This is a work of fiction and accordingly is not realistic about Iraqis and Japanese. However, it is influenced by manga about modern day warrior women.
"What is it about America that scares me?" asked Sayyid, looking at me through the rear view mirror of his old Buick. We were speeding down a street thick with Iraqi men and women.
It was over a decade after George W. Bush's invasion back in March of 2003. On this particular day, a hot April morning in the year 2014, I was one of the first migrant workers to arrive by El Air from Haifa, returning after a previous stint as military nurse working with Iraqi medical staff.
Only a week ago, President Hilary Clinton had signed executive order pulling out troops from the occupation army left in Baghdad after the official coalition pull-out four years ago on November 12, 2010.
In those four years, the US made good its promise under former President Bush to hand over control to an Iraqi parliament fully under its thumb.
Baath subversives had been selectively culled over the past five years, rounded up into American-run interrogation camps. Nominally Baath Muslims and Baaths with a noticeably violent reaction to seemingly oppressive military occupation were placed together, resulting in only a handful of the uncommitted 'converting' to an Islamic fundamentalism that combined a fear mongering regarding Jewish conspiracies with a rigid mindset that negated the open-minded optimism of Sufi reforms.
Sayyid dodges a bearded man to back up on the curb of the road, shock leaving him mute while his fellow country men and women chant.
"Hilary!"
"No, how does America scare you?" I ask, grinning. Sayyid smiles broadly.
"I need not say. The crowd says who my heart fears most."
"Why, Sayyid? It was Bush who ruined Iraq and readied it while you were a child. Don't you fear the Bushes?"
"Yes, but when we asked to nationalize our oil and he refused, he sealed his fate. We had to use democracy in America to lobby earnestly for change."
I pondered Sayyid's word in momentary silence.
"The crowd is too thick." He shifted the old car into park, and then turned off the ignition. The Buick was black, the windows tinted gray.
"It is ok, Sayyid. Please tell me why you fear Hilary."
Sayyid smile, but kept his silence closed behind gold-fleck teeth.
"She has mastered Arabic and knows the Koran well, it is true." The young Iraqi stopped grinning, his dark face wrinkling into a scowl.
"But all this business wasn't stopped by her husband Bill when he came to power."
Instead, there were rumors the US military built biochem warfare munitions and sold it to Iraq via middlemen, at first openly when George Bush Sr. was CIA chief, and perhaps secretly during later administrations.
That was what had lost Iraq's confidence since every bomb meant less money to take care of children, the elderly and especially women.
Yet Hilary's administration supported a pull-out and worked towards that goal.
Saying as much, Sayyid merely said "Hilary wants the best for us."
"Why fear her?"
Shrugging his muscular shoulders, the Iraqi smiled.
"I know that this is sexist," he said, looking me in the eye. "She is a strong woman, but we Iraqi men fear her power over us because we have to treat her like an equal in a country where Baath influence has evaporated leaving a dirty feeling about women leading men."
I looked at Sayyid, and smiled. "I guess you hate women being on top, too."
Laughing, Sayyid replied "Not if she's my wife and emancipated." He winked at me.
With my left hand I reached out and put it on his shoulder.
In Iraqi, I said sweetly "So, let's get to the priest to bless this marriage, my dearest."
"Yes, my dear Sachiko!"
We drove slowly through Baghdad, following the crowds of people. To any prying eyes, they only saw a fellow Iraqi driving an Iraqi car with a woman in the familiar hajib, her face hidden as is the custom for unmarried Muslim women. When anyone threatening edged closer than comfortable, Sayyid would scowl and touch the Ruger in his lap.
Once a disheveled man, his beard spotted with gray and his eyes wild, rapped on the passenger window to attract my attention. Though my head dropped to my lap, Sayyid caught the bearded man's eye. Then he fingered his Ruger. When I looked up, no one was there.
"I would feel safer when we make it to the government office, my love."
Smiling broadly, Sayyid clasped my hand, his first firm affection semi-privately displayed outside of our apartments in the dormitory inside the Baghdad hospital compound.
A young girl in Western attire watched us through the front windshield, her eyes taking us both in. As we drove by, she flashed the sign for victory. Sayyid stopped the car and backed up. "That's the signal."
He cracked the window open, and shouted.
"Pardon Miss!" he said. "I'm taking my betrothed to the government office for official matrimony. Are you our guide?"
The girl smiled, and crowded close to his window. Men, who should have tried to attract her attention, and perhaps drag here away, never appeared. Instead, Sayyid waited for the crowd of men and women to thin out and motioned the girl to get in beside me.
"Hello, I am Aisha," she said, in Darmune dialect. "One of the moderns." As she turned to hug me in greeting, I noticed a small Roxana handgun, made of gray ceramics, gas-powered, popular among the young women.
"Sachiko," I murmured, only to see her eyes light up in surprise.
"My cousin, how is it that a foreigner has caught your heart?" she said, abruptly, her face a mirror of Sayyid’s scowl.
"My beloved was a nurse at the hospital in 2005."
For a moment Aisha's scowl became a puzzled frown. "Cousin, I was only a child then..."
"Think back, Aisha. You two have met."
