Gods Without Men

2008

No one except Laila seemed to think it was a good idea to take the record deck.

“Why you need this?” asked Uncle Hafiz. “You have iPod, everything you want for music.” Uncle Hafiz was a big fan of modern things. If he had his way, they’d all be living on a space station, eating food that came in tubes.

Her aunt worried about the dust. “It’s mine,” Laila reminded them. “I know how to look after it.”

“Leave her,” said Samir. “She’s loco.” Lately he’d started talking Spanish. He’d been telling kids at school he was Salvadorean, swaggering around and throwing hand signs. He told horrible stories about revenge killings and severed heads rolled onto dance floors. She thought he might be getting bullied.

She packed the record player into the station wagon, carefully coiling up the long tails of wire that hung from the back of the speakers, wrapping the units in towels and wedging them between her suitcase and the cardboard box containing her uncle’s mayoral props. She carried the records on her lap so she could look at the covers on the way. Her collection had been more or less dictated by other people’s taste — what they’d once liked but didn’t anymore. For more than two years, since Uncle moved them from San Diego, she’d been making regular trips to the thrift store to riffle through dusty crates of marching-band music and nineties pop. It had started as a necessity; there was pretty much nothing to do in town unless you had a car. It soon got to the stage where she had to limit the number of times a month she’d go in, so at least there’d be a chance of finding some new stuff. Mostly she looked out for hair. A band with good hair, or at least big hair, was probably worth risking a dollar to hear. She liked eighties power ballads, synth pop, old-fashioned Jheri-curled rappers. New stuff she found on the Net, same as everyone, but with old records you got more than just music. You could put an album cover close to your face and smell garages and attics, trace with your finger the ballpoint-pen signature of the previous owner on the inside of the gatefold. Digital things were just what they were. They had no atmosphere.

She replayed, for the hundredth time, the way she’d gushed at Nicky Capaldi. The best thing that’d happened to her all year? Oh God. And he just stood there and stared, looking all British and bored. He’d been kind of a jerk, actually. A while back she’d had this breakthrough that was probably more to do with a new level of English, some tone she was finally catching, than with music or philosophy or God or anything, but America had suddenly made much more sense to her and she’d felt happier than she had since — well, for a long time — and it was all wrapped up with his band, particularly this one song. She’d even wanted to get the chorus as a tattoo, in a coil round her arm:

Got to have faith in believing in faith in believing in faith.

But that was a year ago and lately the tattoo idea had begun to seem sort of lame. It was only a dream, of course. In reality she’d never be allowed to get a tattoo.

Now that she came to think of it, she’d always thought the guitarist was cuter than the singer.

Her uncle started the car. Samir and Auntie Sara waved at them from the porch. Weakly, Laila waved back. She felt as if she was looking out at the world from inside a plastic bubble. Imagine if the only thing keeping you alive is this car, because outside the atmosphere is unbreathable for a creature as delicate and advanced as you. Auntie Sara adjusted her scarf to protect her honor from the rapacious gaze of the neighbors, then waddled indoors. Samir gave her the finger. She stuck her tongue out at him. She was just a visitor in this world, a stranger. She looked through the pile on her lap until she found the Ashtar record. It wasn’t a roller-disco compilation or some strange soul album with fat black men in nasty-colored tuxes on the cover. It was even better than that. She’d already looked it up on the Internet. Nothing. No mention, not a single hit. She wasn’t used to invisible things. It was like finding something out of Harry Potter, something with secret powers.

There was the jackal-headed man, the lines of force. There was a spaceship.

The crackle, then the first tone.

music is the message

The back of the sleeve had writing on it, the purple type so smudged that it had taken her ages lying on her bed to decipher it.

Listen. We repeat, listen. This is the voice of the Ashtar Galactic Command. We speak in the names of all sentient beings in the thirty-three sectors of the Universe, in the name of the Ascended Masters and the Conclave of Interdimensional Unity. We bring this music to you, the Star People, so that you may understand more fully your place in the cosmos. The AGC is an ensemble composed of humans and higher-density beings. As Children of Light, we employ electronic instrumentation and processing modules that allow us to tune our output to the harmonic vibrations of the Universal Field. Know that attempts have been made by powers on Earth to persuade you that your reality as Star People is false. These powers, strongly magnetized to the Darkness, must be resisted at all costs. They seek to destroy you, and plunge you into the brute negativity of matter. This message goes out to whosoever will listen and understand. In the name of the Great Master Jesus-Sananda and of Ashtar, Commander of the Brotherhood of Light, Adonai!

Uncle Hafiz drove, singing along to the Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack. The heat is on, he sang, pounding the steering wheel. He’d drunk a lot of tea before they left. He was excited about the new rotation. “I promise you,” he’d said, more than once. “You gonna have the greatest time.” In some ways Uncle was sweet, but he was also an insane person. Packed in the trunk with his other props was a complete faux-leather Franklin Mint edition of “The Timeless Novels of Charles Dickens,” which he was going to use to decorate his office. There was also a sword and a Perspex award she’d found for him at the thrift store. It was actually for something called Excellence in Network Marketing, but it was shaped like a pair of wings and he was very pleased with it. An excellent gift, he pronounced it. A thoughtful gift.

Laila doubted she was going to have the greatest time, but she needed the money. If she didn’t make it to college next year, she would definitely slit her wrists. Or walk out into the middle of the I-5. One of the two. Sure, it was kind of Uncle Hafiz to get the job for her; she just wished he worked somewhere else. They wouldn’t be at the base for another few minutes, but she was already feeling nervous.

The clearest symptom of Uncle Hafiz’s insanity was his cheerfulness. Laila could see little to laugh about in this life; he seemed to find everything hilarious. He’d been in San Diego twenty-some years, since before Desert Storm, and maybe that was part of it. In a lot of ways he and Auntie Sara lived in a dream world; some things you never brought up in front of them. Leaving Iraq was the best decision of his life, Uncle always said. “I weep for your parents, because they never listen to me when I beg them to get out.” He’d been a happy young man in Baghdad, playing soccer for a college team, hanging around in cafés with his friends. The family had money, but then came the fighting with Iran and air raids and shortages. In those days Saddam was America’s ally, so it was possible to get a green card. He had a speech that started with “California is like a beautiful woman,” and rarely got any further because it scandalized Auntie Sara. When Laila finally heard it in full, she was disappointed to discover it was just a series of cheesy anatomical comparisons featuring L.A. and San Francisco as the breasts.

Uncle Hafiz loved California. He loved its rivers and forests and freeways and red carpets and smog. He was the proudest American she knew. If anyone expressed doubts in front of him about the wisdom of the Bush family or the beauty of capitalism or even the superiority of a McDonald’s hamburger over any other food item one could buy for a dollar ninety-nine, he would simply wave his hand at the Happy Gold Cash and Carry, if it was in waving range, or if not would produce the laminated picture he kept in his wallet, thus (as far as he was concerned) winning the argument at a stroke. To Uncle Hafiz the Happy Gold Cash and Carry was a sort of cross between Mount Rushmore, Arlington National Cemetery and the Alamo. It represented all that was profound and noble about his adopted country — opportunity, struggle, never paying retail. The name had been given to the business by its previous owner, a Chinese guy who’d gone back to China to buy a shoe factory. Hafiz had thought of changing it to something more truthful and self-evident, perhaps in honor of his favorite president, Ronald Reagan, whose strange nickname he always used (it sounded like “the jeeper”; Laila had never seen it written down), as if the two of them were old friends who read the newspaper together and played backgammon. But The Jeeper, all agreed, was a weird name for a Cash and Carry, whereas Happy Gold made some kind of sense, so Happy Gold it remained, though it now had a red, white and blue paint job to help it carry its load of patriotic significance. He’d left his son Sayid in charge. I have my duty, he told the family when he announced the move. We are at war. Every evening he phoned for a report on the takings.

