I Lost My Love in Baghdad (24 page)

I know all this. I know the Iraqi Islamic Party is shady. I know they are hypocrites. I know most political parties in Iraq are complicit in the killing that is taking place in the country—SCIRI, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution, is America's most important Shiite ally. Does the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, whose leaders lived for years in exile in Iran, sound like a moderate political party? Moqtada al-Sadr has thirty members in the Iraqi parliament; his Mehdi Army has death squads that attack Coalition forces regularly. The IIP is not much different. I know the IIP has ties to Sunni insurgent groups. I witnessed it myself in Baghdad in August 2006 with the 172nd Stryker Brigade. We searched an IIP branch office in the neighborhood of Ghazaliya and found an arsenal and IED-making materials. I even emailed Andi about the IIP in December, describing them as having known ties to “the honorable resistance.” This is not hidden knowledge. Why did I not put all of it together when Andi told me she was going to visit with the IIP days earlier? She told me she was going to the IIP headquarters. All I said was, Be careful.

I did not look at the map. If I had looked at the map I would have been horrified at the distance of the trip. The headquarters is miles away from her compound, on the other side of the city. I would have been horrified that the neighborhood was Yarmouk. A neighborhood that
Newsweek
inquired about going to a week before this happened, and we were told within fifteen seconds by our security staff, “Are you crazy? There is no way you can go to Yarmouk, it is much too dangerous. Even Iraqis are afraid to go to Yarmouk.”

So I know all of this.

I know, I know, I know.

I know that after the attack, the Iraqi Islamic Party blamed the Americans. They told the
New York Times
on the day Andi was killed that they had been asking the U.S. military for better security in the neighborhood. They did not publicly condemn the attack. It is not a popular position to be against the insurgents.

This is the Iraqi government. These are our allies, the moderates, the men we decided to work with, the men we have given billions of dollars to.

Fuck them all. Kill them all. Bomb this country and make one giant parking lot. Better yet, build a giant runway to go bomb every one of these other Arab countries off the face of the Earth.

Nuke everybody, put on protective antiradiation suits, take their goddamn oil.

Fuck all of them, these savages, this fucking criminal government. The birthplace of civilization, but there's a reason that civilized people left, migrated, got the fuck out this shithole.

I don't really mean that, I tell myself.

Do I?

I do at the moment, maybe, but there are good people here.

Are there?

And what are we doing here anyway?

We're not evil like this. We're not fucking savages.

Oh?

Stop, stop, stop. I wish a hundred more Hadithas on these fucks. Line them up—I will pull the trigger myself.

I have a change of heart on sectarian cleansing—let the Shiites wipe these Sunni fucks off the map. Let them kill them all, women and children. Let them pay.

I don't really believe that, right?

I don't think so.

Maybe sometimes.

Maybe not.

It is late Friday night. They have located her body. It has made it to the Army morgue at Camp Victory. The phone calls continue. Why didn't I say anything? Why didn't I stop her? You know Andi would have gone anyway; you know how she was; it was her job. She always told you not to go places and you didn't listen. You went anyway. You cannot blame yourself, I am told. Yes I can. I can blame myself and I can blame everybody. Blame is easy. Blame is easier than living with this terrible sadness and despair.

BAGHDAD

It is Saturday. I learn the flight carrying Andi's body is scheduled for tomorrow. I will be helicoptered out from the Green Zone to the airport on a Black Hawk. There will be a small ceremony there. Ambassador Khalilzad will attend.

This afternoon, a few security guards from NDI dropped off Andi's belongings at the
Newsweek
bureau. Two large black trunks—the trunks I had brought to her two weeks earlier. Four suitcases. Two unopened cardboard care packages—they arrived on Thursday—FedEx boxes from her family and my family. Her laptop bag with her personal computer.

I move her things into my room and start to go through the trunks and bags. Her clothes, her perfume, her scent. I was planning to take the important things her family would want now, any of her writings and documents, with me on my flight.

