Consequence (19 page)

I rip the plastic chair out from underneath him. I've forgotten about the old man in the corner. When he moves in to help the boy, I shove him out of the way. He stumbles and his head hits the wall. Thud. The young boy looks up at me from the floor in confusion. He lifts his hands, palms up, and points them at the old man. The sound of the old man's head hitting the wall is like the judge's gavel at the end of a trial. I want to go home.

I return to the office, where Ferdinand and Henson are sorting through screening reports. I say, “I think I may have had enough.” Ferdinand says, “Hey, man, no worries. Relax. We'll cover you tonight.”

We get mail the next day and there are three letters from Karin. One is from Mexico, where she was attending the wedding of a mutual high school friend. One of the letters has a picture in it, the first picture I've received from Karin while I've been away. She is on the beach, in her bathing suit. There is also a letter from my Presbyterian grandmother. She talks about my grandfather and his service in Europe. And although she uses kind words to compare me to him, she also says she didn't want to see this happen again.

I show the photos to Ferdinand. He shows me photos, too, of his wife and young son on vacation in Arizona. The boy, like Ferdinand, is smiling. He's wearing a T-shirt that says something patriotic about U.S. troops. I think the boy is beautiful.

We head to breakfast and say nothing. Ferdinand and I are spending more and more time together, but we are saying less and less. Others know Ferdinand as the one who always talks, the one who is always holding court, always telling stories, always making people laugh. It's good to be around Ferdinand. He makes you forget where you are. But in Fallujah, Ferdinand grows quiet.

Ferdinand and I no longer hold conversations about whether Brent is a good leader, or whether Dent has any idea what she is doing, or whether Tyner is a war criminal. We don't want to remember shoving old men and questioning young children. We focus on our pancakes and bacon. We steal Hi-C drinks and hide them in our bags. We walk to the building with the free Internet and hit the send/receive button. We head back to our room as the morning heat rises and retreat to our bunks. We sleep through afternoon mortar attacks, then wake in time for dinner. We sit at dinner and say nothing. We steal more drinks. We walk to the slaughterhouse and prepare for the evening. Ferdinand and I come to rely on each other for silence.

We sit outside in the gravel parking lot near the slaughterhouse and wait for shift change. The MPs have adopted a stray dog. I've come to know him well. He chews on my boot. Ferdinand wrestles a stick from his mouth. In a few weeks, the Marines will arrive and take over the base. They'll discover most of the dogs are diseased, so they implement a safety policy and shoot all the dogs.

The next night, when I arrive at the interrogation facility, one of the interpreters pulls me aside and tells me that he overheard the detainees talking to each other in the holding cell. They were saying something about one of the interrogators. He says he thinks they were talking about me. He says he thinks he heard the word “Satan.”

The next day I interrogate a former major in the Republican Guard's Hammurabi Division. The major speaks English. He claims innocence. I fill out the paperwork that will send him to Abu Ghraib. At the end of the interview, I ask him what he and other detainees talk about inside the detention facility. I ask about the word “Satan.” He talks about the Salafis and says these are the men we should both be fighting. He tells me that he protects the younger detainees from these men. He says the Salafis are dirty and stupid. He says they try to hold religious services inside the holding cells. They make the men pray and bother those who don't have beards. He offers to help interrogate the Salafis. I ask the major whether the detainees talk about the interrogators. He says they have names for each of us. There is the black Satan, the white Satan, and the fat one. I ask him what they call me. He says, “You, the one who speaks fus-ha, the quiet one, the kind one. Everyone wants to be assigned to you.”

I feel good about this, which is absurd. A prisoner would be foolish to tell me the truth, to tell me that his comrades hate me, think of me as subhuman, want to kill me in my sleep. He is smart to compliment me. I am dumb to believe it. But my insecurity has no limits, so I accept him at his word, pretend that my trespasses have been less than those of my colleagues, and take pride in thinking that I am not one of the “Satans.” It's nice to think of myself as a light amidst the darkness.

I've abused prisoners in Fallujah and in Abu Ghraib. I have pulled chairs out from underneath young boys. I shoved an old man into a wall. I was silent in the face of the Palestinian chair. I failed to protect the men in my care. I tortured them. And now I believe they like me.

