despite the luxury sedans, despite all the bombast and circumstance, the mukhtar didn’t. One glance his way showed he knew it, too.
Yousef was still speaking when Fat Mukhtar interrupted. At first the older man tried to speak over him, but when the mukhtar continued, he stopped and turned his head toward the ceiling, exasperated. Fat Mukhtar then stood up again to shout down his opponent. An argument ensued, one voice restrained and firm, the other wild as a roller coaster. The rest of us sat in awkward silence, watching while pretending not to.
“They argue about who’s in charge,” Snoop said slowly. “Fat Mukhtar say this is his house. The falafel man tells him to calm down, this is not the time.”
Fat Mukhtar spat on the ground toward Yousef’s feet and wiped his palms together like he was cleaning his hands. He said something to all the room with his arms spread wide and turned to Snoop and me, jerking his head to the door. Then he stormed out, slamming the door behind him.
Snoop’s voice returned to a robotic pitch. “The mukhtar say he’s the only one who can stop the terror men,” he said. “Then he tell LT Jack and me to go outside with him, since everyone else here just wastes time.”
“Go,” the Big Man said. “Settle him down, we need him here.” I stood, and Snoop began to do the same. “We need the terp.” Anticipating a protest, the Big Man waved me outside. “Be creative, Lieutenant. Put that liberal arts degree to use.”
I scooped up my helmet, slung my rifle, and walked out into a chalky sun.
• • •
The mukhtar stood in his driveway rubbing the hood of a black Mercedes. He watched me approach through the reflection of the tinted windshield.
“No Snoop,” I said. “Bosses. Mudirs.”
After sneering at the house, he burped and pointed at the fleet of Land Rovers and Mercedeses in his flagstone driveway. Then he pointed back to himself with his thumb, the digit disappearing into a pit of white cloth.
“Bayti. Mine,” he said, the English word like a pepper shaker in his mouth.
He gestured to follow him down the driveway. We walked under a canopy of palm trees, most of them sagging from overwatering. Some of the rolls of carpet that covered his lawns had bunches in them, little green tufts that belonged on a miniature golf course. The estate overlooked the Villages from a ridge wedged between hills. Below us, irrigation ditches zigzagged through hamlets with gridded care, a network of blue forcing structure upon dusty bedlam. In the far north, the sluggish waters of the canal gleamed, partially cloaked by the fruit groves. To the south was nothing but desert and dried-out ravines, and to the west — to the west Rana lay in wait, an exile in her own land.
“Mine,” Fat Mukhtar said, spreading his arms wide to encompass everything from the canal to the villas behind us. “Mine.”
We approached a group of Sahwa and jundis gathered near a woodshed the mukhtar used as an arms room. Across the gravel road, four Strykers sat like sleepy ogres, the tops of headquarters soldiers poking out from the hatches. I considered forcing some of them to interact with their Iraqi counterparts, but decided not to. How had Shaba put it in his love letter to Rana? “They are here to survive and endure, not to change.”
I exchanged shaku makus and knuckles with the Iraqis on duty. One of the khaki browns shied away, turning his back. It didn’t take me long to figure out why: Azhar’s brother wanted nothing to do with an accord. He kept his thin shoulders straight and cocked and tossed the shiny rifle in his hands from palm to palm.
“Salaam,” I said to him. There was no reply. He remained facing away, northward. I looked at Fat Mukhtar and arched an eyebrow. He shrugged.
“Mine,” Fat Mukhtar said, referring to the Sahwa guards. Then he patted the laser sights attached to the jundis’ rifles. It’d taken some wrangling, but the supply guys at Camp Independence had come through. I’d honored the deal with Saif, though he would never know it.
“Mine,” he said again, pointing to my chest.
“Yours,” I corrected.
He shook his head and grabbed a laser sight with one meaty hand and my shoulder with the other. “Mine,” he said.
I closed my eyes and sighed.
As I opened my eyes, ready to convince Fat Mukhtar to go back to the meeting, I saw a familiar shape peek from behind the corner of the squatty woodshed. I pushed past the mukhtar’s arm and stepped over a strand of razor wire. Around the corner huddled a sullen teenager, more stick figure than man.
“The fuck?” The Barbie Kid lifted his good eye to me, his unibrow a dark question mark of its own. He still wore pink sweatpants, but his shirt was an oversized khaki top, like the Sahwa wore. New sneakers covered his feet, white socks rising up his calves like garden snakes. He remained huddled, even when Fat Mukhtar waddled up and clapped at him.