I take a piece and thank him. Inside my mouth, however, it burns so much I’m tempted to spit it out, and then I find myself getting used to it.
Louis frowns. “What do you know about Zayouna?” he asks, shoving two pieces in his mouth.
“Well, I grew up in Baghdad. I had some friends who lived there, and also some distant relatives. It’s a good neighbourhood. Very nice people.”
“Very nice people who are actively involved in trying to kill my people, who are even nicer. Ha!” He shoots a glance at me. “That was a joke, Nabil. We need a nickname for you. Or maybe a title. ‘Nerves-of-Steel Nabil.’ Haddya like that? That’s a good one to have written on your tombstone.”
Louis pulls another red-hot strip from the packet and balls it up into his mouth, working his jaw hard to keep the wad going. “So you got relatives in Zayouna? Maybe a nice cousin you want to introduce me to? Someone cute? Some of these ladies are good-looking if you get them out of their veils, you know what I mean? Except that a lot of them wear too much makeup, man.” Louis veers off the highway, taking us towards Baghdad Jadida — not necessarily the shortest route to Zayouna. How could he possibly know all these neighbourhoods, anyway? Still, for someone who hasn’t been here long he seems to be very familiar with the city.
Louis pushes his tongue out, blowing air to form a small, sugary bubble. In the pop, a speckling of spit lands on my cheek.
“Some of the ladies here, they’re like, all covered and shit, and yet they’re wearing an inch-thick coating of makeup. And then the men go around in those man-dresses! Explain that to me.”
“It’s called a
dishdasha.”
“A dish-whatta? A dishrag?”
He’s trying to wind me up, I know. “A
dish-dasha
,” I say slowly. “Shall I spell it for you?”
He laughs. “Now you’re talkin’. Just trying to see how much shit you’re prepared to take. Just bustin’ chops, Nabil.”
“And sometimes it’s a
thob.
That’s more a like a robe.” At Maisun Square, he turns up Palestine Street, through Muthana. “Maybe I can draw a picture for you so you won’t confuse them.”
“Hey, now, that would be useful. Maybe you can make up a whole picture-book you can sell to dumb Americans like me. ‘The Idiot’s Guide to Understanding the National Dress of Iraq.’ By Nabil, uh, what’s your last name?”
“Al-Amari.”
“By Nabil ‘Nerves-of-Steel’ al-Amari. But those women, with the big dark eyes? I’m down with that.”
I listen to Louis yammer on for a while, that sort of polite listening which is only hearing the sound. Suddenly I feel homesick for the days when I had to listen hard to understand English. As a boy in Birmingham when, if I didn’t listen carefully, the language was like a hum in the background.
“Have you thought of checking out the Tuesday Market as a place for counterfeiting? That’s just up on the right.”
“Yes, I know that one. But we’re not looking for counterfeited goods, not exactly. That place is purses and watches, no?”
“Hmm. Well, it’s just a suggestion. You also have Serai and Safafir. And Shorja.”
I feel a laugh surfacing in my throat, and a quick instinct to suppress it. He sounds ridiculous trying to pronounce Iraqi names.
“Just trying to let you know about some places to check out, in case you didn’t know,” he says. “Baylor said you needed some help in figuring out the black market scene.”
“Well, most of those are regular markets.” Al-Shorja is one of my old favourites, with all the fresh spices piled high, mounds of orange cardamom next to dark-gold saffron and shrivelled green spices I never could quite place. I used to love going there as a boy.
“Whatever,” he says, lowering his window. “But maybe if you rummage around the regular markets, you’ll find what you’re looking for.” Louis brusquely pulls the car over, reaches out and over the roof, and takes back his siren. “No need to look like pigs in this neighbourhood.”
“Pigs?”
He glances at me and pulls away again, as quickly as he pulled over. “Pigs. You know, cops? I guess that’s slang. They probably don’t teach you that when you learn English from the BB fucking C.”
“I went to school in England.”
