The Bone Clocks

IVANO DEL PIO at the Sydney Morning Heraldhad recommended Nasser as a fixer when he left Baghdad, and he was one of the best I’ve ever employed. Preinvasion, Nasser had worked in broadcasting and had reached management level, which meant he’d had to join the Ba’ath Party. He had a decent house and could support his wife and three children, even in a society starved by U.S. and UN sanctions. Postinvasion, Nasser scraped a living from working for foreign press. Under Saddam’s regime the official fixers were a shifty crew, paid to feed you Saddam’s line and inform the Mukhabarat about any ordinary Iraqis foolish enough to try to tell you anything true about life under the dictator. Nasser, however, had a journalist’s nose and eye, and on some of my best stories for SpyglassI insisted he received credit and pay as co-writer. He never used his real name, however, in case an enemy denounced him to any of a dozen insurgency groups as a collaborator. Aziz the photographer was an ex-colleague of Nasser’s, but his English was as limited as my Arabic so I didn’t know him as closely as I did my fixer. He knew his trade, though, and was cautious, crafty, and brave in pursuit of a good shot. Photography is a dangerous hobby in Iraq; the police assume that you’re recceing for a suicide mission.

We passed crumbling walls and decrepit shops.

“You break it,” Colin Powell had warned Bush, in what’s become known as the Pottery Barn Anecdote, “you’ll own it …”

Bedraggled families sifted giant tumuli of rubbish.

“You’ll be the proud owner of twenty-five million people …”

Lines of streetlamps, most leaning over, some fallen.

“All their hopes, aspirations, problems. You’ll own it all.”

We passed a buckled crash barrier by a small crater: the site of an IED attack. We hit an official checkpoint manned by the Iraqi police that cost us forty minutes. Official police shouldn’t hassle a foreign journalist but we were all relieved that they didn’t seem to notice my foreignness. Nasser’s car is in a bad way even by Iraqi standards, but its shiteness acts as professional camouflage. What self-respecting journo, agent, or jihadist would travel in such a pile of crap?

The further west we drove, the riskier our venture became. Nasser’s local knowledge grew scantier, and both the Abu Ghraib Highway and the N10 would be littered with dozens of roadside IEDs. The obvious targets for these were the U.S. military convoys, but knowing that any dead dog or cardboard box or bin-bag of crap might conceal enough explosives to roast a Humvee put you on permanent edge. Then there was the danger of kidnapping. My darkish complexion, beard, brown eyes, and local attire let me pass as a pale Iraqi at first glance, but my basic Arabic betrays me as a foreigner within a few words. I had my fake Bosnian passport to explain my poor language skills while claiming a Muslim affinity, but subterfuge is a high-risk game, and if a mob could be calmly reasoned with, it wouldn’t be a mob. Bosnians aren’t obvious kidnappees for ransom bounty, but neither were Japanese NGO workers until a fortnight ago. If my press pass was found, my value would go up; I’d be sold as a spy to an Al Qaeda affiliate, and they’re less interested in money than in a recorded “confession” and a beheading for the webcam. Midway between Baghdad and Fallujah we reached the town of Abu Ghraib, famous for decaying factories, palm dates, and a vast prison complex where Saddam’s enemies, or potential enemies, used to be tortured in submedieval conditions. Big Mac hears rumors that not a lot has changed under the CPA. We passed its high, kilometer-long fortified wall on the left and Nasser translated a slogan daubed on a bombed-out building facing it: We will knock on the gates of Heaven with American skulls. That was a killer opening or closing line for an article. I jotted it down in my notebook.

In front of a mosque, Nasser pulled over to give plenty of space to a U.S. convoy joining the highway. Aziz took a few pictures from inside the car, but didn’t dare get out; to a jumpy gunner, a telephoto lens looks like an RPG launcher. I counted twenty-five vehicles in the Fallujah-bound convoy, and wondered if Big Mac was sweating his butt off in any of the Humvees. Then Aziz said something in Arabic and Nasser told me, “Ed, trouble!” Half a dozen men were walking towards us from a row of low buildings alongside the mosque.

“Let’s go,” I said.

Nasser turned the ignition.

Nothing.

Nasser turned the ignition.

Nothing.

Three seconds to decide whether to bluff it, or hide …

I slid down under the milk cartons, a few seconds before a man exchanged greetings with Nasser through the driver’s window. The man asked us where we were going. Nasser said he and his cousin were taking supplies to Fallujah. Then the man asked Nasser, “Are you a Sunni or a Shi’a?”

A dangerous question; preinvasion, I seldom heard it.