ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

BY DAVID LAWRENCE CADE

As he prepared to leave his hotel room in Hillah and to check out on Saturday morning around nine a.m., having had a simple breakfast from room service, Omar looked at the date on his wristwatch.

Three whole days together with Iraq, and he knew he would come to love the country more now that he was headed back to what remained of the marshlands where he had grown up. He had been born near the ancient city of Larsa, known in modern times as Senkeret.

If only the weather were fair and not so hot, he thought as he walked down to the ground floor.

Twelve tedious hours since checking into the hotel, to avoid trouble on the highway to the south. He felt upset that Abdullah had wronged him by spying on him for the Americans, and upset with himself for having trusted Goransson and the two officers with the NSA.

He felt like a doting father toward Habib and wanted to embrace him again before travelling further away from Baghdad.

The population of the marshlands and near the Gulf –north of Al-Basrah, Al-Nasiriyah, and the surrounding countryside – had seen its population steadily eroded since he was a boy. His tribe was still intact, one of the few enclaves that had been spared the draining of vast stretches of marsh by order of Saddam, in that their village had been within half a mile of the Tigris and like a few other isolated spots was left undisturbed, partially to placate the cries of environmentalists and human rights activists.

The marsh waters were at times treacherous and provided easy cover for the insurrectionists. The decision to drain the swamps to eradicate hideouts of rebels backed by Iran had caused irreversible damage to one of the most pristine of ancient human habitats known on the planet. The Marsh Arabs affected had to flee to reservoirs in the Iraqi cities or across the Iranian border.

This wanton destruction during the 1990’s of the idyllic regions near the convergence of the Tigris and Euphrates contrasted with another forced relocation of the poor of Iraq. In Baghdad during the early 1960’s, many thousands of the sarifas, the reed dwellings of the poor, had been torn down by order of the new government, to be replaced by miserable buildings barely suitable for anyone to live in with no windows or ventilation.

The marsh dwellers in the more remote villages under the old regime had been spared such severe mistreatment in many cases, but Omar’s family knew of instances in the vicinity of the towns where relatives had lost their mudhifs – long huts of mud and reed - destroyed by the government, in some cases without compensation or relocation. He understood later that much of it was to root out possible enclaves of malcontents and areas of potential communist influence. And the new regime simply did not like having reed dwellings visible in areas where foreigners travelled. It did not fit the image of the new Iraq they wished to foster in the eyes of the world.

Omar had called Habib on his satellite phone the previous evening just before going to bed. It had taken several tries before his son had answered.

"You were attacked by Americans in helicopters?" Habib had said with subdued outrage in his voice. "And you weren’t hurt?"

"Neither of us were hurt," Omar had said.

"Thanks be to Allah that you survived," Habib had said. He had promised to tell the other family members when away from his apartment, as he was growing more distrustful of his roommates with every passing hour.

"I have seen American police on television treating animals better than they treat the Iraqi people," Habib had said before hanging up. "Why do the U.S. military place so little value on an Iraqi life?"

Also Friday evening, just after checking into the Hillah Hotel, Omar had called Nabih, whom he had chatted with each evening since arriving in Iraq. Nabih answered saying he was still in the Grand Hyatt Regency and that he had a flight back to Detroit at 9:41 a.m. Saturday morning New York time.

"I just got back from lunch, Omar," Nabih said. "I’m in my room. Are you all right?"

Omar told him of the ambush by the American helicopters and his concern that the NSA had a sinister plot in mind to use him for political ends, and that his life might become little more to the Americans than a resource to be expended.

"They are setting me up, Nabih," Omar said. "But for what I do not as yet know."

"You are in the ancient crucible now," Nabih said. "Iraq is caught between two rivers, and you are in the cockpit. The Americans will hijack you if you let down your guard."

Omar felt restless to get back on the road to An-Nasiriyah. He recalled tales of how his family tribe had jostled for land and security during the old monarchy. That his maternal grandfather Abdulla ibn Hanza al-Aubeidi had bemoaned the assassination of King Feisal. "Now every officer with ambition will want to be king," al-Aubeidi had told his young grandchildren.

His family had been proud to live in mud and reed homes similar to what their ancestors had known from the 8^th and 7^th millennia B.C. They had relied on the geography to favor them.

Omar had sat on the docks by the river and stared at the ancient tells in the distance, many eroded so that they were indistinguishable from natural mounds.

"That was where our forefathers ate wild wheat and barley," his parents would tell him. "Now we live directly on the river water, so when it floods, we can irrigate the crops we have developed. It is the Twin Rivers." His mother would speak of a legend of how the rivers were born, "Allah was so pleased with the embryonic first river draining the mountains of Iran, that he gave it a fraternal twin when it had just been conceived. They are envious of each other and fight for the waters from the mountains of Asia Minor and Persia."

