1.

Sergeants Conner and Adams stared into the caged waiting area at the group of haggard men. 

Conner, shielding his eyes from the morning sun, pointed at the youngest-looking guy in the group. Maybe thirteen or fourteen years old. He had shoes on and seemed strong enough. “You speak English?” Conner asked the boy through the wire mesh.

“A little bit.”

The sergeant mimed digging a ditch. “You good with a shovel?”

“Yes, mister,” the boy said. “Very good.”

“You bring a lunch?”

The boy gestured to a bearded man rubbing his brow with a checkered scarf. The man held a grocery bag and a cracked plastic thermos. “My father,” the boy said. “He has lunch.”

“Perfect,” Conner said. “You guys are in.” He pointed at the fellow scribbling on a clipboard—a civilian contractor wearing a company shirt, khaki cargos, and wraparound sunglasses. “Talk to him. He’ll help you fill out the paperwork.”

“My brother can come too?”

“Sure,” Conner said. “Why not.”

***

Soldiers had come from all parts of Camp Anaconda seeking laborers. About a hundred Iraqis were lined up outside the sprawling airbase’s chain-link fence, its razor wire crown stretching along the perimeter in a jagged, silver coil. Two US Army gunners in Humvee turrets sat in the shade of palm trees, observing the assembly, while several more gazed down from guard towers. An Arab man translated instructions for the Iraqis through a bullhorn. A few privates wearing latex gloves frisked the men as, one by one, they were allowed through the gate. After getting vetted, the soldiers pointed them toward the waiting area.

***

Conner and Adams chose twelve guys. They needed laborers for hootch fortification. Sitting in tight rows spanning a couple of acres, the housing units resembled the sort of steel shipping containers that populate a trainyard or a port. Their sides were protected by ten-foot concrete blast walls and dirt-filled Hesco barriers, but their roofs were naked, susceptible to the insurgency’s mortar and rocket attacks. The plan was to layer sandbags two feet deep on an expansive, overhead platform—build an enormous shield of dirt.

The Iraqis filled sandbags all morning. The men labored until the sun became intolerable and Conner called lunchbreak. Everyone moved to the shade of the blast walls to sit and eat. There, the boy, who introduced himself as Gabir, offered the sergeants tea. Sergeant Adams accepted, Conner didn’t.

Adams sipped the warm, sweet drink while Gabir asked questions about his rifle and the equipment covering his flak vest: his knife, earplugs, ammunition, zip cuffs.

“What is this?” Gabir asked, pointing at the chain around Adams’s neck.

Adams pulled his ID tags from his shirt. “It’s my name and other important stuff. If someone finds me, dead or whatever, they’ll know who I am.”

“You love Jesus?” Gabir was looking at the gold cross dangling from the chain.

“I’m not religious. It’s just something my mom gave me.”

Conner, with his mouth full of ham sandwich, chimed in: “Do you love Muhammad, kid?”

“Muhammad is good,” Gabir said, “but I am stronger.” He flexed a skinny muscle at the teenager wearing a shirt with the words “HEAVY METAL” printed above a V-shaped electric guitar, eliciting a chuckle from the other workers. Gabir said to the sergeants, “He is my brother. He is called Muhammad.”

“I see what you did there,” Conner said. “You’re a joker.”

“A joker?”

Adams said, “He means you’re a funny guy.”

Gabir agreed. He liked that description.

Adams pointed at the purple furrow on Gabir’s hand. “Where did your scar come from?”

Gabir threw his arms out and made an explosion sound through his teeth. “Big bomb,” he said. “No good.”

“Man,” Adams said, “that sucks.”

***

After lunch, Adams called the men over to an arc welder, which was plugged into a loud, shuddering generator. Almost five hundred steel brackets needed to get welded to half as many I-beams. These lengths, along with a tractor trailer load of plywood, would make up the sandbag platform, which had to be strong enough to support many tons.

Adams put on shaded goggles and leather gloves, then turned up the voltage dial on the machine. The smell of ozone and fuel wafted in the dry air as he tinkered with the outdated equipment.

He yelled over the generator: “Anyone ever use one of these?”