In her laptop bag I find pictures of her and her two nieces. Folders from work. Letters that my father has written her. Gifts I have given her: a small gold Kurdistan pendant and a necklace I had bought for her from a woman in the West Bank, the digital camera I gave her for Christmas in Vermont. A few books:
Marie Antoinette,
Twain's
Joan of Arc,
the biography of Empress Sisi I bought her when we were in Vienna. I open up the care packages, and inside are finger paintings from Kayla and Abby, her nieces, with yellow hearts saying LOVE ANDI.

I find her personal writings and her diary. She wrote about what she hoped the universe would give her. She wrote about the readings she got from her psychic in Boston named Diana, whom she would call occasionally from Iraq. She liked to take notes on what Diana told her so she could compare it to what happened and prepare for what she should watch out for.

I find a note she wrote on stationery from the Amman Four Seasons in December. It says:

I open her diary, and my heart skips a beat as I read:

Don't let MH find out about this, please forgive me, angels, please forgive me…

I read on. She had got access to my email account and sneaked a peek. I laugh for the first time in three days. I smile. I always wondered how she could guess who I was emailing—she always seemed to know! Part of it was her own intuition, of course, and knowing me so well, but it turns out she had had help, too. I don't know how she figured out my password.

I find a note that says: “career, death card.” Another, dated January 12, says that she and I will “take the journey home together.” She had written her favorite quote from Milan Kundera's
Immortality
on an index card: “Only obstacles, Paul thought, were capable of turning love into a love story.” The note was dated August 25, 2006, a week before she left for Iraq.

I take out her clothes—the blue sweatshirt of mine she liked to wear, my favorite top of hers, the white one she wore when she met me in Vienna, her blue scarf and mittens. I take her perfume.

God, this is like out of a movie. So people do this.

I also take her underwear and put it in my bag. I know she would not want customs or anyone else seeing something so personal. But it feels weird all the same.

I find a plastic bag of extra large men's T-shirts, including one that says
THE HUNGARIAN INTERNATIONAL SHOOTING CLUB.
I assume it belongs to the dead Hungarian guard who was in Andi's car.

Later that afternoon, the security manager from NDI calls.

“You don't happen to have T-shirts, do you? Extra large? They belong to the bodyguard in the third car.”

“Yes, I do.”

“I'll come by and pick them up,” he says. And then, “He's agreed to meet with you if you want. He's at the NDI compound in the IZ.”

“I'd like to talk to him.”

A few hours later, I drive with X to meet him. His name is Jacob. He was one of the two survivors in the third car. He's from a small town in Hungary. His English is okay. He was shot in the arm, but is doing fine.

NDI has three rows of trailers, next to three rows of IRI trailers, right next to the Blue Star restaurant. Not many people are at the restaurant. We walk down the row of trailers.

I've brought a notebook with me, though I don't know if I'll take notes.

Jacob opens the door to his trailer and we step in. He's finishing up a Skype chat with his wife, back in Hungary.

I want to thank him for trying to save Andi, but I don't really get a chance.

“I'm sorry we couldn't do more,” he says, and then he starts talking, and I stare at him, listening.

He's a thick six feet two with a square head and soft brown hair. He's wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt. He has a cut on his chin and what look like stitches. He seems a bit shaky.

“She wasn't the only one who was killed, you know,” he says.

I nod.

“My friend Yonni, he was in her car. He died, too, he was like a brother to me. He has a wife and a two-year-old baby back in Hungary.”

I listen.

“They don't give a shit, you know, a PSD from Hungary gets killed, then it is no big deal, but she wasn't the only one who died.

“And you have to understand,” he says, in broken English, “that I am usually in the client car. For the past six months I have been in the client car. I was not in the client car, my friend Yonni was instead. Brother to me.”

So what happened?