This ancient way of life had endured until the devastating projects of the 1990’s under Saddam in which the Marsh Arabs, the Madan, saw the three major marshes of about 12,000 square miles drained, burned, and dammed to the point that only remnants remained at the beginning of the Second Gulf War. For the most part there survived only isolated areas such as the one just south of the Euphrates River northwest of Al-Basrah, where Omar’s tribe and others still clung to existence, and a larger area near the border with Iran fed by streams flowing from within Iran and which Iraq could not control. There were thirty-two dams on the Tigris and Euphrates upstream from the former marshland area, once home to a rich assortment of wildlife species and until the destruction under Saddam one of the preeminent natural habitats of wetlands in the world.

Until the rebellion after the First Gulf War in which the Madan sided against Saddam, there had been an estimated half a million Iraqis still living in their wetland settlements. Most of the legacy of the region was altered beyond recognition.

Satellite images from the 1970’s showed areas such as the Al Huweizah marsh near the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers to have been a vast network of waterways, islands, and lush reed beds. The Al Huweizah was reduced in size by almost eighty-five percent.

Among the international organizations that monitored the situation but were powerless to halt the "reclamation" of the marshes were the U.N. Human Rights Commission, the International Wildfowl and Wetlands Research Bureau, and Middle East Watch.

By 1993, the Iraqi government project was able to prevent two-thirds of the Tigris and Euphrates river water from reaching the marshlands.

The bulk of the flow of the Euphrates River has been diverted to the infamous Third River Canal, bypassing most of the marshes. The flow to the Tigris has been channeled into tributary rivers, inhibiting seepage back into the marshlands.

Draining the marshes led to heavy salinization of the land, stagnant waters in some areas having left a salt crust when it finally evaporated, and severe damage to the indigenous fish and migratory birds from western Eurasia, such as pelicans, herons, and flamingos.

There was an exodus of many of the Madan to the largest Iraqi cities and to Iran.

Their plight amounted to genocide on the part of the Iraqi government, hundreds of thousands made homeless, several thousand killed.

Deprived of fresh water, many of the Madan had to endure epidemics of cholera and chronic diarrhea. These ancient people, who had lived in the marshes since the dawn of history, had kept alive the way of life in the area known as the Fertile Crescent. Only about ten percent of the ecosystem was still remaining by July of 2003.

It was into this altered arid landscape that Omar was returning after twenty-three years in self-imposed exile.

Habib had expressed a wish to help excavate the prehistoric villages that once thrived along the lower valley after the 6^th millennia B.C., and Omar had invited his son to come to An-Nasiriyah the following week. "I have a meeting tentatively scheduled to meet with a team of archeologists from Al-Basrah University on Monday or Tuesday. You must come. You need to meet them."

Habib had agreed to drive down. "Let me know the exact date and time and place. I will try to rent a car."

"I can pay for it," Omar said.

Omar’s contact with Hussein Uffman ibn Affan, an Egyptian foreign service official at their consulate in Al-Basrah, who had been active in fostering cultural exchanges between the two countries for over fifteen years, was the source of the meeting with the archeologists. Affan had corresponded with Omar since their meeting at an Arab-American cultural seminar at the University of Chicago seven years earlier and had put Omar in touch with Egyptologists stationed for the interim at Al-Basrah University. They were from the faculty at the University of Cairo and were eager to talk with Omar and to learn from him what he knew firsthand of the surviving marshlands and to explore with him the possibilities of which of the royal sacred ancient cities of Eridu, Ur, Uruk, Nippur and Girsu offered the most promise for new discoveries.

Omar was to call the two scholars from An-Nasiriyah that afternoon or in the evening to let them know he had arrived safely. If all went well, they could set out Monday morning and visit the ziggurats at Uruk and Ur.

"You have been blessed by the god of wisdom, Enki, the god of Eridu and the sweet waters, blessed in the art of language and writing," al-Aubeidi had told his grandson Omar after he, his mother Marwa, and his brother and sister had moved to live with Marwa’s parents when Omar was twelve, after the death of his father, and a year before Marwa in turn died.

As a young man he had come to relegate the Sumerian myths to old dusty bookshelves in unfrequented stacks at the Arab universities.

Now he began to recall some of the legends he had studied at the normal school in An-Nasiriyah.

The Sumerians had come to dominate the entire lower valley around 3,500 B.C. They were descendants of the early Stone Age farmers who had struggled to survive on the edges of the marshes.

They dealt in precious commodities such as salt and obsidian, and made mirrors, jewelry, and knives.

