Kaboom (37 page)

I sighed and smirked at Eddie. He had done this before too. “Tell him it's not a contract. It's a release form. It just says he'll try to help keep the detainee out of trouble from now on and serve as a positive role model.”

Eddie translated. The mukhtar nodded knowingly, but the deputy mayor spazzed out again and tugged at his hair. Fucking politicians, I thought. Even the mukhtar looked over at the deputy mayor and made an Arabic facial contortion I interpreted to mean, “What the fuck is wrong with this guy?”

“He wants to know if detainee gets in trouble again, will he go to jail for what the detainee does?” Eddie asked. “I tell him no, but he wants you to say it.”

I tugged on my skull cap and bit my lip. “No,” I said, “he won't get into trouble. This is an important document, though, not simply an empty formality. He and the detainee need to take it seriously.” I silently hoped God understood that lies had a time and a place.

The mukhtar nodded again, picked up a pen, and signed his two guarantor release forms, which corresponded to the two detainees from his neighborhood. The deputy mayor slapped his two hands together, smiled pointedly as if a television camera were recording him signing an international peace treaty, and scrawled his name across his one form. I thanked both of them and stood up.

“I'll go get all of us some coffee,” I said. “The ceremony starts in forty-five minutes. We'll just hang here until then.”

Forty-five minutes in Iraqi time inevitably turned into two hours in real time, but nonetheless, Eddie and I found ourselves escorting the deputy mayor and the mukhtar over to the Iraqi police station. A squad from Lieutenant Dirty Jerz's platoon joined us at the gate, and to a man, they all looked how I felt.

“Ahh, the joys of counterinsurgency,” I said to the squad leader. “Throwing a record-release party for guys who want to kill us.”

The staff sergeant grunted and smirked. “Fuck it, sir, we'll just roll him up again,” he said. “Anything to make the time go by.”

We walked into the compound, escorting the deputy mayor and the mukhtar to their folding chairs, which had been set down in an empty field of dust next to the police headquarters. I found Captain Frowny-Face in the front and handed him the release forms.

“Any problems?” he asked, grinning.

I arched an eyebrow his way. “No more than usual, sir,” I replied. “They just wanted to make sure these things wouldn't actually hold them accountable for anything.”

My commander gave me a faux look of disapproval. “Remember, Matt, it's an important part of the ceremony. Who knows, it might scare a few of the dumb ones into behaving themselves.”

I winked and nodded in agreement, then found a chair in the far back next to Lieutenant Rant, who had coordinated many of these in the preceding months himself. Colonel Najij of the Iraqi National Police and Lieutenant Colonel Muhamed of the Iraqi police sat with Captain Frowny-Face in the front row, along with Sheik Modhir and his son, Hamid. Next to Hamid sat a major from our brigade who I didn't recognize and an American in a suit who I assumed came from some sort of governmental agency. A smattering of NP commandos, regular Iraqi police, a few Iraqi civilians I figured to be the detainees' families, and American soldiers filled out the rest of the rows.
An Iraqi reporter and photographer walked around the scene, with the reporter asking Colonel Najij and Lieutenant Colonel Muhamed questions.

A few minutes later, Lieutenant Mongo and some of his soldiers walked in from the rear, guiding the three detainees by their shoulders, towering over them like skyscrapers. I flashed Lieutenant Mongo an obnoxious thumbs-up as he walked by me, and he did an admirable job of not breaking his stone face of stoicism. They stopped the detainees in front of the audience, spun them around, and walked off. The three “reformed” insurgents stayed. Colonel Najij stood up and gave an impassioned three-minute speech, full of arm swinging, fist pounding, and moustache stroking. As the speech lacked an interpreter, I leaned over to Lieutenant Rant and asked if he knew what was being said, as his rudimentary Arabic was slightly better than mine.

“This happens every time,” he whispered back. “There's something about the sun, a scorpion, and second chances. You know how the Iraqis are with their imagery.”

As Colonel Najij finished his speech, then was followed in sequence by Lieutenant Colonel Muhamed and Captain Frowny-Face, I wondered about the concept of second chances. I certainly understood it, although I remained firmly in the school of thought that reformed bloggers weren't quite in the same category as reformed terrorists. Nevertheless, after a photograph session with the released detainees, guarantors, and the police colonels, I couldn't help but smile when the three detainees ran into the arms of their families. One elderly lady I determined to be a mother began weeping uncontrollably as she held her son's face for the first time in many, many months. I've always been a sucker for crying women, I thought to myself.

