35.

Rinsing By the time we reach Damascus Street, Sam has filled me in on why were heading to the Green Zone. Last night at the party, she got invited to a smaller party in someone's suite. She walked in, and among the ten or so people there was that rude American man who had forced us to leave the meeting in Fallujah. Except that he wasn't rude now. He was suddenly very nice to her, and apologetic about how he had acted that day. He took her aside and said he'd love to make it up to her by helping her out, and that she should come to his office today. He's working in an ORHA office for reconstruction projects, ORHA being the name the Americans have given for the office of all the things they're supposed to be doing in Iraq, other than just occupying our country with tanks and soldiers. His name is Franklin Baylor, but we can call him Frank.

Rizgar rolls over the Jumhuriya Bridge, inching behind the other cars which gingerly pass the tanks and Bradleys with men posted behind their guns. To our left, the Ministry of Construction stands like a rotting dinosaur, parts of it bombed out by the Americans in the first days of the war, each window shattered, every part of the frame warped and frayed. I wonder if Frank is going to reconstruct that.

"So he's really not a spook?" I ask.

Sam shrugs. "I'm not so sure about that. I think he could be a spook whose cover is that he works on reconstruction."

What really amazes me is that she has forgiven him so quickly for his treatment towards us that day. Or maybe she just thinks he has something she wants.

We wait for the soldiers to check our boot, and then they tell us to get out of the car so they can search the inside. We stand and wait, and I notice that her hair still looks wet, perhaps because she tied it up and didn't give it a chance to dry. The thought of her showering somewhere else, but not being clear where, filters through the part of my mind that feels like shaking her. Anything else, Mom? Sam sees me as worrying about her like a mother - not even like a father! - not as being defensive of how staying out all night could affect her reputation. Not as being curious about whose bed she slept in.

The inside of the presidential palace is spacious and confusing, Arabic in style but American in function, bustling with soldiers male and female, and civilian people dressed like they do in the American films about California, many of them in jeans or shorts and colourful, short-sleeved polo shirts. Most spectacular are the elaborate ceilings, high as the grandest mosque, and the intricately tiled floors, beautiful as a Persian carpet. I want to take it all in, but Sam hurries me along. Apparently she knows the way from her previous visits here.

"Nabil!" she whispers, catching me gazing upwards. "Come on! I don't want anyone noticing we came in here without an escort."

Sam doesn't realize how new this is. How we have grown up learning to be afraid. How it is baked into our samoun, rolled into our kubbeh, stuffed into our dolma, filling up the very fibre of who we are. Unless, of course, you are one of the people who makes others afraid.

"In here," Sam beckons, her hand cupping me towards a corridor of offices with paper signs on the doors. Written on them are all our country's problems in need of fixing: sewage, water distribution, health services, road repair, electricity.

The tall, muscular bulk of him rises to shake my hand. He has the same arrogant face that made Sam so angry that day, only now he seems a shred softer. He welcomes me with a laugh in his voice, as if to acknowledge that circumstances were quite different last time we met.

"Nabil al-Amari."

"Franklin Baylor. Pleased to meet you," he smiles, pointing to a chair for me to sit in, and something about the way he smiles makes me realize that he probably was not expecting to see me. Perhaps he thought Sam would come alone.

Baylor sits and folds his hands on the edge of his desk. "So, another reporter who wants to know what the hell's going on with the electricity."

Sam is slow to respond, her eyes sweeping from one side of his face to another. She smiles gently. "Well, yes. I mean, why is it that no one is getting more than a few hours a day? I mean, it's more than a month since the US forces took control of Baghdad and there are parts of the city that have no power at all."

"There are a lot of reasons," he says, rolling his eyes back at her. "I can explain most of them and show you what we're doing to fix it. The administration really wants this problem solved. But I think the best way to explain it to you is when we're looking at a chart of all the grids, for the whole city of Baghdad."

Baylor looks out of the window, then pushes back one of the huge maroon curtains, pendulous with dust. "Come with me down to the utility logistics room and I'll show you what I mean."

"Oh," Sam says, "you don't mind if Nabil comes with us, do you?"

"Well," Baylor sounds hesitant. "We have certain policies on access for Iraqis who haven't been through a security clearance." He scans my face and stares at me for a moment, "But I think we can get around it. You look like an honest one. You can vouch for this guy, right?" Baylor grins, and at one end of his mouth is a tooth that seems sharp enough to open a can of vegetables.

He's off down the hall. And because he's tall and his stride is long, it's an effort keep up with him, especially as I keep getting distracted. Above us there is a soaring ceiling with intricate Syrian wood carvings fitted into it, and a sparkling chandelier more elaborate than anything I have seen in any mosque. Baylor leads us into a grand reception room with windows that look out on to a tropical garden. There are gargantuan columns lining the room and an ocean of rich marble flooring so shiny I feel we could skate our way across it. The sun from the windows bounces off it and glares into my eyes, so that I feel compelled to shield them with my hand.