He says he cannot answer all my questions—he would like to, but there is still an “ongoing investigation.” He could even get in trouble speaking with me now. It appears no one high up at the organization has cleared this conversation. The NDI security manager who set it up was doing me a favor; he wanted to help me get answers. But Jacob wants to talk, too, wants to see me, to explain what he can.

They were at the IIP compound for about an hour and a half. He says he has been there seven times. That the last trip there was a month ago. I have talked to people with post-traumatic stress disorder before, watched as they recounted their experiences in combat, and he gets the same look as he goes through the events of that day.

He is about fifteen meters behind her car. For whatever reason—it is unclear to him, or he can't say—her car stops. Four or five men run at the car. At this point, there is a massive amount of shooting. Or maybe there is shooting before, too. The sequence of events, from his telling, is hard to pin down. There is an explosion. The car he is in crashes. Crashes into what? He can't say. The car is receiving fire from all directions—above, to the sides, everywhere, from what he guesses has to be at least thirty shooters. The PSD team leader, a Croatian, is sitting shotgun in the third car. The Croatian steps out of the car to move toward Andi's vehicle. It is unclear whether the explosion has happened yet, whether there still is a vehicle to move to. The team leader, says Jacob, is almost immediately killed. His boss, shot dead. Bullets are now pouring into his car. There is smoke everywhere. Jacob is in the backseat. The driver of his car, an Iraqi, has also been shot. Two hundred rounds hit our car, says Jacob, maybe more.

It is hazy, he says, foggy. He doesn't really know what happens next. It sounds like he stays in the car, in the backseat. It seems like he does not return fire or make any attempt to move to Andi's car. Maybe it is too late. Maybe he is in shock. Maybe the training does not kick in, and he is overwhelmed by what is going on. He hunkers down in the car and waits and at some point, he leaves the car to hide in a building with the wounded Iraqi driver of his car.

X has been listening carefully to the conversation. “There is tunnel vision,” he points out. “When shit like this happens, it's hard to see everything.”

I ask if the guards from the Iraqi Islamic Party compound responded.

He smirks and shakes his head, no.

He tells me the second team of NDI guards arrived maybe twenty minutes after the ambush started.

“Twenty minutes is an eternity,” says X.

Jacob repeats his points.

“I am lucky to be alive,” he says. “He was a brother. I am sorry we couldn't do more.”

I nod, yes, lucky.

I take down his email address and I thank him for his time.

I go back to the bureau, and think about what he told me, and I come to the harsh conclusion that he failed, he froze, he did not return fire. He hid in the backseat. He told me instead that he was fortunate to have survived. I agree, he might not have been that fortunate had he been doing the job he is paid to do, which is to protect his client, even if it costs him his life. That is why he gets paid. I am sympathetic to his own shock, his own trauma, and I am probably being unfair, but I don't really give a shit that he lost a friend, another mercenary. I don't give a shit that he is usually in the client's car, and it was only the fate of switching with his friend that saved him. I care only that Andi is dead, murdered, and that she was not protected.

BAGHDAD

On Saturday night, I print out an email containing my travel orders: authorization for “Fiance of Andrea Suzanne Parhamovich to Accompany her Remains…The State Department requests that the Department of Defense authorize Michael Mahon Hastings…to accompany the remains of Ms. Parhamovich aboard U.S. military aircraft…” The document, on DoD letterhead, notes she was “killed by terrorists in Baghdad.”

The flight home will be Sunday morning. There will be a ceremony at the Baghdad Airport, which the ambassador, representatives from the State Department, NDI, URG, and I will attend. I will be accompanied on the flight by Karen, the head of the political parties program at NDI and Andi's direct supervisor in Iraq.