It was the Sumerian scribes who wrote down the first epic poems, the first historians of record, and who inquired in their writings as to the meaning of nature and life.

The Epic of Gilgamesh with its tale of the King of Uruk wandering the earth after a great flood had been Omar’s favorite among the ancient literary works of Sumer, and he had learned the rudiments of reading the thousands of cuneiform tablets stored in the major Iraqi museums and libraries. He would look up at the stars on a clear desert night and wonder what his ancestors meant by worshipping Ishtar, the goddess, or Nanna the moon-god and his wife Ningal.

Abdullah was waiting outside at the taxi that Saturday morning, July 19, 2003. They spoke little, with Omar cautiously eying his driver with his satellite phone tucked not too carefully into one of the flaps of a totebag.

"Less than two more hours, before noon, and we will be there," Abdullah said.

"I’m ready," Omar said. "But first, drive past the area worst hit by the cluster bombs in April."

Abdullah knew the way. They stopped and got out and stood silently looking at the shrapnel holes in the blood-stained tan stucco walls along the street. Omar shook his head. They got back in the taxi and headed south again.

After taking Omar’s money for the two rooms and seeing him walk out to the taxi in the parking area, the hotel manager had picked up a phone and called an assistant police chief in the Hillah city hall.

"He has left the hotel. Not a word as to where he is headed," the manager had said.

The assistant police chief, who was well-known in Hillah as having been cooperating with the Americans, promptly phoned the U.S. legation office in Baghdad and asked for Hal Rosaria. He left a voice mail repeating what the hotelman had said.

Omar and Abdullah listened for a while to the BBC over the car radio. The main news was that British scientist David Kelly, who had committed suicide on Thursday after being questioned earlier that week by a Parliamentary committee re the BBC reports of forged documents used by the Blair government to make its case for war against Iraq, was acknowledged now by the BBC as having been the source of their information.

"The defense ministry pushed him over the edge," Omar said. "Those in the Blair government who wanted an invasion, who fabricate any lies to fill their bound volumes with gold printed title: ‘The Question of Going to War with Iraq.’"

There had been another large protest rally led by another prominent Shiia senior cleric in Mosul on Friday, with the report indicating the marchers had been asked to disperse after they confronted troops outside a mosque.

Then came a closing note, "BBC World News. There’s been another downing of two American army attack helicopters on a highway south of Baghdad today."

"It was yesterday," Omar said.

"Today their time," Abdullah said.

"Eyewitnesses stated that a vehicle carrying insurgents was travelling at a high rate of speed and a man with a grenade launcher was observed standing up through a sunroof and fired an RPG at one of the helicopters, which was said to be buzzing cars up and down a stretch of highway south of Baghdad. The first helicopter lurched out of control and hit the second, bringing both down in a fireball that killed all seven crew members. BBC World News."

The taxi ride that morning was without incident until they reached the outskirts of An-Nasiriyah around noon.

There was a roadblock set up by Americans.

The highway at that point was four lanes with center medium. Both north and south were cordoned off.

"There must be a hundred vehicles ahead of us," Omar said as they stopped.

"This could take an hour if they inspect every car for weapons or loot," Abdullah said. "They do this once a week, picking a time at random, on all the highways."

"Do we have enough gas?" Omar asked.

"Plenty of gas. I hope the air-conditioning does not give out."

U.S. infantrymen with sub-machine guns were walking up and down the lines of cars, waving through all the military vehicles into the center lanes, leaving mostly Iraqis and a few foreign reporters or businessmen stopped in the outside lanes.

One lieutenant with his face turning rose red from the sun and heat was walking slowly beside the parked cars, ignoring any requests for information, noting a few license plates, bending over and peering into the windows, mostly opened for what air there was.

When he reached Abdullah’s taxi, he walked past, apparently taking little notice, then came back, knocked on the passenger window by Omar, and asked in his twenty-six year old Southwestern accent, "Do you speak English?"

"Yes," Omar said.

Abdullah leaned over a bit and said, "Yes."

"Could you get out of your car?" the lieutenant asked Omar.

"What have we done?"

"You haven’t done anything yet, sir" the lieutenant asked. "I just need help up here. There’s a vehicle with an elderly couple, Iraqi couple, scared to death, and they won’t listen to my interpreter."

"I’ll help if I can," Omar said, getting out.

It was the tenth car up in the line. The lieutenant asked Omar to tell them that if they were having medical problems he could wave them through. "I don’t think they have contraband, but who knows," he told Omar. "Don’t tell them that part. Just the medical part."

