Gods Without Men, page 32
There was a howling sound, like a dog. There was a child’s voice, calling out a word, perhaps a name. There were horse’s hooves, an engine, a man coughing, bare feet running across sand. There was gunfire.
A whole world.
The next day the villagers of Wadi al-Hamam started work. It was a strange routine. Every morning they gathered in the hall to hear about the day’s schedule. Sometimes a patrol would be due to pass through and they had to man their imaginary homes and businesses, so they could be searched and questioned and occasionally shot at with bizarre-looking laser-guns. Usually the soldiers just walked around with shit-eating grins on their faces saying Salaam alaikum. This seemed to be the main plank of their counterinsurgency strategy. When violence was on the menu the villagers had to wear special harnesses over their traditional ethnic clothing, so the laser-guns could register hits. When you were shot you had to lie down and place a card on your tummy, showing details of your wound. Sometimes a makeup artist would come and sprinkle on some blood, for extra realism. Then the medics would run over and treat whatever injury was on the card, or just put you in a body bag and carry you away. There were scorekeepers who tallied up the net effect on the hearts and minds of Wadi al-Hamam, and, depending on how things had gone, they would be told in the next day’s briefing whether they felt more or less pro-American.
Laila’s role was mainly to stand in the shipping container labeled CLINIC, though sometimes she had to come out and mill about on the main street, looking hostile. The soldiers would arrive, sometimes just a few in an armored vehicle, sometimes a whole convoy of Humvees accompanying the major, a little man in a neatly pressed uniform who looked more like a sales clerk than a soldier, a sort of middle manager of warfare. When the major came, his troops would fan out and point their guns in various directions while he gave out ballpoints and toothbrushes as morale-boosting souvenirs. Then they would all surround the mayor’s office while he took a meeting with Uncle Hafiz. The meetings usually ended with Uncle Hafiz announcing some new bribe for good behavior, a tube well or sanitation project or girls’ school. Sometimes the major would make a speech, which was translated into Arabic by a female interpreter who spoke some Maghrebi dialect no one could understand.
Most of it was easier than Laila expected. The stressful part was when the soldiers conducted raids. The villagers had to assemble in various locations, which were supposed to represent their houses. Even though this wasn’t where she actually slept, it was too close to reality to feel like a game. She still had nightmares about Baba, and one night was shaken awake by the woman in the cot next to her, who’d been disturbed by her moaning and thrashing about. Everyone was very understanding, but she didn’t want their sympathy. When there were night raids she tried to stay in the background, listening to her iPod until it was time to be hooded and cuffed.
One day, about three weeks into the exercise, some soldiers shot all the customers at the café, and Heather announced that in response Wadi al-Hamam would mount its first riot. The major came, looking worried, handed out pens and MREs, and bustled into the mayor’s office to consult with Uncle Hafiz. The villagers gathered outside, pumping their fists in the air and shouting “Down with America! Down with George Bush!” Laila felt ridiculous, pretending to be angry about something that hadn’t actually happened, but some of the others were getting really into it, yelling in the faces of the soldiers and ad-libbing all sorts of colorful Arabic insults. Back home she’d seen many demonstrations, of unemployed men or activists from the religious parties, and they were nothing like this, but she supposed Wadi al-Hamam was supposed to be a country place, so perhaps it was realistic enough. It certainly spooked the soldiers, who looked like they wished they had real ammo in their guns.
Mixed in with the demonstrators were insurgents, who’d come out to make trouble. Unlike the ordinary villagers, they were played by American soldiers, who swathed themselves haphazardly in robes and yashmaghs and bandannas and generally looked as if they were attending a frat-house toga party. As planned, when the riot got under way one of them set off an IED, killing a lot of people. The troops responded by killing a few more. Cutting short his meeting, the major fought his way back to the Forward Operating Base. Then everyone broke for coffee and pastries.