I try to keep in step with their brisk but breezy-looking pace through the chambers as they change from vast to vascular, leading from one place to another, past offices with computers, men in military uniform and others in shorts and trainers, women dressed like the men or wearing sleeveless tops. Each has a collection of plastic-coated tags hanging around his or her neck, and they trade cheery words as they pass without stopping. "Heya. How'ya doin'? How's it goin'?" Most of them are young, with the exception of a few middle-aged men with grey hair and wider middles, tugging at their collars in the heat. And the heat is stifling. My shirt is almost soaked. "How could a palace like this not have air conditioning?" I ask Sam.

"No, no," Baylor says. "Apparently, there was always air conditioning here but when our boys bombed the electrical centre during the invasion, we destroyed it and now they can't get it to work again." He smirks at me. "But the official line is that it's the looters fault for stealing all the wiring."

Baylor continues to lead us through the maze of the palace. We descend three flights of stairs from where we started, and as we go the air gets staler, but also, pleasantly cooler.

"See now, Iraqis will tell you that there was full-time electricity under Saddam, but that's a blatant lie," he says. "And in fact, the deal was, Saddam was sending all the juice to his buddies in Baghdad and the Sunni triangle and places like Tikrit, while poor Shi'ites and people in the south weren't getting much of anything at all. See? Let me show you the damage that was done to some of the circuit-breakers," he says. He holds open the door to what I imagine is some kind of control room, but as we step in, it looks little more than a small storage room with a dirty window that gives on to a concrete wall.

He shuts the door behind us. "All right, it's a bit hot and shitty, but it's safe to talk." He offers Sam the only seat, a beaten-up wooden chair against a narrow counter, and leans on the wall. "Sorry," he says to me. "I know it's not the swankiest of places."

"Might we open the door a bit?" I ask. It is already hot in the room; with three of us shut in here, I can imagine the temperature soaring, the air being sucked out, me hitting the floor. But Sam seems fine; she has her window. It's only now that I realize we have something in common: unpredictable syndromes liable to get the better of us.

"Sorry," Baylor says. "But that would defeat the purpose." He goes to the window, undoes the catch and yanks the window up a few inches, releasing a mouldy puff of dust. "That should do it."

"So," Baylor crosses his bulky arms, facing Sam. "You want to know where your problematic story on Congressman Jackson came from, the one that he's suing y'all for in court."

"Right," she says. "Well, actually, at this point it's more than problematic. We can say, pretty much with certainty, that they're fake."

"Yes, and so you'd like to know who cooked them up. Well, I think I can help you with that, and then maybe you'll help me out with something."

"Okay..." Sam says tentatively.

"I don't think you have to look any further than the office of Ahmad Chalabi. I mean, I'm liable to get fired if it comes out that I told you that," Baylor says, looking over at me and then back to Sam, "but I'm sure that's never going to come out, is it?"

Sam nods her slow nod. "So this is just a theory you have. Don't get me wrong. I realize someone went out of his way to stir this thing up. But Ahmad Chalabi? Why would he need to be messing around with domestic American politicians like Jackson? I mean, why should he be dabbling in smear stories when he's got a recently liberated country to run? Chalabi's got the whole Pentagon behind him, the White House, and the CIA. This guy's going to be the next president of Iraq, right?"

Baylor bows his head to one side. "If some people have their way, sure. At least, that was the plan. But I would trim your list of supporters a bit. In fact, I'd lop off the last third."

Sam crosses her legs, pulling the right so far over the left that it's like she's only sitting on one side of her body. "Yeah?"

Baylor squints as if to say of course, that same kind of squint that Sam gives me when I've said something dumb. "Sure. Agency's been warning for a long time not to trust him. In fact, State department folks don't like him either. The guy's wanted in Jordan for bank fraud, for God's sake. But DIA loved him. They and the Pentagon told the White House everything the big chiefs wanted to hear. No one cared if it was true or not. No one went out and said, hey, you think we should do some reference checks on this guy before we hand'im the keys to the castle?"

Sam turns to me. "DIA is Defense Intelligence Agency. You get the difference, right?"

I nod.

Baylor points to me and to Sam and back at me. "So both of you guys are in on all of this?"

"Totally," Sam says, sounding emphatic, even defensive. "I couldn't have done any of this without Nabil."

"Okay, so then Nabil needs to be in on the confidentiality agreement, too. You can't tell anyone we had this conversation, and my name can never be mentioned, nor the agency."

"I know," I say. "Off the record." I'm surprised by the way it rolls off my tongue.

"This isn't even off the record," he says with eyes narrowing in my direction. "This is such deep background, it may as well be at the bottom of a mass grave in East-fucking-Baquba. You get my drift?"