The men eyed the setup. One shouted something in Arabic and the others laughed.

“I don’t know what you’re saying,” Adams yelled. “Just watch me run through the process ...  but don’t stare at the flash.” He tapped the goggles bugging from his face. “Unless you have these on, you could go blind.”

The men watched through their fingers as he sparked two decent welding joints, affixing a bracket to a rusty, orange beam.

Adams removed the gloves and goggles and held them out. “Who wants to try?”

Muhammad volunteered. Adams set him up to practice on a couple of scrap pieces, then showed the others how to prep the beams. When he returned to the boy, he found he had already made six clean welding beads.

“Damn!” Adams said, unable to break apart the pieces. “You should be the teacher.”

For the next half hour, Muhammad stayed hunched over the hot blue spark, welding one bracket after another.

“Look at this rock star!” Conner yelled when he saw the boy’s work. He said something about giving him a raise, but it got lost in the noise.

***

Trucks, planes, helos, generators—the place was one big cacophony of engines. It smelled like it too, guzzling fuel nonstop. Smoke from the burn pit—where all the camp’s trash went—only made it worse. Depending on the wind’s direction, you might catch a whiff of melting plastic, cooking tires, or some oily chemical odor. Then there was the dust—the smell of an old, un-swept warehouse. The tan powder covered all surfaces, always threatening to gum up whatever was needed most in a dire situation: electronic equipment, propellers, rifles. Relief didn’t come till December, when the winter rains finally rinsed things off and turned down the heat. The price for this, however, was mud-caked boots, the bane of all Camp Anaconda inhabitants.

***

Something on the ground caught Gabir’s attention: a cigar butt. He left the shade of the blast wall, where everyone stood taking a water break, and snatched it up. A broken lawn chair lay beside a dumpster. Gabir retrieved it and placed it before the men. Grinning, he dropped into its canted seat and pretended to puff the cigar. Then, laughing like a mad king, he jabbed his finger toward the sand pile, toward the portable bunker, toward the burn pit smoke hanging in the sky, yapping nonsense commands in a mix of Arabic and English.

“Is he making fun of us?” Adams asked Conner.

“Hell if I know.”

A few Iraqis ventured guesses at Gabir’s subject, like a game of charades.

When Gabir finished, Adams clapped, which prompted the boy to take a bow. “So who was it?”

Gabir shrugged. “Saddam, Little Bush, Shahryar ...”

“I don’t know that last one,” Conner said, “but I know the other two.”

“Give this guy a degree,” Adams said, whacking his colleague on the helmet.

Conner flipped him the bird.

Gabir folded his arms and leaned against the wall beside the sergeants.

“You really are a funny guy,” Adams said. “You should come to the United States to be a comedian.”

“Okay!” Gabir said. “I will come.”

***

Soldiers called the airbase “Mortaritaville.” It was known for offering the best amenities in Iraq (only the Green Zone compared), while also sustaining daily mortar attacks. There was a theater with an outdoor movie screen. The screen, however, had recently caught a mortar and now a crater marred its white, concrete surface. There was a well-stocked PX—protein powder, DVDs, and tobacco galore—with a coffeeshop that could whip up a respectable caramel latté. But two soldiers and three Raytheon contractors eating at the outdoor picnic tables, a popular hangout, had recently gotten killed during a dinnertime attack. Now patrons treated the PX like a convenience store: in and out. The overly-chlorinated pool with a two-story high dive, where Iraqi Olympians supposedly used to train, was another hot spot for the camp’s thousands of service members. That hadn’t been hit yet—but several close calls indicated that insurgents were working to dial it in.

***

In the late afternoon, a siren blared, followed by a robotic voice bleating from a loud speaker: “Incoming, incoming.”

“Get in the bunker!” Conner yelled, waving everyone toward the concrete tunnel.

The workers dropped their shovels and ran. One man slipped on the gravel. Conner pulled him up and got him moving.

Thud. Thud. Thud. Three blasts—large mortars—sounded from deep within the camp. Only a few guys had made it inside before they struck. If the insurgents had dropped a round on the worksite, most of the men—the sergeants included—would have been pulverized.