Later Heather came bouncing down the main street in her Humvee to give notes and explain what would happen next. Apparently, Wadi al-Hamam’s hearts and minds had now been definitively lost, and until the end of the rotation they should do their best to make BLUEFOR’s lives as difficult as possible. The insurgents chuckled and high-fived one another. Laila moved as far away from them as she could.
The insurgents lived in a shipping container at the edge of town and passed their days (most of their ambushing was done at night) sullenly shooting hoops, using a plastic crate they’d nailed to a board on the side of the mosque. Since it wasn’t a real mosque, most people didn’t have a problem with it being used for recreational purposes, though one or two of the villagers seemed to think it was disrespectful, and the imam took it very badly. For his role as local religious zealot, he’d designed himself a fantastic fake beard, a long silky chin covering that he donned every morning in a complicated procedure involving a big mirror and a tube of spirit gum. Swathed in his clerical robes he looked very impressive, and when the beard was fixed to his chin he tended to behave as if he really was a respected spiritual leader, lecturing the village women on modesty of dress and giving fiery speeches through the speaker attached to the minaret. One afternoon there was a wail of feedback, and he began railing against the presence of the hoop, declaring it an insult against God (peace be upon Him) and a hateful symbol of the arrogance of the invader. He would tolerate it no longer, he said, and called upon all believers to take a stand against ignorance and join with him in tearing it down. Filled with righteous fury, he propped a stepladder up against the building and began to climb, only realizing his miscalculation when he saw he was surrounded by toga-clad men pointing M-16s at his chest. He climbed back down again. After that everyone gave the insurgents a wide berth.
All the insurgent role-players had served tours in Iraq, so they knew what they were doing when they sneaked around, ambushing BLUEFOR soldiers and planting bombs. They were never rude to the villagers, but they weren’t friendly either; they just kept themselves to themselves. There was one man Laila found particularly frightening. He was very tall and black and walked with a stoop, cradling his gun as if it were a child’s toy. He never smiled, and when any of the villagers got too close to the insurgents’ bunkhouse he’d raise his weapon as if he intended to shoot. The imam claimed he’d told him he would slit his throat if he ever touched the basketball hoop again. “He would do it, too,” he said. “I could see it in his eyes.” As they were debriefed after the riot, this soldier threw back his head and howled like a coyote, which made his buddies fall about laughing. Heather looked annoyed but didn’t say anything. Nor did Lieutenant Alvarado. Laila realized they were intimidated too.
As soon as the soldiers had gone for the day, Laila always made a point of changing back into her ordinary clothes. Most of the villagers seemed happy to have the chance to dress as if they were back home in Iraq. Several had made remarks to Uncle Hafiz, asking whether he minded his niece looking like a vampire. Though he’d always defended her before, at Wadi al-Hamam he seemed far less happy about her rebelliousness. I’m the mayor, he told her. You should think of the dignity of my office. No one else said anything directly to Laila, for the simple reason that she avoided talking to them. Her one friend was called Noor. She was in her early twenties, hardly spoke English, and before she became a role-player had worked in some shitty part of East L.A. packing TV dinners for a food company. She had come to the desert with her mother, father and two brothers. Sometimes she and Laila would listen to music together. Though Noor was older, she knew very little about American life; Laila liked playing the role of educator, telling her the names of the bands, explaining the meaning of slang words they heard on the TV. Most of the women Noor had worked with on the packing line were Hispanic, so she’d learned some Spanish; she taught Laila how to say pendejo and chinga tu madre, and tried to persuade her to listen to Ricky Martin songs. Noor liked pretty things, girly things—pink accessories and stuffed animals and sparkly nail polish. Laila was determined to change that, but Noor was stubborn.
“I don’t understand you,” she said to Laila one day.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re a beautiful girl. You could make something of your looks. Why dress like this? All this black?”
“I like it.”
“But what about your family? Do you think of them? Why do they allow it?”
