Sandstealers. Ben Brown

the convoy delivered them back to the walled sanctuary of the Hamra, Rachel, Edwin and Kaps agreed they should write about what they’d seen amid the dust and sand at al-Talha: the bullet-ridden car, the bloodstains, the nervy troops who’d only just managed to secure the area. It was the hardest story they’d ever had to file. Should they make it a heart-wrenching account of what had happened to their lost friend Danny, or a conventional report on the missing American citizen Daniel L. Lowenstein, couched as if they’d never met him? They had no doubt which Danny would have chosen: he’d have milked it dry.

      They went to their offices and tapped away at battered laptops. Words that usually rolled off their fingertips were suddenly elusive. Even so, it felt good to be reporting again. Only Becky couldn’t bring herself to return to work. She hadn’t been able to take a single photograph in al-Talha—she hadn’t even taken her cameras—and now she sat in the Presidential Suite, waiting for the phone to ring. For the first time she was alone there and she poured some whisky into a teacup. It was rough, like bad petrol, and it scalded her throat, but she drained it quickly.

      She used to think somebody could just come along and mend her—a shrink, a counsellor, a lover—but now she doubted that anyone could help. She heard a voice she barely recognised emerge from deep inside her, cracked and hoarse:

      ‘Oh sweet Jesus, how did it come to this?’

      Tommy Harper and Munro had announced they were meeting some Sunni tribal ‘contacts’; when Camille asked if she could join them, Munro said that in his experience the presence of a Western woman might make things harder. He was sure she’d understand. Camille was irritated: perhaps she was being oversensitive, but he seemed to regard her as unnecessary baggage to be dumped at the hotel.

      She stood on the terrace where, she’d been told, Danny and the Junkies used to have their poolside parties. She could almost see him amid the creepers and the trellises, his languid body stretched out on a cheap patio chair, reflected in the rippling water. His spirit seemed to stalk the place. She wondered what she would do, what she would say, if she came face to face with him after so many years. For a guilty moment, she felt relieved he wasn’t standing there in front of her.

      She could recall the moment it began, or at least the moment she first noticed. He was 14, she was 17 and their school report cards had both arrived. Hers was average, his was scintillating: top of everything, star pupil of the year, head and shoulders above the rest. When Danny thrust it into his father’s hands, full of expectation, Lukas Lowenstein gave it a glance before tossing it on to the kitchen table. ‘Not bad,’ he said. With Camille’s, Lukas took twice as long, and pulled her to his chest. ‘Well, this is fantastic, honey. I’m so proud of you.’ She looked across the kitchen and Danny’s face had crumpled, with a glistening in his eyes and a chin that quivered. As Danny’s big sister, she was supposed to watch over him, but here she was, if not inflicting pain on him, then colluding in it. She told herself her father was just trying, in his own cackhanded way, to make her feel a little better, but over the years she came to see it as the start of Danny’s punishment.

      It was precocious intelligence that had been his downfall, Camille was sure of that. If only he hadn’t been so damned smart. It was his own fault, in other words—not hers.

      At first, she assumed he’d be their father’s favourite: he was, after all, son and heir to Lowenstein Steel, the small but thriving family firm in Pittsburgh. The more he read and thought about the world, however, the more he challenged Lukas Lowenstein’s politics (conservative Republican), his lifestyle (corporate America) and his religion (Lutheran Church). Danny was too interested for his own good in subversive literature: books that challenged capitalism and tore apart the Bible. He asked too many questions, had too many doubts. She wondered why he couldn’t just read detective stories like all his friends.

      Camille, on the other hand, did everything her father asked of her—she went to church, read her Bible, sang in the choir—while Danny wanted to go to Washington to protest about Vietnam.

      Slowly, inexorably, a wedge was being hammered between the siblings. Lukas spent less and less time with Danny: he couldn’t find anything they had in common. It was Camille, he felt, who really needed his attention.

      As usual, the lift had a sign in English saying’ out of action’, because the power was out of action, because the country was out of action. Camille was about to take the stairs back up to her room when she caught sight of Jamail, the kindly hotel manager who’d been so helpful to her. He was grey-haired and stout, with a flattened nose that had big pores in it, and a slightly crooked back. From the day she arrived, he’d made sure she had everything she needed—phones, faxes and speedy room service. He was the only Iraqi she’d ever talked to properly—albeit in his broken English—and her heart had warmed to him: when there was so much to disorientate her, she found his presence reassuring. He told her Jamail meant ‘charming’, and she decided the name suited him. From what she had heard about her brother’s murdered driver, Jamail and Mohammed were very much the same, both gentle and generous men. True Iraqis.

      He was going through some paperwork at the reception desk when she saw him, occasionally handing out or collecting a room key.

      ‘Ah, Miss Camille, hello!’ He gave her his usual lifting smile. ‘Anything we can do for you?’

      ‘I’m fine, thanks.’

      She could tell he had something on his mind. He was looking around to see who else was in the lobby; no one was, but he lowered his voice anyway.

      ‘I want to say to you, I have friend—Saddoun.’

      ‘Uh-huh?’

      ‘We fight in war together, against Iran. The long, long war. Too long. You hear of Fao Peninsula?’

      ‘Yes, sure.’

      ‘We fight in trench there. Many friends die. Me and Saddoun we okay, thanks be to Allah.’

      Camille wondered how any of this might be relevant to her, but he deserved her patience.

      ‘I get work for him here in hotel. With journalists. Yesterday, his son call me to say Saddoun gone. Disappeared. He hide, afraid for his life.’

      ‘Right.’ There were plenty of frightened people in Iraq, Camille was tempted to say; in fact, very few who were not.

      ‘“Why?” I ask him. “Why disappear?” Because he drive journalist, say his son. He drive one of Mr Daniel’s friends, he say, very best friends. One day only, big money. They shot at, but Saddoun good driver, like racing driver, like Michael Schumacher! He get away. He—how you call it?—he make them feel small. In Iraq that very bad thing, you understand? So he frightened, too much frightened. They know his face, they know car.’