Barefoot in Baghdad (15 page)

I met Lieutenant McBride in the usual place at the convention center, and we drove to the Republican Palace, which had been turned into the seat of power for the CPA. The drive from the convention center to the palace was still a delight. A year later, the same area was turned into a labyrinth of ugly concrete slabs, razor wire, and bunkers, with checkpoints scattered around like weeds. But in 2003 the gardens were well manicured and three-story-tall bronze busts of Saddam Hussein stood insolently at the four corners of the palace, as if to remind us of where we really were.

We headed straight for the girls’ trailer and were surprised to find it empty. Soldiers from the neighboring trailer told us the girls had headed off to the cafeteria.

“Those girls are very high maintenance,” McBride said, rolling her eyes. “They’ve only been here three days. But they’ve been complaining every hour, minute, and second of the time. Somehow they expected to get the royal suite inside the palace,” she added with exasperation. “Don’t get me wrong, I have grown to really like them. But they act like they’re on some adventure—not like they’re seeking asylum.”

Now that I had been invited back, I was determined to get more details from them. There was no way I could be of any use if their circumstances remained ambiguous. We walked into the cafeteria. This was only the second time since I had arrived in Baghdad that I had come to the public area of the old palace. The first time I visited, I had been overwhelmed by the gaudiness of the interior design, an opulent hybrid of the Blue Mosque of Istanbul and the Palace of Versailles outside Paris. I was disgusted that Saddam and his belligerent sons might have stood in the very place where I was standing.

This time I was struck more by the juxtaposition of the high school–style cafeteria that spread out across the public area and the walls of the ornate building that rose up around it. At the tops of the walls, high above the dining soldiers’ heads, were biblical or Islamic proverbs—falsely attributed to Saddam, of course—carved in elaborate Arabic calligraphy. Above the arched entryway to the former ballroom, now transformed into a canteen, one of the carvings read: “Do not dismiss the simpleton who debases your reputation, for how many pebbles fracture a large glass?”

The clashing mix of Saddam-esque opulence and military austerity was the perfect stage for the five young girls who blended amazingly well into the sea of army uniforms. We found them at the back of the cafeteria, sitting with a group of soldiers. The soldiers were taking turns having their pictures taken with the girls, who were clearly less frightened than the night before. In fact, the older two looked ecstatic.

“Manal! Manal! Come over here!” the youngest, Amani, called to me.

I went to join them and introduced myself to the soldiers. The two older girls were perched at the edge of the table, their feet dangling above the ground. Every few seconds they would giggle for some reason. My initial feeling of discomfort resurfaced. The lieutenant’s description of these girls as adventure seekers had been spot-on. I knew that their parents would be furious if they saw their daughters’ behavior now. Even in the most liberal societies, the image of these young school girls hanging out among a group of male soldiers would churn stomachs. It was one thing to assist helpless women and girls, but there wasn’t any helping going on here.

Every few minutes Zeena’s and Rasha’s giggles would crescendo into a shriek of laughter. The three younger girls were sitting around the table, beaming at the two older ones. I had to resist a sudden motherly urge to yank them away from the table and scold them. Instead, as nonchalantly as I could, I said hello and asked how they were.

“Good, good,” Amani responded. “This morning we took a picture with the famous American. They promised to make copies for us to take home.” She was speaking in Arabic and was clearly excited about all the attention the soldiers were giving her.

Zeena and Rasha, still perched on the edge of the table, posed between three soldiers who were leaning in behind them. They all put their hands up and gestured with the peace sign. I wanted to vomit.

The picture taking made me feel like these young girls were trophies to the soldiers. None of the troops seemed the slightest bit concerned that the five girls were stranded with no place to go. They clearly had no idea of the expectations they were setting in these girls’ minds—or they simply did not care.

I remembered what Amani had said last night—they had hoped they would be sent to America. I knew there was no chance of that happening. I decided to get to work.

“Listen, girls, I do not have much time this morning. Let’s sit on the side so we can have a proper chat.” I sounded a bit more frantic than I would have liked.