Everyone sat on the dirt floor of the hot enclosure awaiting the “all-clear” announcement. Adams pulled a notepad from his hip pocket and reviewed the sergeant major’s construction notes. Conner loosened his flak vest and rolled up his sleeves. He took out a packet of MRE orange drink, poured it into a water bottle, and shook it up. He chugged the whole pint in one go.

Gabir eyed the tattoos covering Conner’s arm. “What is this?” he asked, pointing to a demonic, flaming skull.

“That’s some scary shit, right?”

Gabir smiled. He pointed to another, a square of seven diagonal stripes, alternating in blue and white.

“That’s a broken TV,” Conner said.

“TV,” Gabir repeated. “Movies? Indiana Jones, yeah?”

Conner said, “Yeah, but now I’m a joker. It’s actually the Third Infantry Division’s patch. My old unit. Meanest in the army. On my first deployment, the invasion, we got to Baghdad first.”

“Oh ... Baghdad,” Gabir said.

Everyone jumped when four low-pitched explosions, US artillery counterfire, thundered in the distance. The ground trembled. Some of the Iraqis shielded their heads.

“It’s okay,” Conner said, his voice reverberating off the bunker walls. “Those are our guns.”

Twenty minutes passed. Outside, the generator puttered to a stop. Now they could hear the chuf-chuf-chuf of a distant helicopter—probably inspecting the artillery’s work, their destruction of the mortar launch site and any insurgents who hadn’t already fled.

Conner noticed that Gabir’s father had a sandal off and was wrapping his scarf around his foot.

“What’s wrong with him?” Conner asked Gabir.

“My father hurts.”

The man unwrapped his foot and showed the sergeant.

“I’ve got just the thing,” Conner said, reaching into his grenade pouch. He pulled out a bottle of Motrin.

Gabir held out his father’s hand. Conner tapped out two pills. The man popped them into his mouth and patted the sergeant’s knee in thanks.

Soon after, the loudspeaker announced “all clear.”

“Damn,” Conner said, tightening his vest. “Breaktime’s over already.” He said to Gabir, “Tell your father to go easy on that foot, okay?”

***

The sergeants were surprised when a public affairs officer stopped by the site. She was writing a story for the Anaconda newspaper on the camp’s construction projects, and she wanted to interview them.

Adams gave her a tour of the site. At the welding station, he said, “They’re all hard workers, ma’am. But this one”—he paused to wave the smoky fumes from his face—“I want him to come to the States to work on my Camaro.”

The officer took notes and snapped photos. She asked the Iraqis to line up beside the pyramid of sandbags they had filled. She called the sergeants into the frame. Their rifles slung across their chests, they kept their shades on and they didn’t smile.

Afterward, Adams asked, “Can I get a copy of that photo, ma’am?”

“Sure,” she said. “What’s your email?”

Adams gave her his personal address.

“Sorry, dungeon master, but let’s use your army account instead.”

Blushing, Adams gave her his “us.army.mil” email.

“I’ll send it tomorrow,” she said. Then she waved goodbye to the Iraqis, speaking in Arabic, “Sukran gazilan!”

The men returned the salutation. “Afwan.”

After the officer left, Gabir asked Adams, “She is your wife?”

“Her?” Adams said, laughing. “No.”

“Your wife is at your house?” Gabir asked, pointing at the hootches.

“My wife is seven-thousand miles away. In Pittsburgh.”

“Pit-bars?”

Having no better reference, Adams said, “Near New York City.”

“Oh!” Gabir said, nodding. “New York City.”

Out of nowhere, Gabir’s father limped over and, in a hoarse and wheezy voice, started lecturing his son. When Gabir shook his head and turned away, the man threw down his shovel and clasped his hands together to help make his point.

“What is your father saying?” Adams asked.

“He says too many questions. No good.”

“It’s okay,” Adams said, waving his hands before the bearded man. “Gabir, tell your father I like you. I like the questions.”

