Pieces of Me Read online

  I consider the idea. I wonder if I have been in Colorado long enough to be any help to Zainab; sometimes I still feel like I could use a “mentor” myself. But at least I have some understanding of where she has come from and maybe that will be of comfort to her. Maybe that is enough.

  After art group, I meet Kate for her appointment. When I get to the maternity unit, she is already sat in the waiting room, repeatedly folding and unfolding the appointment letter in her hands. I give her a hug and sit down.

  “They’re running late,” she says as I settle in to wait.

  I can hear the gentle hum of chatter coming from the nurses’ kitchen further down the corridor, the squeak of trolley wheels, the ring of the phone at reception. The air smells faintly of disinfectant and disposable rubber gloves.

  The sounds and smells of hospitals are comforting to me. They remind me of being a child, sat in the waiting room of the hospital, waiting for my dad to finish work. One of the receptionists kept a colouring book for me in her desk. I would sit with it balanced on my knees, tongue poking out in concentration, the nurses sneaking me sweets from their pockets as they passed. That was while my dad was still able to work. Those were the best times.

  Kate doesn’t like hospitals. She puts the letter down and starts to pick at her nails. It’s unusual to see her like this.

  “Bad associations,” she says when I ask if she’s okay.

  I’m glad she asked me to come. There are three other pregnant women in the waiting room and each one has a partner with them. One man in a suit sits engrossed in his phone while his wife flicks through a gossip magazine. Another younger couple hold hands and the man keeps leaning in to kiss her head and rub her belly. The third couple look like they are barely out of their teens. He has a short military haircut. She has a T-shirt that says My heart is in the army. It is a different world from the one I was in this morning. I feel like I am switching off one part of my identity and switching the army wife part back on.

  “So how was this art-group thing anyway?” Kate asks me, trying to distract herself.

  “It was good. Great, actually. I felt like I had a lot in common with them.”

  “Really? Like what?”

  “Well, they come from other places. They have these sort of mixed identities, complicated stories – I feel like I can relate to them.”

  “I don’t see what’s complicated about it, Em. They’re Iraqi or Arab or whatever. You’re British. I’m American.”

  I don’t say anything. I remind myself that she is anxious about the appointment and I am here to support her. Now is not the time to get into a debate.

  “What’s the art supposed to do anyway? Isn’t it better to teach them how to speak English properly or something?”

  “It’s about expressing themselves,” I tell her. “And creating a support network.”

  “Right…” she says.

  I try to change the subject.

  “Have you spoken to Dave recently?” I ask her.

  “Yeah, yesterday. He got his days confused and called to ask how the appointment went.”

  “Did he sound okay?”

  “Yeah. Busy. He said they were out having lunch with some important local guy today. Lamb grab, he called it.”

  “Oh, nice,” I say.

  “Dave hates them. He says everyone just sits on the floor and eats from the same plate.”

  “Our Iraqi team used to bring food in sometimes. I loved it. One time, one of the women I worked with brought in dolma, these vegetables stuffed with rice and meat. God, I could eat that now…”

  Kate is studying my face.

  “You really miss it, don’t you.” It is more of a statement than a question.

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “You get that look. The same look Dave gets sometimes.”

  I think how alien it must be for Kate to see this longing in the people she loves, for a place that is far away and an experience she doesn’t understand.

  “What about Adam? Has he been in touch?” she asks.

  “Not much,” I say. I do not tell her the emails have been getting shorter. The Skype calls more difficult. Tense.

  “Don’t worry about it. It’s good that he’s got his head in the game,” she says.

  “Yeah. You’re right. It was just easier when I was there too.”

  Kate leans back in her chair, her eyes wandering to the clock on the wall that now reads 2pm.

  “What would be easier is if they were just home. I don’t even know what our troops are doing in that damn country anymore.”

  “Withdrawals are complicated,” I say. “They take time. A lot of Iraqis are scared about what will happen when the Americans leave.”

  “Let them figure it out amongst themselves. We’ve done enough already.”

  “But the Americans have caused problems out there too. And the British.”

  “We went there to liberate them and they’re still killing our men.”

  “Kate, you know it isn’t as simple as that.”

  She holds my gaze.

  “Isn’t it, Emma? Because all I know right now is my husband has spent years going to that godforsaken place. And for what?”

  A nurse comes into the room.

  “Katherine Jenkins?” she asks.

  Kate grabs my hand and gives it a squeeze as she stands up.

  “Wish me luck!” she says.

  “Of course. Good luck!” I smile at her, and squeeze back, pushing down my rising frustration at her comments.

  Kate disappears down the hallway and I am left sitting with the three couples, thinking about what she has said. Kate is my best friend here and yet major parts of our world view are fundamentally different. I am a stranger here too, on the edge, between one world and another. The truth is that I am a stranger everywhere now, even among my family back in England. In trying to know more of the world, I have inadvertently made myself alien in all of it. Accepted, embraced, but never fully belonging.

  *

  When Kate comes back into the waiting room she has a strange look on her face.

  “Are you okay?” I ask her.

  She nods quickly, her lips pressed tightly together.

