www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/03/26/070326fa_fact_packer?printable=true
Feeds An Iraqi interpreter wears a mask to conceal his identity while he assists a soldier delivering an invitation to an Imam for a meeting with an American colonel. An Iraqi interpreter wears a mask to conceal his identity while he assists a soldier delivering an invitation to an Imam for a meeting with an American colonel.
Palestine Hotel On a cold, wet night in January, I met two young Iraqi men in the lobby of the Palestine Hotel, in central Baghdad. A few Arabic television studios had rooms on the upper floors of the building, but the hotel was otherwise vacant. at the gift shop, which was closed, a shelf displayed film, batteries, and sheathed daggers covered in dust. A sign from another era read, "We have great pleasure in announcing the opening of the Internet caf 24 hour a day. The management consisted of a desk clerk and a few men in black leather jackets slouched in armchairs and holding two-way radios. The two Iraqis, Othman and Laith, had asked to meet me at the Palestine because it was the only place left in Baghdad where they were willing to be seen with an American. They lived in violent neighborhoods that were surrounded by militia checkpoints. Entering and leaving the Green Zone, the fortified heart of the American presence, had become too risky. In October, 2005, a suicide bomber driving a cement mixer had triggered an explosion that nearly brought down the hotel's eighteen-story tower. An American tank unit that was guarding the hotel eventually pulled out, leaving security in the hands of Iraqi civilians. It would now be relatively easy for insurgents to get inside. The one comforting thought for Othman and Laith was that, four years into the war, the Palestine was no longer worth attacking. Othman smoked by the window while Laith sat on one of the twin beds. Laith, an engineer with rimless eyeglasses, was younger and taller, and given to bursts of enthusiasm and displeasure. It had taken Othman three days to get to the hotel from his house, in western Baghdad. On the way, he was trapped for two nights at his sister's house, which was in an ethnically mixed neighborhood: gun battles had broken out between Sunni and Shiite militiamen. Othman watched the home of his sister's neighbor, a Sunni, burn to the ground. Shiite militiamen scrawled the words "Leave or else" on the doors of Sunni houses. Othman was able to leave the house only because his sister's husband--a Shiite, who was known to the local Shia militias--escorted him out. from there, he and Laith went to the Palestine, where they enjoyed their first hot water in several weeks. Before the war, they had both longed for the arrival of the Americans, expecting them to change their lives. They had told each other that they would try to work with the foreigners. Othman and Laith were both secular, and despised the extremist militias on each side of Iraq's civil war, but the ethnic conflict had led them increasingly to quarrel, to the point that one of them--usually Laith--would refuse to speak to the other. "It started when the Americans came with Shia leaders and wanted to give the Shia leadership--" "And kick out the Sunnis," Othman interrupted. "The Americans don't want to kick out the Sunnis," Laith said. "They want to give Shia the power because most Iraqis are Shia." "And you believe the Sunnis did not want to participate, right?" "The Americans didn't give them the chance to participate." He turned to me: "You know I'm not just saying this because I'm a Sunni--" Laith rolled his eyes. "But I think the Shia made the Sunnis feel that they're against them." "This is not the point, who started it," Laith said heatedly. "But if we think who started it, I think the Sunnis started it!" "I think the Shia," Othman repeated, with calm knowingness. He said to me, "When I feel that I'm pushing too much and he starts to become so angry, I pull the brake." Laith had a job with an American organization, affiliated with the National Endowment for Democracy, that encouraged private enterprise in developing countries. Othman had worked with a German group called Architects for People in Need, and then as a translator for foreign journalists. These were coveted jobs, but over time they had become so dangerous that Othman and Laith could talk candidly about their lives with no one except each other. "We've shared our experiences with foreigners--the good and the bad. Othman's cell phone rang: a friend was calling from Jordan. "I had a vision that you'll be killed by the end of the month," he told Othman. Othman said something reassuring and hung up, but his phone kept ringing, the friend calling back; A string of bad events had given Othman the sense that time was running out for him in Iraq. In November, members of the Mahdi Army--the Shia militia commanded by the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr--rounded up Othman's older brother and several other Sunnis who worked in a shop in a mixed neighborhood. Othman's brother was only grazed in the head, but a Shiite soldier noticed that he was still alive and shot him in the eye. Othman found his brother and took him to a hospital for surgery. The hospital--like the entire Iraqi health system--was under the Mahdi Army's control, and Othman decided that his brother would be safer at their parents' house. The brother was now blind, deranged, and vengeful, making life unbearable for Othman's family. A few days later, Othman's elderly maternal aunts, who were Shia and lived in a majority-Sunni area, were told by Sunni insurgents that they had three days to leave. Othman's father, a retired Sunni officer, went to their neighborhood and convinced the insurgents that his wife's sisters were, in fact, Sunnis. And then, one day in January, Othman's two teen-age brothers, Muhammad and Salim, on whom he doted, failed to come home from school. Othman called the cell phone of Muhammad, who was fifteen. Thinking of what had happened to his older brother, Othman lied: "We're Shia." The boys had left their identity cards at home, for their own safety. Othman's mother took the phone, sobbing and begging the kidnapper not to hurt her boys. After several more phone conversations, Othman realized his mistake: the kidnappers were Sunnis, with Al Qaeda. Shiites are not Muslims, the kidnappers told him--they deserve to be killed. Othman called a friend who belonged to a Sunni political party with ties to insurgents; over the course of the afternoon, the friend got the kidnappers back on the phone and convinced them that the boys were Sunnis. They were released with apologies, along with their money and their phones. He said he would never forget the sound of the stranger's voice. He went into the yard or up on the roof of his parents' house with a jerrican of kerosene and set fire to papers, identity badges, books in English, photographs--anything that might incriminate him as an Iraqi who worked with foreigners. If Othman had to flee Iraq, he wanted to leave nothing behind that might harm him or his family. He couldn't bring himself to destroy a few items, though: his diaries, his weekly notes from the hospital where he had once worked. "I have this bad habit of keeping everything like memories," he said. Othman was considering his options: move his parents from their house (in an insurgent stronghold) to his sister's house (in the midst of civil war); move his parents and brothers to Syria (where there was no work) and live with his friend in Jordan (going crazy with boredom while watching his savings dwindle); go to London and ask for asylum (and probably be sent back); stay in Baghdad for six more months until he could begin a scholarship that he'd won, to study journalism in America (or get killed waiting). Beneath his calm good humor, Othman was paralyzed--he didn't want to leave Baghdad and his family, but staying had become impossible. From the hotel window, Othman could see the palace domes of the Green Zone directly across the Tigris River. Laith was more blunt: "Sometimes, I feel like we're standing in line for a ticket, waiting to die." By the time Othman and Laith finished talking, it was almost ten o'clock. We went downstairs and found the ...
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