Inside the Wire

Late-night revelry with a news agency in Baghdad

NOTES FROM THE FRONT

Editor’s note: s.d. liddick, a nationally acclaimed investigative reporter and regular contributor to San Diego Magazine, has gone international. He arrived in Kuwait November 2, where he imbedded with U.S. forces at Camp Ripper on Al Asad Airbase, an hour (by helicopter) west of Fallujah in Iraq. liddick is currently in Baghdad. His blogs from Operation Iraqi Freedom will appear regularly on this site.

It’s a party for sure when an Arab girl climbs onto a professional-size billiards table. She’s a reporter with an American wire service and she’s got a British accent, a razor-sharp tongue and a backside made for grinding. The lights are low by this point, and the air is cloudy with hookah smoke and cigarettes. A Middle Eastern song fills the room. Ancient Oriental cymbals clap behind a rap-like chant and half a dozen Arabic men start jumping and writhing.

Another wire reporter, a quiet American in his late 20s, takes a swig off a bottle of red wine and hands it to me. He shuffles off, attached to an extemporaneous dance train that weaves through the room. I’ve never been to a party in a war zone and I can’t decide if I feel jaunty or guilty. The fulsome girl on the billiards table summons me with a wagging index finger, her derrière grinding against an invisible partner.

This is the first time I’ve seen an Arab girl dance like this — and it’s uncomfortable. I can’t kick the uneasy sensation that heavily armed, hooded insurgents are about to storm the room. I see my head — the gringo who defiled Scheherazade — resting on a chopping block. Her eyes narrow and the wagging grows more importunate. With visions of Kalashnikov-toting zealots in my head and strange trilling cries in my ears, I back myself into a seat on the couch.

One of the Arab men climbs onto the table and assumes the role of grinding post. He’s an assistant reporter for one of the wires, as are most of the others; they all know Scheherazade. Their dance is engrossing. One of them looks at me and breaks into a strange repetitive movement, shaking his head and making an exaggerated “come here” gesture with his arms; the gesture repeats and repeats to the music. After a few refrains I reciprocate and he breaks into smile.

These young men are happy, bordering on ecstatic, and I wonder how bad Baghdad can be. They smile, imbibe and chatter rapidly. They are in consonance. Short and slight — with one or two taller standouts — they look to be in their 20s, or maybe 30s. The smiles never wane as they hug and laugh, exhibiting a strain of social ease I’ve only seen in the Mediterranean.

One of them, a jumper, compels a girl — the chief writer for an American news service — onto her feet and into giggles and paroxysms. Momentarily she’s surrounded by a farrago of white and copper faces, Westerners and Middle Easterners, writers, reporters and TV people. The temptation is to think these Arabs preternaturally happy, but conversation proves otherwise.

“My family is from a neighborhood just to the south of here,” one of the men tells me.

“So what do you think about all of this, the American presence, the invasion, the fall of Sadaam?” I ask.

He contemplates me with a deep, sad look — one I’ve already seen three times (from three other Iraqi reporters) since arriving in Baghdad, 12 hours earlier.

“Iraq is dead,” he says morosely. “This place is nothing like I knew — and it never will be again. My country has been destroyed. Iraq, before 1991, was such a beautiful place; the best in the Middle East. In education, in women’s rights, in culture. True Arabic culture. There are not words for the difference.” (In Anbar Province, I will hear a distinctly different story—from people who don’t want the Americans to leave).

“And Saddam?” I ask.

He gives me the same story I’ve already heard — nobody liked Saddam, but the ogre brought stability. And the only way the country is going to have stability again is through iron-fisted leadership. The real fear is that Iran, the age-old enemy and the scourge of Iraq’s recent history, is going to assert control and take over the country. The city (or the small part I’ve seen) is rife with a feeling of impending doom. Nobody wants to be occupied by an empire, but everyone knows if the Americans leave Iran will assert its influence straight across the heart of the country and align with its ally Syria, on the Western border.