Sayid, who regularly shook his fist at CNN, but knew better than to mention the war in front of his father, was happy to be left to run the business without daily homilies on the righteousness of the American cause in Iraq. His wife, Jamila, would often roll her eyes and mutter at her father-in-law, even though Sayid had ordered her expressly not to contradict the old man. “It only causes us pain,” he told her once, while Laila was in the kitchen, trying to make herself invisible. “Him? He hears nothing. Water off a duck’s back.” They had a lot of arguments like this. Sayid would tell her not to waste her breath. Jamila would cry. She’d had family in Fallujah. Three cousins, all gone. When Hafiz was talking about the war, she’d try to carry on quietly with her work. Laila, stirring while Jamila chopped, would sometimes see her freeze for a moment, the knife quivering in her white-knuckled hand.

They drove up the long straight road that led to the base, which was much larger than the little town next to it. At night it lit up the valley, a parallel world that Laila could see from her bedroom window, with traffic and fast-food signs and a grid of streets. The main gate was like a checkpoint at home, a slalom of concrete crash barriers and bored Marines bending down to peer into the car. Involuntarily she began to fidget as they came closer, her eyes flicking to the speedometer. Uncle was approaching too fast. He didn’t seem to know how dangerous it was to spook these people, how quick they would be to fire.

A Marine crouched down beside the window. Uncle Hafiz greeted him like a long-lost relative. The Marine scowled and took their IDs. After a few minutes he came back out of the office and instructed them to drive through to a shed, where the car was searched. Laila was allowed to get out; she walked around, scuffing her sneakers across the concrete. There wasn’t much to see. It was just a shed. Hafiz kept up a steady stream of chatter, mostly about the presidential election and the heroism of the Republican candidate, who’d been a POW in some past war. Laila wished he would be quiet. He was trying too hard, making a fool of himself. No one wanted to talk to him. She needed to go pee, but was told she’d have to wait until they got to the reception center. One of the young Marines doing the search kept trying to catch her eye.

At last they could drive on. They passed barracks and hangars and basketball courts and a big box store with SNEAKER SALE NOW ON written in the window. Then they parked in front of another office and went inside. There was a whole crowd of Iraqis waiting in the hallway. Uncle Hafiz seemed to know them all, and started hugging and kissing cheeks. When she came back from the bathroom, he showed her off, putting his hand on her shoulder and saying how proud he was that she was doing her duty for her country. She didn’t bother pointing out that it wasn’t her country until the immigration case was settled. Everyone was introduced as her auntie or uncle; they were all going to look after her. This was what she’d been afraid of — a whole new crowd of busy-bodies reporting on what she did, who she spoke to, offering opinions on how she dressed, like they knew the first thing about fashion. They were a motley crew, dressed in American clothes, except for one very old man who Uncle referred to as Abu Omar, in yashmagh and dishdasha, clicking his prayer beads and blithely ignoring the NO SMOKING sign on the wall.

She grimaced through the introductions and put her earbuds back in. Eventually someone nudged her and told her they were calling her name.

A woman dressed as a soldier registered her and made her sign an indemnity form. From now on, anything that happened was basically her problem. Then the woman took her photo and made her a pass. Laila wondered what it was like for her, working with so many men. Did they behave themselves? Or did they pester her, opening the door when she was in the bathroom, making stupid remarks?

She was told to get her stuff and wait with everyone else in the parking lot. They stood in a long line, holding their passes, until they’d all been checked off by a Marine with a list. There were more people than she thought there would be. Easily over a hundred. Batch by batch they were loaded onto trucks and driven out into the desert.

The sergeant who rode with them shouted instructions and handed out bottled water. The name of their village was Wadi al-Hamam. It was located “fifty clicks” away. No one was to move from their seats while the vehicle was in motion, due to considerations of health and safety. They drove across a flat plain, dust kicking out behind the back wheels of the truck and masking the vehicle behind. The passengers sat facing one another, bouncing and sliding from side to side on the benches, their luggage piled between them like the worldly goods of refugees. The afternoon light made everyone’s faces glow golden yellow. The thin-faced man with the bad teeth, the two women trying to read a celebrity magazine. It was a freak show. This was going to be her world for two months?

Wadi al-Hamam was weird. The village looked exactly like one of the little towns where her mother had family. Walls of cinder block and concrete and mud brick, a whitewashed minaret. Poking up over the roofs were wooden telegraph poles carrying a tangle of wires. The desert stretched away in all directions. They’d parked beside a row of shuttered stores with one-room apartments over them. Signs hand-painted in Arabic: TAILOR. AUTO SPARES. The sky was peach and lilac; it looked hand-painted too.

“See,” said Uncle Hafiz. “This is for me.” He was pointing to a building with an English sign fixed to it: MAYOR’S OFFICE. She looked around more carefully. All the buildings were actually shipping containers, with false fronts to make them look like houses. As they walked toward the hall for their induction, she realized that the telephone wires didn’t go anywhere. The bricks and cement were sheets of molded plastic, tacked to wooden frames. It looked like what it was, a stage set for an elaborate play.

Know that attempts have been made by powers on Earth to persuade you that your reality as Star People is false

That night everyone sat up late and sang songs. It was like a wedding back home; the women congregated on one side of the room, the men on the other. They ate snacks and sipped glasses of sweet tea. It was good to be surrounded by a crowd gossiping in Arabic. It felt as if a weight had been removed from her shoulders. At first she enjoyed herself, laughing and making jokes with the rest. Then, like a tower collapsing inside her chest, all her pleasant feelings crumbled. It was no use. The singing, the hands clapping — everything led back home, to her old life, to the good things and the bad and eventually the worst thing of all, the corpse lying on the garbage heap by the airport. She slipped out and hid in the dormitory, pulling the sleeping bag over her head so she didn’t have to hear the music.

She knew it would feel strange to be surrounded by soldiers, but since Uncle had moved them to the desert, she’d seen enough of them — hard-faced young men driving about in trucks, buying cases of beer at the supermarket — to be prepared. So she was ready for that part, but not for this, not to feel as if she were actually back in Iraq. She tried to make the picture cute, to add a soundtrack of passionate guitars and surround it with pretty bleeding hearts and flowers and color the scene in romantic black and white, but still Baba lay there, broken and dead. He’d been all alone. He must have been so frightened. It was worse, somehow, because they’d never let her see him. That only made his ghost more powerful.

There were a few memories that came back time and again. An evening at some uncle’s house. How old was she? Nine, ten? Everyone was sitting outside because of the heat and she was playing with Samir, a chasing game that was making them both giggle and scream. Her father was talking around the brazier with the other men, smoking, wearing a dishdasha instead of his ordinary suit. He was relaxed, enjoying himself, playing at being back in the village. She had a flash of herself at that age, her feet tucked underneath her as she read a book on the swing chair.