Slowly, the young girl's frown melted into a smile.
"Saichi?" she said, warily. I squeezed her hand, smiling, tears in my eyes.
"Ai-chan, I am back."
It's funny how memories come back to tell us something about the past, especially warm ones.
Months after I fell for Sayyid, he'd taken me on the only visit to his village near Fallujah, where the Darmune tribe had achieved total dominance over the past 1000 years through revenge killings and technically illegal activities. That a doctor was once a thug is in itself a miraculous story. Even more stranger is that the doctor is so well respected in Fallujah of 2005 that he can escort a foreigner, female and under threat by violence by citizen and American troops. Yet I was young but not naive.
A child of eight had greeted us, and peppered me all kinds of questions. My grasp of Iraqi was inadequate then. Still, we bonded, Aisha and me.
As long as I wore the clothes other Iraqi women wore, my foreignness was hidden. Muteness and occasional Japanese exclamations could be explained as being simply mad. She taught me much of the Iraqi I needed to deal with Iraqi nurses and with vendors outside the hospital compound.
"Saichi-chan, my friend, I missed you. Because of our previous bond nine years ago, I regret my earlier outburst."
"Aisha-chan, I too missed you. Let's make today another adventure."
Sayyid smiled, and for a moment his face was free of scowls. Then the facade returned, his scowl matched by his right hand moving towards his gun.
"We're here. The marriage office."
To Aisha, he asked, "The priest is aware of Saichi not being Darmune, nor of any tribe?"
"He only cares for the American dollars to grease his palm, cousin." She smirked, and winked at me.
"Saichi-chan, has your dear Sayyid trained you with a Roxana?"
It was my turn to smirk, and rather than answer, I placed Aisha's hand on my right thigh, to feel the tanto in its sheath.
"Oh what good is a big knife with an AK-47 pointed at you?"
"Aisha-chan, you'd be surprised of my surgical precision!"
After the wedding we went out separate ways. Aisha melted into the crowd of roving men and women. We managed to get back to the hospital before Dyncorp mercs came on duty for the dusk to dawn shift. The UN observer troops nodded to us. At least one of them could credit either of us with saving their hides after a fire-fight with rebel troops who strayed too far from Fallujah.
Morning caught us in the operation theatre attending to another casualty of the civil war now dying out. Hilary might scare Sayyid, but to me she symbolizes a new way with the world. It's doubtful what she'd make of a Japanese nurse who's as handy with a tanto blade as with the autoclave.
After surgery, Sayyid takes me into his arms. "Well done, nurse!" he says. He smiles broadly, looking into my eyes.
"Now that we are husband and wife, my love, am I merely your nurse?" I ask.
"In the hospital, yes. As for our home in the dorm..."
My breath catches at the implication of his promises.
Later that night, I lay there as Sayyid snores. His trusty Ruger is on his nightstand, my tanto under my pillow. Outside, the gunfire is faint. More casualties in the morning, hopefully the blood bank will be resupplied...
Then my thoughts return to Hilary and what Sayyid said about her.
I know what scares Sayyid, but the only thing that scares me is losing Sayyid. With our security precautions makeshift and mainly for our peace of mind, we rely on corporate mercenaries at night time inside the compound with the UN troops guarding the perimeter.
No one here trusts the Dyncorp security officers. They seem too slow to respond to the rare security breaches, sometimes insulting the Asian medical staff and mostly trying to out think the quick witted Iraqi staff. We have documented the pilferage of drug supplies and sent our inventory lists to UN HQ encrypted. The master list is entrusted to the UN.
Despite all of this worry and complications, Hilary isn't big on my list of fears as the loss of the man I love dearly.
In the morning Sayyid nudges me. "Sachiko Hattori, wife of Sayyid the doctor... Awaken, princess..." I feign sleep, mumbling, "Please, sir, let me rest." My Iraqi has this Japanese accent, I am sure.
To the UN troops and Dyncorp merc, Sayyid is Doctor Sid. To me, he is Sayyid Muhammad-as-Darmune, a reformed juvenile delinquent who escaped petty tribalism to become a skilled surgeon, putting broken bodies of military men back together in a triage center in Baghdad.
To the rest of the world we are both unknown, except to our immediate families.
A year passes. Once I was visiting my mother at the mausoleum of our home city's crematorium. Now I am back at ho
"Oh Mother, your pride and joy, surgical nurse, first of the volunteer wave of Japan's finest medical staff, outsourced to Iraq due to our military commitments to NATO, is married."
Then I returned to Iraq.
Since 2010 Father never writes, his body a frail husk in the old age home. I'm not even sure where his mind is these days. All my hard earned cash after local expenses gets sent electronically to my bank in Tokyo. The old age home takes out their legally proscribed amount and the rest of my funds accumulate interest.
If I were to die tomorrow, then SDF will notify next of kin, arrange the funeral expenses, and travel costs will be taken out of my estate.
If Sayyid dies tomorrow, his staff would start arrangements alien to me, with Aisha taking care of details of customs so alien to me. As of yesterday I am the spouse of an important citizen of the Iraqi Commonwealth of Tribal States, a Japanese national with a father who does not worry about me and a mother who never will.
