Page 114 of Whisper

“The Americans, they’re rounding everyone up. Everyone. Not just the Islamists and the insurgents.”

“Dawood, you should be careful.” An old man, a former teacher, who smoked and sat in the same café everyday drinking coffee and chatting with the neighborhood men, called out to him. “The Americans, they’re arresting all unwed men! Anyone from this high up!” He held his hand just above his waist. A boy’s height.

He played soccer in streets overflowing with sewage alongside high school dropouts and smoked cigarettes on street corners, beneath gas hawkers bellowing their prices for fuel, a hundred times any affordable rate.

“I heard we’re not supposed to play on Karraba Street on Thursday.” One of the players passed him the ball. He juggled it between his feet, kicked it down the block. It bounced off a burned-out car, bounced in a pile of sewage.

“Where did you hear that?”

The player shrugged. “Around. Things get said, you know?” He chuckled. “I don’t want to get—” He made an explosion sound, and his hands burst open. “You should stay away too.”

David hid from American convoys and felt the burning gaze of a Humvee’s turret gunner zeroing his sights on the center of David’s forehead.

“Do you ever wish things would go back to the way they were?” Samir, another out-of-work young Iraqi, smoked with him on a street corner, hidden away from the American convoy blazing down the Baghdad street. Car horns blared, and the Americans fired warning shots into the street, forcing the Iraqis to drive over each other to get out of the convoy’s way. Cars crunched. Glass broke. Curses and shouts filled the air.

“There’s no going back.”

“There’s no going forward.” Samir shrugged. “What do we do? We have nothing. No country. No jobs. No pride.” He grabbed David’s shoulder. “At least we have today, and each other, my friend.”

Hatred, a palpable, pure thing, grew like cancer, like a tumor David could hold. Could taste, choking him and everyone in Baghdad.

He felt, with a surety of rage, what Saqqaf was tapping into on the streets of Iraq. There was a blood haze rising, a fury cresting, that was going to swallow the world.

Baghdad, Iraq

March 31, 2004

Where are you?

The text came in midmorning. David had slipped out of the Green Zone early, heading to one of his meeting points. He ducked into an alley, skipping over a puddle of sewage and discarded shell casings.

Kris kept texting.Where are you? Answer me. I need you to text back, right now. Right now.

[I’m here. I’m on Karada Road.]

Thank fucking God. Get back here. Now. Please. PLEASE.

[What happened?]

Get back here.

He pocketed his phone and turned around, heading for the Green Zone. He twisted and turned, ducked into a café for a coffee and smoked two cigarettes on two different street corners, making sure he wasn’t followed, before entering the Green Zone cordon. Half a mile of concrete barriers topped with razor wire funneled all pedestrians into a single file line. Barely anyone wanted to enter the Green Zone that morning. David, dressed in his Iraqi street clothes, moved quickly past the overwatch posts, the tanks and giant machine guns glaring down onto the pedestrians in the concrete tube.

At the first of three checkpoints, a soldier ordered him to his knees fifty feet from the sandbag barrier. “Get thefuckdown! Hands on your fucking head!Now!Now!”

Twelve rifles centered on his head.

David slowly dropped to his knees. Placed his hands behind his head.

Four soldiers tackled him, pushing his face into the ground. One stepped on his cheek, the sole of his boot digging into his skin.

Old pain, the remembrance of his childhood, flared.You are worth less than the filth I step in every day. He winced and closed his eyes.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” One of the soldiers, a squad sergeant, bellowed. Hands rifled over him, roughly searching his body. They lifted his clothes, grabbed his chest, his stomach. Grabbed his crotch and fisted around his cock. “What the fuck are you doing here, huh? Come to blow yourself up? Come to kill more Americans? Huh?”

“Sergeant!” One of the soldiers searching him found the badge he kept sewn inside his jeans, his contractor badge and his CIA ID. The soldier passed them to his sergeant.

“Are these fucking faked?” The sergeant bellowed. “Did you fake these credentials?”