Kurdish peshmerga soldiers deface a poster of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in the Kirkuk Governorate building in Kirkuk hours after it fell from the Iraqi central government’s rule, April 10, 2003.
I was set up with a cot alongside about thirty soldiers in a giant room. It opened up to a grand terrace overlooking the city. I stepped out to the balcony to work under the stars and enjoy the cool breeze. I had a good day of shooting behind me and another one ahead of me. I just smiled out there, alone on the balcony, and knew that this feeling could sustain me forever.
? ? ?
UNLIKE THE REST of the press corps that descended on Baghdad, in addition to my assignment with Elizabeth I had been asked by Time magazine to stick around and work in the north in the weeks immediately following the fall of Saddam. Salim, who stayed on as my interpreter, was forced to live vicariously through the sensuous, alluring dispatches from his best friend, Dashti, who had traveled to Baghdad to continue as interpreter for Elizabeth. For many young Kurds, Baghdad was a chance to experience big-city life, despite the fact that most stores were still closed, the electricity was still cut, and Arabs and Kurds didn’t always love each other. The prostitutes of Baghdad were an irresistible temptation for Dashti and Salim, whose sexual experiences were limited to fleeting moments of soft porn on satellite TV.
“Can we please go to Baghdad already?” Salim pleaded day after day. “Dashti is there, and he says there are so many beautiful women!”
“Salim, I am on assignment, and they want me in Mosul. As soon as this assignment ends, we can go.” I wasn’t about to compromise my work so my interpreter could lose his virginity. But this experience with interpreters, I was learning, was a typical one: We were living with them day in and day out, and they became close friends, often like family. There were few other people I spent such extended periods of time with, day and night, and I worried about their desires, hardships, and needs as much as they did mine.
Dashti called several times a day. “A friend has arranged four sisters in this brothel . . . I have met all of them . . . I will make sure they are ready for you.”
Soon enough I was off to Baghdad to shoot another story with Elizabeth. Salim began preparing himself, squirming in the passenger seat with excitement. As we drove along endless stretches of barren desert highway my satellite phone rang relentlessly with Dashti on the other end: “The sisters are ready for Salim!”
Dashti, the ultimate fixer, had done the necessary groundwork for his best friend’s deflowering, as if he were arranging just another interview.
I felt some sense of responsibility. I had spent the last two months consumed with anything but the normalcy of life: arranging drivers, preparing vehicles with spare tires and extra containers of gas, looking for hotel rooms with south-facing windows for satellite reception, trying to wake up early enough on three hours of sleep to take advantage of the soft morning light and its long shadows. As we approached Baghdad, my thoughts, my responsibilities, shifted to Salim and the loss of his virginity.
Where the hell did one start explaining the birds and the bees to a twenty-three-year-old Iraqi Kurdish boy who has never kissed a woman? I started with condoms and AIDS.
“There’s no AIDS in Iraq,” he said.
Children swim in an artificial lake surrounding former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s palace in Mosul, April 29, 2003.
U.S. Marines take a break to shave in front of one of Saddam’s presidential palaces the day Tikrit fell from Republican Guard rule in Iraq, April 14, 2003.
“Well, OK, but do you know what to do?” My voice trailed off. I couldn’t explain foreplay to a Muslim man when I was unmarried and allegedly a virgin. I let it go. I just hoped Salim would make it to work the next day in time for the early morning light.
? ? ?