They used a drill on him. She overheard Sayid say it, only a few months ago. No one had ever told her that part.

There were nights just after the war started, when there was bombing and everyone had to sleep in the main room, laying their bedding down on the tiled floor. It was a large room, but they all ended up close together, because it wasn’t safe to be near the windows. Who could sleep on such a night? The children went crazy. Even the adults would act hysterical, her mother and the other women bickering about stupid things, raising their voices, bursting into tears. Sometimes the men would go up on the roof and look over the river toward the ministries, smoking and watching the shock-and-awe. She always begged to be allowed to go up too, but she never was. It was one of those nights, when everyone was staying over and the electricity was cut so the whole apartment was like an oven and the family was tense because someone had gone out and not come back. She was dancing with Samir in the candlelight, making up the songs and music herself, from fragments of the pop videos they showed on state TV:

Sexy sexy!

Sexy sexy!

The two of them were hopping about, singing the naughty words and screaming with laughter. Then her father came in. They thought he was going to scold them but instead he started dancing too, wiggling his hips and singing along.

Sexy sexy!

Sexy sexy!

Her mother and Auntie Amira came in, asking what all the noise was about. At first they stood in the doorway, looking stern; then they started to laugh. Baba raised his arms in the air, scrunching his lip and making his mustache wiggle from side to side. He took her hands and danced around the room.

Round and round. Her daddy. All hers.

But he would keep getting involved in things. She remembered him crying — actually crying — about what had happened to the treasures in the National Museum. He went to ask the Americans to do something about it, waiting all day in the sun in a line of other men, as if he thought he’d be invited to sit down in an office with a glass of tea and say to some sweaty pink fellow in a uniform, Look, my dear, I happen to be a professor of history and unless you people smarten up, you won’t achieve a passing grade. As if he thought he’d come back with something, a promise or an answer. There were two or three times when he stopped the car and tried to talk to soldiers about some problem he’d spotted. In her dreams his body came back to life and did such things. Her father’s corpse, standing by a tank with foreigners pointing their guns at it; raising its hands to remonstrate with them, the drill holes like moles on its face and neck.

Her mother was different. She had a better survival instinct. But he would never listen to her.

Her father’s corpse, hunting through its looted office, dripping blood on the desks and chairs. She’d gone with him; she couldn’t remember why. The thieves had been through the whole university. All the computers were gone. There was dust and broken glass everywhere. They’d even ripped the air conditioners out of the windows.

After a while people stopped going out. What had become of the city? Gas lines and bombs and kidnappings and crazy foreign mercenaries shooting at drivers who got too close behind them on the road. They’re using this place like a playground, said Baba. They think it’s their sandbox to play in with their big metal toys. He’d seen some pilot casually fly his helicopter under the crossed swords of the Hands of Victory. Though he’d hated Saddam, this made him shake with anger. She couldn’t understand why; there seemed to be much worse things happening. The university was closed, and while things were so dangerous, there was no chance it would reopen. At first, Baba tried to do some work at home, reading and writing. Then he stopped. He was worried about money. They sold the car, then Mama’s jewelry. Her father’s corpse and her uncle, two zombies manhandling the washing machine down the stairs.

After a long time, the university reopened. The family was very happy, because Baba was to be paid a salary again. With no car he had to get a ride with a colleague, and every morning he’d put on his suit and sit at the kitchen table with his briefcase, waiting for the man to arrive. Soon her mother was frantic with worry. The death squads were killing academics. First a lecturer from the sociology department, then the head of the College of Humanities. There seemed to be no reason. One of the dead was an old philology professor, a man whose only passion was ancient Aramaic manuscripts. Even Baba was shaken by that. “Akh laa!” he muttered, the telephone receiver still in his hand. “How could it happen? That one would never hurt a fly!” No one seemed to know who was behind it: SCIRI, the Interior Ministry, Mossad. Laila begged him to be careful. “Don’t worry,” he told her. “None of it has anything to do with me.” He said the dead men were probably involved in politics or the black market, but he didn’t look as if he believed it. Mama shouted, telling him to think about his family and not to speak out in public. He would often say things against the Americans, against members of the Governing Council. He just spoke however he pleased, as if it were a free country.

He took so many risks — with his job, his loose talk — but in the end it was the stupid neighbor who broke him. Mr. Al-Musawi was having problems with his TV reception. He accused their family of moving some electrical cable so that it ran near his aerial. It wasn’t true, of course. They’d never touched any cable. Al-Musawi and Baba would shout at each other over the wall, the neighbor demanding the power line be moved back to its old place, father retorting that they never had any electricity anyway, so what did it matter? Baba probably shouldn’t have insulted him. All the man wanted was to see his football or his variety shows or porn movies or whatever it was. When there’s a war, people cling on to little luxuries. Such things can become very important.

They couldn’t prove Al-Musawi was behind the raid, but another neighbor told Mama it was certainly him because he had a cousin who worked as an interpreter for the Americans. All he had to do was give their name. The soldiers came into the house and made the whole family kneel on the floor while they went into all the drawers and closets and threw everything around. They were shouting at Baba about being a terrorist, and wouldn’t listen when he told them he was nobody, just a teacher of history. Where are the weapons, they kept asking. He was begging them at least to treat his books kindly, but they were sweeping them off the shelves and taking whole handfuls of his papers and dumping them on the floor. Everyone was crying but somehow that was more upsetting than anything, seeing the papers he kept so neatly strewn all over the tiles. “You think I’m a terrorist?” he asked in English. “Look at this!” It was so silly. He was waving a DVD, some black-and-white American movie they’d watched the night before, about a scout leader who becomes a politician in the Senate. “You think this is what terrorists watch? You think so?” They put a hood over his head and took him away.

He was gone almost two weeks. It was a terrible time. At first, it was impossible even to find out where he was. There were horrific stories about what the Americans did in their prisons. As bad as Saddam, said one neighbor, before Mama angrily reminded him there were children in the room who could overhear. Finally one of her uncles had to take money in an envelope to some man at the Interior Ministry to get him out. He came home, unshaven and tired but saying he was OK. “Nothing happened,” he told Laila, as she clung to him, weeping fiercely. “It was just a little cold and dirty.” But he wasn’t the same afterward. He and Mama talked in low voices in the bedroom. He shuffled around the house like an old man.

That was when Mama started talking about leaving. When the phone was working, she spent long hours talking to her brother in America, ignoring Baba’s pleas to think about the bill. Laila and Samir weren’t allowed out, even to go to school. Samir had been asked by a classmate whether he was Sunni or Shi’a. He was so little, he didn’t even know the answer — before the war that kind of thing had never been a problem. Now it made their mother paranoid. She saw kidnappers everywhere. So they were stuck at home, watching TV when there was electricity, drawing and reading when there wasn’t. Along the street people were putting up signs saying their houses were for rent. Every day they seemed to hear about someone else who was leaving for Syria or Jordan. Baba said he didn’t want to leave, that Iraq was his country and it was his duty to stay and make it a decent place to live again.