The first flight will take us from Baghdad to Kuwait. In Kuwait, we are scheduled to change planes then fly to a U.S. airbase in Germany. From Germany, we will make the last leg of the trip to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. We are scheduled to arrive in Dover late Sunday night or early Monday morning. If there are no foul-ups, it is about eighteen hours of flying. It is important to me that there are no delays. The longer it takes to get to Dover, where the U.S. military may take as long as a week to release her body, the longer Andi's family has to wait to have a funeral for her.

The security guard who died in Andi's car, Yonni from Hungary, will also be coming with us back to Dover for processing. The air force base in Delaware has the military's largest morgue, and receives the bodies of almost all the American servicemen and women killed in Iraq, just over three thousand at this point.

That night, I pack my bags, just the essentials. My clothes, thrown into a Swiss Army duffel bag, are mixed with Andi's clothes. I put her laptop in a backpack I'm carrying. I have her mobile phone and diary, her folders from work, her perfume. I put a stick of lipstick in my pocket, where I'll keep it for the next few months. I'm also bringing body armor and a helmet for the helicopter ride to the airport and the C-130 flight out of the country. I fold up the printout of my DoD travel orders and slip it in my jacket.

Sunday morning is overcast and windy. “Show time” is 0700; the helicopter is supposed to take us to the airport for a flight around 0900. I get in the Mercedes, X drives. We leave the bureau, take a left from our house, pass the traffic circle, go underneath an arch from the Saddam era, then after a series of massive speed bumps we hang a left and are at the LZ Washington gate a few minutes before 7
A.M.
I am the first to arrive. The Peruvian guards at the gate say we are not allowed to drive in and try to send us across the street.

“You don't have the right pass to drive in here,” they say, in broken English and Spanish.

I get out of the car and unload my bags. They tell me to move.

“I am getting out here,” I say, my voice rising. “If you have a problem, call the fucking ambassador.”

The Peruvian guards start to circle around me, like they are going to physically restrain me. X moves near me, ready to intervene, ready to tackle the Peruvian who looks like he is ready to tackle me. I pick up my bags and walk inside. The guards watch. I put my bags down in the waiting area inside the LZ. I apologize to the guards for my outburst.

Reps from the embassy, including my friend Lou Fintor, turn up about fifteen minutes later.

“I've spent the last twelve hours trying to find a Hungarian flag,” Lou says, when I ask what's in his hand. “The only one we could find was at the DFAC.” The embassy dining hall has all the flags in the Coalition of the Willing—the thirty-two countries that originally supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq—hanging from the ceiling. Korea, Japan, Estonia, Fiji. Even though Hungary, as Lou points out, is no longer part of the Coalition (they dropped out in 2005), they still kept their flag hanging right above the salad bar, three meters from the Baskin Robbins ice cream counter.

“There is one problem,” Lou says. “The flag smells like French fries and onion rings, all that grease from the chow hall.” The loss of Yonni is front-page news in Hungary, Lou tells me. It's caused some controversy. Before Yonni was a hired gun, he served in the Hungarian military. Officially, the Hungarians aren't even supposed to be here, but they're part of the NATO mission. NATO has representatives stationed in Baghdad to watch the progress of the war. Lou, who speaks Hungarian from his time at the U.S. embassy in Budapest, has been in touch with the Hungarian NATO detachment to arrange their participation in the ceremony at the airport. They didn't know if they could get a flag in time, and Lou did not want to take any chances.

The wind picks up. I resign myself to the fact that we might be delayed.

No, I'm told, we're going.

The contingent from NDI arrives. I meet the man who gave me the news, Tom Ramsay. He tells me: “We are cooperating fully with the FBI investigation.”

This statement perplexes me, and I get suspicious. Well, of course you're cooperating fully with the investigation. Why wouldn't you be? It is a sentence that reeks to me of legalese and evasiveness and guilt; cooperating fully with the investigation. No shit you are. Perhaps he says this because I'm a journalist. Perhaps he says it because it is stressful and he doesn't know what else to say. Perhaps he says it because he is not cooperating fully with an investigation that will show many mistakes were made, too many, and the responsibility for those mistakes might fall on his shoulders. Perhaps not. Perhaps I am just angry and tired and paranoid.