A despondent smile plays sad denouement to his account. I can’t decide if these people are throwing themselves so energetically into dissolution to forget all that they’ve lost, or because all hope for the future has been abandoned. Maybe it’s because it’s a Muslim novelty to be drinking wine and dirty dancing with buxom Arab women and infidel Westerners without morals. Probably all three.

A hookah is billowing in the corner and the smoke is exquisite. Rumor has it the benefactor of this round — a man named Muhammad — has sneaked a pinch of hash into the mix. If that’s the case, it’s disappointing hash — one strike against the wire. (It will take weeks to come to the realization that every third person in the Middle East is named Muhammad, and one of the other two in any trio is sure to be named Jamal).

Roger, my patron for the night, is a friend and former work companion of a man named Becker, a reporter I’ve come to know through Mexico coverage. It’s through the Becker connection I’ve ended up at this compound. (I didn’t meet Roger in person until his driver picked me up on the way to the party.) Becker once told me the two of them used to hop trains together, as cub reporters at a daily in the San Francisco Bay Area. I ask Roger about the claim.

“I nearly broke my goddamned legs,” he shouts.

It’s midnight and he’s fully in his cups — which should have been expected. Writers are generally a phobic, highly idiosyncratic lot, and pathologically in need of drink. Before the festivities even move inside — to that smoke-filled den of infidel-fueled profligacy — he begins spouting off. We’re eating kabobs and other Arab foods off the grill in the pleasant night air on the heavily guarded compound’s ample patio, when he squares off with Scheherazade.

There’s nothing more awkward than two writers sparring and this episode’s no different. Roger spews politically incorrect comments about Jews and Arabs (I later realize he’s Jewish) and the ridiculousness of their respective actions. Scheherazade, a Westernized Arab woman (and atheist) with hard-set principles and caustically combative tendencies — and that grating Western tendency to say whatever’s on her mind — attacks and parries, seemingly enjoying the sport of the banter. That lasts until the end of the third bottle of wine.

A work dispute enters the equation and there’s a pretend argument, or at least the combatants are pretending they’re only pretending. And then, like a dead animal under the front porch, the foul stench of politics drifts in. Roger becomes more obstreperous and Scheherazade more obdurate. There’s a tension between them that seems vaguely sexual — but then again, Scheherazade’s MO seems to be tension (and watching people writhe in it). Maybe this banter is just the sublimation of her own idiosyncrasies.

Roger raises an esoteric point about Israeli politics that I don’t understand and then makes an off-color comment that I can’t help but understand. I wince as Scheherazade counterattacks. Feelings go raw and I run through my options: How am going to get back to the military’s Combined Press Information Center (CPIC) headquarters in a city where taxis are considered death rides for Westerners? Scheherazade allows the tension to rise to a tacit crescendo, and then another bottle of wine floats into our lives.

Smiles blossom and turn into laughter and a round of cigarettes fires to life. I drift away from the truculence and find English-speaking Arab men and Westerners cavorting and imbibing on one side of the grassy portico. On the far side, the working set — the staffers of the compound, drivers and security men — sit in garden chairs, sipping on beers and chattering in Arabic with bonhomie. Somewhere in Baghdad people are dying tonight and I try to reconcile that thought with the revelry.

At further loggerheads with the spirit of the fête, men with Kalashnikovs move in and out of the compound’s main entrance. That entrance is surrounded by sandbags, bunker style, as are all windows. Manned guard shacks ring the perimeter of the sprawling old property.

“You’re going to embed with the Marines for four months?” a wire reporter from White Plains, New York, asks me. “Are you f---ing crazy?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I’ve never embedded for more than three days — and I wouldn’t want to,” he says. Then he calls over my shoulder, “Roger, did you hear this asshole’s gonna be in Anbar for four months?”

“He’s a f---ing idealist,” Roger calls back.