  “Are you sure?” I shoot a glance at the nurse standing behind her, but the nurse checks her clipboard and calls the name of the next patient.

  Kate nods again, then opens her mouth and closes her mouth, reminding me of the giant carp that used to live in the lakes around the palace.

  “I’m trying to hold it in. I should tell Dave first. But…”

  “Wait,” I start to say, “did you find out—”

  “Girl!” she blurts out. “I’m having a baby girl!”

  I jump up and hug her.

  “Congratulations, Kate! Wow, congratulations!”

  Kate hands me a picture of her scan.

  “Look, can you see her? That’s her head and those are her little legs.”

  It looks like the scan Rebecca sent me when she was pregnant with Sophie, but, with no explanation, Rebecca’s scan had just looked like a black and white blur. Anna and I looked at the picture from my computer in Iraq, trying to work out what might be an arm or a foot, but we were clueless. I sent Rebecca an email saying it was wonderful and beautiful and then I never opened the picture again. But this scan is different. Kate points out the head, the legs, the heart and the black and white swirl become a baby girl.

  I hug Kate close to me and feel her heart beating rapidly. No matter what our differences are, I need this woman in my life. We will get through this together.

  27

  “God, I can’t imagine how weird it must be. All that time you spent visiting him and now he’s back here. And you’re just, well, in Colorado.”

  Anna sits in front of me with a glass of wine. She looks different to the last time I saw her. Her hair is shorter and a darker shade of brown. I can tell she is tired, by the way she intermittently rubs at the side of her eye. Her face pixelates briefly, then returns to fu
ll detail.

  “Yeah, it’s odd,” I say. “Harder than I thought. You know how when you’re there, most of the time everything is fine and there are just the occasional bad moments? Being on the outside is the opposite. Every minute he’s not in touch I’m wondering whether something has happened.”

  “Stop, Em. You’re making me feel bad about what I put my parents through.”

  “It’s definitely given me a different perspective,” I say. “Kind of makes me wonder how Adam dealt with it being the other way round for so long.”

  “He probably knew the roles would be reversed eventually,” she says. “So what are you actually doing there? Hanging out with army wives? Hiking a mountain each morning?”

  “No hiking mountains,” I say. “I tried, but it didn’t end too well. Actually, I’m going to mentor a new Iraqi family I met here. Help them settle in, that kind of thing.”

  Anna laughs.

  “God, Em, you really can’t let go, can you? An Iraqi refugee family in Colorado? You’ll be telling me you’re on a flight back here next.”

  Is this what Adam is scared of? Does he think I will leave him and go back to Iraq too?

  “I just need some kind of purpose,” I tell her. “I honestly feel guilty that I’m probably doing it more for me than for them. I miss it out there.”

  Anna gets it.

  “I know, we miss you too.”

  “How is work going?” I ask.

  “Busy,” she says. “Same as ever. The backlog is bad; it has been for a while. We’re just getting swamped with applications.”

  “And the staffing?” I ask. Staffing had always been a problem with that organisation. Everything was dependent on funding, so when the funding was low, people got laid off. Then a backlog would build up and at some point the funding would be renewed, then a whole new batch of staff had to be recruited and security cleared and trained.

  “We’re low, but that’s nothing new,” Anna replies. “I think the issue is the prospect of withdrawal. People just don’t want to stick around to find out what happens next.”

  “I heard a similar sort of thing from Adam. They keep losing ’terps when their visas come through. Any word on whether they might agree on a military extension?”

  “Rumours, but nothing official,” Anna says.

  I take a sip of my wine and her face freezes again, then returns. It’s a bit early to be drinking here, but Skype dates with Anna are an exception. When I first moved to Colorado, we promised to have them once a month, but the routine quickly slipped.

  “Anna, on the subject of ’terps, can you look up Adam’s old ’terp on the system for me? To see if he’s been caught up in the backlog?”

  “Has he still not turned up?”

  “Not yet. But his cousin Ameena moved over here while I was still in Baghdad, so I wondered whether he had managed to get out too.”

  “Of course, I remember you helping her,” Anna says. “Email me his full name. I’ll take a look tomorrow.”

  “Thank you.” I see her scribbling down a reminder on her hand. Anna wrote notes about everything, usually starting on her hand and spilling onto her arm when she ran out of space. In the summer once I saw her write a note on her thigh.

  “So what are they going to do about the backlog. Are you recruiting?” I ask her.

  “That depends, are you ready to come back to us?”

  I know that Anna is joking, but her face becomes serious when I laugh but do not reply.

  “Em… You’re not actually considering it are you?”

  “No… No. Colorado’s great. I just... well, I miss it. The work. Being there. Hanging out with you!”

  “You’ll feel differently once Adam’s home,” she says.

  “Probably. I just hope this mentoring gig will help a lot too.”

  “It was the right thing to do, Em… Leaving when you did. Not just because of what happened. Because of everything. It’s not the same here anymore. Everyone is tired and cynical and just trying to work out what they’ll do once the whole operation wraps up.”

  “I still feel bad about leaving.”