As we sauntered back to the JSS, I reached into the air and slapped Lieutenant Mongo on the back. “Sometimes this job isn't so bad, you know?” I said.

He looked dubiously down at me. “Are you crazy, man?” he said. “Six months from now, this same thing will happen with Abu Abdullah.”

I bit my lip. “Good call.”

His point was reinforced a week later, when Specialist Haitian Sensation sent me a Facebook message, updating me on the Gravediggers and Saba al-Bor. In his message, he let me know that during a recent detainee release ceremony, Mohammed the Ghost had been cut loose a solid year before his sentence ended. He said the release shocked everyone, including the Iraqi army and Iraqi police leaders.

I stopped thinking about the weeping mother.

I loved Joe.
He wasn't always able to voice his opinions and thoughts directly, due to military customs and courtesies (some of them respected such protocol themselves, some simply feared the retribution of their NCOs, but the end result remained the same: acquiescence), but I always trusted that he would get his point across somehow. One of the time-honored places for such backdoor honesty was the Porta-John, a refuge where men of all ranks, colors, and creeds were both pantless and alone. Shitting was humanity's great equalizer—especially on an army base in a combat zone.

From Kuwait to Camp Taji to Saba al-Bor to Istalquaal, I always read the walls of the Porta-Johns, especially after the dramatic happenings that polluted day-to-day existence in the army. What better place to learn how the soldiers really felt about things? I wanted more than a “Yes, sir,” damn it, I wanted the truth. Sure, the standard artistic renditions of the female anatomy scattered said walls. And you could always count on at least one limerick breaking down the most basic of bodily functions into rhyme. But within this bawdy shell of smut, some real witticisms worthy of commemoration existed. It was like the juicy custard inside a stale donut, but in word form. Admittedly, temptation occasionally struck, imploring me to participate in the Sharpied shenanigans, but officer humor usually lacked the brevity necessary for such contributions. So I continued to simply observe, chuckle, and pull out my notebook to copy the clever ones down for veracity's sake.

The flame in the distance
danced in defiance of the black abyss enveloping it. Its proud orange screams had no base and seemed to hover in mid-air like a torch, unconscious of and unyielding to anything else along the nighttime horizon. I had learned the month before that the flame in the distance was nothing more than a burning oil refinery located miles away from JSS Istalquaal, but that didn't stop me from staring into it for the occasional lost moment, inevitably thinking about other lost moments in other lost times. I liked to pretend some magic still existed, even in the dark.

I stood on the front porch of our company TOC, pacing back and forth, in a futile effort to keep warm. A bloody half-moon snarled down at us in repugnance. While I normally didn't pay attention to the days of the week—after ten months in Iraq, they all blended together—I knew it was Monday because I awaited the arrival of Lieutenant Anwar, the Iraqi National Police intelligence officer, for our weekly sync meeting. Eddie waited for us inside, but I had found that Lieutenant Anwar liked being greeted outside and escorted into our company area; like most Iraqi officers, he had a flair for pomp and ceremony. I didn't consider either my specialty, but in the name of international partnerships, I acquiesced and did what I could.

Shortly thereafter, a shadow materialized out of the darkness in the shape of Lieutenant Anwar. He was a short, stocky man with dark brown skin and short black hair, and the only thing crisper than his black moustache was
his police uniform. We certainly made for an odd couple, due to my gangly frame, perma-unkemptness, and wild shock of brown hair that straddled the lines of military regulation. Nevertheless, I always enjoyed our sync meetings, mainly due to Lieutenant Anwar's very real and very fiery passion for his job. Unlike some of his peers, he legitimately wanted to make Hussaniyah a safer place and did not simply go through the motions to placate either his superiors or us. When I first joined the Wolfhounds, one of Captain Frowny-Face's first directives for me had been to temper Lieutenant Anwar's spontaneous, reactive targeting method and develop his analytical approaches. We learned on the job together.

“Salaam aleichem, Cap-e-tan,” he said, sticking his hand out of a long pea coat sleeve.

I shook his hand and patted him on the back. “Salaam aleichem to you, Anwar,” I replied. “How's life?” We began walking into the building, where the heater greeted us. My body smiled.

“Life . . . good?” he said, chuckling to himself for holding a conversation in English, no matter how basic. “And you?”