I meet Karen. She will be with me all the way to Dover. Karen was the last NDI staffer to see Andi. She is about five feet five, with tan skin and dark hair down to her shoulders. She looks tired and smokes Marb Lights. Do we have enough cigarettes? I ask. I have two packs—so does she. That should keep us until the afternoon, I say.

The two Black Hawks land, blowing wind and dirt against our faces as we follow the ground crew member out to the “birds.” I dressed today in the blue blazer and gray flannels and a white button-down shirt that has light blue stripes in a crisscrossing pattern. I wanted to look respectable for the ceremony. I do the State Department chic thing, and put the body armor on under the navy blazer. I wear my Burberry coat, bought with Andi the year before, and button it to the top. I strap my helmet, pop on the eye protection, and stick in the yellow earplugs. I have the travel down to an art—two bags carried, one on my back. X and I hug before I get on the helicopter.

We lift off over Baghdad. There are heavy winds, winds that would cancel a normal flight. I am being buffeted around like never before. I feel so fucking strange. The city is waking up, three thousand feet below, maybe closer, it seems closer. We follow the river out, the other Black Hawk tailing behind us, whoomp whoomp whoomp, and I can't help but smile at the unbelievability of it all. I laugh to myself, an absurd, sad laugh. I think very briefly, I can't wait to tell Andi about this trip, she'll get a kick out of it—and it hits me again that I will never get the chance.

We land at Sather Airfield, or the Glass House, the military terminal at the Baghdad Airport where the C-130 is scheduled to meet us that morning. The Glass House was once the building where Saddam met VIPs arriving in Baghdad. There is not much glass anymore, most of it replaced by plywood to board up the windows. I can see the civilian air terminal across a large airfield, where the Royal Jordanian flights take off. We are informed that the C-130 is late and won't arrive until the afternoon, about eight or nine hours from now. They want to do the ceremony as the two coffins are loaded onto the plane, so we have to wait.

An army chaplain comes in, along with Lieutenant Colonel John Franks of Mortuary Affairs and the ambassador's speechwriter. They start to talk, going over the details of the ceremony—the honor guard, where the soldiers will stand, who will speak first. The ambassador's speechwriter shows her talking points to the chaplain so he can get a sense of what the ambassador is going to say. It is too much for me, and I go outside to smoke and look at the airplanes.

Lou joins me.

“This place is a fucking nightmare,” I tell him.

He agrees.

“When I leave here, I won't look back,” he says. “Afghanistan I could go back to, but this place is so fucked up.”

Lieutenant Colonel Franks rounds us up for a trip to the morgue. There are two such Mortuary Affairs companies in the army, he explains, or about three hundred people in total. It is all volunteer; the men and women in Mortuary Affairs serve only six-month tours, due to the stress and psychological trauma of their military occupation specialty, or MOS. There are eight collection posts for bodies throughout the country. This spot at Camp Victory is the main depot for the dead. The Iraqis are being trained how to take the lead in mortuary affairs, building their own facilities with help from the Coalition, so they don't have to rely on local hospitals or the Americans to process their dead.

We drive out in SUVs to a small white building. Lieutenant Colonel Franks points to an even smaller, rundown building where they had worked until they recently upgraded to the new facility. The Mortuary Affairs group is isolated, Franks explains, away from the rest of the base, hidden in the corner, out of the way.

We walk inside. A group of soldiers is hanging out in a small office. I am introduced to Staff Sergeant Cruz, the young man who worked on Andi. We get a tour. “Everyone is treated with dignity and respect,” he says. They bring us out back, where there is a white morgue truck and a stack of silver metal caskets. The caskets are temperature controlled and identical, with a slip of white paper containing the personal details of the contents on the side. Andi is already in one, but they don't tell me which one.