Omar leaned over and began speaking in standard Iraqi Arabic to the husband at the wheel and realized immediately that the old man, dressed in dark brown pants and a white long-sleeve dress shirt with black tie, was speaking the dialect of the southern marshlands where Omar had grown up. He asked the man’s name and was astounded to realize it was one of his old school teachers from Senkeret. He embraced the old man through the window and explained to the officer that the couple were confused, not familiar with what the lieutenant’s aide had been trying to tell them. "I know this man since I was a boy," Omar said in English to the American. "He is quite able to understand modern Arabic. Your interpreter must be incompetent. Careful lest you confuse everyone in the line with mismatched words."

Omar asked what the lieutenant wanted, told the old teacher, passed words back and forth. Satisfied the old couple were harmless, the lieutenant waved them through. "You’re free to go as well, sir," the lieutenant said to Omar.

"Thank you."

The taxi was waved through, passing the ninety or more cars still obligated to pass full inspection.

"He taught me math and science," Omar said and told Abdullah what he remembered about the old man.

They reached Omar’s hotel in the city of An-Nasiriyah without further delay around half past noon. Abdullah quietly got Omar’s bags out of the trunk and back seat, thanked him, and opened his eyes wide on being handed a fifty dollar tip for all his work, "in addition to today’s fare" Omar said.

They exchanged a few more good-byes, and Omar went into his hotel followed by a porter pushing a luggage cart.

After a lunch on traditional Arab cuisine in the hotel restaurant, Omar went to his room and called the numbers he had been given for the two Egyptian archeologists in Al-Basrah who wanted to work with him.

There was no answer from either party.

He then proceeded to the desk downstairs and asked where he could hire a car.

"We can arrange that," the clerk, a slender Iraqi man of about twenty-nine years, said.

"I would like it air-conditioned, four doors, off-the-road use, if possible," Omar said.

"That could be more difficult. What you need is a truck, if you wish to drive in the desert."

"Near the river banks, actually," Omar said.

"A truck, I would think."

"Can you get me one?"

"I can try," the clerk said. "I know a man with one. He won’t be expecting this, but he rents it, and on the weekends only, when he doesn’t need it for work."

"Good. I need it as soon as he can get here," Omar said.

They were in luck. The owner of the five-year old mid-size truck, a member of the city staff, which he only used for his work, answered as soon as the desk clerk phoned. The man, known as Abu Shubaa Dalyell, arrived at the hotel around three p.m. wearing a white galabiyya with dark blue stripes and showed Omar what he needed to know about operating the vehicle, as it was of Japanese make. The price was less than a rental in Baghdad, and Omar showed his international driving permit and third party insurance guarantee.

"That last part is not necessary, as I also have insurance," Dalyell said.

Omar got a few things from his room, including camera, totebag with an extra clean shirt, filled a large container with ice water, and started out in the truck for the site of Ur, just a few miles to the southwest of town.

He drove as close as he could to the ancient ziggurat, which had been restored with ancient brick during the last century. He parked and got out. There were four men nearby, Iraqis who were dressed in conservative slacks and long sleeve shirts, walking around the southwest corner. They kept walking along the southerly wall away from where Omar stood. He noticed a lone man of about thirty-five years age, over six feet four inches tall, clean-shaven except for a trim brown moustache, dressed in Bedouin robe of white and dark grey, with a white turban with check pattern and black band, and light blue sandals. It appeared to Omar that the man had a type of large revolver in a holster under his robe. There were several other men and women at the far corners, but the man in Bedouin garb was the only person close enough to speak with Omar without shouting.

The man called out in Arabic, "Tour?"

"I lived nearby when I was young," Omar said. "What can you tell me? Was it hurt during the wars?"

"Not a scratch," the man said. "All the missiles and rockets flew over as if taking heed it would go badly for whoever fired if this were hit."

"You live nearby?"

"I live near An-Nasiriyah and make a living giving tours. I know all the sites."

Omar introduced himself to the tour guide, whose eyes grew large on hearing Omar’s full name and who gave the name Abu Shujah Bohanar. They shook hands. Bohanar had a strong grip that impressed Omar as that of a man who would not flee if they were confronted by any of the lawless element known to be harassing the countryside.

"Is that a gun?" Omar asked.

"It is. I have a permit from the local police."

"I grew up near the ziggurats of Nippur and Larsa," Omar said.

"Senkeret," Bohanar said.

"Yes, Senkeret. We lived on a tributary of the Tigris, in a village, right on the water," Omar said. "I’ve been told it was spared when most of the swamps were drained."

"I knew all of them when I was a boy," Bohanar said. "I know who you are."

When Omar gave details of where his village had been located, and more details of his family history, Bohanar said, "Your father died when you were a boy, and you left for An-Nasiriyah when you were not much older. My father knew your father. I was several years younger than you. I’m thirty-five now. I saw you once on a boat with your father when we visited the river. You knew how to steer even when there was a strong wind and better than the other boys."