“Relax,” Zeena drawled, dragging out the word and rolling her eyes at me.

I walked over to another table, and Amani and the other girls followed. Zeena stayed behind with the soldiers.

“All right,” I said, “tell me what happened. Start from the moment you decided to leave.”

Rasha began to tell me the story. The girls’ fathers were brothers, and their families lived together in one house in Baqubah. One evening they heard their parents speaking with their older brothers. The brothers were planning an attack on the nearby coalition army base. For two nights Zeena and Rasha could not sleep. According to Rasha, the cousins felt they had a moral obligation to warn the soldiers who had liberated their city from Saddam. That, she said, was why they set out on their journey.

Rasha sounded as if she were reading from a script. When I asked why they didn’t go to a nearby post, why they traveled all the way to Baghdad, none of them could answer.

Zeena finally decided to grace us with her presence and quickly took over where the girls had gone silent. She explained that they had been worried that one of their parents’ friends or relatives would see them, and so they kept moving until they felt they were at a safe enough distance to approach a base.

“But why take your little sisters?” I asked.

Rasha and Zeena both responded immediately that they could not trust them with their families.

I carefully looked at the five girls. They all seemed to be well cared for. It was clear that the highlights in their hair had been done a while ago. True, it looked more like they had been attacked by kindergartners armed with Sun-In, but not many families in the governorates outside Baghdad could afford to have their daughters’ hair highlighted. Or buy them colored contact lenses. The younger girls were chubby, so it was clear they were well fed. Something seemed very wrong.

Their story was not very convincing, but now there was a much bigger problem. Whatever the particular circumstances were around their running away, these girls had now been missing from their homes for about a week. There was a chance of reconciliation if the parents believed they had been taken against their will, but it was slim. The idea of young girls being unaccounted for over several days would raise many questions about the family’s honor. Few Iraqi men were willing to take the risk of shaming their family’s name. Even if the girls’ fathers demanded an examination to ensure that the girls had not been violated, and they passed, there would be enough suspicion about the length of their absence. If the parents had the smallest clue about what really happened, there was no doubt in my mind the girls would be killed. In their parents’ opinion, the girls would have committed two terrible crimes: betraying their fathers and spending time away from their families without chaperones. The fact that they had been among Americans would only exacerbate the shame.

It was clear to me that these girls would never be able to go back home.

“So what are you thinking now?” I asked them.

“We came to join the army. We want to enlist,” Zeena boldly stated.

“Excuse me?” I was sure I had heard her wrong.

“Yes, we want to fight with the Americans against terrorists. It doesn’t make sense for them to fight for us.”

I was shocked. This sixteen-year-old girl had lost her mind. “You know that’s not possible.”

“Why not?” She demanded. “I have seen many young people on television who fight for their country. ”

I had no clue what to do with that statement. I wasn’t prepared to go into the obvious reasons as to why her logic was ludicrous, so I simply said, “You have to be eighteen to enlist.”

Zeena was silent for a second before she burst out, “Then they can send us to America, and when we turn eighteen, we will join the army.” She seemed adamant that her plan was foolproof. I realized there was no reasoning with this girl.

I turned to Rasha, who I prayed would be the saner of the two. “I can help you. There is an organization I work with in Sulaymaniyah, in northern Iraq, and they have helped place young girls like you. The situation there is different, and at least we will know you are safe.”

“What will we do there?” Rasha asked.

“Stop it! Stop talking to her.” Zeena jumped in. I looked over at Amani and the other two, who hadn’t said a word so far. They had the same frightened expression I had seen on their faces last night. This only made me angry with Zeena, who was beginning to make the possessed girl in
The Exorcist
look like a girl scout.

“Can’t we stay here?” Amani meekly asked.

“I wish you could.” I said, deciding to try to stay on their good side. “I am totally with you. Believe me, if I thought you could get to America or even stay here, I wouldn’t even get involved. But you can’t. That’s why they’ve called me. They don’t know what to do with you, and time is running out.”