I ask Lieutenant Colonel Franks if I can see her remains; he shakes his head no. He moves closer to me and says we will have a talk, man-to-man. The rest of the group leaves.

“I know who you are,” he says. “I know about
Newsweek
and the trip to Paris”—he'd read about it in the
L.A. Times
—“I know you're the media. I've done my research. I've Googled you. You know, the media is always reporting the negative news. I'm glad this is finally a positive story.”

I am slightly stunned. I am amused that the colonel, meeting a representative of the press, takes a shot at the liberal media, then suggests that Andi's death is a good news story. I don't say anything, but I assume he means the fact that she died for something she believed in, she died for her ideals, and that she was being treated as a hero.

He gives me the details.

Her body was found in the backseat. The body of the Hungarian security guard was found on top of hers. It appears he was trying to protect her from the flames, from the bullets and the explosions. The front seat was broken, knocked back, so he must have jumped in the backseat to cover her up.

“Twenty-five hundred degrees Fahrenheit, fire burns down,” he says.

I don't know what this means.

“There has been comingling of the remains,” he says.

It dawns on me why the Hungarian has to go back to Dover—so the morticians with better equipment in the States can separate what is Andi from what is her security guard.

“Can I see her?” I ask.

“There is no body,” he says. “She is not what you think. What is left is not recognizable as man or woman. It is ugly. It is not her. Trust me, you don't want to see.”

“Was the driver found in the car? I was told he may have run away,” I say.

There were only two found in the car, he says.

I thank him and go back to the SUV.

A further investigation is being conducted by the CID, or the criminal investigation division of the military. What will the forensics say about the last moments? Will the body of her driver show burn marks—will there even be a body?—like he was escaping from the fire, or will it be full of bullets, like he just stopped the car and tried to run away? Or did he stagger out in a daze after something hit him, a bullet, shrapnel? How many bullet holes in the car will there be?

At least one of her guards did his job, I tell myself, tried to cover her, tried to protect her from the heat, from the flames, from the grenades rolled under the vehicle, under the gas tank, the dense smoke, 2500 degrees Fahrenheit, fire burns down. I hope her guard covered her five-foot-three frame. I hope she was comforted by this. I wish I had been the one to die on top of her. I wish I had been there to protect her.

There are still a few hours left before the ceremony. Lieutenant Colonel Franks offers to show us around. He suggests going to the PX on Camp Liberty, another base on the airport compound. On the drive over, I ask where the Crisp is located. The Crisp is the name of the yard at Liberty where destroyed vehicles are brought—vehicles that are burned up, burned out, burned to a crisp. The Crisp is where Andi's car was taken. It is the Crisp that gives me images of scraping scorched bones off the melted carcass of the car she was in.

It's over there, he says. From a distance, it looks like a junkyard or parking lot.

The PX on Liberty is one of the nicest in Iraq, due to its proximity to the airport. There is a Taco Bell and Green Bean, and the PX itself is the size of a Wal-Mart. Franks, Lou, Karen, the speechwriter, and I enter the store. Bright lights shine on row after row of Doritos, Tostitos, Right Guard, Crest toothpaste, Marlboro Lights and Reds, magazines,
Car and Driver, Ebony, Maxim,
new DVDs, new video games for the Xbox and PlayStation and even the handheld PSPs. There is a back room with televisions and air conditioners, satellite dishes. There is combat gear, holsters, boots, socks, sanitary napkins; there is a counter for ballistic eye protection. I pick up a pack of Marb Reds, and I also decide I need a new pair of sunglasses for the upcoming funeral and plane ride. The sunglasses I have been wearing are slightly bent. I ask to look at a pair of Ray-Bans, a black pair that I press to my face. I buy them. There is a fifteen-minute wait in the checkout line, which stretches back to the refrigerated pizzas, customer after customer, some in uniform, some in the jeans and tight T-shirts or push-up bras of contractors.