"Is your father still alive?"

"He is. He lives in Nasiriyah. He cannot take care of himself any longer, so I try to make extra money giving tours, even though I could be robbed."

He said he could show Omar any of the ancient sites, that he had updates on what was happening as far as excavations, what the Iraqi archeologists had been doing before the war, and what complications were arising.

They agreed upon a fee for the tours and after strolling around the site at Ur, they drove toward the northwest in Omar’s truck to the site at Uruk, near the modern day town of Warka.

They looked out across the stark Mesopotamian plain at the 5,000 year old mound at Uruk under a pale blue sky with wisps of cloud zooming in from the northwest.

"It’s like a lunar landscape," Omar said. "Or a link to the heavens."

"It was a temple mound," Bohanar said. "When the sky god Anu was generous, gifts would rain in for the ruler, and he would fold his arms and scribes would record gifts from the people of the surrounding area, all brought in to please the patron god."

Omar mentioned he had seen some of the tablets recovered from the site now stored in Baghdad, "before I left for America."

They walked toward the large entry portals along the southern façade, speculating what it had looked like when new. The openings that once had been windows now looked like natural openings in a cliff, gaping like the mouths of suppliants of the past whose secrets were lost forever.

"If it were not so hot, I would walk to the top," Omar said.

"I have walked it, when I was much younger," Bohanar said. "You feel you can see all of ancient Sumer from up there."

They spent over two hours looking at Ur and Uruk. Omar wanted to visit the Larsa site, and then to return to his old village site, but he decided there was not enough time to do more than drive by the Larsa ziggurat hill, which he photographed from the truck.

Then he drove as close as he could to where his village had been located along a tributary just south of the Euphrates. Along the way he could see mile upon mile of desolate wasteland where once verdant marshland had thrived since the days of pre-history. Then he reached the site of his old village.

"It’s still there," he said as they approached. "But some of the huts have been moved."

"Rebuilt," Bohanar said. "A few from the sixties survive."

They got out of the truck and walked the rest of the way to the shores of the marsh, passing some fishermen who looked surprised to see a man dressed in such nice clothes as Omar.

He called out to them his name and that he had been born nearby. "I grew up here."

Each of the three men in their boats along the shore raised their hands and waved, giving their names. Omar realized immediately that another man in his early forties had sat beside him in the grade school outside the lagoon where the Aboudi mudhif had stood.

He called out asking the men to come to the shore if they could. "Who else still lives here?" he asked.

There were murmurs up at the village at the unaccustomed sound of loud voices disturbing the centuries old stillness of the way of life they had always known.

"It is really Omar Hammad Aboudi," the fishermen repeated as they approached and hugged him.

"Where have you been?" one man asked. "They said you disappeared after Saddam took over."

"No," another man said. "He went to America."

"I went to study in the United States," Omar said. "I have come back now that Saddam is gone to see if I can help in the rebuilding of Iraq."

He told them about his interest in helping with the educational system.

The men looked at each other as if it had to do with lofty matters far away from what would ever affect their lives in the village. They expressed admiration for what Omar had accomplished.

He asked who was still alive, what had become of their parents. The answer too often that was the parents had died, perhaps due to malnutrition or lack of medical care. "The regime under Saddam only took care of the Baathists," a younger man said. He looked eager to move away to make his fortune and asked Omar much about Baghdad and the conditions there.

Medical care had been severely neglected under the former regime, with little available in the way of doctors or hospitals for most of the country’s poor.

The men close to Omar’s age remembered him clearly. They all had stories of sons or brothers who had been killed in the Iran-Iraq war, or the First Gulf War, or the Shiite Uprising in the south in 1991. "And this year, we are again losing men to the American occupation."

They pointed to the countryside just outside the huts and to a large abandoned destroyed Iraqi missile launcher standing like a bizarre abstract metal sculpture pointing toward the south.

"It was left by the Revolutionary Guard," one man said.
"They wanted to push it into the river, but we wouldn’t let them. They were too scared and knew that this time Iraq would be defeated. So they left it. We got tired of it and turned it to point toward Mecca."

They introduced Omar to some men who would have been his father’s age had he survived. "What do you need most?" Omar asked the elders, two of whom were senior tribal members.

"Everything," one of them said.

"And for the American soldiers to leave," the other said.

Omar stood looking them in the eye and asked, "Can you get anything up the river from the ports?"

"Yes," the elders said. "But we have no money for it. The economy of Iraq is in shambles. Everything here has been cut down to the bone, and now it is so desperate it is cutting into the bone."

Omar grimaced. He gave the elders one hundred dollars for some medical needs for some of the children that could be purchased at a clinic in An-Nasiriyah.

