Of Sea and Sand

But Thea had been warned. One of her colleagues in Dublin had an Iraqi friend, a student doctor, who had agreed to meet her before she left for Baghdad. In an Irish pub, in an Irish city, he had been reticent, nervous. His eyes jumped toward the doors whenever someone came in, and when he asked her why she was going to work in Iraq, her naivety shone through. Oh, it wasn’t the money, she had blurted, but then she had muttered and fumbled about with words like “adventure” and “experience” and felt ashamed. Looking for personal thrills in the mayhem sounded even crasser than being motivated by a tax-free salary, and it was an insult, she realized, to a man whose country was in despair. He was anti-regime, hence his nervousness, and he would have no option, he explained, once his studies were finished, but to disappear into a corner of Europe or America, where the Secret Service wouldn’t find him. He would not work for Saddam—could not—so he could not return home, and yet he was polite to Thea, who was off to her high-paid job in the very city where his own family lived, the family he could not hope to see for years. He didn’t seem to begrudge her, that quiet Iraqi man, who wore no mustache. Instead he had warned her, in the cozy pub, to trust no one in Iraq. To be very careful what she said and where she said it. He told her that the walls had ears and the elevators had eyes, but left unsaid that adventure might be better sought elsewhere.

Humbled, she had returned home that night feeling the first twinges of apprehension, and a little tawdry besides.

Weeks later, staring at her Baghdad ceiling, it still bothered her to think that his family were only a few miles from where she lay, while he remained so far away from them, but she liked the city too much to be nervous, even though the student doctor had been right. Reggie had warned them—when they were in the jeep (the only place where they could speak freely)—not to be critical of any aspect of Iraqi life at work or even in their bedrooms among themselves, and to be extremely careful about what they said on the phone. Whatever about the rooms being bugged, the phones certainly were.

But she endured the ubiquitous security and the giant poster eyes that followed her everywhere, because she loved the way it met her eyes, this city, with its fractured skyline—its modern monuments and the few high-rise buildings sprouting haphazardly from the low-roofed town. The Martyrs’ Monument, which they drove past often, was like a huge blue onion carved through the heart, one half dancing with the other, and it glittered at sunset with deep pink flashes of light. She loved the slow flow of the Tigris, the dusty palm trees scattered along its banks, the resonating call to prayer and the honking traffic. Every morning she woke elated, knowing that when she pulled back the curtain, her eyes would fall upon one of the great cities of antiquity and legend.

And yet it wasn’t all about the magnificent East. Thea loved Baghdad because it had already marked her, aged her. Already she knew that she could never recover from the Friday-evening scenes at bus stops, where huddles of soldiers gathered, young and scared, with their distraught families, who had come to wave them off, knowing they might never see them again. Those goodbyes gave her sight of other lives, of the crisp pain of war. She worked with people who had relatives at the front, and she saw, daily, the anguish in their eyes. Her brothers, back home at college, were safe from conscription, and her opinionated mother could speak her mind, whatever her views. In Baghdad, Thea watched her tongue, and grew up.

For the same reasons, their plans to integrate with Iraqis were largely doomed. The women at work were friendly, but wary. Most subjects were off-limits—travel, politics, what they had done at the weekend even—and any attempt to speak their language met with a studied bemusement. Those colleagues who spoke English insisted on doing so, even for the slightest pleasantries. There was no encouragement if Kim or Thea tried to say “Good morning,” or “How are you?” in Arabic. “No, no,” their colleagues insisted, “we must practice English!” Perhaps they knew it might one day be their means of escape, but it was frustrating. Thea and Kim liked the women, wanted to know them better, but when, one day, they invited those who had a little English to join them for tea at the hotel the following Thursday afternoon, the invitation, though graciously received, was neither accepted nor declined. It was only toward the end of the week that excuses started coming: Alia had to help her mother; Rabia was expected by her grandparents; and Najma was vague—thank you, but she could not come. There were no reciprocal invitations.

“What happened to hospitality being the cornerstone of Arab life?” Kim grumbled over dinner. “I thought inviting strangers into your tent was part of the culture. What gives?”

“What gives,” Reggie said, “is that it’s against the law to fraternize with foreigners, except in very restricted circumstances.”

“But we work with them!” said Thea.

“Yes, but all that is monitored. I’m sorry,” he went on, dropping his voice, “I should have told you. They have to be very careful whom they speak to.”

“Even a couple of harmless women like us?”

“Yes, because they might find out stuff Saddam doesn’t want them to know. They might get hungry for a different kind of life.”

“But they can’t leave the country,” Kim said, exasperated.

“Except to study,” said Thea. “What about Iraqi students abroad—paid for by the government? They’re out, mixing with people.”

“That’s a risk the government has to take. They need the expertise. Besides, those students are closely watched. They scarcely go anywhere without someone on their tail.”

Thea remembered then how the Iraqi doctor