“I do what I want, OK? Just because I don’t dress like a Muslim Barbie.”
There was a reason, of course. For the black clothes, the music. When Laila had first arrived in the U.S. she’d felt lost. All she could think about was her father. She couldn’t sleep, and didn’t eat, even when Aunt Sara tried to tempt her with her favorite dishes. She remembered with shame how she used to behave, pushing her plate away, telling her aunt that the biryani didn’t taste right, the burek was too salty. What she meant was that they didn’t taste like Mama’s cooking. She couldn’t understand why her mother hadn’t come to America. She’d been so keen to leave Iraq. When Laila could get through on the phone she’d try to persuade her to hurry. “I’m scared for you,” she’d say. “I miss you so much.” But somehow Mama always made excuses. Laila shouldn’t worry. She was fine. She’d come soon.
“When?”
“Soon.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
But she didn’t come. And gradually the tone of the phone calls changed. She started saying how things were getting better in Baghdad, how the city was safer, with fewer explosions and more regular electricity.
“So do you want us to come back?”
“No, darling. Not yet.”
“Well, then, when will you come here?”
“One day.”
What did she mean, “one day”? Auntie Sara and Uncle Hafiz were kind and patient, but often in that first year Laila would wake up screaming in the middle of the night. Once she even wet the bed, like a baby. Jamila would sit up with her and Laila would cry on her shoulder and confess how much she missed her mom. Why wasn’t she coming? Jamila said it was to do with visas. Uncle Hafiz had a friend, some bigshot Republican who’d arranged things so she and Samir had a temporary right to remain in the country. This big shot was also helping them with their applications for permanent residence. But with Mama there were complications. Baba had joined the Ba’ath Party so he could get a promotion. His widow was listed as a “sympathizer.”
“So we’ll come back,” Laila pleaded, sobbing into the phone.
“No, darling. That’s not a good idea. There’s nothing for you here anymore.”
Gradually San Diego came to seem normal. The city was exciting; a life that had once been contained inside the rectangle of the TV screen was now spilling out all around her. There were Rollerbladers and convertibles and bikinis and Big Gulp drinks. School was tough. She’d never had to sit in a class with boys before and the other girls were so intimidating that at first she didn’t say anything to anyone. People thought she couldn’t understand English and spoke to her slowly, making hand gestures and exaggerating the words. Most kids thought she lived in a tent and rode camels. She couldn’t believe the Americans were making a war in a place they didn’t seem to know a thing about. When she tried to explain, even the clever ones just wanted to talk about suicide bombers and their stupid 9/11, as if the people in New York were the only ones who’d ever died in the whole world. She lost her temper once and shouted at some football players, who were taunting her in the school cafeteria. “We weren’t savages! We had television! I saw Cosby Show, Saved by the Bell!” She couldn’t understand why they found this so funny.
Though she was angry, she was jealous too. She wanted to be an American girl, to be confident and loud and know why it was funny to have seen Cosby Show. The nicest girls at school were the misfits, the ones who wore black and seemed at least to have been bruised by life, instead of being unwrapped like pink cakes every morning before school, fresh and stupid and untouched by human hand. She’d always loved music, so she began to find out about the bands the misfit girls liked, with their lyrics about feeling empty and crying on the inside and being scarred and shattered and wanting to die. She too was an angel without wings. Her heart was in a million pieces. For the first time in her life she had an allowance, and, since her uncle and aunt felt sorry for her, they didn’t stop her from buying big boots and plucking her eyebrows and ringing her eyes with black so she looked like a panda bear. Aunt Sara was appalled, but Uncle Hafiz liked the idea of bringing up a modern teenager. In some ways he even encouraged her; the henna tattoos and briefly purple hair were proof they were an American family, not stupid immigrants who didn’t appreciate the freedoms of their adopted country.