Then, one Friday afternoon, he went out and didn’t come back. Her father’s corpse, waving good-bye at the door. The colleague he’d gone to visit said he’d never arrived. As it got dark, Laila tried to comfort her mother, who was crying uncontrollably. One by one the uncles arrived, bringing their families so they wouldn’t be left alone. The house was crammed; the whole clan was sitting by the phone, waiting for news, turning the air blue with cigarette smoke. That night no one slept. They assumed it was a kidnap, and some middleman would get in touch to demand a ransom. Instead, the next morning, there was a call from the police to say Baba’s body had been found dumped by the side of the road. On a garbage heap, they said. Her darling father, in the trash like a dead cat.

This time they couldn’t blame Al-Musawi. He’d taken his stupid television and left with the others. Someone drove to the morgue to get the body. Laila stayed with Mama and Samir, too numb to move from the couch.

They buried him immediately, bribing a guardian for a plot in the overcrowded cemetery. Laila wasn’t allowed to go. Three weeks after the murder, Mama told her to pack her things. Two suitcases had been bought at the market, a black one for Samir and a pink one for her. They were going to America, to stay with Mama’s older brother Hafiz. For how long, she asked. Until it’s safer, was the reply. Samir clung to Mama’s dress, pleading not to be sent away. She soothed him, telling him she’d follow as soon as possible, when she’d found a tenant for the house. She hugged Laila and told her to look after her brother. Then they got into the car, where Uncle Anwar was waiting to drive them across the border to Jordan. In Amman, they got a plane to the United States, sitting in their seats with their documents around their necks in big plastic wallets. At the other end, Uncle Hafiz and Aunt Sara were waiting.

It had been her first and only time in an airplane and she fell asleep on her cot in Wadi al-Hamam thinking about it, the novelty of the microwaved food, the movie playing on the little seat-back screen. Samir had been so young he got carried away with excitement. She’d hissed at him that it was wrong to be so happy after what had happened to Baba. He began to cry and the other passengers stared. The stewardess tried to cheer him up with coloring pencils and a little toy bear.

When she woke she wasn’t sure where she was. There was the sound of a helicopter flying overhead, a familiar dry heat in the air. Would there be electricity? Then she heard other people moving about and opened her eyes. No, not home at all. On the Marine base. She brushed her teeth in the shower block, feeling shy at being half dressed around so many strangers, all these women towel-drying their hair, putting sunscreen on their faces. She scuttled in and out as fast as she could, then slipped into a pair of black combats and a T-shirt and walked over to the canteen to get breakfast. The sun was already high in the sky. The hills looked almost white in the fierce light.

Uncle Hafiz was sitting at one of the Formica tables, smoking and talking to his friends, the deputy mayor, the chief of police and the imam. They were already behaving like important men, puffing themselves up, taking their space. The chief of police was a limo driver. The imam had a beauty salon in Ventura. Uncle waved to her but didn’t invite her to sit with him. Decorum had to be observed. She took a tray and ate alone, trying not to make eye contact with the people at the other tables. Again, she wondered whether she should find the person in charge and say she wanted to go home.

After breakfast it was time for a briefing. All the Iraqis crammed into the main hall, where a petite civilian called Heather introduced herself as the simulation coordinator for Echo Sector and gave a PowerPoint presentation. She wore sweats, a high ponytail and a baseball cap, and carried her phone on a lanyard round her neck; her high-school sportscoach look was completed by a pair of silver running shoes. She was accompanied by REDFOR Control, a grumpy-looking uniformed officer called Lieutenant Alvarado. Heather was fizzing with excitement. Alvarado looked like he’d rather be cleaning the toilet block. Heather more than made up for the lieutenant’s lack of enthusiasm, announcing in a helium voice that she was “stoked to be part of Operation Purple Rose.” She wanted all the “noncombatant role-players” (which was them) to know that they were “playing a critical role in the nation’s security.” She hoped they would all “give a hundred and ten percent at all times.” Laila sat there, trying to project the evil eye in a beam aimed at Heather’s forehead.

The job of the villagers of Wadi al-Hamam was to help American troops understand what it would be like when they deployed to Iraq. They’d do this by playing realistic roles, some pro-American, some hostile. They’d each been assigned an individualized character with a name, biography and backstory. Heather said she wanted them to think about how their characters would react in various situations, so they could be as truthful as possible when interacting with the soldiers. This was, she said, a “fine-grained simulation.” They should all consider themselves “tiny moving parts, like cogs in a watch.”

Laila wasn’t sure she wanted to be a tiny moving part, unless it was lodged in Heather’s windpipe. She was even less sure when she opened the envelope containing her character details. She was a country girl called Rafah, who’d lived in Wadi al-Hamam all her life, but wanted to train as a nurse. She hated the Americans because her father had been killed in a checkpoint shooting. In the game she would be sympathetic to the insurgents and help them whenever she could. As she read the paper, her hands shook. Why had they given her a dead father? Had Hafiz told them about Baba? She went to Heather and asked to be given a different biography. Heather looked at her strangely. “It’s only for the simulation, honey. It’s to help you play your part. Look at the alignment graph — you’ll see you have a strongly negative attitude to the U.S. as a liberating force. Just go with that.”

“But I don’t want to be this Rafah.”

“It’s not something we can change at this stage.”

“Why not?”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t have this discussion with you. We need you in this role. You’ll just have to live with it. And, while we’re talking, if I could make a suggestion, I think it’d be best if you didn’t wear so much eye makeup. We like our civilian role-players as far as possible to adopt an ethnically traditional look. You brought your veil with you, right?”

“My veil?”

“Your, uh, head covering and your robes and whatnot?”

Laila replaced her earbuds and walked away. Go on, she thought. Fire me, bitch. See if I care. Uncle Hafiz came over and tried to speak to her. She watched his mouth move for a while, soundtracked by Arcade Fire. Eventually he threw up his hands and waddled off, presumably to do something important and administrative, such as rearranging his mayoral props on their shelves inside his shipping container. She spent the rest of the day hiding from everyone, reading a Neil Gaiman book in the shade cast by the minaret of the fake mosque.

That evening the villagers hung out in the hall and watched TV. On the news was a story about Nicky Capaldi. They showed pictures of him coming out of a police station and getting into a big black Suburban; he was wearing dark glasses and looking annoyed. She couldn’t believe it: Apparently he’d been questioned about the disappearance of a child. They showed some concert footage and a few shots of him at an awards show, then cut to a photograph of the missing boy. Laila was shocked. Obviously Nicky had nothing to do with it. His management had released a statement calling on the abductor to bring the kid back, and a disappointed-looking sheriff came on, saying they’d eliminated him as a suspect. There was even a shot of the main street near her house, which was full of news vans and photographers. She wondered if Samir had been there.

Still thinking about Nicky, she went to the dormitory and wired up her record player. Ignoring the strange looks she got from the other women lounging around reading and writing letters, she plugged in a pair of big padded headphones and lay down on her cot to listen to the first side of the Ashtar Galactic Command record.

