My former translator called me from Iraq yesterday afternoon—around 10 p.m where he was. I was waiting on an oil change at the time.
"What’s up, m’therFUCKER," he slurred. The slurring was unusual, but the language wasn’t.
"Hey man," I said. "Where are you? What are you doing?" I hadn’t talked to him in several months.
"I’m in Baghad, m’therfucker. . .tryin’ to get dronk." He said something else after that, but the connection was bad. Three or four seconds later, the line went dead.
"A." is a 29-year old secular Sunni. He is married, has a two-year old daughter, and lives in Baghdad. He called me back a while later, this time a little more clear-headed. He asked how I was doing, whether I was working, and how my girlfriend was. I told him we were fine and then I asked him how his family was.
"I’m doin’ fine, man," he said. "But this place. . .this place is shit.
As much as anyone, he would know. In the time since he and his sister began working for the Americans in 2003, he’s had one uncle assassinated (two bullets to the chest), his cousin, another U.S. Army translator, was murdered, and his family had to pay a $40,000 ransom for another female relative who’d been kidnapped. For a while, he and his sister weren’t allowed to leave a U.S. Army base for their own safety.
Then he switched the subject on me, asking again if I was working. I told him I wasn’t—since I recently finished school—and that I was looking for something in D.C.
"No shit?" he asked. "Why don’t you come work for us?" For the last two years, A. has worked for a U.S. State Department contractor at Baghdad International Airport. Translating has become too dangerous.
"Because," I answered matter-of-factly, "you work in Baghdad. My parents and girlfriend would kill me if I went back. Plus, I’m not really interested in living there right now."
He paused for a few awkward seconds and then said, "Aww come on man. . .these people are making $12,000 a month to work here."
"Yeah," I said, "but they work in Baghdad."
A. paused again. "But. . .they don’t ever leave the airport. They don’t do shit. They don’t know anything. They don’t have any balls."
What he sees are a bunch of money vultures and Regent University types that won’t—or can’t—venture out into the city. They don’t know the culture or its needs. They don’t know the people for whom they are supposed to be providing.
"A.," I said, "I don’t want to live in Baghdad. Not now. Maybe some time later, once everybody chills the fuck out."
"But these people don’t know shit," he repeated. "How much were you makin’ when you lived here?"
I told him.
"See. You’d be makin’ three times that."
"Come on, man," I said.
Then he changed tone. "Please. . .I’m askin’ you because you’re my friend. Will you at least look at the web site?"
That’s when I realized what he was getting at.
A.’s country—the place in which he grew up to earn a computer science degree—has literally disintegrated in the four years since we met. And now he sees that we’re going to abandon it. I think he’s terrified of that. A. wants desperately for someone competent to rescue his failing country. I think he sees in me the hope that most Iraqis felt in 2003. It’s as if he thinks if I come back, we can all go back to that time four years ago when we were a team, and there was a chance—however small or misguided—to bring democracy to Iraq.
What he doesn’t know—and what I don’t have the heart to tell him—is that there is nothing I, or any other American soldier, can do for Iraq at this point. I have no idea how I’m going to break it to him that I’m advocating for a withdrawal of American forces. I still haven’t told him yet. In A.’s mind, he still sees us as that team—a team that’s actively working to transform Iraq into a democracy. But I haven’t been there in three years. And I don’t feel the same way anymore.
I don’t know how to tell him that his people need to fix this—not us. I don’t know how to do it, because I know that when we pull out, it will be bloody and he may die and members of his family may die. And I don’t how to tell him that after these four bloody years, he may not get the democracy for which he’s worked after all.
As much as he hates it, A. sees the writing on the wall. Like so many other talented Iraqis, he’s taken steps to leave the country. He’s hedging his bets. Homeland Security has already cleared him for a translator immigrant visa, though he still has to wait on the U.S. State Department to allow him entry. It could take months. While he has mixed feelings about making such a move, his wife is absolutely dreading it. She doesn’t want to abandon her country or her family.
I guess I’m just writing to say that in all this shit, these people are true patriots. The Iraqi translators with whom I worked while I was in Iraq—like A.—are the bravest people I will ever meet in my life. Abandoning them now makes me nauseous when I dwell on it. So I try not to. Because I know in my heart that, at bottom, this civil war—their civil war—can only be solved by them. We can leave a small force behind to train the Army and to hunt terrorists, but that is all we can do now. We can’t stay there forever. Never in history (that I know of, at least) has one country’s military successfully solved another country’s internal strife.
When—and if—A. arrives here in the United States with his family, I will tell him I’m sorry we weren’t able to do better for them. But at the same time, I will tell him I’m sorry that his people have allowed corrupt leaders to rule over them. I will tell him I’m sorry that his people have allowed religious fundamentalists to influence vast swaths of the population. I will tell him I’m sorry that his countrymen have decided to terrorize each other. Because these groups of people are the only humans I hold in lower regard than George W. Bush and his administration.
And I will tell him that, although Baghdad is a beautiful city, he was right when he spoke to me on the phone and said, "But this place. . .this place is shit." Because that is what it has become.