Gabir’s father wouldn’t hear it. Muttering to himself, he snatched up his shovel and went back to the sand. Hobbling on his injured foot and huffing, he jabbed the tool into the pile and tossed scoopfuls toward a co-worker, who did his best to catch them with a bag.

For the last hour of work, Gabir stayed quiet.

***

At 1700, the sergeants loaded the spent workers into the bed of a deuce-and-a-half cargo truck and drove them back to the gate. The civilian contractor paid the men, cash in hand, before they exited the camp. Some greeted ramshackle vehicles waiting to take them home to Balad. Others, including Gabir and Muhammad, started down the craggy road on foot (their father, thankfully, had a ride). The sergeants watched as the boys passed under the guard towers and beyond the road barricades, walking into the sun.

“You wouldn’t catch me dead traveling that highway without a weapon,” Conner said before going to start the truck.

Adams stood hypnotized. He followed the boys’ silhouettes as they receded into the flat, dusty farmlands. He took off his shades, and the glassy road blinded him. His eyes adjusted in time to see the brothers disappear around a bend, heading north through the orchards. He kept staring, as if taken by a mirage. Then, snapping out of it, he put his shades back on and went to meet up with Conner.

2.

Over the next few weeks, mortar attacks fell off. The drudgery, however, hardly changed.

One afternoon, as the men were downloading a shipment of fresh plywood, Adams got an idea. His wife’s birthday was next month and he needed a gift.

“Can you get me one of these?” Adams asked Gabir, pointing to the sweat-drenched scarf wrapped around his father’s head.

“Keffiyeh?” Gabir asked, out of breath.

“The scarf, yeah.” Adams took out his wallet and handed Gabir thirty dollars. “You can keep the change,” he said.

Gabir squinted at Adams. He looked at the money.

“Do you understand?”

Gabir explained that he could buy one at the Balad market that evening, but he didn’t know if he could get a ride there.

“Here’s another ten,” Adams said. “Get a taxi.”

Gabir said, okay, he would do it.

Adams was stoked. Back in Pittsburgh, his wife was a performer, a singer-songwriter. The scarf was the kind of accessory she often wore on stage. He could picture it tied loosely around her smooth and slender neck, her dark hair in a bun, as she played her cello and sang his favorite song of hers. The perfect gift. Their marriage might survive this deployment after all.

***

Gabir did not come with a scarf the next day. At the gate, he signed in with the contractor and went straight to the truck, avoiding Adams. At the worksite, when the sergeant inquired about the scarf, Gabir seemed more interested in the birds hopping around the dumpster. He said he couldn’t get to the market.

“I thought you’d get a taxi,” Adams said.

Gabir shrugged. “No taxi.”

“What do you mean?”

Gabir couldn’t find the words. He stammered, then repeated that he couldn’t get a taxi.

Adams was puzzled by Gabir’s elusiveness. He again asked for clarification.

Gabir could only promise that he would get his scarf. “Maybe tomorrow, maybe two days.”

The boy didn’t say much as he shouldered sandbags up ramps all morning. Muhammad wasn’t himself either. He fumbled the welds on several beams, forcing the men working on the roofs to carry the pieces back down for re-fitting.

At lunch, Adams asked Gabir if they were okay.

“Yes, okay,” Gabir said. He took a sip of tea, glanced at Muhammad and their father, then said, “Maybe not okay.”

With help from a worker who spoke better English, Gabir explained that two nights ago a neighbor, a family friend, had gone missing. The old man went to bed, and he was gone in the morning. Disappeared. Worried about the situation, concerned for their friend’s safety and also their own, the brothers and their parents had been up late strategizing.

“Well, I hope you and your family get some sleep tonight,” Adams said, gazing up at the smoggy sky. He was trying to locate the source of the low-pitched humming sound. Then he spotted it: a Reaper drone, flying east toward the Tigris, the reedy expanse just beyond the fence.

Adams turned to Gabir, who was staring at him. He said, “I hope your neighbor comes home safe.”

