I suddenly noticed an old acquaintance of mine who worked for a local television channel. He was talking to the woman reporter in tight trousers whom I’d seen earlier and who was chewing gum in an overly sexy manner. He was bombarding her with rapid-fire statements, but when he saw me he waved and smiled. So I went over. As soon as I reached him, he introduced the woman, saying her name in a low voice, ‘Nermine Haidar.’ I didn’t know where I’d heard the name before, but he told me that she directed documentary films. ‘I might have seen a film of yours at some time,’ I told her. It was unclear to me whether he knew her from before or had just made her acquaintance. But she seemed rather put off by him. Nevertheless, he dragged her by the hand to the duty-free shop and came back half an hour later, laden with bags of drinks, perfumes, belts, prayer-beads, jewellery, scarves and religious books. He told me he’d bought the items to make his work as a journalist in Baghdad easier.
We waited for around two hours. There was nobody that we could ask about the reason for the delay. The journalist, whose name I’ve forgotten, called several people in Baghdad, asking basic questions about his hotel or requesting help for his work there. When he spoke on his mobile, his voice was drowned by the voices of the other passengers. Then he hurried off to the cafeteria and returned with a tray full of cups of coffee. He gave me one and offered Nermine another. At the gate, we drank and chatted.
On the plane it was even more crowded because the seats were unallocated. Families and clerics were seated first. We put our little briefcases and bags in the overhead compartments. I took a seat next to the window. The nameless journalist pushed his way to the seat next to mine. In the aisle seat sat Nermine Haidar in her tight trousers and full blouse. She lifted her arms and with a rubber band tied back her hair, which was cascading down her shoulders. Then she took some papers out of her handbag and put them on her lap. Across the aisle from us sat three Marines who were returning from leave. It was clear from their looks and their language that they were of Mexican descent. Two soldiers from Fiji occupied the seats in the row in front of us. A plump woman soldier sat beside them. She was blonde and her hair was bunched with a khaki hairband. She’d left her khaki camouflage jacket open, revealing a khaki vest. In the seats near us sat young men from Iraqi families and three women soldiers. One of the women soldiers was very tall and blonde, with blue eyes and a small tattoo on her arm. A black officer stood beside her, talking. It was clear that his seat was elsewhere, but he was spending as much time as possible talking to her before the plane took off. Every time the air-hostesses hurried past to carry out the required procedures before takeoff, he would squeeze himself harder against the seat of the woman soldier.
When I’d finished drinking my cold beer, I dumped the can in a black bag beside me. The anonymous journalist turned and asked me if I wanted another one. I made a sign of agreement, so he reached into a large bag and brought out another can, which he opened and handed to me. The outside of the can was cold and covered with droplets of water.
‘Where are you staying?’ he asked me as he wiped his forehead with a handkerchief.
‘Do you know Faris Hassan?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ he answered.
‘He’s coming to collect me from the airport,’ I said to avoid any further questioning. I didn’t ask him where he was going. He took the handkerchief out of his pocket, wiped his mouth and started drinking beer from the can in his hand. In the other hand he held a packet of Lays chilli-flavour crisps, which he was devouring eagerly. I drank my cold beer. Every now and again, he shook the packet of spicy crisps towards me. It was illustrated with a red chilli. I stuck my hand in the packet, took a few crisps, put them in my mouth and downed a sip of cold beer to soothe the burning sting.
I never answered the anonymous journalist’s question nor disclosed to him the nature of my mission. I evaded his curiosity by pretending to be asleep until the pilot ordered us to fasten our seat belts for landing.
The descent was terrifying. The plane came down in a tight spiral, trying to keep immediately over the airport, because the militias would target slowly descending civilian airplanes with portable, shoulder-mounted, Russian-made Strela missiles. After the aircraft had landed and come to a complete halt, we all stood up. There was heavy spring rain. The Marines and Asians were the first to disembark and head for the terminal building. They were all complaining about the rain, except for the blonde woman soldier with the tattoo. A young man helped carry her heavy bag. He lifted it up for her to put on her shoulder. She thanked him without looking at his face and asked the others to make way for her. She then sprinted off.
As the crowd moved in front of me, I turned and took the newspapers that had been left in the seat pockets. I put them in my bag and stuck the empty beer can in a seat pocket in their place. I took my passport and mobile phone out of my small leather bag, which I then slung over my shoulder before leaving the aircraft.
All three of us stood in the queue: the anonymous journalist, Nermine the documentary director and me. The soldiers, Marines and Asian workers all went to the other side, except for the woman soldier with the tattoo. She’d been held up by the large bag she was carrying on her back. She finally caught up with them and left the place, accompanied by the black officer. Outside, the weather was terrible and we saw a flat green area, the portico of the building, and the wreckage of an aircraft still left behind from the days of the war. We all ran as quickly as possible towards the bus to take shelter from the rain.
Nermine was talking non-stop to a family with two young women. One of them was dark and wore very tight knee-length trousers. The other one was prettier, but rather plump, and wore a check skirt and blue blouse. She’d tied her hair with a ribbon as blue as the colour of her eyes. The mother was around fifty, very slim and elegant and with long hair that fell to her shoulders. She wore round glasses and carried a book in English. She told us that her husband was also a journalist working for a recently established paper in Baghdad. They’d been living in Stockholm for twenty years but had gone back to live in Baghdad after the fall of the Saddam regime. She talked about the hardships of life and compared the Baghdad of twenty years ago with the present day. I wasn’t really interested in what she was saying, and didn’t listen. Every now and again I’d check out the crowds of passengers of different ethnicities in the terminal. Then I’d gaze out of the window at the space outside. The clouds had partly cleared and the sun’s rays fell warmly on the American soldier who stood holding his gun and looking in our direction. In the other direction, it was still raining non-stop. Our turn came at the passport control booth. The officer smiled at me and stamped the passport quickly without uttering a word.
We moved a few steps inside the hall and then stopped in front of the luggage conveyor, which was going slowly round. All eyes were fixed on it. Three tall, slim employees from the Fiji Islands appeared, accompanied by sniffer dogs trained to detect explosives. They moved around the bags with their dogs that sniffed one suitcase after the other. A soldier dressed in khaki then came out of the gate opposite. He walked towards us, buttoning his shirt up, examined our papers and passports, and then allowed us to move to another hall. The windows were very tall and revealed a large garden of fruit and willow trees, surrounded on all sides by a chain-link fence that was hard to get through. The only exit was through a gate guarded by a Marine checkpoint, beyond which stood a car from a convoy.