to an end. He’d kept himself under better control than I had. It seemed the city had somehow transformed him. Or perhaps it was simply the luxury of seeing an enemy vanquished. “I have to go out for the rest of the day,” he said casually as he went down the stairs. “My men will care for you while I’m gone.”
He had no need to issue threats about what would happen if I tried to leave.
Not much was left of the afternoon. I struggled up, dragged my chair over to the parapet, and sat there until the sky took on flamboyant pinks and violets, grew murky and then dark. I was glad they left me alone. Despairing thoughts crowded in, reminders of all my failures. The car crash had set off the downward plunge. Even if I managed to stay alive, I didn’t believe I’d ever recover.
Toward the end of the evening my thoughts turned to Samuel. I remembered a train trip we’d taken after one of his long absences to visit friends living near Utica. I’d sat, my face pressed against the glass most of the time, taking in the country landscape. We passed farmers’ fields turning golden in the sun; long-forgotten waterways, their still surfaces covered with verdant water plants; luxuriant vines draped over telephone lines; roads leading to nowhere; stands of forest; brown deer nuzzling grass on stream banks. I’d imagined on that day I was the last human left on the planet, watching the earth reclaim itself.
At one point we crossed a vast plain of marshes, the rushes standing straight as swords, pointing to the sky. Idyllic days, those times I’d spent with him in my youth. How had it gone wrong? What flaw had produced a personality that brought harm to everyone I cared for?
I recuperated for the next six days. My hearing gradually returned to normal. The burn on my arm became less painful. My memory of the attacks and the fight at the cemetery began to fade like a bad dream. Physically, I gained strength. Emotionally, I veered from self-recrimination over Laurel’s death to deep depression, some of the blackest moods I’d ever experienced.
They had no TV or radio. The terrace quickly became my own private refuge; here at least I was blessedly cut off from the world. The only sliver of happiness, weak though it was, came through a developing affection for the city. Out of character for me, I’d get up early in the morning so I could see the boxy forms of its buildings emerge along with the first shafts of sunlight. Night animal though I was, my patterns became almost rural, rising at dawn and retiring at sunset so that when there were brownouts or, frequently, no power at all, I barely noticed. Central Baghdad had many high-rises and I could see few, so I guessed our location to be well into the outskirts.
Reminders of the war intruded, of course. The sky would occasionally buzz with military helicopters, circling like angry wasps overhead. One day a bright arc of fire flared on the horizon, followed by a loud boom that seemed to go on forever. That did not cause me any real concern. Like a moth wrapped securely in its cocoon, I felt safe from the tempest raging outside. The next morning I noticed the rooftop furniture coated with grime. I got a cloth and wiped everything clean again. It seemed that easy, banishing the horror of a bomb with a flick of my hand. Perhaps that was my way of trying to regain some sense of stability.
Once, I thought I heard Laurel’s voice. I rushed over to the parapet. In places the street was so narrow it looked as though you could touch the facades of opposite buildings just by stretching out your hands. I saw three women, each wearing a black chador, walking at a leisurely pace down the street. Their laughter rose up to me, bell-like. One extended a delicate foot; a filigree of silver circled her ankle. Her headscarf slipped back, revealing glossy dark hair. She looked up, sensing me watching from above. Not Laurel, of course. Just my mind playing a vicious trick.
Whether it was the new connection with the city Samuel had loved, my near-death experience, or my somber thoughts about Laurel, this was when I took my first faltering steps toward making peace with Samuel’s death. I did not forgive myself for the accident, but the ceaseless voice of denial stopped and I more readily accepted that my own actions had played a role.
I saw Tomas only occasionally after that first meeting. When I asked why he didn’t just help me to get out of the country he deflected my question with a joke, saying, “Why? Aren’t you being well looked after here?” And when I demanded to see Nahum’s engraving or tried to find out what progress he’d made in deciphering it, he gave me vague and unsatisfactory answers. Otherwise he behaved courteously enough, was even solicitous at times, but kept his distance. He opened up to me only on one occasion. Very late one evening I heard his footsteps climbing the stairs to the terrace. He’d brought glasses and a carafe of sweet wine with him. He sat down and poured us our drinks. He seemed in a very collegial mood. I couldn’t imagine what had caused this change of heart.