It was like no other music in her collection. It started with a quivery electronic drone, the kind of noise made by the equipment you saw in old science-fiction movies, with big metal dials and wavy lines going up and down on little screens. It was joined by a scraping of guitar strings and primitive drumming that sounded like it had been recorded inside a shoebox, a relentless dull thud that went on and on without changing at all. Sometimes there were other noises, bangs and clankings, little bursts of feedback or sounds like stringed instruments being dropped on a hard floor. Very low down in the mix, almost at the edge of hearing, there were voices whispering half-intelligible words: We speak in the names of all sentient beings in the thirty-three sectors of the Universe, in the name of the Ascended Masters and the Conclave of Interdimensional Unity.… The effect was scary and boring at the same time, like a crazy person sitting next to you on the bus. The first time she played it, she thought it was the worst music she’d ever heard. That was probably why she put it on the deck again. Surely nothing could be that bad. Why would anyone make music that sounded so … unmusical? No one would buy it. Probably no one ever did. The Ashtar Galactic Command wasn’t exactly a household name.

Listen. We repeat, listen …

So she’d listened. She had nothing better to do. On the second, third, fourth plays, she started to hear weird things — chanting, crying and screaming, people gurgling as if they were being strangled. The record seemed to be some kind of jam session, just a bunch of musicians playing and letting a tape run. And while they played, something truly strange had been going on in the room, a party, maybe. Something. Often the background noise was obscured by more musical sounds, electronic runs and trills that seemed to have been played by someone following the beat of a completely different drummer from the one banging away on the record, as if the players could hear something she couldn’t, something significant that she really wanted to hear, that she needed to hear, if only to satisfy her curiosity.

Lying in the dormitory, she shut her eyes and listened to a passage that was now as familiar to her as Nicky Capaldi’s first album. The pulse of the drums was joined by a high-pitched whistling and a sinister rumble that rose up and up until it sounded like a rocket taking off. Out of the rumble came a bass, which was doubled by a guitar and some other instrument that might have been a keyboard. Cocooned inside her headphones, her eyes tight shut, she felt as if she were inside a capsule, heading out into space.

There was a howling sound, like a dog. There was a child’s voice, calling out a word, perhaps a name. There were horse’s hooves, an engine, a man coughing, bare feet running across sand. There was gunfire.

A whole world.

The next day the villagers of Wadi al-Hamam started work. It was a strange routine. Every morning they gathered in the hall to hear about the day’s schedule. Sometimes a patrol would be due to pass through and they had to man their imaginary homes and businesses, so they could be searched and questioned and occasionally shot at with bizarre-looking laser-guns. Usually the soldiers just walked around with shit-eating grins on their faces saying Salaam alaikum. This seemed to be the main plank of their counterinsurgency strategy. When violence was on the menu the villagers had to wear special harnesses over their traditional ethnic clothing, so the laser-guns could register hits. When you were shot you had to lie down and place a card on your tummy, showing details of your wound. Sometimes a makeup artist would come and sprinkle on some blood, for extra realism. Then the medics would run over and treat whatever injury was on the card, or just put you in a body bag and carry you away. There were scorekeepers who tallied up the net effect on the hearts and minds of Wadi al-Hamam, and, depending on how things had gone, they would be told in the next day’s briefing whether they felt more or less pro-American.

Laila’s role was mainly to stand in the shipping container labeled CLINIC, though sometimes she had to come out and mill about on the main street, looking hostile. The soldiers would arrive, sometimes just a few in an armored vehicle, sometimes a whole convoy of Humvees accompanying the major, a little man in a neatly pressed uniform who looked more like a sales clerk than a soldier, a sort of middle manager of warfare. When the major came, his troops would fan out and point their guns in various directions while he gave out ballpoints and toothbrushes as morale-boosting souvenirs. Then they would all surround the mayor’s office while he took a meeting with Uncle Hafiz. The meetings usually ended with Uncle Hafiz announcing some new bribe for good behavior, a tube well or sanitation project or girls’ school. Sometimes the major would make a speech, which was translated into Arabic by a female interpreter who spoke some Maghrebi dialect no one could understand.

Most of it was easier than Laila expected. The stressful part was when the soldiers conducted raids. The villagers had to assemble in various locations, which were supposed to represent their houses. Even though this wasn’t where she actually slept, it was too close to reality to feel like a game. She still had nightmares about Baba, and one night was shaken awake by the woman in the cot next to her, who’d been disturbed by her moaning and thrashing about. Everyone was very understanding, but she didn’t want their sympathy. When there were night raids she tried to stay in the background, listening to her iPod until it was time to be hooded and cuffed.

One day, about three weeks into the exercise, some soldiers shot all the customers at the café, and Heather announced that in response Wadi al-Hamam would mount its first riot. The major came, looking worried, handed out pens and MREs, and bustled into the mayor’s office to consult with Uncle Hafiz. The villagers gathered outside, pumping their fists in the air and shouting “Down with America! Down with George Bush!” Laila felt ridiculous, pretending to be angry about something that hadn’t actually happened, but some of the others were getting really into it, yelling in the faces of the soldiers and ad-libbing all sorts of colorful Arabic insults. Back home she’d seen many demonstrations, of unemployed men or activists from the religious parties, and they were nothing like this, but she supposed Wadi al-Hamam was supposed to be a country place, so perhaps it was realistic enough. It certainly spooked the soldiers, who looked like they wished they had real ammo in their guns.

Mixed in with the demonstrators were insurgents, who’d come out to make trouble. Unlike the ordinary villagers, they were played by American soldiers, who swathed themselves haphazardly in robes and yashmaghs and bandannas and generally looked as if they were attending a frat-house toga party. As planned, when the riot got under way one of them set off an IED, killing a lot of people. The troops responded by killing a few more. Cutting short his meeting, the major fought his way back to the Forward Operating Base. Then everyone broke for coffee and pastries.

Later Heather came bouncing down the main street in her Humvee to give notes and explain what would happen next. Apparently, Wadi al-Hamam’s hearts and minds had now been definitively lost, and until the end of the rotation they should do their best to make BLUEFOR’s lives as difficult as possible. The insurgents chuckled and high-fived one another. Laila moved as far away from them as she could.

The insurgents lived in a shipping container at the edge of town and passed their days (most of their ambushing was done at night) sullenly shooting hoops, using a plastic crate they’d nailed to a board on the side of the mosque. Since it wasn’t a real mosque, most people didn’t have a problem with it being used for recreational purposes, though one or two of the villagers seemed to think it was disrespectful, and the imam took it very badly. For his role as local religious zealot, he’d designed himself a fantastic fake beard, a long silky chin covering that he donned every morning in a complicated procedure involving a big mirror and a tube of spirit gum. Swathed in his clerical robes he looked very impressive, and when the beard was fixed to his chin he tended to behave as if he really was a respected spiritual leader, lecturing the village women on modesty of dress and giving fiery speeches through the speaker attached to the minaret. One afternoon there was a wail of feedback, and he began railing against the presence of the hoop, declaring it an insult against God (peace be upon Him) and a hateful symbol of the arrogance of the invader. He would tolerate it no longer, he said, and called upon all believers to take a stand against ignorance and join with him in tearing it down. Filled with righteous fury, he propped a stepladder up against the building and began to climb, only realizing his miscalculation when he saw he was surrounded by toga-clad men pointing M-16s at his chest. He climbed back down again. After that everyone gave the insurgents a wide berth.

