Dorothy Mcintosh - The Witch of Babylon

“How will we ever find him?”

“Tomas told me where he’s shooting.”

Moments later we slowed. The vehicle inched along like the proverbial tortoise at the end of the race and then halted. “Too dangerous going any farther,” Mazare said. He pointed to a clutch of vehicles in the distance. “That’s them. I’ll turn the car around. Make yourself ready to move fast when you come back.”

I left the door swinging open and ran. A dirty white building with no windows ranged ahead on my right, a guard tower standing at its perimeter like the pilot’s nest on a steamship, the shadow of a soldier inside. A long pole was raised at a forty-five-degree angle, painted red and white like a giant barber’s pole. A mélange of huge concrete blocks, cement barriers, and miles of razor wire clustered around the entrance.

I could see press vehicles in the distance.

A figure emerged from one of the cars. I practically went down on my knees in gratitude. It was Ari. He took slow, measured steps back from the car, his camera balanced on his shoulder. I waved both arms and yelled his name. Either I was still too far away for him to hear me or he was too focused on what he was doing, because he didn’t look up. I summoned all my energy and ran toward him.

Army vehicles approached Ari from the opposite direction. The convoy looked like a train of lumbering dinosaurs, a Bradley fighting vehicle in the lead. Probably just checking things out. In the bright morning light I could easily see the word Press emblazoned on the cars and Ari clearly held a camera.

I yelled again, only a hundred feet or so away now. Ari glanced toward me, a flood of joy lighting up his face mingled with surprise at seeing me there. He lifted his hand, waved, and then motioned for me to wait while he finished the shot. He didn’t appear to be aware of the military vehicles behind him. Had seeing me distracted him? I called out once more and gestured emphatically, trying to draw his attention to the convoy. Ari waved again and smiled, not understanding me.

I put on speed.

I looked toward the lead Bradley again. It kept coming. Something about the body language of the soldier manning the gun alarmed me. Not much time left. Ari had almost no chance of escaping arrest now. I notched my voice up and shouted, “Turn around—they’re at your back!” Ari’s ginger hair ruffled in the breeze, the light making it look like spun gold. He began edging his camera off his shoulder, preparing to greet me. He grinned. Said something to me. I felt the warmth of his smile link the two of us. But I couldn’t hear him and that meant he still hadn’t heard me.

The gun on the Bradley fixed on him. They were getting ready to make a move.

Look behind you, Ari! Get back in the car and get the hell out of there.

What sounded like firecrackers went off. Ari buckled as if a missile had struck him. His camera toppled to the ground. He screamed and grabbed for his chest. One of the journalists lurched out of the press car, blurting out a volley of Italian. Ari crumpled into the dirt, a geyser of blood bursting over the front of his shirt.

“They shot him. They shot him!” I screamed this as I ran the last yards. I threw myself down beside him. Ari struggled for breath. Wheezing sounds rushed out of his throat. His eyelids flickered and his whole body shook with convulsions. I had no idea what to do.

Soldiers appeared on either side of me. It took two of them to pull me away. “Let me alone,” I said. “I’ve got to do something; he’s hurt, you can see that.”

“There’s other people coming,” one of them said. “Let them take care of it. Who are you?”

I looked toward Ari, military men now crowding around him, attempting to stanch the flow of blood. I sank down on my knees, shuddering. “His friend,” I said. “I’m his friend.” I could no longer talk, the agony as great as if it were my own life draining away. The soldier set his gun aside and crouched down beside me, putting his hand on my shoulder. He said, not unkindly, “They’ll try to save him. You can’t make any difference now anyway.”

When the team around Ari finally stepped back it was clear nothing more could be done. His body lay in the dust. The soldier guided me toward him, let me stand near Ari for a few moments to say goodbye. They assumed I was with the press team. I took off the sun medallion Ari had given me and wound it around his hand, recalling Diane Chen’s prediction: Only the sign of the sun can save you.

The Italian crew eventually drove me back to the city. Mazare was nowhere to be found. I asked the journalists to take me to the al-Mansour Hotel. I got thoroughly tanked in the hotel bar and spent the rest of the night wandering the grounds, wishing the dogs would come to finish me off, the scene of Ari’s last moments competing with the horror of Laurel’s fate playing over and over again in my mind.

I finally came to my senses with the dawn.

A freelance journalist planning to leave for Kuwait City agreed to give me a ride late that afternoon. The day was an oven again, the heat so thick it seemed to take on a material form. As we drove out of Baghdad I took one look back. The waning sunlight had turned the buildings into orange flares. It looked like the city was burning.

Thirty-eight

Friday, August 22, 2003, 12 P.M.

Three days later I returned to New York. In three more days my grace period would be over and the new owner would be installed in the condo Samuel and I had shared.

Amir brightened up when he saw me. “You keep vanishing and then reappearing. I’m beginning to think you’re a ghost.”

I gave him a weak smile. He had no idea how close he was to the truth.

“How come you sold your place?” He looked a little hurt, as though my leaving was a personal affront. I rubbed my thumb and forefinger together in the universal sign for money.

He pursed his lips. “A lot of people came looking for you. I wrote them down.”

He hunted for something under the front desk counter and retrieved a scrap of notepaper. “The first was a policeman, I’m guessing in his late fifties. He came on August 4, over two weeks ago. A man built like a wrestler with holes in his face.” Amir peered at his handwriting. “Detective Gentle.”

“Gentile,” I said.

“Yes, that’s it. He seemed mad. Like angry mad.”

“Who else?”

“Next day the black lady came back again.”

“You mean the lady who dresses in black.”

He nodded. “Yes, her. A sad person.”

“That was Evelyn.”

“And last came a beautiful stranger. An angel woman. Hair shining like ice, blue eyes.”

“When was this?”

“They all came in around the same time.” He looked down at his paper again. “The light-haired woman showed up on August 5. Nobody since.” He crinkled up the paper. “You have mysterious friends.”

I explained I’d lost my keys and got a duplicate from him, then grabbed the armload of mail stuffed into my box. The elevator door had almost closed when he called out to me.

“I forgot one more thing. The carpet fitters came last week.”

Carpet fitters? The new owners must have been in already.

Since they came from Dubai, I wasn’t sure whether they planned to rent the place out or keep it for occasional use. What if they’d already removed my property?

I opened my front door with great reluctance, expecting to see the place stripped bare. Instead it looked like a drunken football fan’s hotel room.

Graffiti had been sprayed across the walls, quite unimaginative taunts like up yours and your mom is a whore. They were a careless bunch who did this, spraying right across the paintings when the mood struck them. The sofa was ripped to shreds with the stuffing left intact, so it was plain they weren’t searching for anything. Huge gouges had been scraped in my teak media cabinet, a retro piece I was particularly fond of.