Redeployment(35)

“Yep.”

“And they believed you?”

“I told them I get promoted for completing projects, which is sort of true, and that the plant wouldn’t be operational until well after I was out of Iraq, which is definitely true, and that I wasn’t going to go through with the nine-hundred-thousand-dollar open-air market one of the ministry guys’ cousins is supposed to build for us if they keep cock-blocking us on water.”

I stared at the major in awe. Initially, I had thought the man stupid. Now, I wasn’t sure if Zima was brilliant or insane.

“But,” I said, “we can’t destroy a Sunni village… .”

“It’s okay,” he said. “For now, we keep moving forward. The Sunnis aren’t going to let overpressurized water destroy their homes. That’d be a silly thing to happen in the desert. They’ll keep track of it, even if we don’t.”

Zima’s confidence didn’t reassure me. “Do they know about the pressure?” I said.

“No,” he said. “But I put a reminder on my Outlook calendar for the week the BCT’s scheduled to leave Iraq. It says, ‘Tell Sheikh Abu Bakr that the pipes we built for him will make his house explode.’”





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Sheikh Abu Bakr was, in addition to being an important item on Zima’s to-do list, a major player west of Route Dover. The first time I met him, the lieutenant commanding my convoy told me, “Sheikh Abu Bakr is, literally, Tina Turner from Mad Max.” Bob also claimed the sheikh was the man to see about widows, so a little after my water conversation with Zima, I headed out to try to get the beekeeping project off the ground. I needed to see Abu Bakr anyway, as we were shifting monetary support to the qada’a, or provincial council. Previously we’d given funds directly to him and he’d pay Iraqis to man security checkpoints instead of fight in the insurgency. Since Abu Bakr ran the qada’a, shifting payments to the council was somewhere between a shell game and a method of helping the Iraqis develop government institutions capable of managing budgets.

As we drove into town, I saw a couple of kids in baseball uniforms going through garbage on the side of the road. One kid was in gray, the other in blue. Blue had cut the leggings off to turn them into impromptu shorts.

“Stop the convoy,” I said. Nobody paid any attention, and I didn’t press the matter.

Given the squalor all around, I was always shocked coming to Abu Bakr’s home. It was an enormous estate, with five separate buildings and the only real lawn I’d seen in Iraq outside of the U.S. embassy. The creation of the embassy lawn had been ordered by the ambassador himself and had involved sod imported from Kuwait, armored convoys to bring in lawn supplies, intense efforts to keep birds away from the seed, and a casual disregard for the rules of nature. Estimates for the cost varied from two to five million taxpayer dollars. What Abu Bakr’s cost, I had no idea. Given the sheer number of pots he had his fingers in, it was likely U.S. taxpayer dollars had gone into his lawn as well.

When we arrived at his home, the U.S. soldiers and the Iraqi police and Iraqi army set up a defensive perimeter. There was a uniformed Iraqi police officer already there who was in the midst of detailing the car in the driveway, a black Lexus. We walked inside and were escorted through rooms filled with mahogany furniture, crystal vases, and the occasional flat-screen TV hooked up to an Xbox. Our guide brought us to a dining room where Abu Bakr was waiting. We exchanged pleasantries and sat down, and he had his men serve me, the Professor, the convoy commander, the police lieutenant, and a couple of the Iraqi army guys lamb and rice. They brought the lamb out in a big slimy pile on a large plate and set it down next to an equally large plate of rice. There was no silverware. One of the IA guys, thinking I didn’t know how to eat, elbowed me, smiled, and grabbed a bunch of lamb in his right hand, grease oozing through his fingers. He then slapped the lamb on the rice plate and mashed it up with his hand until he had a little ball of rice and lamb, which he picked up and dropped on my plate.

“Thanks,” I said.

He stared at me, smiling. Abu Bakr was looking at me, too. He seemed faintly amused. The Professor was openly amused. I took it and ate it. Hygiene questions aside, it was delicious.

With that, real discussion began. Abu Bakr was a fat, jovial man who claimed to have three bullets lodged in his torso. Doctors had told him it’d be more dangerous to take them out than to leave them in, but, he’d say, “every night I feel them worming closer to my heart.”