All the insurgent role-players had served tours in Iraq, so they knew what they were doing when they sneaked around, ambushing BLUEFOR soldiers and planting bombs. They were never rude to the villagers, but they weren’t friendly either; they just kept themselves to themselves. There was one man Laila found particularly frightening. He was very tall and black and walked with a stoop, cradling his gun as if it were a child’s toy. He never smiled, and when any of the villagers got too close to the insurgents’ bunkhouse he’d raise his weapon as if he intended to shoot. The imam claimed he’d told him he would slit his throat if he ever touched the basketball hoop again. “He would do it, too,” he said. “I could see it in his eyes.” As they were debriefed after the riot, this soldier threw back his head and howled like a coyote, which made his buddies fall about laughing. Heather looked annoyed but didn’t say anything. Nor did Lieutenant Alvarado. Laila realized they were intimidated too.

As soon as the soldiers had gone for the day, Laila always made a point of changing back into her ordinary clothes. Most of the villagers seemed happy to have the chance to dress as if they were back home in Iraq. Several had made remarks to Uncle Hafiz, asking whether he minded his niece looking like a vampire. Though he’d always defended her before, at Wadi al-Hamam he seemed far less happy about her rebelliousness. I’m the mayor, he told her. You should think of the dignity of my office. No one else said anything directly to Laila, for the simple reason that she avoided talking to them. Her one friend was called Noor. She was in her early twenties, hardly spoke English, and before she became a role-player had worked in some shitty part of East L.A. packing TV dinners for a food company. She had come to the desert with her mother, father and two brothers. Sometimes she and Laila would listen to music together. Though Noor was older, she knew very little about American life; Laila liked playing the role of educator, telling her the names of the bands, explaining the meaning of slang words they heard on the TV. Most of the women Noor had worked with on the packing line were Hispanic, so she’d learned some Spanish; she taught Laila how to say pendejo and chinga tu madre, and tried to persuade her to listen to Ricky Martin songs. Noor liked pretty things, girly things — pink accessories and stuffed animals and sparkly nail polish. Laila was determined to change that, but Noor was stubborn.

“I don’t understand you,” she said to Laila one day.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re a beautiful girl. You could make something of your looks. Why dress like this? All this black?”

“I like it.”

“But what about your family? Do you think of them? Why do they allow it?”

“I do what I want, OK? Just because I don’t dress like a Muslim Barbie.”

There was a reason, of course. For the black clothes, the music. When Laila had first arrived in the U.S. she’d felt lost. All she could think about was her father. She couldn’t sleep, and didn’t eat, even when Aunt Sara tried to tempt her with her favorite dishes. She remembered with shame how she used to behave, pushing her plate away, telling her aunt that the biryani didn’t taste right, the burek was too salty. What she meant was that they didn’t taste like Mama’s cooking. She couldn’t understand why her mother hadn’t come to America. She’d been so keen to leave Iraq. When Laila could get through on the phone she’d try to persuade her to hurry. “I’m scared for you,” she’d say. “I miss you so much.” But somehow Mama always made excuses. Laila shouldn’t worry. She was fine. She’d come soon.

“When?”

“Soon.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

But she didn’t come. And gradually the tone of the phone calls changed. She started saying how things were getting better in Baghdad, how the city was safer, with fewer explosions and more regular electricity.

“So do you want us to come back?”

“No, darling. Not yet.”

“Well, then, when will you come here?”

“One day.”

What did she mean, “one day”? Auntie Sara and Uncle Hafiz were kind and patient, but often in that first year Laila would wake up screaming in the middle of the night. Once she even wet the bed, like a baby. Jamila would sit up with her and Laila would cry on her shoulder and confess how much she missed her mom. Why wasn’t she coming? Jamila said it was to do with visas. Uncle Hafiz had a friend, some bigshot Republican who’d arranged things so she and Samir had a temporary right to remain in the country. This big shot was also helping them with their applications for permanent residence. But with Mama there were complications. Baba had joined the Ba’ath Party so he could get a promotion. His widow was listed as a “sympathizer.”

“So we’ll come back,” Laila pleaded, sobbing into the phone.

“No, darling. That’s not a good idea. There’s nothing for you here anymore.”

Gradually San Diego came to seem normal. The city was exciting; a life that had once been contained inside the rectangle of the TV screen was now spilling out all around her. There were Rollerbladers and convertibles and bikinis and Big Gulp drinks. School was tough. She’d never had to sit in a class with boys before and the other girls were so intimidating that at first she didn’t say anything to anyone. People thought she couldn’t understand English and spoke to her slowly, making hand gestures and exaggerating the words. Most kids thought she lived in a tent and rode camels. She couldn’t believe the Americans were making a war in a place they didn’t seem to know a thing about. When she tried to explain, even the clever ones just wanted to talk about suicide bombers and their stupid 9/11, as if the people in New York were the only ones who’d ever died in the whole world. She lost her temper once and shouted at some football players, who were taunting her in the school cafeteria. “We weren’t savages! We had television! I saw Cosby Show, Saved by the Bell!” She couldn’t understand why they found this so funny.

Though she was angry, she was jealous too. She wanted to be an American girl, to be confident and loud and know why it was funny to have seen Cosby Show. The nicest girls at school were the misfits, the ones who wore black and seemed at least to have been bruised by life, instead of being unwrapped like pink cakes every morning before school, fresh and stupid and untouched by human hand. She’d always loved music, so she began to find out about the bands the misfit girls liked, with their lyrics about feeling empty and crying on the inside and being scarred and shattered and wanting to die. She too was an angel without wings. Her heart was in a million pieces. For the first time in her life she had an allowance, and, since her uncle and aunt felt sorry for her, they didn’t stop her from buying big boots and plucking her eyebrows and ringing her eyes with black so she looked like a panda bear. Aunt Sara was appalled, but Uncle Hafiz liked the idea of bringing up a modern teenager. In some ways he even encouraged her; the henna tattoos and briefly purple hair were proof they were an American family, not stupid immigrants who didn’t appreciate the freedoms of their adopted country.

The whole emo thing was fine while they were still in San Diego, but Uncle’s sudden decision to bring them out to the ass end of the universe meant she and Samir had to deal with redneck kids who called them raghead and Saddam and sand-nigger. And though the goth clothes and the overwrought music had begun to seem a little ridiculous, they were hers, and she’d found them by herself, and no one could ever take that away from her.

The weeks went by. The first rotation ended and the clerical major and his troops were deployed to Iraq. Laila and the others watched them leave, then she spent a week back home, trawling the thrift store and hanging out with Samir, who was distant and sullen and kept disappearing to his room to take calls from some girl. Together they watched a lot of TV. One afternoon, still in their pajamas, they sprawled in front of a talk show, watching the presenters discuss the latest twists in the Raj Matharu case, speculating whether the parents were responsible for whatever had happened to their son. They didn’t say anything about Nicky Capaldi, though the blogs were reporting that he was in rehab in England and had vowed never to tour America again unless he received a formal apology from the government. So far the White House didn’t seem to have made that a priority. Fans were getting up a petition, but she didn’t feel like signing. While the TV presenters swapped theories, she opened Samir’s laptop and they watched a YouTube interview with the Matharus, who wore pastel shirts in complementary colors and held hands and did their best to counter the rumor that they were Satanic pedophile child traffickers.

“So you think they did it?” asked Samir, throwing peanuts up into the air and trying to catch them in his mouth.

“No.”

“I do. That woman looks like a crack whore.”

“You wouldn’t look so good if your child was missing.”