6.9

The next night, Brent meets me at shift change to inform me that I'm being transferred back to Baghdad. My new team members have arrived and it is time for me to start working in my assigned position. He says it will be important work. I read through the daily report and listen to the brief from Captain Dent. As the day shift prepares to leave, Brent asks me to spend some time that evening with one of his detainees. He is utilizing sleep deprivation. I am to wake the detainee up at random times. Every hour is fine, but don't make it too consistent. And strip him, too. We're not looking to induce exposure; just take his coat long enough to cool him down. The key is to keep him awake.

The night shift leaves. I read reports on the detainees I'll be interrogating. I grab a Hi-C drink and Girl Scout cookies from the common room and spend some time outside listening to the outgoing rounds from the artillery units stationed on base. The rounds detonate in the distance. I don't think about sleep deprivation. I think about following Brent's instructions. It's not my interrogation. It's not my sin. At one a.m., I awaken the detainee. He smells. He is shaking. I make him stand up and I take his coat. Underneath, he is naked. He cries.

I return the coat, turn off the light, and let him sleep. I hope there is a way back.

 

7

In Baghdad, I run. I run past the canals that feed the artificial lakes of Saddam Hussein's presidential retreat. The large palaces were all damaged during the initial days of the invasion, but the smaller villas and vacation homes remain largely intact. A variety of American military units have set up their headquarters in the abandoned structures. The roofs are covered in an array of antennas and sandbags. The sun rises and begins to heat the day. I turn around and head back to CACIville. I am passed by armored Humvees and an assortment of tracked vehicles. Mortar rounds strike an empty field. I keep pace with a group of soldiers running in formation.

Brent was wrong. My new team members have not arrived. It will be another week. CACI leaders give me a certificate of appreciation for my voluntary work at Abu Ghraib and Fallujah. I also get a plastic CACI coffee mug and a $10 certificate to spend at the post exchange. I buy Gatorade and Doritos. I'm told to be patient and enjoy the time off. I'm assigned my own room in an old Iraqi army barracks. The room has a door with a lock. It is the first time I've been inside a locked room since arriving in Iraq. I go to the room and lock the door.

Ferdinand and I spent our last night together talking about sleep deprivation. It was the first time I remember using the word “torture” in a conversation in Iraq. We both knew the Palestinian chair was torture, but I don't remember saying it. But sleep deprivation can be described no other way.

That evening, I eventually left the detainee in the room and allowed him to sleep for the rest of the night. When Brent arrived the next morning, I said, “I don't know, I don't know what to tell you.” Brent apologized. He said, “Yeah, you know, I don't think I want to do it anymore, either.”

I write a letter to Karin from the locked room in Baghdad. It is April. My midtour vacation is in May. I write to Karin about traveling in Europe or swimming at a beach in the Maldives, about airplane flights, good food, and bathing suits. I write that I am happy to be gone from Fallujah. I write about my morning runs on Camp Victory. I write about the canals and the artificial lakes. I ask her to send me a new batch of clothes. I need hot-weather shirts. I do not write about sleep deprivation. I do not write about waking up at night to make sure my door is locked.

Bill Jenkins, my new team leader, soon arrives in Iraq. He is a former Army warrant officer with more than twenty years' experience in the intelligence community. I help him with his gear and give him a tour of the complex. He talks about CACI's hiring process and about the deployment process at Fort Bliss. He says, “Worst I've ever seen.” He talks about the other CACI employees on his flight. He suspects the vast majority of them forged their résumés. He wonders whether any of them have actually served in military intelligence. He says, “Bottom of the barrel.”

Bill and I talk about our new team and the details of our assignment. We are tasked with creating a five-member unit that will support military counterintelligence units and provide expert analysis of emerging trends inside Iraq while offering critical assessments of evolving insurgent capabilities and motivations. I tell Bill I'm not qualified to do this. I tell him I was an Arabic linguist trained to do long-range reconnaissance and that I was a police officer. I say the only emerging trend is more incoming mortars and more angry Iraqis. Bill says, “Just pretend you know what you're doing.”