***

The internet café, the tent where Adams later went to call his wife, was at capacity. Some thirty service members sat at makeshift plywood desks, typing emails and talking quietly into headsets. Adams signed the list to use a phone and stood in the waiting area, surrounded by op-sec posters warning him that the enemy could be listening. On the floor, someone had left an opened care package, its contents free for the taking, but it had already been picked over. What remained were peppermint candies, a few copies of The Purpose Driven Life, a stuffed animal wearing an Operation Iraqi Freedom T-shirt, some mini camouflage Bibles. Everything smelled like the bars of motel soap that were getting knocked around each time someone pawed through the box. Adams wondered if the Iraqis might want the candy or the soap, but he didn’t want to risk offending them.

A phone opened up. Having exactly ten minutes to use it, Adams dropped his notepad and pen on the desk, slid his rifle and helmet under his chair, and quickly input the numbers off his phone card.

There was no ring. His wife’s voice simply materialized: “Hello?”

“Hey, Shyla, how are you?”

“Geri, hey. I’m doing okay.” Shyla sounded distorted and echoey, like she was in a cathedral. “How about you?”

“Okay,” Adams said. “I’m alive.”

“That’s good news.”

They talked about Shyla’s college classes. And they talked about her recent gig at a small Pittsburgh theater, which was well-attended. Listening to Shyla go on about the encore, Adams imagined her getting on a tour bus while he stayed home to mow the grass.

“Wow,” he heard himself say after she finished sharing her news, “that’s so awesome. I’m happy for you.”

“If you were here it’d be a whole lot sweeter.”

“Aww,” Adams said, realizing he had just scribbled an “X” through the cover of his notepad. “I got you a birthday present. I think you’ll like it.”

“Well, don’t tell me what it is, Geri.”

“I won’t. The story behind where I got it is pretty good though.”

He waited for Shyla to express interest, but she didn’t, so he went right into it: “Every day, Iraqis come to the camp to fill sandbags, clean port-a-johns, haul materials—do general labor stuff. Hardest workers I’ve ever met. Good guys. I’ve sort of befriended a few.”

Adams paused. “Shyla, you there?”

“Yeah,” she said, her voice still colored by the reverb effect. “You cut out for a sec, but I’m listening.”

Adams talked about the mortar attacks, joking with the Iraqis, the conversations in broken English. He talked about Gabir and Muhammad. Shyla didn’t say anything.

“Shyla?”

“Yeah, I’m here,” she said. “The whole thing sounds, I don’t know … weird.”

“Why?”

“In American Lit we just covered colonialism—”

“I know what that is,” Adams interjected, “and it’s not that.”

Shyla had been dropping -isms into their conversations for months now. Adams tried to write down the word, so he could look it up later, but “COL” was as far as he got. He tossed his pen aside and sat up.

“It’s not?” Shyla asked.

“They get paid,” he said, stumbling into an answer. “They need the work. They come every morning and they—”

click

“Shyla?”

Had she hung up on him? Had he pissed her off?

Then he realized what had happened: Intel monitored all personal calls to ensure service members didn’t reveal anything mission-compromising—for the enemy could be listening. Someone had cut them off.

“Man, come on!” Adams said into the receiver. “That wasn’t sensitive information.”

No one responded. There was a tapping noise and soft static. Then nothing.

***

The following day, Gabir, Muhammad, and their father did not show for work. None of the Iraqis had any idea where they were. Adams kept the crew waiting at the gate for half an hour.

“They probably just took the day off,” Conner said to Adams, as they sat in the truck watching a convoy of tanks rumble through the exit gate.

Workers had, of course, cycled in and out of the group, one or two each day. It was hard to keep track of who was coming and going.

***

A few days passed and the brothers and their father still hadn’t returned.

One night, with the entire camp blacked out for security reasons, the sergeants stood on Conner’s roof with their gear and shirts off, sharing a pack of cigarettes and watching the stars. Just a couple hundred yards away, the burn pit fumed, its mounds of trash ablaze or smoldering. Sometimes the wind would shift a little, carrying the smoke to their nostrils.

It had been a long, hot week, and both sergeants were grouchy and exhausted.

“I’m telling you to be realistic,” Conner said to Adams. “They probably didn’t come back because they wanted to keep your cash.”

“Nah, I don’t think so,” Adams said. “It was only forty bucks.”

