We spoke, of course, about the murdered Iraqi musician. We also talked intermittently, in the midst of the clamour and the shouting, about the trip to Baghdad and the information that was available. Faris sat facing us. He took care of the orders and spoke to the waiters, a cigarette in his mouth and a glass between his fingers, loudly addressing some man or other, or a woman sitting nearby. He allowed me to get close to Nancy and talk of old times. Mostly we recalled things that had happened between us when we’d been together in Beirut. Then the restaurant began to grow quiet. Light-headed from drinking, the journalists in the bar started to head to their homes and hotels.
At Nancy’s insistence we returned to the topic of Kamal Medhat.
The following day, Faris left for Baghdad in the hope of arranging a place for me at the agency site, in a building near the Associated Press inside the Green Zone. I stayed on in Amman, from where I set out to find information. I had to prepare a short biography of Kamal Medhat, as well as detailed maps of the capitals he’d lived in: Baghdad, Tehran and Damascus. I also had to find maps of those cities from the time of his residence and to assess the changes that had taken place.
I returned to my hotel at noon. The moment I stepped into the lobby, I saw Nancy sitting in the corner with her driver. She saw me come in and rushed over, saying that Faris was in Baghdad and that everything was ready for me. He’d be there to meet me at the airport. She gave me my plane ticket and a card with some important information. She also gave me a badge attached to some blue cord, to hang around my neck. This was my press card with the agency logo, stamp and licence. Nancy looked utterly exhausted, as though the volatility of the situation in the Middle East had left its mark on her face and hands. Although she was only thirty, the curls of her soft hair seemed ashen. She looked as though she were at a funeral. She was pale, worn-out and tense, and she was chainsmoking. Her appearance aroused strange and contradictory feelings in my heart. I reminded her that we were supposed to meet in the evening to spend some time together before I left, but she apologized, saying she had some urgent business to take care of in Damascus.
By dawn I’d flown to Baghdad.
IV The imperial city and the emerald bars
‘Your destination?’ The man at the entrance of Queen Alia airport in Amman asked me. He had a bushy moustache that hid his lips, and a blue beret pulled down over his forehead.
‘Baghdad,’ I said, putting my suitcase on the floor.
He shuddered a little, looked me straight in the eye and asked, ‘What do you do?’
‘I’m a journalist,’ I said and showed him the card hanging from the blue cord on my chest.
He searched me carefully with his hands, tapping on my back and shoulders as well as between my legs. He ordered me to take off my shoes. So I removed my shoes, my khaki jacket, my glasses, my mobile phone and my belt. I placed all the items in addition to some coins in a grey plastic tray, which he passed through the machine. I was then allowed to go through the metal detector. There was a woman carrying an expensive leather bag walking next to a man dressed in a white suit and silk tie. He had a gold ring on his finger. There was also a foreigner with a cigar in his mouth and another person who was holding a string of prayer-beads and talking to a hefty policeman slouched in a leather seat.
I placed my small black leather bag, my Sony DCR-TRV461E camera and tripod on a small trolley, which I pushed in front of me. I headed quickly to a wooden counter inside the terminal. When I looked up, I noticed that the clock on the wall opposite showed two in the morning. The airport workers were sitting in their blue uniforms on wooden benches, yawning. Some were stretched out on the benches while others were fast asleep. When I reached the counter, I lifted my luggage onto the scales. A female airport employee gave me my boarding pass and pointed me to passport control. As I headed towards the white counter, I heard the last call for the British Airways flight to Cyprus. The call made one of the travellers jump up and hurry towards the counter.
I handed my passport to the airport employee, who flipped through it back and forth. A frown appeared on his dark face and there was a strange look in his eyes. He took a long time examining the passport and then asked me my destination. ‘Baghdad,’ I said, without adding a single word. I felt that he was taking his time and began to fidget. So he raised his head, glanced at me, rapidly stamped the passport and handed it back. Hugely relieved, I stashed it in the pocket of my jacket, picked up my little bag, put it over my shoulder and walked away. The terminal was filled with Marines heading for Baghdad.
I sat on a wooden bench watching them. Gathered in one spot, their loud voices were as piercing as an exchange of shots in a tennis rally. They wore camouflage uniforms and their heads were shaved. They were solid guys and carried their khaki rucksacks and kitbags on their backs. Some were stretched out on the floor, while others were sitting on benches. It was clear that they were booked on the same flight, bound for Baghdad.
At the wooden barrier, a few government employees were also preparing to board the plane with us. They were dressed in elegant suits and long ties, and carried Samsonite briefcases. The number of passengers increased as they were joined by bearded clerics wearing black turbans and holding long strings of prayer-beads between their fingers. Their veiled wives stood close by. On the benches sat families also preparing to go to Baghdad. They spoke fluent English without a trace of an accent. It was clear they were Iraqi families who’d settled in Europe and the United States and were now returning to Baghdad. Some of them were employed by the new government. The girls wore jeans and pretty T-shirts, and the boys had modern outfits and strange haircuts. They moved confidently and light-heartedly among the passengers, as though heading for a party. Their destination, after all, was the Green Zone, the location of the government and foreign embassies, and not the Red Zone, which was one of the most dangerous locations in the world.
Apart from the Marines, there were Asian workers: Filipinos, Malaysians and Pakistanis. They were employed at US military bases as cleaners, cooks, porters, dishwashers, ironers, salesmen and servants of all kinds. Other Asians were dressed in black suits and long narrow ties. It was clear they worked as personal bodyguards for businessmen, contractors or venture capitalists.
We all moved slowly through the hall towards the wooden barrier with the wide golden stripe. When we entered the departure lounge, the crowd grew larger and more diverse. Monks dressed in black cassocks sat on a distant bench. One of them had snowy white hair and wore a small, black cap. His head was turned towards a woman sitting near him as he listened to the voice of her playful child. There were Kurds in their baggy trousers and distinctive clothes. Near the barrier stood a tall woman leaning against the wall, looking very sexy in her tight trousers and light pink shirt that revealed the roundness of her breasts. She placed a camera tripod and a blue holdall full of various equipment beside her on the floor. She had the look of a reporter. Although I couldn’t tell where I’d seen her before, it had been in more than one place.
In the farthest corner, a group of passengers was moving around, murmuring and gesticulating in a tense, nervous manner. Suddenly a group of American Blackwater guards passed through the small gate, carrying their luggage. This was the American private security company that specialized in providing security services to foreign embassies and US companies in Iraq. The way they looked stood out; you couldn’t mistake them for anyone else. It wasn’t only their uniforms that distinguished them — their bulging trousers and black shirts that revealed their chests — but also their burly, powerfully built figures. Their bare, muscular arms, their tanned skin, their broad, thrusting chests and their shaved heads gave them the look of actors taking part in a Hollywood action movie.