“They were probably working for security,” Reggie said, “and he knew that.”
“Other students?”
“Sure. Regime and anti-regime. Everyone is on one side or the other. The same with our colleagues. One side or the other, and don’t ever believe you can tell which. They don’t know who’s watching them, they only know they’re being watched, so you two rather put the women on the spot. If they’d expressed any pleasure at being invited, that could have been taken as courting foreigners, even if they said no.”
“Which explains the flatness of their refusal?”
“I imagine so.”
An oblong platter of hummus, tabbouleh, and beetroot was placed on their table. The war had closed most of the city’s restaurants, so the team usually ate in the hotel and they enjoyed their evening meal together, often retreating afterward to Reggie’s spacious corner bedroom, where they were frequently reduced to helpless laughter by silly jokes and pointless anecdotes, amusing only to the blended mentality of a small group living closely in restricted circumstances. Thea loved it all—from the hummus to the hilarity. These were good times. Good times in Iraq.
Gently, swiftly, Sachiv Nair became a preoccupation, and as those early weeks passed, Thea had reason to believe that he knew it, maybe even reflected it. Increasingly, whenever she stepped into the lobby at that miserable hour of the morning, his eyes were already turned toward the elevators. As she emerged, he dropped his moon-like lids, and then, when her heels clipped across the marble, he looked up with a greeting, a hand reaching out for her key, and she would go her way while he stayed at his post. She began to wonder if the day would be as long for him as it was for her until she pushed those revolving glass doors and emerged into his world again.
It was harmless. A crush. He was married, in his early thirties. She passed by a few times a day. Pleasantries were exchanged, like the keys. A few flirtatious smiles, some eye contact, but there would always be that desk between them. That marble barrier. In spite of it, the longing—to talk to him, to linger and dally without attracting attention—grew more persistent.
There was very little they could talk about at Reception, with everyone milling around and military personnel coming and going, but she often watched him from the alcove, where she read and drank tea, raising her eyes when discretion allowed. Whenever an advance party of soldiers swarmed into the lobby, Sachiv managed to maintain about the place a distinctively civilian bustle, and Thea noticed how he even maneuvered the overdecorated generals and their eager underlings with a cold efficiency. He pulled the necessary strings, but showed no deference. In contrast, when wedding parties bundled into the hotel, he gathered a cheerful staff around him and allowed no missed detail to spoil the spectacle as the newlyweds arrived in their chariots—huge white Cadillacs—and families crowded into the lobby, the women ululating and waving their arms, while the bride came in under a swarm of hair and lace, broad with gown and grinning past her scarlet lipstick. On Fridays, the one day Thea could hang about, Sachiv was rushed off his feet, what with the martial and the marital, so it made no odds when Reggie started taking them out on day-trips. The kitchen provided picnics wrapped in foil, slabs of unleavened bread and cans of soft drinks, and they would head off to whatever sites of interest had grabbed Reggie’s attention.
Thea was reluctant to leave the sphere in which she could catch even brief glimpses of Sachiv, but Reggie’s excursions were to leave an indelible mark, because Iraq too could give her a look, could stand still and yet tinker with the heart. It brought out her other self—the one who was curious, daring, who could no longer see her horizon, since it was now so far away. In her room at night, she gazed at maps and made plans, and read of the Marshes, of Ctesiphon and Babylon, and the holy towns of Karbala and Najaf.
One day, in the western desert, things turned for Thea, on two counts. Removed from Sachiv for longer than she liked, she guessed herself to be in trouble, love kind of trouble, though she scarcely knew the man, and driving through Karbala, past its celestial golden mosque, she became further entranced by Iraq, though she scarcely knew the place.
Beyond Karbala, across the steppes, they approached al-Ukhaidir, a great rectangular fortress, miles from anywhere. At a distance, it looked like a shoebox, but as they pulled up, its remote elegance silenced them. Its long external walls, intact, were indented with bricked-in arches and stocky towers, while the upper part had crumbled away. It was all aglow; a golden place. They went in, reverently, through the arch and under a fluted dome, past stocky columns and architraves, and emerged into the main courtyard.
Reggie muttered facts and figures—built during the Abbasid Caliphate, eighth century; 165 rooms, mosque, guest quarters, bath with heated bricks; secret tunnels; forty-eight towers on the external walls; innovative architecture, including pointed arches and a new way to build vaults, which had later made its way to Europe with the returning Crusaders.
Shaded cloisters led to brilliant, sun-filled rooms, the light filtering down from above. It was like a sandy cathedral, with no town of its own, shining from the inside out. Two young boys, one in a leather jacket, led them up closed stairways and open steps until they emerged on another level, where they sat on a dome in the barely warm sun.
Kim pointed to a far-off tail of dust, thrown up by a pickup truck on the plain. Her arm and hand made an undulating curve against the flat, almost savage landscape. “We can see for miles,” she said, “but there’s nothing to see.”
On the way back to Baghdad, they had to contend