“That’s a week’s wages for them.”

“Maybe,” Adams said. “But it’s not enough money for all three to quit coming.”

“The work sucks. I’d quit if I were them.”

“You really think they have other employment options?”

Conner took a drag off his cigarette, cupping the cherry to hide its light, and exhaled into the stale desert air. “Probably not.”

“And what about their missing neighbor? Don’t you think that could have something to do with this?”

“That’s above my paygrade,” Conner retorted. “Maybe they’ll come back, maybe they won’t. Can we talk about something else?”

The sergeants watched a group of soldiers back a truck up to the burn pit and dump their haul. Whatever they offloaded caused a flare up, silhouetting them in a hellish orange glow as they retreated from the flames.

Adams was still trying to remember the word Shyla had used. Colonel-ism? Was that it?

Conner said, “Maybe it’s a sign from God.”

“What, the burn pit?”

“No. The fact that the kid didn’t bring your gift.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Maybe giving your wife a haji scarf for her birthday is a bad idea.” 

Adams readied his fist.

Conner quipped, “Some jody might pick her up after a gig if you don’t get her something nicer.”

“Kiss my sweaty ass.”

“Really? That’s all you got?”

Adams punched his colleague in the arm, causing Conner to drop his cigarette over the side of the hootch.

“Damn, dude,” Conner said after a coughing fit, “that hurt.”

Adams passed Conner the pack of Miami’s and gave him a light. He said, “If you didn’t have a Frankenstein face and you could actually find a mate, what would you get her for her birthday?”

Conner laid his hand on Adams’ bare shoulder and squeezed. “Exercise equipment,” he said. “Can’t go wrong.”

Adams removed Conner’s sweaty hand and fired off a couple more insults.

Conner said, “I sleep just fine.”

***

Sergeant Major changed the plan. He now thought it would take three feet of sandbags to stop a mortar. The support structure would need more beams to carry the extra weight. The job would be extended by three weeks, maybe more.

“Christ!” Conner said to Adams after they left Sergeant Major’s office. “This is not what I signed up for. I’m not a fobbit. I’m an infantryman, goddammit. I’m supposed to be outside the wire, kicking in doors, returning fire.”

“I don’t like it either,” Adams said. “But I wouldn’t test fate by asking for IED duty now. We’ve got three months left over here. At this point, I’m doing everything I can to go home—with both of my arms and legs attached.”

“Seriously? What kind of attitude is that?”

“A sane one.”

“Sanity could get you killed just the same.”

***

Two weeks after Gabir and his family disappeared, a new worker, a tall man in traditional dress, approached Adams and, without a word, handed him something—what looked like a book wrapped in a brown paper bag. Adams had never seen this man before, so he hesitated before accepting it. When he felt the softness of the contents, however, he knew what it was.

“Holy shit,” Adams said, pulling out a new red and white checkered scarf. The Iraqi—who wore a similar scarf atop his head—chuckled as the sergeant unpeeled the cellophane wrapper and ran his fingers over the cloth’s delicate embroidery. Adams looked up. “Where is Gabir?”

“No English,” the man said, his gray-tinged moustache all but concealing his lips.

Adams repeated the question slowly, raising his voice as if the man were merely hearing impaired: “Do you know where Gabir is?”

The Iraqi could only emphasize that he didn’t speak English.

Conner watched from the driver’s seat of the truck. “Load up!” he shouted out the window, breaking Adams’s spell. “Paradise awaits.”

Adams again thanked the Iraqi, who gave the sergeant a friendly pat on the shoulder pad of his body armor before climbing into the truck bed.

Adams put the scarf back in the wrapper and gently slid it into his cargo pocket. He didn’t want it to get wrinkled or dirty before sending it home to his wife.

***

“Dude, those things are a dime a dozen,” Conner said, talking over the diesel’s grumbling engine as they rolled down Anaconda’s main drag. “Any market in Iraq will sell you one, cheap. You need to get outside the wire more.”

“Why are you such a buzzkill?”

“Because we’re in a combat zone, sergeant. Stay alert, stay alive. Don’t forget that any of these guys”—he thumbed toward the back—“could be informants for the insurgency.”