“Really? Well then,” he says, trying to feign an English accent, but sounding like an Irish brogue instead. “Smashing, I’m sure.”
I suppose every culture has some sort of unflattering name for the police. But pigs? I can’t think of a more insulting thing to call a human being. But then, maybe Americans don’t see pigs in the same way we do. When I came back from England and told my friends at school that kids in England eat pig-meat for breakfast, they didn’t believe me. Mum forbade us from eating bacon, but Baba let us have it a few times when he took Ziad and me out to see the football game at the St Andrew’s ground.
The wide streets and large houses of Zayouna look pretty much the same as they did when I was last here. What’s different is the shops, many of them closed, and the sidestreet checkpoints and homemade roadblocks, which are almost everywhere.
At the mosque, Louis makes a right and then another right, and then heads past a line of large houses, many of them just like the ones in my neighbourhood, only a little bigger.
“Do you see this primary school on the right?” He uses his chin to point.
“Al-Watheq School?”
“I guess that’s the name. There’s an illegal gun market inside. I’m told you can get a single-action, semi-automatic there for as little as $75.”
“There? In the school? I find that hard to believe.”
“Well, I’m pretty sure of it. Do you want to go in and check?”
“With you?”
“Nah, I’ll just raise suspicions. Despite what that Waspy-assed Baylor says, I don’t pass for an Iraqi.”
I move my hand towards the door handle, then use it instead to smooth my trousers. “Well, if I go in and there are people there, I’m sure I’d have to spend at least ten minutes shopping around. If I go and leave quickly, they’ll be suspicious of me.”
“Take my word for it. They just want to make sales.”
“Well,” I say, looking at my watch, “if you do have time...”
“Go already!” he says. “Make it fast.”
I’m out, pacing quickly towards the school entrance. I hate it when Americans think everything can be done quickly. There is no sense of appreciation that important things take time. I’m walking faster, and as I do the heat creeps up around me, moving across my skin, beneath my clothes. The lobby door is unlocked.
Two young guys holding Kalashnikovs look up. One of them puts his hands into place on his rifle.
“Salaam aleikum,”
I say.
“W-aleikum is-salaam,”
mumbles the one without his hands ready to shoot.
“I was looking for a place to buy some...defence.” Stuck between weapons,
silah,
and defense,
difa’,
the latter sounds more dignified.
“They’re not here today. Try coming back tomorrow.”
“Not here?”
The quieter man, wearing a stubbly beard that looks like it is based on lethargy more than piety, puts a cigarette in his mouth and lights it. “They went to sell in Aadhamiye today,” he says. “They’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Oh, well maybe I’ll come back then,” I say.
He takes his cigarette out. “Looking for something in particular?”
“Nothing special. lust something small...maybe a Beretta.”
He puts his cigarette back in and leaves it there. “Well, the Zayouna Brotherhood has the best prices. If we’re not here, ask for Mazen at the pharmacy across from the mosque. He’ll tell you where to find us.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“Fi m’Allah”
the smoker says, raising his head in a gesture of goodbye. I nod at the other and take off, back through the courtyard.
Fi m’Allah.
A shortened form of
fi iman Allah
— with faith in God. May God see to it that we see each other again. Though religious people say
fi m’Allah
often, it seems strange coming from them. If you have faith in God, why do you need to rely on weapons? I suddenly remember a line by the Indian poet Kabir: “But when deep inside you there is a loaded gun, how can you have God?”
~ * ~
Louis is not where he dropped me off. What if someone shot him and stole his car? What if they’re waiting for me, ready to shoot me for working with the Americans?
The sound of a car horn, and with it, the sight of Louis’s car, just down the road, closer to the mosque. When I see him, he blinks his lights at me. I walk over, trying not to look too rushed, too obvious, to people on the street. It’s so much better travelling with Rizgar. Even though I often worry about Rizgar looking or sounding Kurdish, at least he is Iraqi.
“So?”