And still I am scared of losing Sayyid to death. I have seen death countless times at the surgery bed, but am afraid of waking up from my matrimonial happiness to discover him gone forever.
Yet Sayyid is still afraid of President Hilary and what her policies imply for Iraq. The civil war, the violence, the corruption... This doctor-soldier, who has seen blood outside as well as inside this hospital, is my husband.
Yet he reaches for his gun when the gunfire is too near.
And what of Aisha? Will her Roxana fail her in the middle of a sticky situation, brokering a ceasefire in a country not noted for women warriors such as her?
I open my eyes and look up. Sayyid’s smile is reflected in mine. He's dressed in doctor's scrubs, with his Ruger hidden in a pack on his back.
"Still afraid of Hilary?" I ask.
Sayyid’s smile fades, and he scowls. "Only what she represents."
"What about me with my big knife?" I ask.
"Run from knife, rush gun." He grins, his dark face beaming. His close cropped hair suits him. I get up. My scrubs are all neatly laid out on the divan.
Out of the shower, I restrap the sheath to my thigh, neatly sliding the tanto into it. Sayyid is on his cell phone, his voice loud and booming.
"Tell the Dyncorp pig to leave my staff alone," he bellows.
Recently the security guards have made a game of cornering a nurse and rubbing up against her. Respecting decorum, none of them have aggressively asserted themselves, save for the younger ones who clearly state in English, "Please leave me alone." One orderly, Sayyid’s cousin from Fallujah, even reported the incidents to the UN commander.
So Sayyid took matters into his own hands, being the doctor with the most seniority here. He has been negotiating with the Dyncorp executive in Baghdad over the past month to reprimand the supervisor guarding our hospital complex. Negotiating, because the idiot didn't see a problem with this sick game of cat and mouse played by bored, lonely men. Lately, the negotiation gets strained.
As I get the scrubs on, Sayyid utters an expletive, a curse implying revenge for dishonored relatives. He's hung up the cell phone minutes ago, but is upset.
"Dear one, ready and reporting for work!" I shout as I join him in hall leading to the exit from our dorm.
The electronic lock on the door of our room had clicked shut when I left. When we leave the building it's just a quick jaunt from there to the shuttle car driven by a Dyncorp mercenary, his beady eyes ogling me. Reluctantly, Sayyid ignores this impropriety and just scowls. I can smell the decayed sweat on the guard's body, and feel nauseated. But as a precaution I make a mental note to visit the Obs ward. Jasmeen wants me to take a pregnancy test.
Was it weeks ago that I returned?
Later on today, I also have to return to the Nanotech ward, where Doctor Noguchi wants me to take a refresher course on Iraqi while nanobots restructure my short term memories and the language centres of my brain.
Being pregnant or injected with nanobots doesn’t scare me as much as losing Sayyid, I tell myself.
And he's just worried about a woman president of America!
Noguchi's nanobots and I worrying over my positive test at Obs gets me nauseous. However, I'm breathing deeply now, in the gym, keeping my reflexes sharp as this tanto blade whistling through the air. No Dyncorp merc spying on me, only a UN trooper outside the building, protecting me from corrupt corporate lackeys of America.
Hey Hilary! I yell in Japanese. Think you can take me one-on-one!
Quickly I spin, and kick to block the imaginary thrust of Hilary, the both of us naked. Her breaths are short, gasping. Her katana easily misses me. I dodge and feint, my nausea forgotten.
You scare my husband! I yell, sliding my blade up to slide the length of her blade, burying it deeply in her heart.
Spent, I return to reality around me. No Hilary, just me alone in the gym. I wonder what the UN trooper from Canada thinks of this crazy Asian broad. As I dress, the nausea grips me. I rush to the showers, vomit, and clean myself up.
Later, Jasmeen is monitoring my blood. "It's the nanobots, Sachiko. All he's done is shift your dialect to match Sayyid’s. But there are markers I have never seen before."
"Things used to be simpler before the UN repeal of gene technology in 2009."
That was when Hilary felt the itch to be president. By 2012, she had the job. A lot of countries also had female leaders, due to the glitch in 2010 when world leader, all of them male, made the foolish decision to prove the first batch of nanobots safe by taking them, and ended up like my father, senile and drooling.
It is only in the third world countries that men were spared, but the women of privilege survived those experiments to be quicker witted and the equal of their male peers.
Nanotech senility was traced to an engineering glitch, in spite of the rumors of a feminist agenda. How laughable! Nanotech just affects men and women differently.
Maybe that's why Hilary scares Sayyid. Nanobots, the nanotech senility. Obs had me donate eggs, in vitro, a cloning. Sayyid is even afraid nanobots can burrow through latex.
Still, I am afraid of losing him. I lost my father to nanobots.
All Hilary is a symbol of the ascendancy of women in the aftermath of the failed decade of peace that ended in 2010.
As I vomit in the bathroom of our dorm room, this epiphany comes to me...
What scares one Iraqi pales before the fear of one woman who loses the most important male figure in her life.
It makes me wonder how Bill is doing in that geriatric clinic, drooling and nodding off while his wife conquers the world...