  “It was the right choice. You gave longer to this place than most people.”

  I nod, but it is a nod of acknowledgement rather than agreement. When I left Iraq it felt like a betrayal. Of Anna. Of everything. Even of myself, although I knew I couldn’t do it any longer. I tried to get over what happened, but I couldn’t.

  Anna is the one person who knows about that evening. There were others there at the time, of course. People who were in the bar, the woman from the US Embassy who made the call, the Military Police. But all of those people exist only in the world of Baghdad. Anna is the only person who is in my real life too.

  There was another day. A day that came after the petals and the dancing and the chill of the evening air. For me it is the day Iraq ends.

  I was in the bar with Anna that evening. It had been a busy couple of weeks. We spent our days rushing through interviews, trying to catch up on paperwork, and wondering how much longer we could physically keep up that pace.

  In the evening we sat sipping gin and tonics with zombie-like stares, but on one occasion we were interrupted by the appearance of a half-empty pint on our table. The owner of the beer, a brawny sunburnt man, grinned down at us both.

  “Y’alright ladies? I hear this is the Brit table. Guess I’m in the right place then.” He spoke in a thick slurring accent and made as if to sit down.

  “It’s more the quiet gin and tonic table,” I said.

  “Yeah. Emma and I need a bit of downtime,” Anna added. “It’s been a long week.”

  The man took a step back, although it was unclear whether it was intentional or to counter his swaying. He was smiling less now.

  “Oh, you’re Emma? You’re the one who married a septic then, are you?” he asked, trying to focus on me. Septic tank. Yank. It was a term I’d only ever heard among private security contractors and British military.

  “I married an American, yes.” I felt my whole body tensing, my enunciation becoming more crisp. After such a rough week I was not in the mood to deal with this kind of shit. Whatever came out of his mouth next, I was ready to take him on.

  The man looked like he was getting ready to say something else, when a more familiar face approached, Kieran. Kieran was another one of the British private security contractors. One of the good ones, we thought. He was ex-military himself but had been teaching history in a secondary school somewhere up north when one of his old army buddies had offered him a Baghdad gig that would let him pay off his mortgage in a couple of years.

  “Hello ladies. All okay over here?” he asked, putting a firm hand on the other man’s shoulder.

  “We were just telling your buddy that we’re having a quiet drink. Not really a big social night,” said Anna.

  “Of course,” Kieran said, with a nod of understanding. “Sorry ’bout my mate here. He only arrived last week and he’s been hitting the cat piss pretty hard.”

  He tightened his grip on the man’s shoulder and steered him firmly away.

  “New PSD, I take it,” I said, turning to Anna. She raised an eyebrow.

  “Yeah. Called Alec, I think. I heard he tried to take on one of the embassy Marines a few nights ago… I can’t imagine he’ll last long.”

  “Sounds delightful,” I said.

  Lisa, one of the political affairs officers from the US Embassy, joined us a short while later. We didn’t spend much time with the embassy staff, but Lisa had a British husband and said that our accents reminded her of home when she was away.

  “I just saw that new security guy stumble out the door. What a mess. I’m glad he’s not supposed to be protecting me tomorrow,” she said as she sat down.

  “Yeah, he was over here being a pain,” said Anna. “Kieran dragged him off.”

  “I heard one of the UN lot had some hassle with him last week. Watch out for him,” Lisa said.

  About an hour later, I de
cided to turn in for the night. Lisa and Anna were staying for one more drink, but I wanted to catch Adam on Skype before going to bed.

  “Shall I walk back with you, Em?” Anna asked.

  “No, then you’d have to come back on your own,” I told her. “It makes no sense. Don’t worry, I’m pretty sure that Alec guy will have passed out a while ago. I’ll text you when I get to my room.”

  We were so careful about the buddy system usually, but not that evening. In truth, I wanted to enjoy a couple of moments on my own in the hot night air before returning to my windowless room.

  I walked out of the bar and slowly through the compound, along footpaths bathed in the orange light of street lamps. I could hear music and muffled laughter from Baghdaddy’s fading behind me, but other than that the compound was quiet.

  I passed by the rows of CHUs. From a couple, the flickering light of a television screen slipped out between the blinds. Most were in darkness. There was the smell of smoke in the air and I thought I saw the glowing end of a butt brighten and then disappear further down the row as someone smoked a final cigarette on the CHU step.

  Sometimes I found the number of people in the compound overwhelming, in the same way I used to feel overwhelmed looking at blocks of flats in London at night. So many lives stacked on top of each other. The IZ was full of people who had homes and families elsewhere, yet chose to be here in a strange bubble at the centre of someone else’s war. Lots of lonely lives hemmed in by blast walls and barbed wire.

  The night exhaled around me. I carried on.

  I was about halfway to my room when it happened. I heard him first. The shift in the gravel at the edge of the path and the heavy breathing. Perhaps the smell of cigarette smoke had been him too. Was he out on his step, listening to the silence. Waiting?

  He grabbed me before I had time to turn and shoved me up against a blast wall with the heavy arms of someone whose job was to be strong. His breath was stale on my face and his groin pushed into my leg.