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.