The guy looks at me solicitously, as if he’d just found out I had a prosthetic testicle or a horrible venereal disease.

“I figured I’d need that much time to get a feel for the daily life of a grunt,” I say.

“You’ll figure that out in about three days,” he says. “And then you’ll be bored as shit. AND,” he continues, “you’re gonna be dealing with some pissed-off people.”

“I heard it’s got quiet out there.”

“The Marines like to do one thing, you know what that is?” he asks. “The Marines like to kill. Most of those grunts signed up a couple of years ago — when a lot of people were dying over here. They signed up to come kill people and they’re not killing anybody. Some very pissed off Marines out in Anbar. Good luck.”

Scheherazade, devoted chatelaine, grabs all the remaining booze and shepherds everybody to the second floor. The first floor, I see, is the wire’s command center. TVs, computers and bulky electronic gear fill the ad hoc office space. The house we’re in — in a neighborhood just outside of the Green Zone (three check points to get here and we almost weren’t allowed in) — is a venerable and sprawling affair; probably a mansion during better times. Now it’s run down and in need of paint. Holes in walls are filled with sandbags and impromptu bunker tactics seem to be the vogue.

When we get to the landing on the second floor (there must be four or five rooms on this level), I see everybody congregating in the ample billiards room. The ceilings are more than 15 feet high and French doors open out onto a small overlook. Divans ring the room and a TV sits in the corner — blasting out that beguiling Arab music (something like NAS rapping Arabic over the chorus in a Muslim church). A British reporter and two Muslims are coaxing Scheherazade, who’s already atop the table. I can’t shake the idea that these Arab men must feel they’ve achieved the empyrean — they can’t be used to this kind of female action.

I fall onto a comfortable couch next to Muhammad and take a long toke off the hookah. With a relaxed smile and phlegmatic self-possession, he tells me he’s from Jordan. He’s in his mid- to late-40s and looks less Arab than the others. His skin’s a lighter color and he’s tall, with broad-shoulders, thinning hair and a bit of a paunch. He says he’s been producing video feeds of this war for five years. He has a wife and kids back home.

“Are you Muslim?” I ask.

“Yes, of course.”

“Isn’t this sort of taboo — the spirits, the sexy dancing, the smoking?”

“Yes,” he says, laughing. “This is haran, forbidden. But I don’t believe that. I’m Muslim, but I like to do all this. I don’t think it makes me a bad person. But for strict Muslims, yes, this is bad.”

“I have confidence,” I offer, “that I’ll be able to find you when we get to hell. We’ll be able to hang out.”

“All of this stuff by itself isn’t bad,” he says. “It’s bad because if you get drunk and you smoke and you’re merry — well, at the end of the night, that’s going to lead to something with a girl, and that’s forbidden.”

As if on cue, Scheherazade shoots a look — and a finger wag — my way. I give her the just-a-minute sign, not wanting to explain there’s no way in hell I’m scaling that billiards table (what they’re doing to that piece of art is about as offensive to my good judgment as our dissipations must be to the Muslims in the neighborhood around us).

At that point, Roger materializes.

“I’m getting wasted, man. And I don’t want to leave. Schehera said we can spend the night — is that okay with you? My driver will come get us in the morning. It’s safe here. British security. You’ll be fine.”

My concern is that the military liaison assigned to me is expecting me back at the CPIC headquarters at some point. A phone call to the center’s 24-hour escort section precludes that problem. I can call whenever I want, night or day, and a soldier will meet me at the Fourteenth of July Bridge.

Say what you want about the military, they’ve been accommodating as hell — to me, a rep of the dirty, liberalized media. (It will be weeks before I realize this war’s left the battlefield and entered the television. It’s a public relations battle now, the domineering West vs. Islamo-fascist al-Qaida, and the paleface commanders in Baghdad are as media-savvy as they are proficient at pinpoint munitions drops).

