“Do you really think that we have the problems that your papers are reporting?” Hamid asked. “Do you think that people who have lived together for more years than your country has been in existence suddenly find it impossible? That the hatred has grown so quickly between Sunnis and Shiites that we must shoot each other and bomb each other? No, my friend. Everyone knows that eventually you will miss the warmth of your own bed, the blue eyes of your own wives, and then you will go home. Then who will rule Iraq?”
“It won't be Saddam Hussein,” Major Scott said.
The sheik closed his eyes and bowed his head toward Scott. But for the rest of the meal, there was very little said except by Major Scott, who kept insisting that the coalition forces would provide more security if the local people helped us find hidden weapons.
The woman who had come in before returned with two men who served an entire second course. One of the Iraqi men saw me smile and smiled at me.
The dinner ended with the sheik saying that he would do his best and Scott saying that was all that he wanted.
“Sir, what we can accomplish together, the coalition forces along with the goodwill of the Iraqi people, will astound the
world,” Major Scott said as we stood outside the door. “We're going to have some of our people work with yours tonight at the hospital. We'll assess the needs there and do what we can.”
We mounted up and started toward the hospital. Captain Coles rode with the major until it was time for us to split from them, and then he came over to First Squad.
“So what did you think?” I asked Coles.
“I think Major Scott was right in the way he handled it,” Coles said. “He had to pin the sheik down into actually doing something. The different factions over here all want our goodwill but they don't want to actually do anything to get it.”
“I think the sheik is just one of them uptight dudes,” Jonesy said. “You know the typeâbomb them once or twice and they get a chip on they shoulder.”
I didn't know what weapons Major Scott was looking for. The army hadn't found any big stash of chemical weapons, although they had to be somewhere because they had used them against the Kurds.
There were marines in Fallujah and they were on edge big-time. A marine captain met up with Coles and shook his head slowly back and forth as Coles explained that we were going to assess the needs at the hospital.
“Fallujah is the body-bag capital of the region,” the captain said. “Don't spend any more time there than you have to. And don't trust anybody. They killed some contractors here and burned their bodies. Keep that image in your head.”
“How do you keep your guys safe?” Coles asked.
“By killing everything that ain't smiling, and half of everything that is,” the marine captain answered.
Captain Coles's mouth tightened as he nodded.
We got to the hospital and it looked like crap. There was barbed wire around it and Iraqi guards. We rolled up and a guy came out and directed us toward what looked like an ambulance entrance. I was nervous as Jonesy drove in.
“Hamid called and said you were coming,” the man said. “Let me tell you my situation. You are Americans. I am Iraqi. Just talking to you could get me killed. I have to send my people out and say that I am getting supplies from you that will save Iraqi lives. Otherwise I will be attacked for cooperating with you.”
“You give us a list of supplies you need,” Miller said, “and we'll try to see that you get them. We can't guarantee anything, but we'll try, sir.”
“Talib Al-Janabi,” the man said. “Do you know anything about hospitals?”
“I'm a Physician's Assistant,” Captain Miller said. “I have a degree in biology and enough military training to qualify me for most medical positions.”
“Then you don't need a list,” Talib said. “We have next to nothing here. We are down to washing bandages. Anything that you can get for us will be appreciated.”
We heard mortar fire; Coles called the marines and found that
there was fighting in a nearby cemetery. A marine officer told us to stay put and he would try to get us an escort out of the city in a few hours.
Marla found a bathroom and we took turns, all except for Captain Miller.
“I'm going to look the place over with this guy,” she said, indicating a heavy man in a nearly white coat. “I'd like to get an idea of how bad it is away from the Green Zone.”
“You're not allowed to treat Iraqis,” Captain Coles said.
“I've got a few rolls of clean bandages and some antibiotics,” Miller said. “I don't think it's going to make a major difference in the war.”
“And you know the patients here aren't the enemy?” Coles asked.
