The Wreckage

13

The new day is a bright orange line on the horizon but already the trees are sagging in the heat and the landscape has blurred to a shimmer. Driving at speed past barricaded shops and bawling vendors, Luca and Jamal cross the Greater Zaab River, withered and brown, into the province of Nineveh. Abu is in the vehicle behind them, never more than a car length away.

Soon the desert stretches out on every side with flat expanses of hardpan between brush-covered ridges and dry creek beds that look like old scars in the earth. Rural Iraq is like something from a Biblical story with men in dishdashas, boys herding sheep and simple mud-brick houses the color of sand.

The traffic is heavier than Luca remembers. Good news. Business is being done. Jobs created. Families fed.

Jamal’s eyes dart back and forth to see if any vehicle has “picked them up.” “Dickers” can be anywhere; sympathizers who punch a number into a mobile phone and summon insurgents to a “soft target.”

Below them at the base of a ravine the remnants of a US Humvee lie twisted and blackened. Fresh tar covers the bomb crater at the edge of the road.

When they reach the outskirts of Mosul they turn east and cross the Tigris. After stopping twice to ask for directions they reach a village too poor to pave its stretch of road. It has one dusty street and a broken line of mud buildings. Four or five men sit outside a cafe, playing poker and drinking tea. Their faces are like the desert-old, worn and craggy. Watching.

Jamal asks about the bodies that were found. One of the men raises a weathered hand and summons a young boy from the kitchen. Barefoot and dressed in rags, the boy sprints ahead, his pink heels flashing in the dust. Jamal and Luca follow, while Abu stays with the cars. Their young guide waits for them to catch up. He runs again, zigzagging through a dusty yard full of half bricks and broken concrete.

Then he stops. Waits. He points at a collapsed house, rubble instead of walls, the roof in pieces; some sort of explosion or implosion. Luca moves closer, stepping gingerly into the debris. He pulls aside a twisted rectangle of tin, stained with rust. Not rust. Blood. Flies lift off and settle again.

Luca retreats, wiping his hands on his shirt. He questions the young boy in Arabic. There were four men inside the house. They were wearing uniforms. The police took their bodies away.

The nearest dwelling is across the street. Luca notices a young girl on the rooftop, sitting beneath a tarpaulin slung from three poles. She’s wearing a scarf drawn across her mouth, peering from beneath the edge of the fabric, not quite looking directly at him.

“Did anyone see what happened?” he asks the boy.

“We were sleeping. My house is there,” he points further along the street. There is a woman hanging washing on a clothesline. The wet clothes are piled in an aluminum case just like the one he saw in the bank vault. On the opposite side of the road an old woman is selling onions and peppers from another case.

“Where did you get this?” he asks her.

“It was not stolen.”

“Where?”

The boy answers, “We found them.”

“Show me.”

Luca follows the boy again, walking between buildings that radiate heat, yet trap the cool behind thick walls. Goats bleat from the shade of a lone tree. Stopping at the edge of a ravine, Luca’s feet have disturbed loose stones that bounce and slide down the steep slope, rattling against bags of household rubbish, discarded clothing, furniture and broken pottery. Scattered on top are more than a dozen aluminum cases. Luca counts them. Including those he saw in the village it makes sixteen. How much money did they contain?

Walking back to the destroyed dwelling, he begins taking photographs. Through the lens he notices the girl again, still watching him from the rooftop. Luca waves. She doesn’t respond.

Crossing the road, he knocks. For a long while nobody comes. An old man opens the door, a yellowed bandage around his head. His eyes disappear in dark holes like burrowing animals afraid of the light.

Luca greets him with respect. He can smell the rotting flesh beneath the bandage. Infection.

“What happened to your head?”

The old man shrugs.

“Do you have antibiotics?”

“I cannot afford them.”

Luca sends Jamal for the first-aid box in the car. The room has rugs on the floor and a few simple pieces of furniture. The old man sits down on a wooden stool.

“Did you see anything last night?”

“No.”

“What about your granddaughter-did she see?”

“I don’t have a granddaughter.”

“The girl on the roof.”

“That is where she sleeps.” The old man blinks at him. “You are not an Arab.”

“No.”

“What is your religion?”

“I don’t have one.”