The whole emo thing was fine while they were still in San Diego, but Uncle’s sudden decision to bring them out to the ass end of the universe meant she and Samir had to deal with redneck kids who called them raghead and Saddam and sand-nigger. And though the goth clothes and the overwrought music had begun to seem a little ridiculous, they were hers, and she’d found them by herself, and no one could ever take that away from her.
The weeks went by. The first rotation ended and the clerical major and his troops were deployed to Iraq. Laila and the others watched them leave, then she spent a week back home, trawling the thrift store and hanging out with Samir, who was distant and sullen and kept disappearing to his room to take calls from some girl. Together they watched a lot of TV. One afternoon, still in their pajamas, they sprawled in front of a talk show, watching the presenters discuss the latest twists in the Raj Matharu case, speculating whether the parents were responsible for whatever had happened to their son. They didn’t say anything about Nicky Capaldi, though the blogs were reporting that he was in rehab in England and had vowed never to tour America again unless he received a formal apology from the government. So far the White House didn’t seem to have made that a priority. Fans were getting up a petition, but she didn’t feel like signing. While the TV presenters swapped theories, she opened Samir’s laptop and they watched a YouTube interview with the Matharus, who wore pastel shirts in complementary colors and held hands and did their best to counter the rumor that they were Satanic pedophile child traffickers.
“So you think they did it?” asked Samir, throwing peanuts up into the air and trying to catch them in his mouth.
“No.”
“I do. That woman looks like a crack whore.”
“You wouldn’t look so good if your child was missing.”
“I wouldn’t be having no stupid assburgers kid in the first place.”
“Well, if you did.”
“I just wouldn’t. That’s all.”
She was almost relieved when it was time to go back to the village.
The major in charge of the new BLUEFOR rotation was very different from the last one. He looked like a cartoon soldier, an injection-molded plastic warrior, flattopped, bug-eyed and steroidal. He made a big show of force on the first day, driving into the village at the head of a convoy, blaring the theme from Lawrence of Arabia out of speakers mounted on his Bradley. But despite his confidence, his troops were still incompetent, sheepishly drawling their mispronounced greetings and shooting randomly into crowds. Before long the hearts and minds of Wadi al-Hamam had been lost once again, and Heather was instructing the villagers to stone him when he came by to inaugurate the imaginary new cement factory.
One day Uncle Hafiz starred in a beheading video. They shot it inside the mosque because it was the most sinister spot in town. All the insurgents wanted to take part, so Lieutenant Alvarado held a casting call and whittled them down to the six he thought looked most terroristical. The video was for Al-Mojave, a fake TV channel broadcast to the troops in their mess hall, which provided their main feedback on the progress of the simulation. The Al-Mojave reporters would sometimes show up and interview the villagers about how pro-American they were feeling. They particularly liked Noor, who had a good line in wailing and angry denunciations. Uncle Hafiz had been collaborating with the occupier, so he’d been kidnapped from his office in a dramatic dawn raid. He’d spent the day watching Vietnam movies with the insurgents while the flattopped major directed fruitless house-to-house searches. Uncle Hafiz’s death (reported Al-Mojave) would be a major setback for BLUEFOR, since it called into question their ability to provide security in their sector. As far as Laila was concerned, they couldn’t provide snacks and dips for their sector, let alone security, but she supposed this was the sort of thing they needed to find out before they went to Iraq and did it for real. She and Noor watched the beheaders get ready. They were even more ridiculously dressed than usual; one of them had lost his dishdasha and was wearing a Little Mermaid beach towel wrapped around his waist. Uncle Hafiz was willing to help them sort out their keffiyehs but was hampered by the fact that his hands were cuffed behind his back.
“Girls, please come help.”
So they tugged and tucked. Much against her will, Laila found herself assisting the tall black insurgent wrap a length of cloth around his head. He looked imposing, and even more scary than usual, like a Berber dressed to cross the desert. To her surprise he smiled and said thank you. It was the first time he’d ever spoken to her.