"Sure." I still dislike his arrogant tone. But I like that I am getting most of his slang, and that he sees that my English is good enough for him to use it.

"Listen, Ahmad Chalabi is a character and-a-half," Baylor says. "He's now one of the wealthiest, most powerful men in Iraq, and he's done that primarily with taxpayer money. It's amazing this guy was in our good graces as long as he was."

"Was?" Sam interrupts.

"Well, look, there's a lot bubbling now that I can't talk about yet, even on background. But let me tell you this much. Ahmad Chalabi-"

"Do you mind if I take notes?"

"Go ahead. But you're not recording are you?"

"No," Sam says, putting her notebook on the counter. "I hardly ever record."

"Fine. Don't even put my name at the top of your notes there," he says, stretching his neck to see what she just scribbled. It reads: On Chalabi.

Baylor clears his throat. He quickly opens the door a crack and sticks his head out to see if there's someone in the hallway. "Just bear in mind, if you burn me by sourcing any of this back to me or anyone who even smells like me, I will make sure that no one in any agency that matters will ever talk to you again."

Sam holds up two fingers. "Scout's honour."

"Nice, but I think that's a peace sign."

Sam smiles with a hint of embarrassment, drawing the two fingers together.

"Here's what you should know. Since around 1994, when our guys back home really started regretting not taking out Saddam in *91 when they had the chance, the United States has given over a hundred million dollars to Chalabi and the INC. Every month the INC gets about $350,000 from the Department of Defense. And that whole time, it turns out, he was double-dipping: getting funds from the Iranians and cultivating close ties with them. Meanwhile just a couple of years back, after 9/11, Chalabi starts feeding us all kinds of info about how Saddam has resumed his WMD plans and wants to build a bomb. And you know what I think? Not just me. A lot of us. A lot of us think that nearly every piece of information the guy provided to us about Saddam's weapons capabilities was fake. But we wanted it. Oh, you can imagine how hungry Bush's boys were for every tasty tidbit that Chalabi served up. So, let's see, you feed us bogus information, and we pay you handsomely for the privilege of receiving it. Either we're too blind to see you're bullshitting us, or we're pretending we don't see it. Because hey, it makes such a good excuse for a war. And a great opportunity to take out a brutal asshole who no one likes anyway."

Sam is scribbling so furiously that her script looks more like unfolding coils of Arabic than English, except for it running from left to right. Her cheeks are flushed. I wish I had a handkerchief with me to wipe the sweat from my face.

"So your guys at the Tribune bought bum documents from some guy who professes to have more, and all of these documents seem to incriminate people who were pro-Saddam, or at least anti-invasion. What does it tell us? It's an ideologically motivated forgery ring, not just a financial one. Hey, criminals are people, too, you know - they got a right to a cause. So, if you've got a whole slew of documents and most of them just happen to be incriminating people who were pro-regime or even looked pro-regime and who worked their tails off to keep us from knocking out Saddam, you bet'cha bottom dollar that is no coincidence. And if I had to say who was the most likely suspect, as a person who might have the will and the wherewithal to organize such a thing, well, I'd say that that person must be Ahmad Chalabi. See what I mean?"

Sam finishes off another two lines in her notebook and stops, putting it aside. "Wow. Huh! That's pretty incredible. But look, Frank, I can't go on must-be. You can put two and two together, I guess, but maybe there's more than one person who fits the profile of four. Maybe someone else who's smart and corrupt did this. How can we know for sure it's Chalabi?"

"Hey, well, proving that Chalabi is behind it, now that's going to be pretty hard. That man's one slippery individual. And clever, too. Did I mention well-connected? You're sure you want to pursue this?"

Sam shakes her head. "It's not a question of wanting."

"Well, then I'll say this. I'm positive that Chalabi is your man. But if you want to trace the whole paper trail, that's going to require a little more work."

"What about your sources? Could any of them help us nail down whether it's Chalabi?"

"Now, Miss Katchens," he says in a sermonizing tone, wagging a finger at her. "I'm happy to give you whatever information I can that will be helpful for your story, if it will help bring out the truth. But not at the expense of some other guy getting his head blown off, which keeps happening around here."

Sam exhales, turns her pen over in her notebook. Point, plunger, point. "So, what's the truth you're after?"

Baylor shifts his back against the wall, blinking. His eyes search blank airspace for a moment, and he stands up straight.

"The truth is that I don't give a shit about Billy Jackson and his political career, and I don't have a particular axe to grind against Chalabi. But I'm going to help you with this Jackson thing, and after that, I think you're going to help me by doing a story about the WMD farce."

Sam squints. "Are you saying there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?"