“I don't have a good answer for you, Captain,” Miller said. “But my gut feeling is that you don't let people die if you can help it. You got a better answer?”
He didn't. None of us did.
Through an open window we got a great view of an enormous moon hanging over the squared roofs of the city. Silver and white against the darkening sky, it seemed bigger and more important than anything below it.
Some radio messages told us about insurgents in the area. We were told to stay on alert. We talked about baseball and tennis and then, as we always did, what we were going to do when we got home. I hadn't known that Sergeant Love from Third
Squad was married. He seemed like a nice guy, but maybe a career soldier.
“You got kids?” I asked him.
“Five,” he answered with a smile. “Joined the National Guard in Baltimore for the extra money.”
I remembered Pendleton and asked him if he had pictures of his kids.
“Back in my locker,” he said. “I don't want them being captured. That's a little stupid, right?”
“I don't think so,” I said. “Maybe you'll show them to me when we get back to the base.”
“Sure.”
Night came in a hurry. The moon lit up the streets and sent eerie shadows across the frosted windows. The night air in Fallujah was fresher than what we were accustomed to in Baghdad and I felt myself relaxing. We could still hear sporadic small-arms fire outside. I thought I recognized the staccato cough of a machine gun and occasionally what could have been a grenade.
“Birdy, you look nervous,” Marla said. I was half lying, half sitting on a dark couch that looked as if it might have been a place where patients waited to be seen.
“When the rest of the world is nervous,” I said, “you can bet that I'm still cool.”
“Oh, you sound so brave!” Marla said. “Now Jonesy over there is fast asleep, probably dreaming about the blues joint he's going to open.”
I looked over to where Jonesy was sprawled out; his M-16 across his body looked like a guitar. Very cool.
“So, what were you telling me about some foster family you were with?” I asked Marla.
“My biosâthe folks that borned meâif they were ever really togetherâbroke up when I was two or three,” she said. “I don't remember. All I know was that I was going from foster home to foster home. Once in a while I would be in a group home. I guess I wasn't cute enough to be adopted.”
“I thought that a lot of white couples wanted to adopt kids,” I said.
“Yeah, I guess.” Marla had her helmet off and was spinning it upside down on the tile floor. “But my folks weren't dead and they wouldn't consent to me being adopted. I think my dad wanted to get a few bucks for me or something. I don't know. Anyway, I knocked around in a bunch of places. Some were good and some weren't. Then I ended up in juvenile court for shoplifting, and this black family took me in. Kept me out of juvy detention. I was with them for a little over a year. Giving them a hard time. They had a kid of their own with cerebral palsy and really wanted a companion for her. It was all good with them. At least I didn't have to fight her husband off. He was okay. Then it was time for me to either go to college or get a job. So I joined the army.”
“You going to stay in?”
“No, I'm stronger now. I'll probably get out and go to college,”
she said. “I'd like to be a teacher if they let me bring my M-16 to school. Keep the kiddie-poos in line.”
We talked a while longer and Coles came over and told us that we were going to be in the hospital for the night. I had figured that much already.
It was nearly five thirty when Jonesy woke me to say that we were mounting up.
“I'm glad I'm not married to you as loud as you snore,” he said.
Captain Coles said that we were going to start out on our own but go through a part of town that was controlled by the marines. “They'll know we're coming and look out for us,” he said.
We got ready and were waiting for Miller, who we figured was making another survey of the place. I started thinking about the guys the Iraqis had caught and hanged in Fallujah and immediately had to pee again. I told Jonesy, who said I was the peeingist black man he had ever met.
The bathroom we were using was down the hall and off to the right. I started walking a little faster because I really had to go. I was just about to reach for the doorknob when the door opened and an Iraqi started backing out. He was pulling something. I jumped back against the far wall. Another Iraqi had his hand over Captain Miller's mouth and was pulling her head back.