"Do the children have a teacher?" he asked.

"Not since the war began," an elder said.

Several American jets flew overhead at two miles altitude. Omar recalled reports he had heard that morning on BBC radio about $2,000 a plate campaign luncheons held the previous day for Cheney.

He could see they still did not have electricity. He asked if anyone had a portable radio. A few did, but the batteries usually were dead.

Omar took out his satellite phone and tried the number he had been given for Phillip Goransson in Baghdad. He walked over to his truck so the villagers could not hear him, asking Bohanar to inquire what else was needed in the village.

"Mr. Goransson’s office," a female secretary said.

"This is Omar Aboudi. Is he in?"

"I’ll check."

There was a wait of over fifteen seconds.

"No," the secretary said. "Can I take a message?"

In the U.S. legation headquarters, Phillip Goransson, Hal Rosaria, Rodney Howard Hansen of the British legation, and the aide who had been so puzzled at the embassy’s preoccupation with an Arabic studies professor from Ann Arbor, sat around a table in an office with several computers and listened to the phone hookup from the secretary’s desk outside.

"All right," Omar said, his voice coming clearly over the speakers. "I’m at my old village outside Senkeret. I have a guide whom I believe could help me in my search for stolen artifacts, and I have a truck, and I have met many men I knew years ago and I believe they will help us find any loot hidden among the reeds, and I have suspicions."

"Just a moment," the secretary said. "I need to get all of this down. All right. Continue."

"All right," Omar said. "Your name, if I may ask."

"Wingfield," she said.

"Mrs. Wingfield," Omar said.

"No," she said, "Miss Wingfield."

"Right. Thank you. I am here, my friends are here, the Americans are rich, we all want you out of the country. So send aid workers here to help these people. Please ask Mr. Goransson to arrange for electricity."

"Electricity?" Wingfield said shrilly. "I don’t even have electricity where I live half the time."

"And batteries."

"We have those," she said.

"And medicine for malnourished children. And food. And satellite phones that work."

"Satellite phones?" Wingfield asked.

"They need to know what the rest of the world is like," Omar said.

"What else?"

"Everything," he said.

"Everything?"

"Everything including George W. Bush’s cowboy hat. No, not that. They would use it to fish with."

Goransson had just stepped into the outer office and handed Wingfield a handwritten note. She read it, "If they send President Bush’s cowboy hat as a gift, do you think it would help quell the insurgents?"

"It would be something they could sell for food," Omar said. "Protection from the sun."

Goransson scribbled another note and held it in front of her to read. "But then wouldn’t the President get sun burnt?"

"He has one hundred thirty thousand soldiers sweating like pigs in full body armor, and you’re worried about him getting a bit sunburnt?"

"One hundred fifty thousand if they have to send more," she said, her own words this time.

Goransson handed her another note that she read, "If the President sends his hat, will Imam Ramiz send his turban to the White House?"

"Are you alone?" Omar asked.

"There are a few people down the corridor," Wingfield said, "but we’re at minimal staff on Saturdays. I was just here catching up on some typing."

"You’ll see he gets the message?"

"Mr. Goransson?" Wingfield asked.

"No, Bush." Omar said.

Goransson scribble another note and she read, "You can be sure he’ll be told you called."

"He will?" Omar asked.

Reading another note, Wingfield said, "Triple A or double A batteries?"

"Both. Triplets and twins."

"Where are the best bazaars in Baghdad?" she asked.

"You have this wry sense of humor," he said.

"I got here just a month ago having lived ten years in Alexandria, Virginia. I need to shop."

"Try the Al Mansur district. All those people with homes full of luxury items that would put Sargon the Great to shame. Now they have cash flow trouble like the rest of Iraq and have to put some of their household goods in the bazaars to raise a little cash. Like the American garage sales."

"Al Mansur," Wingfield said. "I’m writing all this down."

"And send plenty of packaged food and clothes," Omar said.

"Thank you. I think I got all of this down."

"Thank you," Omar said. "Have a good day."

"You too."

Wingfield said good evening in Arabic, as did Omar, and they hung up.

Back in the embassy office, Goransson sat down hastily and said, "This is what we’ve been waiting for. They have most of this stocked at our warehouse in An-Nasiriyah, and I believe we can do better, a lot better, than he asked." He turned to the aide, who looked rather put out and frowning, and said, "Get right on it, will you?"

"Yes, sir." The aide left the room with Rosaria.

Omar put away his satellite phone, walked back proudly to the shores of his village where the crowd of former neighbors had begun to drift away to their huts and rafts, women beginning to prepare food for the evening meal.

He called out a few goodbyes and said he would be back the next day.