“Who is your God?”

“I have no God.”

“What sort of man has no God? What does he believe in? Why does he live?”

He lives because he is a man.

“You are American?”

“I was born there. My mother is Iraqi.”

“I like George Clooney and Arnold Schwarzenegger. How come Americans don’t like football? Everybody in the world likes football.”

“We have our own sort of football.”

The old man grunts, unimpressed. The girl appears on the narrow stairs. Barely sixteen, her face still covered. She feels her way, pressing her palm against the wall. The old man calls her closer. She raises her chin. Her eyes are a dull and sightless white.

“She heard them,” he says.

“What did she hear?”

The girl speaks softly in Arabic. “There was a truck and two cars. Men were arguing.”

“How many men?”

“Seven or eight.”

“What were they saying?”

“Some of them were told to go into the house. They were beating at the door, trying to get out. The other men loaded the truck.”

“Did you hear any names?”

She shakes her head. “They were driving Land Cruisers.”

“How do you know?”

The old man answers for her. “She can recognize different engines.”

“Did they say where they were going?”

She hesitates. The old man barks, “Tell him, wife.”

Not her grandfather!

“I heard them say Al Yarubiyah,” she says.

It’s a crossing on the Syrian border, eighty miles to the west.

“The men in the building were yelling and screaming,” she says, covering her ears. “There was a big noise and then they stopped.”

Luca leaves a bottle of antibiotics on the table and tells the old man how many to take. He steps into the brightness of the afternoon. A dozen men are watching him, their faces wrapped in kaffiyehs. Eyes empty.

Jamal and Abu are waiting at the vehicles. Abu is eating a homemade sandwich of bread and meat. He has a weapon slung across his chest.

“Time to go,” says Jamal, glancing over his shoulder.

They leave the village in a cloud of dust but even before it settles Abu spots a vehicle tracking them, a battered pickup about two hundred yards away, travelling in the same direction, bouncing over ruts.

The driver is dressed all in white. He’s not alone.

Jamal puts his foot down, swerving around potholes, his knuckles white on the wheel.

“How far to the dual carriageway?”

“A mile and a half.”

Luca pulls a Kevlar vest from his bag. “Put this on.”

Jamal shakes his head. “I’m fine. You wear it.”

“We both wear one.”

Jamal takes one hand off the steering wheel and puts it through the sleeve, then the other one.

Reaching beneath the seat, Luca pulls out a machine pistol. He cracks the car door, holding it partially open, keeping his weapon out of sight.

The pickup is still with them, the distance closing.

“They could be farmers,” says Luca, not believing it. He raises the machine pistol and fires a warning shot. The pickup doesn’t slow down or change course.

Ahead, lying discarded beside the road is a hessian sack. Jamal swerves violently, bouncing through a gutter and sending the Skoda rearing like a rodeo bull. At the same moment the sack explodes, blowing out the side windows and lifting the Skoda on to two wheels where it balances for what seems like the longest time, trying to decide whether to roll over or right itself.

Gravity is kind to them. Four wheels kiss the earth. Luca’s ears are ringing. Jamal is yelling.

“He’s coming in! He’s coming in!”

The pickup has closed to within thirty yards. The passenger is firing on them, sending bullets pinging off the side of the Skoda.

Luca leans over the back seat and shoots through the rear window. Ejected cartridges, brass, red-hot, rattle on to the floor. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Abu in the Toyota HiLux, rearing over the dunes and the undulations. He has pointed the vehicle directly at the pickup, closing at speed.

The gunman in the passenger seat recognizes the danger and changes his aim but it’s too late. The force of the collision sends the pickup spearing into an embankment. Its nearside bumper digs into the earth and the entire vehicle lifts off the ground and rolls once… twice… three times in slow motion before exploding. Black smoke rises and billows like a mushroom cloud, perfect in the heat and stillness of the afternoon.

Jamal and Abu pull up at a safe distance.

The cousins look at each other, breathing hard, wordlessly taking stock. Uninjured. Jamal runs his hand along the side of the Skoda, putting his finger through one of the many bullet holes.

“And you laughed at my armor plating,” he says, with a hint of pride.

Abu glances at the burning wreck.

“They will have friends. We cannot stay here.”