He had lifted me up into the ranks of those who are revered. That night, I dreamed about Omar again. But I didn’t run away from him.
Sayed came back to sound me out once more. He wanted to be sure I hadn’t spoken too soon. The day before launching the preparations for the mission, he told me, “I’ll give you three more days. Think hard. At the end of that time, we’re off.”
“I’ve already thought hard. Now I want to act.”
Sayed assigned me to a small but luxurious apartment with a view of the Tigris. The first time I went to the place, a photographer was waiting there for me. After the photo session, a barber cut my hair, and then I took a shower. As I was to leave Baghdad within a week, I went out to the post office to send Bahia the money I’d managed to put aside.
On a Friday, after the Great Prayer, I left Baghdad in a livestock truck driven by an old peasant in a turban. I was supposed to be his nephew and his shepherd. My new papers were in order and looked properly worn. My name appeared on various documents connected to the livestock business. We negotiated the roadblocks without difficulty and reached Ar Ramadi before nightfall. Sayed was waiting for us at a farm about twenty kilometers west of the town. He made sure that everything had gone well, ate dinner with us, and gave us the itinerary for the next stage before taking his leave. At dawn the following day, we were back on the road, bound for a little village on the slopes of the Badiet esh Sham, the plateau of the Syrian desert. There, another driver took me aboard his van. He and I spent the night in a small town and drove away before sunrise, heading for Ar Rutbah, not far from the Jordanian border. Sayed, who was already there, welcomed us in the courtyard of a health clinic. A physician in a graying lab coat invited us to wash up and occupy one of the patients’ rooms. Our departure from the clinic was canceled on each of the following three days because of a military redeployment in the region. On the fourth day, taking advantage of a sandstorm, the driver and I set out for Jordan. Visibility was zero, but my companion drove calmly along, following desert trails he seemed to know with his eyes closed. After several hours of absorbing shocks and inhaling sand, we made a stop on the slopes of a valley, a barren place where the wind howled unceasingly. We drove onto a natural courtyard and took refuge in a cave. We had a bite to eat, and then the driver, a small, dried-up, impenetrable fellow, climbed to the top of a ridge. I saw him take out his cell phone and, apparently with the help of some sort of navigation device, indicate our coordinates. When he came back, he declared, “I won’t have to sleep outdoors tonight.” That was the only time he ever addressed a word to me. He entered the cave, lay down, and pretended he wasn’t there.
The sandstorm began to subside, its surges coming at longer and longer intervals. The wind still sang in the crevices, but as the landscape steadily emerged from the ocher fog of the desert, the gusts gradually died down and then suddenly fell silent altogether.
The sun burned more brightly as it touched the rim of the earth, throwing the bare, jagged hills on the horizon into bold relief. Out of nowhere, two men riding mules appeared, climbing up the valley to our cave. Later, I would learn that they belonged to a ring of former smugglers who had turned to gunrunning and occasionally served as guides for the volunteers arriving from other countries to swell the ranks of the Iraqi resistance. My driver complimented them on their punctuality, inquired about the current operational situation in the sector, and turned me over to them. Without any sort of farewell, he returned to his vehicle and sped away.
The two strangers were tall and thin, their heads wrapped in dusty keffiyehs. Both of them wore jogging pants, thick sweaters, and espadrilles. The taller of the two sought to reassure me. “Everything’s going fine,” he said. He offered me a big woolen pullover and a hat. “Nights get cold here.”
They helped me climb up on a mule and we set out. Night fell, and the wind came up again, icy and vexing. My guides took turns riding the other mule. The goat paths branched out before us, opalescent under the moon. We hurtled down some steep escarpments and clambered up others, stopping only to prick up our ears and scrutinize the features of the landscape that lay in shadow. The journey took place without incident, as my guides had foretold. We made a brief stop in a hollow to eat and regain our strength. I devoured several slices of dried meat and emptied a goatskin of springwater. My companions advised me not to eat too fast and to try to rest. They attended to my every need, regularly asking me if I was holding up all right or if I wanted to get off my mule and walk a little. I said I wanted to keep going.
We crossed the border into Jordan at about four o’clock in the morning. Two border patrols had passed each other a few moments before, one in a military 4×4, the other on foot. The observation post, recognizable by its watchtower and the light shining on its antenna, stood atop a hillock. My guides observed the post through infrared binoculars. When the squad of scouts returned to their quarters, we took our mules by the reins and slipped along a dry riverbed. A few kilometers farther on, a little van carrying a cargo of plastic bowls bore down upon us. A man wearing a traditional tunic and a Bedouin scarf around his head was at the steering wheel. He congratulated my two guides and traced on the ground a secure itinerary for their return to Iraq. He informed them that drones were flying over the area, explained how to elude their sweeps, and recommended a way to get around a unit of coalition forces freshly deployed behind the line of demarcation. The guides asked a few practical questions; when they were satisfied, they wished us good luck and began their journey back.
“You can relax now,” the new stranger said to me. “From this point on, it’s a piece of cake. You’re in the best hands in the business.”
He was wizened and swarthy. His large head, too big for his shoulders, made him seem unsteady on his feet. His full lips opened on two rows of gold teeth that sparkled in the rising sun. He drove like a madman, with no regard for potholes and no reticence about slamming on the brakes, which he did abruptly and violently, often catapulting me against the windshield.
Sayed reappeared that evening, in my new guide’s house. He embraced me for a long time.
“Two more stages,” he said. “And then you’ll be able to rest.”
The following day, after a substantial breakfast, he drove me to a border village in a large, high-powered car. There, he turned me over to Shakir and Imad, two young men who looked like students, and he said to me, “On the other side, there’s Syria, and then, right after that, Lebanon. I’ll see you in Beirut in two days.”
BEIRUT
18
My sojourn in Beirut is drawing to its close. I’ve been waiting for three weeks now. I count the hours on my fingers or stand at the window in my room, staring down at the deserted street. The rain drums on the windowpanes. On the windswept sidewalk, a tramp blows into his fists to warm his fingers. He’s been there for a good while, on the lookout for a charitable soul, but I’ve yet to see anyone slip him a coin. His leggings are soaked through, his shoes are water-logged, and his general appearance is simply grotesque. Living like a stray dog, practically in the gutter — that’s obscene. This person, possessing not so much as a shadow, isolated in his wretchedness like a worm in a rotten fruit, can somehow forget that he’s dead and over with. I feel no compassion for him. I tell myself that fate has brought him so low in order for him to function as a symbol; he focuses my awareness of life’s unbearable inanity. What hopes does this man have for tomorrow? Surely he hopes for something, but for what? For manna to rain down upon him from heaven? For a passerby to notice his destitution? For someone to take pity on him? What a fool! Is there life after pity?