Bohanar walked back to the truck with Omar, and they got in. He asked if Omar noticed much difference between the speech of the settlers in the marshland and the Arabic of Baghdad.

"Not as much as forty years ago," Omar said. "The entire area of the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates up to Baghdad have a similar Arabic type of dialect." The semi-nomadic marsh-dwellers of his birthplace had ethnic ties with most of southern Mesopotamia and similar reflexes and inflexions. "It contrasts much with the dialects of Arabia," Omar said. "This is my profession, teaching Arabic."

They headed back to An-Nasiriyah, with Omar saying he would like Bohanar to accompany him when he met with the Egyptologists.

"Monday or Tuesday, I’m not sure."

Sitting so tall he almost had to lean forward to keep from touching his head to the liner of the truck cab, Bohanar looked at Omar from the passenger side and said, "Your father once saved my father."

"How was this?"

Bohanar told how during the mid-sixties, when anti-communist sentiment ran strong in the old regime, his father had been denounced to the authorities as having been a communist organizer. And it was all fabrication.

"We think the man who did it wanted to get our land," Bohanar said.

"How did my father help?"

"Your father was a very good young man who died sadly at an early age."

"I know this," Omar said.

"Many men knew him and had known him since he was a boy," Bohanar said. "They confided in him, because he always held what they said in his heart. He was someone they turned to about their fears, concerns about what it took to survive day to day as nomads or fishermen."

The man who had wrongly denounced Bohanar’s father as being communist also knew Omar’s father and had told him in private that he had made up the story of involvement in Marxist activity to impress the authorities.

"We were scared to death he would be arrested and put in prison," Bohanar said. "It was easy then, just like later under Saddam, to ruin a man by telling lies to the Secret Intelligence Services that they wanted to hear. The old regime wanted to scare all the people in the valley and so what if a man were innocent or not."

Omar’s father had talked with his tribal elders, and they had accompanied him to An-Nasiriyah where he repeated to the police and an official from Baghdad what the informant had told him.

"Your father was afraid to go there alone. The elders were his witnesses. They vouched for your father’s integrity. My father was spared because your father risked his life."

"Who was this man? My father never told me about it."

"Your father died," Bohanar said, "worn out by our hardships, two years later. The informant’s name was Yayah al-Hakam Ocalan. They did nothing about it in Baghdad. I think they liked having someone like Ocalan scaring the poor with false accusations, just like under Saddam."

"Is he still alive?"

"No," Bohanar said, "but his two sons are alive, Tashin and Abu."

"Where do they live?"

"One in Najaf, the other in Al-Basrah. They have vowed someday to get you."

Omar straightened up and said, "How so?"

"They blame your father for their father’s disgrace. He was never believed by the authorities again, not like before. It gave their family a stigma to be rebuked that way."

"Would you tell me about them?" Omar asked.

"They are a few years old than you. The times I visited your village and saw you, after your father died, I never knew what he had done for our family. I only learned of this when I turned eighteen. Tashin and Abu have also vowed to destroy me some day, or so I am told. That is another reason I carry the revolver. The older one, Tashin, has a son who lives in Baghdad, in his early twenties. The younger one never had children. He never married."

"Do you know the grandson’s name?"

"Mohammad, Mohammad Ocalan."

"Thank you for telling me this."

As Bohanar lived just a mile outside An-Nasiriyah to the southwest, Omar drove him home and then headed back to his hotel. It was after six p.m. He rested and freshened up and went out to dine at a local restaurant.

He went back to his hotel room where he had left his satellite phone charging and called one of the archeologists in Al-Basrah.

"Nushi Jaan al-Haqar," was the answer.

"Excellent," Omar said. "This is Omar Hammad Aboudi. I am in An-Nasiriyah."

Al-Haqar sounded excited to learn that Omar could meet them at one of the tells on Monday or Tuesday.

"Monday morning, surely," al-Haqar said. "We can drive up and be there around ten a.m. Earlier, if you think best."

"Ten a.m. will be good. I want to begin at Uruk. It is close to An-Nasiriyah and then we can make our way back up north to the others."

"Good."

"Let’s meet at my hotel." He gave the address. "We can move on from here. There is a guide I met today whom I would like to accompany us. He is trustworthy and a good man to have watching out for bandits. I will pay him."

"Iraq has become so lawless I realize what you say," al-Haqar said. "Yes, he is welcome to come along with us."

Omar mentioned that he had met his son Habib in Baghdad. "I never knew I had a son. He wants to join in the expedition and to become an archeologist."

Habib was also welcome and the rendezvous at Omar’s hotel was to be confirmed with the other professor from Egypt. "See you Monday then."

"Bye."

He checked his satellite phone roster for Habib’s number and dialed.