“I wouldn’t be having no stupid assburgers kid in the first place.”

“Well, if you did.”

“I just wouldn’t. That’s all.”

She was almost relieved when it was time to go back to the village.

The major in charge of the new BLUEFOR rotation was very different from the last one. He looked like a cartoon soldier, an injection-molded plastic warrior, flattopped, bug-eyed and steroidal. He made a big show of force on the first day, driving into the village at the head of a convoy, blaring the theme from Lawrence of Arabia out of speakers mounted on his Bradley. But despite his confidence, his troops were still incompetent, sheepishly drawling their mispronounced greetings and shooting randomly into crowds. Before long the hearts and minds of Wadi al-Hamam had been lost once again, and Heather was instructing the villagers to stone him when he came by to inaugurate the imaginary new cement factory.

One day Uncle Hafiz starred in a beheading video. They shot it inside the mosque because it was the most sinister spot in town. All the insurgents wanted to take part, so Lieutenant Alvarado held a casting call and whittled them down to the six he thought looked most terroristical. The video was for Al-Mojave, a fake TV channel broadcast to the troops in their mess hall, which provided their main feedback on the progress of the simulation. The Al-Mojave reporters would sometimes show up and interview the villagers about how pro-American they were feeling. They particularly liked Noor, who had a good line in wailing and angry denunciations. Uncle Hafiz had been collaborating with the occupier, so he’d been kidnapped from his office in a dramatic dawn raid. He’d spent the day watching Vietnam movies with the insurgents while the flattopped major directed fruitless house-to-house searches. Uncle Hafiz’s death (reported Al-Mojave) would be a major setback for BLUEFOR, since it called into question their ability to provide security in their sector. As far as Laila was concerned, they couldn’t provide snacks and dips for their sector, let alone security, but she supposed this was the sort of thing they needed to find out before they went to Iraq and did it for real. She and Noor watched the beheaders get ready. They were even more ridiculously dressed than usual; one of them had lost his dishdasha and was wearing a Little Mermaid beach towel wrapped around his waist. Uncle Hafiz was willing to help them sort out their keffiyehs but was hampered by the fact that his hands were cuffed behind his back.

“Girls, please come help.”

So they tugged and tucked. Much against her will, Laila found herself assisting the tall black insurgent wrap a length of cloth around his head. He looked imposing, and even more scary than usual, like a Berber dressed to cross the desert. To her surprise he smiled and said thank you. It was the first time he’d ever spoken to her.

“You’re Laila, aren’t you,” he said. His voice was surprisingly high-pitched, almost girlish.

“Yes.”

“Like the song.”

She must have looked blank. He did an impression of someone playing a guitar and hummed a few notes of a riff.

“Not an Eric Clapton fan, then.”

“Not so much.”

“Me neither. I like that one, though. Everyone likes that one.”

He smiled again, waiting for her to say something. She stared awkwardly at the ground.

“Come, Laila,” said Uncle Hafiz sharply. “Come away. Everything is ready now.”

The tall soldier ignored him and stuck out his hand for a dap shake. “I’m Ty.”

She took it, felt it twist and swivel in a quick series of moves, ending in a fist bump.

“Yeah, that’s right,” he grinned. “That’s the way.”

Lieutenant Alvarado clapped. “OK, ladies, let’s get this done.”

Uncle Hafiz knelt down on the floor. Ty put a hood over his head.

“Allahu Akbar!” said one of the insurgents.

“Too soon!” snapped Uncle Hafiz, his voice muffled by the hood.

Since he was best at fiery rhetoric, they’d drafted in the imam to play the insurgent leader. He started off in formal Arabic, apostrophizing Allah the most Gracious and most Merciful and addressing a call to the young men of the Islamic lands never to relent in their fight against the Crusaders and the Jews. He reminded them that there were only two choices in life, victory or martyrdom, and tried to lead his followers in a chant of “death to the Crusader Bush,” temporarily forgetting that none of them understood a word he was saying. Lieutenant Alvarado, who was holding the camera, started to make “wind it up” gestures. The imam ignored him, launching into a new description of the hypocrisy of the invader, who dared use his serpent’s tongue to talk of human rights and dignity when he was the greatest torturer in the history of the world. Alvarado lost patience.

“Just cut his head off already!”

“Allahu Akbar!” shouted the insurgents. Ty started to saw at Uncle Hafiz’s neck, slicing into a blood bag, which spurted realistically down his shirt. Uncle Hafiz fell over onto the ground.

“Cut,” said Lieutenant Alvarado. “That’s a wrap.”

Everyone got up. Ty uncuffed Uncle Hafiz, who insisted on looking at the finished product before he’d let Lieutenant Alvarado pass it for broadcast. He seemed pleased with the result. “Very realistic,” he said. “Very bloodthirsty.” Contentedly he turned the camera screen toward Laila. “See what they did to me? Animals!”

One of the insurgents wanted to know if he could get a copy to send to his mom. Lieutenant Alvarado suggested maybe a postcard would be more appropriate. Ty came over to Laila, wiping the blood off his hands. “That was pretty cool,” he said.

She shrugged. “If you like torture and violence.”

“True. Say, you’re the one with all the vinyl, right?”

“How did you know?”

“C’mon, we’ve been living here for weeks. You want to bring it over sometime, play us some tunes?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I got some records in my storage unit. Soul music, mostly. Old school.”

“I don’t know.”

“Come on, I won’t cut your head off.”

Laila didn’t find that funny. Uncle Hafiz put a protective arm around her shoulders. The imam shot Ty an angry look. Ty took a step toward him. The imam pretended he’d gotten something in his eye.

After that, Ty always said hello whenever Laila walked past. Sometimes when he was shooting hoops with his friends, he’d throw the ball to her to catch. He never offered to play records for her again, but she could tell he liked her.

“How old do you think he is?” she asked Noor one day.

“I don’t know. Twenty-two perhaps? Twenty-three? Why?”

“No reason.”

“You like him!”

“Don’t be silly.”

“But he’s a black man, Laila. Your uncle would go crazy.”

“God, Noor! I didn’t say anything. You have a one-track mind.”

One afternoon, she was sitting outside the clinic, waiting for BLUEFOR to turn up on a routine patrol. Ty walked by, wearing his Berber headscarf. She called out to him.

“Are you going to ambush them?”

“No. Not on the list today. We’re firing some rockets at their base tonight. Should be cool.”

“OK.”

“Must be kind of weird for you, all this.”

“All this?”

“Playing war.”

“Isn’t it strange for you, too?”

“But you grew up there, right? Before you came to the States?”

“Yes.”

“So isn’t it weird? Living in this place, watching all these doofuses pretending to attack your people?”

“It’s just life, you know?”

He laughed. “That’s one way to think about it. Where you from?”

“Baghdad.”

“I was there. Not for long — I was in the north, mostly. You know Tikrit?”

“Of course.”

She couldn’t have explained why she asked him the next question. It just popped out. “Did you kill anyone?”

He stared at her for a long time.

“Yes.”

“Iraqis?”

“Who else would I be killing?”

She could feel his eyes on her as she walked away.