“Come on. You really believe that?”

“Damn straight.”

Conner down-shifted to stop behind a bus letting off a group of third country nationals—probably from Nepal or India—at the PX. Judging by their food service uniforms, the workers were headed to the Cinnabon and Burger King trailers.

“What’s your MOS?” Conner asked, driving on.

“14 Juliet,” Adams said. “Radar operator.”

“I rest my case. If you were infantry, you’d understand.”

“You’ve done the same shitty jobs as me this deployment.”

That shut Conner up. He eventually blurted out a comeback, something about earning his combat patch during the invasion, but Adams let it go.

At the worksite, Conner dropped the tailgate and, helping the Iraqis download, said to Adams, “I’m surprised the kid sent the scarf. I figured you had wasted forty bucks.”

“I know,” Adams said, watching the tall man climb down from the bed. “This guy here is my new friend.”

The man gave the sergeants a little wave, then followed the other workers to the sandpile.

“Man, I hope Gabir and Muhammad are okay,” Adams said.

Conner shrugged.

***

Adams needed to settle the matter. He knew if he didn’t, it would weigh on him for a long time. He had to know what had happened to the missing Iraqis.

Thankfully, one of the better English-speaking workers had come that day. During the morning water break, Adams asked him to translate for the tall man, whose name he learned was Kassim. The worker rolled his eyes, but he agreed.

The two men squatted and spoke in Arabic, while Adams, with his rifle in his lap, sat on his helmet across from them, listening. After their brief exchange, the interpreter, in his gruff voice told Adams, “Gabir and his family have left Balad. They went north.”

“What else does he know?”

The Iraqis conferred for a long moment. Finally, the interpreter looked at Adams and said, “That is all.”

“Come on,” Adams said. “That can’t be all. When did Gabir give Kassim the scarf?”

“The keffiyeh?”

“Yes, the keff-ee-yah,” Adams said, attempting the pronunciation.

The interpreter asked Kassim, then responded, “Two days ago.”

“Okay,” Adams said, “that’s something. So why did they quit coming to work? And why did they leave Balad?”

Conner interrupted, “He said he doesn’t know, Sergeant Adams. Let it go. You got your damn scarf.”

Adams waved his colleague away.

The interpreter said, “Gabir and his family will not come back here.”

“Well, I guess that settles it,” Conner said, crushing his empty water bottle and tossing it toward the dumpster. He stood and announced: “The sand awaits, my friends.”

But Adams wouldn’t let it go. “You can’t tell me why?” he asked the interpreter.

“Mister. We can tell you no more.”

“All right, I get it,” Adams said. But he wanted to say one last thing. He took off his shades and leaned closer. “Can you give a message to Gabir?”

The interpreter relayed the request to Kassim, and both Iraqis chuckled.

Adams asked what was so funny.

“A message,” the interpreter said, ignoring the question. “Yes, of course.”

“I’d appreciate it,” Adams said, smiling as if he were in on the joke. “Please tell Gabir that Sergeant Adams is happy that he and his family are okay. Thank him for the scarf—the keffiyeh.” He looked down at the gravel and added, “Tell him that he’s welcome at my place in the United States, in Pittsburgh, anytime.” Adams turned to the surrounding workers, who were leaning on their shovels, watching. “All of you guys,” he said, opening his arms to the group, “are welcome at my place, anytime.”

The interpreter, in a dramatic voice, translated the invite for the men. Adams expected an enthusiastic response, but no one so much as grinned. Kassim laid his wrinkled hand on Adams’ knuckles and thanked him through the interpreter, while the others drifted away to fill sandbags.

***

Shyla received the keffiyeh just before her birthday. She emailed Adams a selfie of her wearing it with her black peacoat, which he promptly printed out and taped up in his hootch. In her message, she said she liked it. But, after getting out of the army and moving home to Pittsburgh, Adams never saw her wear it—on stage or anywhere. Nor did he ever ask her about it, fearing what she might say. After they divorced a year later, he found the keffiyeh buried in a box of clothes and jewelry she returned to him.