“Just two guys with guns.”
“Really?” Louis looks surprised.
“But usually they’re there, I guess. It sounds like they took their goods over to Aadhamiye for the day. They might be back tomorrow.”
“Aha! So it’s a mobile market. Well, that’s good to know.” Louis puts the car into gear and takes off, making too much noise as he does. For someone who is not supposed to be conspicuous, I feel like we may as well have spray-painted news of our visit across the mosque walls.
“D’you price anything?” Louis puts his chewed red blob into one of the wrappers and dumps it in the ashtray.
“You mean to buy a gun?”
“No, I was hoping you’d buy me a fresh fucking pack of chewing gum.”
In the wardrobe in my parents’ bedroom, I know there’s a small revolver. I was fascinated with this fact when I was a teenager, wondering how Baba could work on saving lives while arming himself for the possibility of taking them as well.
“I wouldn’t want to carry a gun.” I turn to face him. “If I did, I might end up having to blow the heads off assholes like you.”
Louis guffaws. “Ka-ping!” He rasps through the rest of his laugh, which ends in a sigh. “That’s the spirit, my man. Can’t lose your sense of humour in all this. You won’t survive without it.”
I can almost feel the cold metal moving into my temple, the pressing of the gun against my head.
We suggest you stop working with all foreigners. Particularly the Americans.
I’d get one to protect Sam, though.
She’ll go back to America in a pretty coffin.
“So they only cost $75?” I ask. “I mean, for a basic one?”
“About that,” he says. “That’s what I’ve heard. Can you afford one?”
Getting $100 a day to work with Sam, I can afford a whole arsenal. But that’s not the point. I watch as he turns onto the Khalid bin al-Walid Expressway, reaching again for his removable siren to navigate us through the traffic.
“Don’t worry, I’m not turning on the siren for now,” he says. “Just us getting ready.”
“I’m not worried.”
“Sure you are, man. It’s been written all over your face from the moment you got in the car!”
I feel the urge to pull the visor down, the way Sam always does when she’s sitting in the front in Rizgar’s car, to check myself in the mirror. Instead, I weave my fingers together and turn them out, sending out a rip of cracks.
“No problem, dude. I can imagine what it must be like. Our guys don’t go out nearly as much as your reporters do. Your people do some crazy shit!”
My people. As in journalists? Or Iraqis?
“So how do you get information if your guys don’t go out much?” I ask.
“Well, from people like you, Nerves-of-Steel. Not every Iraqi who can speaka da English is lucky enough to land a job like you did.” Louis turns the siren on again and weaves through the cars that let him pass. The unsettling rise and fall makes my heart accelerate. I let him talk for a while, feeling my coiled spine loosen a little when he turns the siren off again to get back on the local road, leading to the beautiful Masbah, with its huge houses right along the riverfront. We never drove through here before the war because most of it was closed off to the public, protecting the mansions of government ministers and senior Ba’ath party people. It’s one of the few things I like better about Baghdad
ba’id
than
qabil —
driving through the Masbah. I can only imagine how much more beautiful it must be from inside the houses, on the balconies, perched high and proud along the Tigris.
A queue to buy petrol winds around the bend on the way to the Hamra. While Louis talks, I count. I’m already up to more than seventy cars waiting in line.
“Hey,” Louis says. “When you start scouring the city for stuff in the illegal markets, can you give me a little briefing on what you find? You know, very off the record?”
Maybe Sam would say sure, off the record, and say it’s all in the name of cultivating a source.
Cultivating.
She explained that idea at length the other day, as it applies to journalism. I thought it was for gardening.
“I — might be able to help. I think I have to check with Sam first.”
“You do that, buddy. I’d appreciate it.”
Stop working with the Americans.
“I don’t want to promise anything, though.”
“No sweat. Here you are, Mr al-Amari. Next stop, Hamra Hotel,” he says, pulling into the car park. Some of the drivers who recognize me are watching us roll in, staring.