Finally he motioned for Sameh to join him in the outer office. “So many tears.”
“And these are the fortunate ones.”
“Fortunate. Yes. Fortunate.” He searched the office. “Is the American here?”
“Alas, he was called away by his embassy.”
“Pity. Major Lahm says he was of great help. I had hoped to meet him.”
“He will be most disappointed to have missed you.”
“You trust him.”
Sameh nodded. “I do.”
“May I ask why?”
Sameh searched for one point that might summarize all he was coming to admire about Marc Royce. “His wife died three years ago. He sacrificed his profession to be with her. He carries the loss with him still. And yet it has not left him bitter. He cares deeply. He feels the pain of those who are suffering.”
Jaffar studied him for a long moment. “Major Lahm tells me this Royce is a friend of the missing American man.”
“Alex Baird. They worked together. They are part of the same church in America.”
“He too is a believer?”
For Sameh, the world seemed to stop. All the background noise vanished. The weeping couple in his office, Leyla’s soft voice, the murmurs rising from behind his office door, the harsh sunlight bathing them through the window to his left. All gone. There was only room for the imam’s intense gaze. The word hung in the air between them. Believer.
Jaffar must have read the shock in Sameh’s face, for he added, “That is the term the Americans use, yes? I seek only to acknowledge what so many of my associates prefer to ignore. That their beliefs are important to them. As important as ours are to us.”
“Indeed.” Sameh sought a further response but could only come up with, “Marc Royce’s faith is his own. But he strikes me as sincere. About everything.”
Jaffar turned his back to the office and asked softly, “Do you have news about the other matter?”
“Nothing direct. Only one possibility.” Sameh described the conversation that morning, about Hassan and the gardener.
When he was done, Jaffar frowned at the dust motes dancing in the sunlit air. “Hassan el-Thahie is known to me. He is Sunni and he had ties to Saddam. Which means many of my associates will carry their distrust of him to their graves.”
Sameh replied, “Hassan strikes me as a man seeking to rise above his past and carry our entire nation with him.”
For the second time that day, Jaffar surprised him. “I agree. Though I must ask that you do not share my opinion with anyone else.”
“Of course.”
“You say the American came up with this possible connection?”
“He and Major Lahm.”
“I would like to meet with this man.”
“I will make it happen. Without delay.”
“And I will make some inquiries of my own.” Jaffar lowered his voice further. “If you have anything to discuss about this matter, do not do so in writing or by phone. We should meet in person. And take great care. There are people in power who do not want us asking these questions.”
Sameh felt the old familiar chill seep into his bones. The imam’s words brought back all the fears of the Saddam era. “Why should the authorities be so concerned about one more kidnapping?”
Jaffar offered Sameh his hand and a smile that did not touch his eyes. “That is one of the questions we should never speak aloud.”
Chapter Nineteen
T hree hours later, Sameh left his office and entered the old town on foot. His destination was quite a ways off, and the day was blistering hot. But he needed time to sort through his thoughts, and he did some of his best thinking while alone in a crowd. Just another city dweller, walking and breathing the city’s fearful and frenetic energy.
The imam had left one of his aides to help maintain the orderly procedure. A few of the families had allowed panic to color their claims, but nowhere near as many as Sameh had feared. Most who could not find their child on his walls left voluntarily, after handing over photographs and depositions and tearful pleas. Sameh carried their desperation with him as he walked.
The entire group had been processed in three hours. The families had brought photographs of their own, along with written lists of distinguishing marks and characteristics. They had all been through such procedures endless times before. The photographs were compared and the hospital phoned when a match was made. A nurse was on duty to check the child in question. As Major Lahm had thought to number both child and photograph, this took very little time. Once confirmed, the families were told to arrive at the hospital the next morning. A number of the children had been so traumatized they had required sedation. The doctors wanted to keep them all under supervision for another day.
By the time Sameh had left his office, all but four of the children had been identified. For those four, no family members had come forward. Which presaged a different tragedy. But that would have to wait.
Sameh passed Tayeran Square and remnants of the city’s most ancient walls. Baghdad had been erected upon ruins that predated Babylon. It originally had followed the Persian design, a series of tight collectives, similar to guilds but structured as separate villages. One for carpenters, one for goldsmiths, another for healers and herbalists, and so on. One village farther north had been reserved for those noncitizens described by the Koran as “People Of the Book,” meaning Christians and Jews. The old city was vibrant again, the war damage not so much erased as joined to a myriad of more ancient scars. The traffic was chaotic, the smells and sounds and people a vibrant mix.
Sameh crossed Nafura Square and took Kifah Street. His route took him by one of modern Iraq’s many anomalies, a brand-new Persian market sprawling around the sides and rear of the Al-Gailiani Mosque. Sameh was astonished at how fast the market had grown. Sheikh Abdul Kader Al-Gailiani, a tenth century Shia leader, was buried across the street from where Sameh stood. It remained a pilgrimage site, and Persians were bused in on government-run package tours. Sameh had no problem with pilgrims, Persian or otherwise. But his sentiments toward the Iranian regime and their ultra-orthodox clergy were something else entirely.
Initially, this market’s traders had served the Iranian pilgrims. But increasingly these unlicensed hawkers offered everything from Persian mountain honey to Iranian toothpaste to boxy air-conditioners to diesel generators. All at prices below anything manufactured locally or brought in from the West. This was possible because the Iranian government secretly offered these traders a substantial bonus.
The deeper the United Nations sanctions bit into the Iranian economy, the more desperately these traders and the Persian manufacturers clung to the Iraqi market. Tehran subsidized the pilgrim bus services, charging the traders pennies for their transport. They doubled the number of vehicles in service. These days, more than half the buses coming from Iran carried no pilgrims at all. Seats were stripped out to increase the space for products. Freezers, motorcycles, even sacks of Persian cement were coming through border stations as “pilgrims.”
Iran’s largest bank had opened an office across the street from the mosque, despite the fact that it was under UN sanctions for its ties to Iran’s nuclear program. Another bank on the UN watch list had just acquired a building near the market’s ever-expanding northern border. Sameh knew this because his closest friend in the legal profession had handled the building permits. Sameh was always very careful never to publicly voice his opinions. Iran’s spies were everywhere. But he refused to do business with them. He would rather bed down with a nest of vipers.
Iran had sought to oppress and dominate Iraq for more than thirty centuries. The two nations had fought war after war. Sameh was a passionate student of history, and he knew Iran’s habit was to smile and embrace, then slip in the unseen blade.