"Hello, Habib, this is Omar."

"Yes, good to hear you. What did you find out at the sites?" Habib asked.

"Much. I met a man who knew things about my family. I saw my old village, and I have plans to help them. I wish I were there now. I want to do everything for them now. And I’ve spoken with Nushi Jaan al-Haqar. He is sure they can meet us Monday morning at my hotel and then to the ziggurats. Can you rent a car by then? I can pay for it."

"I thought I would ask for my mother’s car," Habib said.

"I would rather pay for it myself. I have a credit line at the Bank of Baghdad, and credit cards if the agency accepts them."

"Thank you. That is very kind of you. I will find out the best rate and be there Monday."

"Habib, the man I met, Abu Shujah Bohanar, is a tour guide. He will have much to tell you that you wish to know about the condition of the mounds, especially at Ur."

"Yes."

"And he told me something extraordinary. I never knew my father had been responsible for saving Bohanar’s father after he was denounced as a communist by another man. It is quite a story."

"Yes. I would like to hear."

"Bohanar said his father would have been thrown in jail but that my father came forward and cleared his name with the authorities, because father knew the informant was lying. Yayah al-Hakam Ocalan was his name, died years ago."

"Could you repeat that?" Habib said.

"Yayah al-Hakam Ocalan. He left two sons, Tashin and Abu. One lives in Al-Basrah, the other in Najaf. There is a grandson, Mohammed, who lives in Baghdad. They carry a grudge and have vowed to get back at me someday."

There was silence on the line for a moment.

"Are you still there?" Omar asked.

"Yes, father. I have rarely heard such a story."

"It is true."

"I don’t doubt that," Habib said.

"You sound distant," Omar said. "Is everything all right? You’ll be here Monday?"

"Yes."

"I told Professor al-Haqar you are interested in archeology."

"It will be an honor. Thank you for arranging it."

"Are your roommates there?"

"Yes."

"You still sound careful. Is someone in the room? Are you in the living room?"

"Yes," Habib said.

"And one of your roommates is there?"

"Yes."

"What’s his name?"

"Mohammed?"

"Uh huh. Where are his parents? Do you know them?"

"No, they live in Al-Basrah."

"Al-Basrah. You’re very quiet. And his last name? You didn’t tell me his last name."

"Weren’t we just talking about that?" Habib said. "I went into my room, father. I’ve closed the door." Standing alone in his bedroom with the windows open to the sweltering heat, as the electricity had gone out an hour earlier, he continued. "His last name is Ocalan."

"No."

"I’ve spoken with his father," Habib said. "His name is Tashin. I told him just yesterday for the first time that I met my real father this week. I told him your name. He looked like he was going to be sick. He said nothing to me for a while after that. I thought it was because you and mother were not married when I was born."

"I’m sorry about that," Omar said. "Then he knows your father is an enemy of his family. And he said nothing to you about this?"

"Nothing. This is rather chilling. Do you think I could be in danger from them now?"

"I am sorry to say that could be the case," Omar said, "if they keep their vow to hurt our family. My son, you are in the midst of a whirlpool that is Iraq and that you could not have known would become like this. I think you should consider moving in with your parents, until you find another apartment."

"I will indeed," Habib said. "But I still want to meet with you Monday. I can make plans tomorrow, and ask some friends who started their own newspaper who will help me on a moment’s notice. We move a lot at our age, and I’m sure I can get most of my things out of here tomorrow. Mohammed will think it’s strange. I see no reason to tell him this. How would you have known, but for the chance meeting with Bohanar?"

"Yes, and thus has Abu Shujah saved us in turn, just as your grandfather helped his family. And so I am so glad to hear you will be able to move. I’ll call Aminah. I will pay for what you need. Here’s what we need."

Omar explained that Habib might as well rent a truck on Sunday to begin moving, and that they would be able to use the truck on their investigations at the ziggurats and in the narrow tracts of marshlands. He invited Habib to stay with him through the next several days in An-Nasiriyah if he found it interesting, or to rent another car to return to Baghdad on Tuesday or Wednesday.

"I’m here until Thursday or Friday, when I want to return to Baghdad for the weekend and then on to Mosul to see my sister and her family."

"Thank you, father. I think I will stay there a couple days at least. I’ll call you again from mother’s house. This is incredible you learned of this just a day after I told Mohammed who you are."

"I pray you have not been in danger," Omar said.

"I will be on my guard around him from now on. Until later."

"Yes, you take care," Omar said.

"You too."

Omar sat down stunned at the news from Habib as to the identity of his roommate. "Enemies," he muttered to himself. "I didn’t realize there were so many of them. Another legacy of Saddam and his sons."

David Lawrence Cade Copyright 2003 by

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