Suddenly it’s 3 a.m., we’re thoroughly sodden — the whole shooting match — and the last of the revelers is dancing in the hollow of the cup of nothingness. The Arab men, after flailing and writhing like banshees all night, start filtering out and finding beds. Scheherazade takes visiting reporters to different nooks in the compound and I’m left to talk with Muhammad. We muse about an ancient culture that’s been cursed with the preeminent natural resource of the modern age and a country whose infrastructure — woefully neglected for a generation by a venal dictator and bombed to oblivion by his second- or third-most earnest enemy — is limping along like a three-legged dog with two bad paws.

Scheherazade returns and joins the conversation. Her views are as intransigent as her tongue is unrestrained. She starts in on the Americans and I find myself in the strange position of defending a country that has an uncanny knack for pissing me off. Lines are drawn and the tenor hardens. Soon she’s nearly shouting and the edge in my voice shows. The straggling Arab men evaporate under pressure of the hard tones and it’s just the two of us, arguing in the smoky aftertaste.

“America pisses me off,” she shouts. “Look what your meddling has done to this place, to the whole Middle East. You’ve bombed out an entire country and killed millions. Your great Western minds. Look what your Western liberation has done for us. You think only about killing and enslaving.”

“The great irony here,” I counter, my tone growing harder, “is that you and I probably agree on a lot of things. But I gotta tell you: I know a lot of soldiers and officers and there are some pretty smart people among them; some damned good people — people with morals and hearts. And a lot of them — the dirty politics behind all of this aside — have come here with good intentions.”

“How long have you been in the Middle East?”

“Three days.”

“And already you know.”

“I know people who’ve served here. Good people.”

“It makes me so angry,” she shouts. “So angry. We’re not perfect in the Middle East. But even with our dictators and tyrants, we’re making progress. We’re moving in the right direction. We’re working toward construction and peace and ... and look what you’ve done. You’ve set us back decades. You’ve made a festering hole of insurgents for a whole new generation.”

“Your views are completely binary,” I say. “

Oh really?”

“And frankly they’re naïve.”

“Is that right?” she says.

“You think that jackass Bush is the antichrist, but in reality — and don’t think I’m apologizing for him—in reality he’s just a puppet.”

“A puppet.”

“For the landed-gentry that really runs the U.S. The great American oligarchy — General Electric, Viagra and the Ford Company.”

“You’re here for Empire—and for our oil.”

“See, we agree on a lot. Just don’t fall for the trick; don’t take your eye off the ball. That Texas idiot’s a patsy — as guilty in Iraq as Oswald was in Dallas.”

The tenor of the conversation softens and the couch deepens. Politics are abandoned for talk of Jordan and growing up Atheist — and an outspoken woman — in the Middle East. The sun lurks somewhere around the corner when conversation suddenly stops.

“You’re still an invader,” she says.

“Nah,” I say. “I’m just a dirty ole writer. A witness for history.”

I think of Muhammad and damned if he wasn’t right — all of those vices, all that haran, and look where it’s led. Late-night shenanigans. Dim lights and wandering hands. With daybreak threatening, Scheherazade shows me to my room and bids me adieu. Four hours later, Roger’s voice — one I’d not heard until 10 hours ago — rips me from slumber.

“Grab your shit,” he says. “My driver’s waiting.”

Blinking into the sunlight, I follow two wire reporters through the labyrinthine compound, by a bunkered guard shack and into an old, armored Mercedes. Following us is Nigel, a short, 50-something Brit in charge of security for the wire. An avuncular and charming man, he’s a veteran of the legendary Special Boat Service, and has, no doubt, more ways of wringing a neck than I have adjectives for aggression. Twenty minutes later I spill out of the car, into the already-hot Baghdadi morning, and give Roger a parting hug.

Stumbling my way to a military SUV, driven by my armed escort, I kick up a small cloud of dust and try to imagine what a full battalion of pissed off Marines is going to look like.

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