7.1

Easter arrives. The nightmares have become more frequent. On Easter morning, I go for a run on Camp Victory. I explore a new portion of the base where the Army's 1st Cavalry Division is setting up. A large artificial hill rises out of the empty fields. This is where the workers piled the dirt to dig out the canals and lakes for Saddam's palaces. Everyone says this is where Saddam Hussein buried the chemical weapons. From the top of the hill I can see the buildings and minarets of Baghdad. I hear the Muslim call to prayer and think about Sunday services at the First Presbyterian Church. I remember an organ prelude accompanied by the Philadelphia Brass, the choir processing down the aisle and singing “Jesus Christ Is Risen Today.” The “Hallelujah Chorus” from Handel's
Messiah
. In high school, I used to attend all four Easter services before getting French-kissed in the church parking lot.

A large formation of soldiers from the 1st Cav Division reaches the top of the hill. They stop for push-ups and sit-ups. The sergeant berates the stragglers who are still making their way up the hill. His profanity is interrupted by incoming mortar rounds. We scatter over the sides of the hill and make our way back down to lower ground. I sit with other soldiers in a bunker made of large cement highway dividers. An officer says, “They watch from the minarets. Fucking assholes call artillery on Easter Sunday from a fucking mosque.”

CACI organizes training sessions for newly arrived employees. They ask me to teach Arabic. I sit in a classroom while another employee gives a PowerPoint presentation on the difference between Sunni and Shia. I listen to a speech about the Baath party. There is a class on terrorism. I stand up front and recite basic Arabic greetings. When it's over, one of the employees organizes everyone into teams. He tells me to say words in Arabic and then call on the teams to see who was paying attention. He uses a whiteboard to keep score. Bill gets up to leave and tells me to come with him. He says, “I didn't come to Iraq to play games.”

Bill commandeers a vehicle and tells me to show him the airport. We drive to Baghdad International and visit the duty-free shop. We buy whiskey and Cuban cigars. We return to our room and spend the rest of Easter Sunday getting drunk. I had access to alcohol in Fallujah, but I rarely drank. I was too busy, and when I wasn't busy, I was talking with Ferdinand. There were too many interrogations to conduct. In Baghdad, there is nothing for us to do yet, so I stay drunk for a week. The alcohol dulls the nightmares. Bill watches over me.

7.2

On April 18, I go back to work. Bill decides that we do not need a five-man team to do the assigned job. He says, “The last thing we need are more CACI guys.” The two of us are attached to an Army intelligence unit tasked with gathering information on the Iraqi workers who enter Camp Victory during the day. They paint the walls, fix the roads, gather the trash, and suck the shit out of the portable toilets. The jobs are highly sought after by Iraqi citizens. The pay is better than anything they can find in Baghdad. Iraqis form long lines at the checkpoints, hoping to land day jobs on Camp Victory.

I arrive at the main gate in the mornings and make my way through long lines of Iraqi citizens. The U.S. military suspects that members of a number of insurgent groups are mixing with the workers in order to gather information about the troops on base. They also suspect they are recording the locations of important buildings in order to facilitate more accurate mortar fire.

I walk among the Iraqis and practice my Arabic. They are eager to speak with someone who knows the language. They think I am someone with influence, so many tell me about their brothers who were taken by American troops, or their fathers who never came home, or their cousins who disappeared last month, or their uncles arrested by the Iraqi police. They complain about the checkpoints that keep them from visiting relatives or the military convoys that make them late for work. They want to know why their child's school was destroyed and who will be rebuilding it.

I listen to the stories and field the complaints. I pretend to write names down in my notebook and promise to report back when I have more information. More and more Iraqis come to see me and make the same complaints. I make the same assurances. An older man holds my hand and guides me through the crowd. He introduces me to his teenage sons. One of them wears a shirt with the word “Jesus” printed on the front. He shows me the cross he is wearing around his neck, then points at me, then back at himself. He says, “Christian.” They are Chaldean Christians, like Tariq Aziz, the deputy prime minister under Saddam Hussein. Coalition forces arrested Tariq Aziz not long after the invasion, and he is a detainee in an American prison in Iraq.