“You’ve been through a difficult time, Madison,” he said. “I can’t see how I could have done things any differently, but I owe you some thanks for the role you’ve played.”
I almost dropped my wineglass. Next thing you knew he’d be asking to be best man at my wedding. I’d gotten so used to his prickly, resentful attitude that I wasn’t sure how to react.
“I hope you understand what it’s been like trying to survive over here,” he continued. “Over the last months, there’ve been many times I’ve wondered if I’d make it this far. When the invasion began I was convinced we’d all be killed.”
I remembered what Ari had told me about his fiancee. “It must have been hell just trying to get out of Baghdad.”
“I don’t recall a great deal about fleeing the city. It was chaotic, I remember that much. People panicking, piling into vehicles, boxes and mattresses stacked on car roofs, traffic strangling all the major roads, looters going mad over the stuff they were grabbing. I spotted one man, by himself, dragging a fridge he’d stolen. When it tilted the door swung open. You could see the food and things still inside. People took anything they could get their hands on—plastic piping, hoses, even cables they’d strip to gouge out the copper. Looters sailed right through checkpoints. No one tried to stop them.
“On our last day we went to a friend’s place to borrow some petrol. I waited with the van while the others saw to getting the tank filled. I noticed a woman on the street who looked to be in her late forties, wearing traditional dress, but the hijab was missing. Her hair hung loose, falling in a jumble down her back. In one hand she held a running shoe.
“She behaved very strangely, bending down and rooting through a pile of litter, then turning in the opposite direction, she’d take a few steps and kick through a mound of dirt. A younger couple came up to her, grabbed her arm, and tried to haul her away, but she screamed at them and shook them off.
“Our friend told us she’d been hanging around for over a day like that. Apparently her three sons had been on their way home when a missile struck, killing them all instantly. Her youngest had his leg blown off. The woman had convinced herself that if she found his other running shoe, his leg would be restored and he’d come back to life. She’d simply turned mad with grief.”
I felt a stab of guilt, listening to him, even though I’d never supported the invasion. “That sounds like one of Ari’s stories.”
“He caught some of it on film, but I think it ended up on the proverbial cutting-room floor.”
“Laurel told me he’s won a lot of awards. So he doesn’t have to prove anything anymore. He could easily get a safer post somewhere else in the Middle East. Why does he want to stay here?”
Tomas leaned back in his chair, swilling the wine in his glass absentmindedly. “I wish I could answer that. For a long time I thought he was attracted to the action, like a soldier getting high on danger. I don’t think that anymore. Now I believe he just started in the business too young. When he was too impressionable.”
“What do you mean?”
“In his first year of university, a news outlet hired him to cover events inside Iraq during the Gulf War.” Tomas gave me a sardonic grin. “You can imagine there weren’t a lot of volunteers for that with Hussein in power. Ari had wanted to be a portrait photographer; he wasn’t even thinking about journalism. But he accepted. I wish he hadn’t. He saw things that broke his heart. Hospitals where entire floors were slick with blood, people burned so badly pieces of their skin slid off where you touched them. That changed him forever.”
He drained his glass and stood up. “Ari’s a survivor though. He doesn’t take stupid risks.” He glanced at his watch. “I have to go now. Let’s talk again over lunch tomorrow.”
“Fine,” I said. “What’s happened to put you in such a good mood?”
He gave me a sly smile and turned away. “Tomorrow. You’ll know then.”
The room where we had lunch the next day was spotlessly clean and bare, holding only a large rectangular table covered with a cheap plastic tablecloth, patio chairs, and a canvas stool with a Bible lying on it. A crucifix
