Sunrise Over Fallujah: List 7

The kid had been out on the streets of Baghdad past curfew and just disappeared. We were going to search the hospitals, detention centers, and the morgues.

The coalition forces had won the hot war and the newscasts kept telling us that we were in the stabilizing and rebuilding phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom, but the situation was getting hairy.

I couldn’t understand what the Iraqis were about, or what they really wanted. The television coverage showed interviews with them, always men and usually, according to Jamil, Kurds, talking about how glad they were that Saddam Hussein was overthrown.

When the Iraqis were killed it took a while for an ambulance to come and get the body. There would always be other Iraqis around, friends, mourning and crying, sometimes swearing revenge.

The hospital hadn’t been hit during the bombing or in the fighting that followed. But it was shoddy, as far as American standards were concerned, and available only to the richer people.

“So long ago?” the Iraqi answered. “We were overwhelmed during that period. It was all triage—very selective, very much—”
“Check to see if he is here!” Major Sessions interrupted the Iraqi. Her voice was flat, hard.
The Iraqi inhaled sharply, as if he were startled, and nodded. “Of course,” he said. “We will see. Please come with me.”

“So long ago?” the Iraqi answered. “We were overwhelmed during that period. It was all triage—very selective, very much—”
“Check to see if he is here!” Major Sessions interrupted the Iraqi. Her voice was flat, hard.
The Iraqi inhaled sharply, as if he were startled, and nodded. “Of course,” he said. “We will see. Please come with me.”

“None of these bodies have been here that long,” the administrator said, “but since we don’t know if the boy is dead or when he might have died, we can’t tell much from the dates. Please feel free to look around. You can also see how successful the Americans and British have been in dispatching your enemies.”

We did see some horrendous wounds in one of the hospitals. There were men with limbs amputated, the bandages wrapped around the stumps of arms or legs.

We did see some horrendous wounds in one of the hospitals. There were men with limbs amputated, the bandages wrapped around the stumps of arms or legs.

A guy with a cart of fresh fruit came down the street and we stopped him and bought some. Jamil negotiated the price, which must have been pretty good, because after the guy gave us the fruit he was smiling.

We mounted up and Coles said that we were going to go to only one prison.
“When we got here the place was empty and all the cells were open,” the captain that ran the prison said. “The Iraqis had let them all out....Murderers, thieves, lunatics, everything. They let them loose. I guess the theory was that they’d make trouble for us the same way they made trouble for the Iraqis.”

“Can you ID any of them?” Coles asked.
“Most of them,” the captain replied. “They’re people we’ve caught at checkpoints with weapons in their cars, some with RPGs, a few who were looting. We were going to turn the looters over to the Iraqi police, but they didn’t want them.”

The kid that Jamil brought over looked more like twelve than fourteen. He was a slight kid, with big eyes and a broad smile. He was jabbering away in Arabic a mile a minute and Jamil just nodded.

“How did it make you feel when you found Muhammad?” The reporter was wearing his “this is serious” face.
“Pretty good,” Marla said, trying to downplay the whole thing.
“ ‘Pretty good,’ ” the reporter repeated as he turned away from Marla toward the camera. “For American soldiers this rescue mission, reuniting an Iraqi child with his parents, is just part of the day’s work…”