The guy facing me yelled something and the one nearest me turned. He had an AK-47 slung over his shoulder and let Miller go as he reached for it. I pointed my piece at him and pulled the
trigger. Nothing. Safety! I pulled the safety off and shot a burst into his face. He spun away from me, his hands going to his face as he went down. Captain Miller was on her knees and the other guy was fumbling in his jacket.
I tried to say something. I wanted to say don't move. I wanted to tell him that it was over. Nothing came out. I pointed the muzzle at his chest and he reached for it, grabbing the barrel and pushing it up. Frantically I jerked it away from him and pointed it at him again.
I don't remember shooting again, or any sound the weapon made. All I remembered is the way the top of his head exploded and the way his hands, fingers spread wide apart, went to the side of his face.
Captain Miller was shaking. Her hands were beating flat against her chest and she was sucking in air noisily. I thought she had been shot or was having a heart attack.
“You okay?” I asked.
She looked up at me, then at the two guys on the bathroom floor. Neither of them was moving. She pulled her pants up and buckled them. She was saying something, but either I couldn't hear her or no words were coming out.
The rest of the crew had heard the gunfire; later I learned they thought it was outside.
Miller was stunned. She kept hitting the front of her Kevlar against the tiled wall.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“No! No! Nooooooo!” she screamed.
She screamed. She cried. She rocked back and forth. She moaned.
“With all the garbage that's going onâ¦with all the disgusting garbage that's going onâ¦How can they? How can they?”
She was crying again. I put my hand on her shoulder.
Miller turned to me. “You stopped them from raping me,” she said. “But you didn't stop them from ripping up what was left of my soul.”
“I'm sorry,” I said.
“I don't care about sorry anymore,” she said. “I just don't care about sorry any freaking more!”
Outside the air was clear and crisp, already warm. The sky was slowly turning from a quiet predawn gray to the brilliance of morning. In the distance the bright reddish gold of the Iraqi sunrise began to spread over the horizon. Dark silhouettes brightened into sprawling fields and square squat structures. The foul smell of the Euphrates River mixed with the sweet odors rising from the sands along its banks, adding texture to the rising sun, like a chorus of strings backing up a sad saxophone.
Our crew was going back to Baghdad, back to the base. It was just another sunrise over the city that had seen sunrises from long before men wrote history. But here, on this bright morning, I rode for the first time as someone who had killed. All the times before
that, I had fired my weapon into the darkness, or at some fleeting figure in the distance, I could say that maybe I had missed, that maybe it was not my bullets that hit them.
No more. I wanted to be away from Fallujah, away from Iraq. I wanted to be alone in the dark with my grief. I wanted to mourn for myself.
The marines took us through Fallujah and halfway to Baghdad. There we met a patrol from the 3
rd
ID and tailed them back to the Bubble. We didn't talk about the incident on the way back. When I got out of Miss Molly and headed toward the tent Captain Miller stopped me.
“Thanks, Birdy,” she said. “Thank you.”
Later Marla came in and sat with me. “You need to be with somebody, let it be me,” she said.
We had a birthday party for Jean Darcy, who turned twenty-one. The guys in the mess hall came up with a dynamite cake and enough ice cream to feed the entire army. Darcy's parents and friends from Oak Park, Illinois, had made all the arrangements and there were at least fifty presents, cards, and thank-you notes for her service to the country. It blew Darcy away. She sat in the middle of the floor, all her birthday stuff around her, and cried and cried. We were all hugging her and kissing on her and half of us were crying, too. It was crazy cool.
Instead of keeping the presents, Darcy handed them out to us still wrapped in the boxes and so we all got a few odd things.
I got skin lotion and Jonesy got a sponge on a rope to wash his back.
“Y'all trying to say I stink so bad I got to tie the soap down?” Jonesy asked.
The party lasted until way past midnight with guys slurping down Cokes and ice cream until they got sick. I was queasy in the morning when somebody started a whistle going for roll call. We fell out, half awake, half dressed, and half pissed that we had to make roll call at all.