“What will we do if we go to the north? Have you been there?” Rasha asked me, clearly making an attempt not to look at Zeena.

“I’ve been there. It’s a very nice house. I personally know the woman who represents the organization here in Baghdad, and I also know the woman who is in charge of the house in Sulaymaniyah. She’s a good friend, and I go there every three months. If you are interested, we can look into it. I would even go with you to Sulaymaniyah, so you wouldn’t need to make the trip alone.”

Amani and Rasha looked carefully at me. Apparently they were sisters. The other little ones were Zeena’s little sisters and would not dare question her. Zeena seemed to calm down a bit, and she leaned forward.

“You are a nice woman,” she said. “Maybe one day I would even want to hear more about your life and where you have traveled. But you are ruining everything. Now the only option is for them to send us to America. With you, there will be another option. I will die before I go to the north, and I will kill myself in that nasty trailer they have put us in. So stay out of this.
Iftahamtee?
(Do you understand?)”

***

There was not much I could do or say after that. The girls had to ask me for help, and even if I were crazy enough to try to force my help on them, I knew that my partner organization would ask for a signed consent form from the girls. Even though my heart reached out to the younger girls, there was nothing I could do for them as long as they refused to cooperate.

I would have to explain the situation to the colonel.

From my first meeting with the colonel a few days earlier, our interaction had been tense. He knew that I was an Arab American aid worker, but apparently nobody had bothered to mention that I wore a veil, which I could tell he interpreted as a sign of extremism. He gave me a mini-interrogation to confirm my Americanism. What brought me to Iraq? Where was I from? Why did my parents choose to start their lives in the United States in Lubbock, Texas? Why did they move to Spartanburg? Why was I Muslim? I answered all of his questions, no matter how personal or private. He seemed to be comforted by my responses and became a bit friendlier—but only a tiny bit.

I left the girls and went to the building where the colonel’s office was located and asked for him at the makeshift security desk that was set up in the foyer. I sat on a bench and waited. When he showed up fifteen minutes later, he didn’t bother inviting me into his office.

“You asked for me?” He stared blankly at me.

“Yes, sir,” I said, wincing at the sound of the word
sir
coming out of my mouth. “I need to let you know that I will not be able to help you with the girls.”

“And why is that?” he asked, a hint of worry creeping into his expression.

“Sir,” I said, mad at myself for calling him “sir” again, “I can’t get involved if they don’t want my help. They told me in very clear terms they do not want our organization, or any other NGO for that matter, involved. Only the military.”

“I thought you said there was a shelter in the north. I can arrange transportation and send them there. What’s the problem?”

“They don’t want to go, sir.”
Damn!
“I can only take them if they go voluntarily, and they have to agree to the conditions of staying. They won’t.”

“It is not up to them—do you understand me?—IT IS NOT UP TO THEM!” He barked each overenunciated word at me.

I weighed my response and calmly replied, “They are all under the age of eighteen. I cannot force them to relocate, either as an individual or as a member of the NGO for which I work. First, they will probably run away again. Second, in most countries that’s considered kidnapping.”

“They have to go,” he said. “Those little punks gave us empty information. We conducted a thorough investigation, and their claims were bogus. Those little brats tricked us! And now they are stuck to us like leeches.”

“You guys are treating them like tourists,” I said. “Did you ever even talk to them about the consequences of taking them in? For them, this is the adventure of a lifetime. Of course they don’t want to go. You don’t just take in girls as young as them without telling them what’s going to happen to them.” There was anger in my voice now.

“That is their problem, not mine,” the colonel said. “As far as I’m concerned, the U.S. government has been extremely gracious with them, and I have gone beyond the call of duty. Now you need to do your job and place these girls!”

“Yeah, well you should have thought about that when you decided to keep them on a U.S. military base. It’s too late to backtrack now!” I was almost yelling at him. “The fact of the matter is that if their parents discover where they’ve been for the last few days, they will most likely be killed. You have a responsibility for their lives.”