That night she lay awake and thought about what he’d said; he hadn’t sounded happy or sad or remorseful or proud. Just blank. She groped for her flashlight. Noor had found a gossip magazine with a picture of Nicky Capaldi in it. She ducked her head under the covers and started to read. He was out of rehab and leaving a charity event in London. BACK ON THE SCENE! Nicky C. “tired and emotional” leaving the Artists Against Anorexia bash at Shoreditch House … She tossed the magazine aside. The girl he was with was as skinny as a rail. Maybe she was part of his charitable work.

The next day she saw Ty again. He waved, but didn’t stop to talk. Just then the imam bustled up, a grave and clerical look on his face.

“I must talk to you,” he said. “Seriously.”

“What is it?”

“My dear, I am like your older brother. I see what is happening with you and I don’t like it. You are decent girl, so I know you will accept my advice when I say it is very bad to make conversation with — men like this.”

“I was just saying hello.”

“It does not matter. Please listen to me. I am only concerned for your welfare. There is so much immorality these days, particularly in this place. These soldiers, they are very bad people. Like animals.”

“I thought you supported the war.”

“Please, don’t interrupt while I am talking to you. You are fine young girl. I have spoken to your uncle about you.”

“Why?”

“As you know, I make good business with the hair. I have several young girls working for me, but — I will speak frankly — they are whores. Sluts. I see them leaving for their nightclubs and discos, wearing short skirts and other small clothes. It make me very angry. It is why I am severe with you. It is only because I respect you. You are good Muslim girl, not some American prostitute. This is what I say to your uncle.”

“OK. Whatever. I think I need to go now.”

“But you are prey to many influences. He feels this also. These homosexual singers, with their long hair and makeup. I say to your uncle, he has not been strict enough with you. I have offered to help in your education.”

“You’ve what?”

“I think at the bottom you are a very good girl. But you must wipe off this makeup and dress modestly. And I forbid you to talk to these soldiers. They’re immoral, particularly the black ones. They’re no better than monkeys.”

It was pretty much the freakiest speech anyone had made to her since the president of the math club had written her a poem for Valentine’s Day and tried to recite it in class. She didn’t wait to hear any more, just turned and ran back to the women’s dorm, where she knew the imam wouldn’t follow her. She hadn’t felt so angry since the soldiers came and took Baba. Who did this man think he was? How dare he tell her what to do? Beneath all his pious words was this strange, slimy tone. I will look after you, I will help you with your education.… She knew what he had on his mind, and it was disgusting.

After that, she made a point of spending as much time with Ty as she could. He brought her a disco record he’d found somewhere, a band called Rufus and Chaka Khan. They listened to it loud, sitting on the roof of the clinic container, blasting the music out into the desert as the sun set over the mountains.

“I’ll be honest with you,” said Ty. “I know I can be kind of an asshole. But I find it hard being around Hajis.”

“What?”

“Sorry. I know that’s a bad word to you people. It’s not like I’m racist or anything. It’s just — well, when you’re out there you got to watch your back the whole time. You got to treat everyone as a threat. It kind of eats into you.”

“So you think we’re all terrorists?”

“Not you. Well, maybe that imam dude. He’d like to put the hurt on me.”

“You know he’s a hairdresser?”

“Get the fuck out of here. For real?”

“Ty, why don’t you like us? What have we done to you?”

“It’s not logical. I mean, we’re on a damn Marine base. Safest place in the world. I’m not going to have to go back there, just train other idiots to do it. But I can’t relax. I just want to switch off, you know? Just get a good night’s sleep.”

“Did something happen to you?”

“When?”

“In Iraq.”

“Yes. You could say that.”

“Something bad?”

“Pretty bad.”

“Are you over it?”

“No.”

“Me neither.”

She thought of telling him about Baba. He’d probably have understood. Instead she played him the Ashtar Galactic Command record. He told her it was the worst music he’d ever heard, “worse than Arab music, even,” and though she probably should have been offended, she laughed. He told her they were going to do a big ambush that night, and asked if she wanted to watch. She did, so he took her to the bunkhouse and produced a helmet covered in frayed desert camouflage. Clipped to the front was what looked like a pair of binoculars, a black metal device with twin eyepieces feeding into a single lens. Some of the other insurgents watched as he placed the heavy helmet on her head and adjusted some straps so it didn’t slip down over her eyes.

“You ain’t going to let her borrow that, are you, Ty?”

“Why not?”

“What if she loses it?”

“She ain’t gonna, are you, Laila? Kill the lights, Danny.”

Someone flicked a switch and the room went dark. Ty flipped the binoculars so they came down in front of her eyes, then pressed a button on the side. Suddenly she was in a glowing green world. She could see everything clearly: the guys lying on their cots, the jumble of kit bags and drying laundry, even the pornographic posters on the walls.

“There ya go. Night vision, baby!”

“That’s incredible! It’s like a computer game!”

“Thermal too.”

“Yeah,” chortled someone. “You can see Ty’s got his dick out.”

“Shut your mouth, Kyle.”

At midnight, following Ty’s instructions, she sneaked out of the women’s dormitory and climbed a low hill at the edge of town, which gave her a view over the road. BLUEFOR were due to do a round of punitive house-to-house searches, a favorite tactic of the flattopped major now that he’d more or less given up on Wadi al-Hamam’s hearts and minds. The sky was clear, dusted with stars. Laila flipped down the goggles and watched the insurgents taking up positions, green figures sprawling flat on the ground, assembling a rocket launcher behind a building. They’d buried an IED in the road, primed to explode when the rear truck ran over it, trapping the convoy in what Ty called “the kill zone.” He’d warned her to be very careful where she sat, explaining that if she didn’t go exactly where he said, she could get caught in crossfire. Though the insurgents weren’t firing live ammo and the bombs were just whizbangs, it was still dangerous. She had to stay far up on the ridge, away from the fighting. Luckily the goggles were fitted with a zoom, like a digital camera. She zipped up her hoodie against the chill and played with it, expanding bits of the scene, raking the empty desert with her high-tech gaze.

The darkness was alive with motion. So this was how Iraq looked to them; this was how her house looked when they flew overhead in their helicopters. She lay on her back for a while, then stood up and turned a slow three-sixty rotation, ruling the world, dominating it. Out in the emptiness, away from the town, was a single glowing shape. She couldn’t tell what it was, even with the zoom doubling its size. Elsewhere she could see a conga of bright lights, the BLUEFOR convoy driving down the main road toward the village. She watched it come, getting steadily closer as the insurgents settled into their positions, ready to do whatever violent thing they had planned. Suddenly all of it felt very distant, just a boy’s game. Cowboys and Indians. Kick the can.

She turned back to the glow. What was it? An animal? She couldn’t tell how far away it was. How many “clicks”? This was how she looked to the soldiers, a little point of thermal light, a grid reference to be targeted with a bomb or a drone or a shot from a sniper rifle. Press a button, squeeze the trigger. Snuff her out like a candle. Suddenly the strange glow seemed more important than watching the ambush. Taking a last look at the approaching convoy, she scrambled down the hill and started walking toward it.

She walked for ten minutes. Behind her she heard a loud boom, then the sound of gunfire. Turning around, she saw flashes, intense bursts of energy. She turned away again and carried on walking. In front of her was the shape. It was definitely alive. It seemed too small to be a human being.

She put her hand up to her mouth when she saw what it was. He was just standing there, as if he’d dropped from space. A child. A little glowing boy.