"Not in useable condition. And whatever was useable has probably been carted off elsewhere," he says, using his fingers like little feet running away. "But first things first. Sam, how about you come back to my office upstairs so we can make things look good in terms of you having talked to me about electricity. I can send out a couple of messages from there, maybe get you some leads," he says. "And Nabil, I'm going to send you out with one of our undercover intel guys who can show you areas where a lot of the illegal activities are going on: weapons markets, chop shops, looted goods up for resale. You might find some connections to the forgery operations there, too."

Sam views Baylor with hard eyes. "We don't usually split up." It isn't entirely true, but I like the way she put it. We. "And if this guy is intel and knows all this stuff," Sam says, "I'd like to be there, too."

"Afraid not," Baylor says. "Nabil will see where they're at. He could always bring you back there later in your own car. But I don't need you going there on my watch. It's way too dangerous."

"Well then it's dangerous for Nabil."

"Less so for an Iraqi," he says, reaching for the door knob. He looks me over. "I want to send you out for a tour with my guy Louis. He's not really in intel so much as security with a bit of information-gathering thrown in, but don't tell him I said that," he says, giving me a wink. "He can show you a few interesting things around town, and then drop you off at the Hamra."

"Frank," she says. "I need to get out and check these places, too. If I don't do it in one of your bullet-proof bulldozers, when will I?"

"Look, Louis is a quarter Latino and wears a nice big moustache, so he can pass in a crowd. But people would be suspicious of a woman in these places. Am I right, Nabil?"

I look at Sam, knowing that lying might put her in danger. "Yes."

"With that mane, if you don't mind my saying, you're never going to pass for anything but a good-lookin' media chick," says Baylor. "Oh, sorry. Was that politically incorrect?" He smiles widely, pulling the door open and holding out his hand for her to walk first.

36.

Holding Up close, Louis, who makes it clear that I don't need to know anything about him other than not to call him Lou-ee, and not Lou either, doesn't look at all like he might be mistaken for an Arab. But he does wear a thick moustache, and from afar, I suppose, I see what Baylor is talking about. He is a touch more brown than most Americans, unlike Baylor or Sam, who have skin somewhere between a peach and an apricot. He could pass for Lebanese, maybe. But not Iraqi.

After a kind but fast hello that says, don't waste my time with your Arab niceties, Louis flies off at speeds we haven't driven since before the war, when we weren't worried about the possibility of being mistaken for someone trying to attack a US convoy.

He reaches into his glove compartment, cups a red glass box in his hand, and when he rolls down the window I get a better look at the ruby-coloured charm and only now do I see that it is a siren. He lifts himself out of his seat and, with his left arm out of the window, plonks the siren on top of the car.

The wailing sends a bolt of fear into my neck. It's the knell of heart attacks, strokes, accidents. The sounds of the hospital while I waited in Baba's office after passing out from some terrible sight or another. Akhir marra. This is the last time I'm taking you here, Nabil.

But we don't often hear the sirens anymore, unless it is a really big bombing, the kind that shakes the ground and rattles the windows and sends a shudder through your arm-hairs, so that you know that many people, not just one, have just passed from this world, whisked out of the city through the secret doors only God knows. There are fewer sirens now because when it's only a few people dead no one bothers to get the ambulance to come, but instead they take most of the injured to hospital on their own.

We carry our own dead and wounded, in our cars and trucks and trunks, and afterwards in our minds, which brings them back to life just when we least expect it. Recently, I saw a blackened body, or maybe it was an almost-dead man, flung over the seat of a bicycle while his friend, crying, pushed it along from behind. For every Iraqi who has done harm to his fellow man in this war, there are a hundred others who have done good. I've seen them in corners, trying to help, trying to stay honest, trying to live. I've seen them lift torn flesh and blood and put it on human wings and spirit it to places where we try to do the work of God.

Sometimes I wish I had been stronger, like Baba and like Ziad, so that I too could heal people. But I'm doing a different kind of mending, aren't I? Fixing. Without me, the communication between Sam and the rest of Iraq would be broken. Instead of bodies, I stitch together words.

I feel the impact more than the ache; Louis just punched me in the arm. I must have been lost in my thoughts for too long. He grins at me and laughs.

"Look, man. You gotta have some way to get around traffic in this town, because it is fucking deadly. You don't think I'm going to sit here and wait for us to get shot at, do you? I've taken lots of small arms fire, that's nothin'. Do you know what it's like to come under a barrage of mortars and RPGs when you're just trying to get the goddamn boss to work?"

Before I can answer, he turns up the volume on his stereo and veers on to the central reservation, and now he is higher than I am. He overtakes the other cars at speed and he is hooting like a schoolboy and I feel like we could tip over at any second, surely in my direction, and that he would crush me in an instant.

"Yee-hah! Hold on there, Nabel!"

I find myself grasping on to a hook just above the window with one hand, and with the other, the dashboard.

"Is this allowed?"

"Come on, my man. What isn't allowed in this hellhole? There're no rules here anymore. This here's make-your-own!"