Redeployment(70)

“And it’s about war,” she said. “That’s what gets him to listen.”

“So I tell him how there’s this one area where intel knows who the enemy is. This little band of Islamists called the al-Tawhid Martyrs Brigade. And my dad’s like, ‘Okay. Al-Qaeda.’ And I’m like, ‘No. Just desert f*ckers who didn’t like having Americans roaming around in their country.’ It was the first time I’d cursed in front of my dad.”

“What’d he do?”

“Nothing. He just said, ‘Okay. So basically al-Qaeda.’ I wanted to smack him.” I took a breath. “Anyway, we knew the name of these guys’ leader. Laith al-Tawhid. Intel had him on the BOLO list and so I had his name.”

I squeezed Zara’s hand, hard. “I had his name,” I said. “In all the confusion, I could call him by name. I could talk to him and he would know it. And so would all his men.”

“That gave you an advantage.”

“Yes,” I said. “And I had a plan. Normally, this sort of thing wouldn’t start with a SPC, but they trusted me. They thought I had the magic knowledge, because, you know, I’m an Arab Muslim.”

Zara was leaning forward, the same posture as my father. Her eyes were on me now.

“Now, Laith al-Tawhid was no idiot. He was fundamentalist, not dumb. He wasn’t going to come running because I called him names. But I knew how to get him. Women.”

“Women?”

“His women were at home,” I said. “Outside of Fallujah. And the old-school guys, guys like Laith al-Tawhid, they treat women like dogs. Like dogs who can destroy all your family’s honor if they act up or show an ounce of free will.”

She nodded.

“There was a Marine company holding an office building in front of Laith’s position,” I said. “I told the Marines what we wanted to do and they loved it.”

“What did you say?”

“Laith al-Tawhid, we have your women,” I said, “your wife and your daughters.”

She frowned. “So he had to come and fight you,” she said.

“I told him we found them whoring themselves out to American soldiers, and we were bringing them to the office building.”

She nodded. “You told this to your father.”

“I told him everything. How I screamed out, in the Iraqi Arabic I’d learned in my private time, that we’d f*ck his daughters on the roof and put their mouths to the loudspeaker so he could hear their screams.”

Zara pulled back her hand. I’d expected that. “So that’s how you fought,” she said. There was a touch of contempt in her voice, and I smiled. I’m not sure why, I wasn’t happy.

“I didn’t send it up the flagpole. But the platoon loved it. I stayed on those speakers for an hour. Telling him how when his daughters bent down to pray, we’d put our shoes on their heads and rape them in the ass. Rub our foreskins on their faces. A thousand dicks in your religion, I told him, and in forty minutes, a thousand American dicks in your daughters.”

“That’s disgusting,” she said.

“Everybody laughed as we came up with what we’d tell them. All the Marines had suggestions, but I turned them down. Americans think the best insults are all ‘cunt’ and ‘*,’ but in Arabic it’s all ‘shoes’ and ‘foreskins’ and ‘putting a dick in your mother’s rib cage.’”

“I get the idea,” she said.

“Well, this worked,” I said. “They didn’t charge out of the mosques like idiots, but they still assaulted, and they got mowed down.”

“I don’t care if it worked.”

“I mean, all this guy’s men were hearing him being disrespected. Humiliated. For an hour. This was a violent time. There were a hundred little insurgent groups, a hundred little local chiefs trying to grab power. And I was shaming him in front of everybody. I told him, ‘You think fighting us will win you honor, but we have your daughters. You’ve f*cked with us, so you’ve f*cked your children. There is no honor.’ He didn’t have a choice. And I never saw him die. I never saw him at all. I just heard the Marines shooting him down. They told me he led his little suicide charge.”

“I get it,” she said.

“But you don’t like it,” I said. “My dad didn’t either. He’d rather I shot them in the face. In his mind, that’s so much nicer. So much more honorable. He’d have been proud of me, if I’d done that. You’d like me better, too.”