Jane Smiley - Golden Age

He wasn’t a prophet — everyone in his unit knew there would be trouble. The only question, they decided when they were talking about it late that night, was: Bombs? Rockets? IEDs? And aimed at whom?

There was a guy from Wyoming, Harper, who was the smart one, Guthrie thought. He didn’t whine about whether or not the Iraqis were grateful to the Americans for getting rid of Saddam Hussein, nor did anything surprise him. He was ready. He said, “Okay, you bring the cavalry in to steal more of my cattle, what’s the difference between you and them? I don’t give a shit that they are in uniform — you bought them off anyway, because you’ve got the money and the politicians in Cheyenne.” He shrugged.

It was the Iraqi army, not the coalition forces, who were supposed to suppress the reaction against the explosion of the mosque, but it turned out they just stood there, and so the Mahdi Army could go into Sunni houses, drag the only man inside out, shoot him if he was lucky. And then it turned out they were killing children and women, too. After that, they started taking their rocket launchers into the streets and firing on Sunni mosques. It was said that they killed some imams.

Guthrie was feeling as jittery as everyone else. He had spent the day in the mortuary, helping guard the bodies of the dead. People kept coming in looking for their relatives, mostly men, but some women, too, all wrapped up in their veils. They would come to the window and say they were looking for someone, the way you went to the window at the bank at home. Then they would be shown pictures of the faces of the corpses. Was it worse to see that face you knew, or worse not to? Guthrie didn’t want to think about it. And he wasn’t good at estimating stacks of bodies, but he did think there were more than the three hundred the U.S. military was saying had been killed.

It was tempting to repeat what his buddies said, that this was a fight Saddam had started and not their business. If the Shia and the Sunnis wanted to kill each other, they should go for it. The fewer Iraqis there were, the better for the coalition forces; it saved ammo, for one thing. But even when guys said it, they didn’t say it like they were happy about it — they said it like they were pissed to be caught in this shithole that was supposed to be pacified by now and ready for the modern world.

Supposedly, it happened in March, but everyone was hearing about it now, at the end of June. Whenever there were rumors, Guthrie had discovered, most of them were true in some way, but not in the way you first imagined. What made it come out was the two American soldiers: they were abducted, killed, apparently tortured, then their bodies were dragged around, and there was said to be a video Guthrie had not seen that showed some insurgents kicking one of their heads down the road like a soccer ball. Of course, all the guys he knew were pissed, and then, when the first rumors about why the insurgents did it came out, everyone thought it was just an excuse. Why would you capture and kill two Americans who were not even the ones who had raped the girl and killed her family? Why wouldn’t you go for the ones who had done the crime?

But what was the difference, maybe, if you were an Iraqi? Every one of the coalition troops was wearing the same camo, the same boots, the same caps. Everyone carried the same weapons, and everyone had been trained to treat the Iraqis the same way — from a distance. Partly that was self-defense: you don’t express friendship to someone with a multitude of enemies; you try to stay neutral, so that at least, if you were killed, it was a neutral IED that did it, not some kid with a weapon staring at your very own face.

A day or so later, more about the rape and the killings came out. It was a squad who guarded a checkpoint just south of the city, a place no one wanted to be assigned to, it was so dangerous. Six guys kept staring at this girl who lived in a house nearby. They got drunk, and that was probably the least of it, and went over to the house and killed the parents and the sister first, then raped the girl, shot her in the head, and tried to burn up the evidence. They then blamed it on Sunni insurgents, but that unraveled. Another episode, said Harper, in the History of Stupid People, which, Guthrie had to agree, was a long and eventful history. Everyone involved had kept this under deep cover for a while, but of course it would come out — the Iraqis got to know all about it, and the longer it went unattended to by the coalition forces, the more certain it was that something bad would happen, and then it did. But that was the way it was this time, Guthrie thought. His first deployment, he had been scared, but the worst days were at the beginning, even including the Fallujah battle. This time, the vermin, and pardon him for saying that, were getting the upper hand, but he was speaking scientifically — bacteria always evolved immunity to antibiotics, broadleaf weeds always evolved past the Roundup, the insurgents always developed better methods of resistance. In the meantime, the army kept promising vehicles that might actually withstand a roadside bomb, but where were they? And though there were checkpoints everywhere, the violence was getting more frequent and more menacing; if you were manning a checkpoint, any person approaching, any child, any dog, not to mention any vehicle, made you nervous. Yes, maybe the Shiites hated the coalition forces the most — Muqtada al-Sadr tried to make sure of that — but no one, at this point, had a reason to befriend the coalition forces.

Guthrie asked Harper if his dad or his uncles had been in the army. No; one uncle had been a career naval officer, got in during Vietnam, got out after the Gulf War; he was against this war and had even rallied against it in Santa Cruz, California. He had said to Harper that if he had to join up, the navy was the place, but Harper decided he was too tall for the navy. This was his first deployment. Maybe that was the key — he hadn’t expected it to be any easier. Guthrie watched him; he was good-humored, and things rolled off his back pretty quick. He was also uniquely observant, Guthrie realized. For some unknown reason, Harper could sense something odd in any scene; if he bumped into a shelf and something wobbled, he caught it without thinking about it, every time. Month by month, Guthrie had come to the conclusion that somewhere not far from Harper was the safest place to be. But in Baghdad, even that spot wasn’t terribly safe.

One morning after the story about the murders came out, they were at their assigned checkpoint. They had been there since dawn. Dawn was cool enough, but now it was getting hot, and Guthrie, as always, was feeling sweaty and uncomfortable in his gear. A kid did approach, a little skinny kid in shorts and sandals. He came toward them with his hands away from his sides, his shirt flapping in the wind. Their checkpoint was not out in the open; there was a wall and some wrecks of apartment buildings not far away. The road to the checkpoint had been cleared, but it came down a small rise. The boy had a can in his hand — a Coke can. He was smiling, and he waved the can, then threw it. As it left his hand, someone, not anyone right around Guthrie, shot the can like a clay pigeon, and the boy jumped back. The very moment he jumped back, Guthrie expected the can to explode, but it didn’t, it just fragmented from the hit — the aluminum sparkling in the sunlight. It was the boy who was killed, shot in the neck and the chest. He collapsed to the ground. None of the coalition soldiers went out to him. He lay there. His blood was dark on the dirt. After what seemed like a long time, two guys in Iraqi uniforms drove up to the body in an old jeep. Even they approached the body cautiously. But the corpse didn’t blow up. They laid it in the back of the jeep and drove away. Guthrie, like everyone else in the squad, watched, said nothing. Then the corporal said, “I don’t see why the insurgents shoot kids with Coke cans.” And that was the explanation — another example of in-fighting. Guthrie knew better than to look around for any telltale grins, knew better than to ask, knew better than to wonder. It was the kid’s own fault, wasn’t it? Throwing that can.