The Quran instructed against women adorning themselves for beauty, but her application of makeup was natural and unnoticeable, or so she hoped. Someday, Leila thought, the world of Arab women would catch up with the rest, and they could all wear beautiful fashions and high-heeled shoes. Until then, Leila’s tiny rebellion was a dash of color on the face beneath her hijab.
She yawned, and stretched, and pulled her long hair into its tight bun to go with the head scarf. It was Thursday, the last day before her weekend. Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays were off, as Friday was the Muslim holy day and Sunday the Christian. Leila was sorry, for her work at the American base meant life had finally taken an interesting turn.
Her first day at the 67th Combat Support Hospital had been like stepping into a small piece of America, fresh and efficient and clean. People—strange men!—shook her hand: the doctors, the nurses, all big smiles and welcomes. The immersion was complete, for there was not another woman in sight wearing the hijab, or a sentence, a word, written in Arabic.
In comparison to most of the hospitals in Mosul, the American facility was large and well equipped, three stories high, with a radiology department, a pharmacy, and an operating room. When she first arrived, Leila had been given the tour by a female army nurse who held the rank of second lieutenant; the woman had been briskly cheerful, full of facts, and with a quick double pat on Leila’s arm, had left her to fend for herself. Overwhelmed, Leila had sat down on a square wooden chair with a black leather cushion and tried to take deep breaths when her new boss showed up.
“Miss al-Ghani?”
Looking up, Leila found a short man with a paunchy middle and thin glasses perched on his nose. She stood. “Yes?”
“Dr. Harding Peabody,” he said, jutting out a hand and giving a quick, tight smile. “You’ll be working with Dr. Whitaker and me in the surgery.”
“Hi,” said Leila, shaking the offered hand. “Fursa saeeda—er, nice to meet you,” she said, flustered that she’d spoken in Arabic first. It would take practice to remember to think and speak in English.
Dr. Peabody told her that she would be working primarily as a medical assistant, but that she would act as a translator whenever there was an Arabic-speaking patient. He explained that it was hospital policy to always keep someone fluent in Arabic on staff. That sounded just fine to Leila; she was glad they needed her particular set of skills.
The rest of the day had been an orientation, but it served more to disorient Leila than anything else. She’d felt on the brink of doing something wrong all day. The soldiers were intimidating; when she and Dr. Peabody visited the main ward, a soldier recovering from a broken ankle had looked Leila up and down, then winked. When he saw the furious blush rise on her face, he’d given her a broad smile. She was not used to innocent flirtation.
However, the staff was understanding (Leila was not, she learned, the first female Iraqi translator to work at the hospital) and the first strange day passed without incident. At the end of it, Leila felt as though a million things had happened, the impressions crowding in around her, so when she arrived home she’d been truly relieved to make the tea, serve the meal, and listen to Fatima chat about the children at the nursery.
Each day at the Combat Support Hospital grew more routine, as Leila’s rational mind told her it would. The mysteries of the American hospital were decoded and Leila began to adjust to the foreign behavior, the laughing nurses, the soldiers who tried to flirt with her. Leila found herself enjoying the job more each day. On the cusp of her third weekend, she had grown to like her job so much that she wished she could work every single day. She was addicted to the thrill of her learning curve in the American hospital.
She descended the staircase when her outfit was in place, modest and decent. Her thick fringe of eyelashes felt like a luxury. “Good morning, Mother,” Leila said, popping into the kitchen for a bite of bread before she went.
“Good morning,” said Umm Naji. “You are up early.”
“I want to get to work on time, and I never know about traffic,” said Leila.
“Leila, do you think you could stay at home a bit more? It’s not safe out there. Surely the pharmacy can spare you. Perhaps work only three days a week.”
“I can’t, Mama,” said Leila.
Umm Naji sighed. “Your father was talking to me again,” she said. “You know that more civilians die every day. There is no law. And the Americans pick up people off the streets! They disappear into the prisons!”
Leila had seen this for herself, the “detainees,” as they were called. Some were guilty of insurgency. Others suffered from sheer bad luck. But they were taken to the military base, then whisked away in unmarked planes that took off from the airstrip, with five or ten or twenty Iraqi passengers who might never again be seen by their families. She ignored the operations for the most part; her job was surgical assistant and translator. When she kept her sphere of attention limited to her duties at the hospital, she slept better at night.
The kettle of water on the gas threatened to boil over, and Umm Naji grabbed a tattered cloth to touch its handle and move it away. “Tea?” she asked.
Leila nodded, and reached up to the top shelf of the cabinet to grab two small clear glasses. She put them on the metal tray, and dropped sprigs of fresh mint into them. Her mother poured the tea, hot and black and sweet.
“You are looking well, Leila,” said Umm Naji, peering at her daughter.
Leila dropped her eyes, praying her mother did not notice the makeup. That would be fatal to her budding career, as Umm Naji would tell Tamir, and then Leila might be banned from leaving the house. “Thank you, Mama,” said Leila. “And Fatima looks well, too.”
“Yes, Fatima,” said Umm Naji. “Today, Khaled’s relatives are coming for tea. I believe they will want to talk to Mr. al-Ghani!” Umm Naji tittered with laughter, rocking in her chair.
Leila sighed with relief. It sounded like the mashaya, when the men in the families met to finalize the wedding plans. If it was, all attention would be on Fatima, and off her. “How exciting!” Leila said, raising her eyebrows and sipping the tea that cooled in her glass.
“It is,” said Umm Naji. She laughed to herself and said, not unkindly, “Maybe someday soon, we will have good news for you, Leila.”
Leila glanced at her watch. “Oh! I must go.” She leapt up and kissed Umm Naji on the cheek. Umm Naji waved her off, in jolly spirits, and Leila slipped out of the house unnoticed by her father.
The month of December was cold in Mosul. The air would not warm up until midday, and even then it would be tepid sunshine, kept in check by the breeze sweeping down from the mountains. Leila’s breath fogged about her as she pedaled her bicycle down the fine paved road. She hoped the road stayed intact and that the mujahideen had the sense not to destroy it with IEDs. It was such a joy to feel the tires of the bicycle clip along the smooth surface.
Once she entered into the rabbit warren of old city streets, Leila had to slow her pace and ring her bell to warn pedestrians of her passage. The gentle ding of her bicycle bell sounded over and over, merging with the goats’ bells and the car horns and the clatter of the city morning. A large truck rumbled past, spewing toxic black clouds from its dripping exhaust pipes, and Leila coughed. Mingled with the chemical scents were the earthy odors of trampled, stale animal dung; the succulent roasting of meat, already turning round and round in the shwarma stands; and the deep rich wafts of coffee from the roadside, where old men stood next to tall gleaming Turkish coffeepots. She turned down a random street that would take her on a new route to the Al-Razi Hospital.
Every morning she left her bicycle chained up to the metal rack outside the big concrete building. She walked a block, went past a security checkpoint, and waited for the bulky square minibus to