T h ree days I ' ve been h e re running from one ministry to another, making phone calls, emailing the U. Nothing has worked. I want to be in Fallujah. But I can't get out of Baghdad. It's two in the afternoon on a Thursday in late October. I'm in a nearly empty shopping mall, at a Toll House cookie kiosk across the street from the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior. It's Fityan, Hawre, and me. We're waiting for a call from Fityan's cousin Tahrir, a captain in the police.
He is inside the ministry negotiating my letter of permission into Fallujah. In Fallujah there is a doorway I want to stand in. My friend Dan Malcom was shot and killed trying to cross its threshold twelve years ago. A sniper's bullet found its mark beneath his arm, just under the ribs. In Fallujah there is a building I want to stand on top of.
It was a candy store. The day after Dan was killed, my platoon fought a twelve-hour firefight from its rooftop. That was the worst day of the battle, the largest and bloodiest of the Iraq War. We began the morning with forty-six guys. By nightfall, twenty-five of us were on our feet. That doorway in Fallujah, that rooftopβI remember exactly where they are. Fityan's phone rings, startling him so much that a worm of ash tumbles from his cigarette.
He brushes at the black T-shirt that is snug over his round belly. As he answers Tahrir's call, I try to decode the slushy tonality of Fityan's Arabic. His expression sags as he hears his cousin's report. He tosses his phone onto the coffee table between us. I met Fityan through a friend of mine, an American who used to teach at a university in northern Iraq. He knew Fityan through one of his students, which is to say he hardly knew Fityan at all. Weeks ago, over long-distance Skype calls and emails, Fityan introduced me to Tahrir.
The two of them promised that they could get me into Fallujah, and I've come a long way because of their promises. They're giving you a hard time because you're an American. Our server brings our drinks. Hawre, the photographer assigned to this story, sets down his camera and examines the enormous cup of coffee in front of him.
