The Foreign Service Journal, November 2008

tors were playing carols over the secu- rity loudspeakers. I had volunteered for the assign- ment in Iraq out of curiosity more than anything else. In 2005, two years after the initial invasion, we were still there. I wanted to know why. I want- ed to help push things along so life could go back to the way it was before. So here I was, one of 13 women in a compound of 400 men. One of 10 State Department personnel in a sea of contractors for logistics and securi- ty. Vastly outnumbered, and sur- rounded by people who seemed friendly and hostile at the same time. “What do you think this is?” It was one of the judges for the door-decorating contest. He was talk- ing to his buddy, another contractor. Two large men in cargo pants and long-sleeved jerseys with lots of facial hair. They were looking at our potted palm, which had acquired a fluffy paper boa, making the poor plant look like an old lady out on a shopping trip. I suspected Parker was behind this last-ditch effort. “This is our Christmas tree,” I said, as if it were obvious. “Hmm. Interesting.” The two judges marked something down on their clipboards. They turned to me, looked me up and down. “Hey, missy, what do you do here?” one of them asked. I was used to this kind of flirtation by now. As one of the few women on the compound, I knew I was an item of interest. “I work for the State Department. This is my office.” I pointed to the open door where I worked with Bill and Parker. “Never been up here before,” the first guy said, peering into the office. “What do you guys do?” “We work with the local govern- ment, try to get the reconstruction efforts coordinated. That sort of thing.” “Really. I didn’t know we were doing that.” I was getting uncomfortable with the way they were staring at me, like they hadn’t seen a woman in months. Come to think of it, they probably hadn’t. “What do you do?” I asked them, backing up against the wall. Suddenly, I wished I were wearing a headscarf. “Forklift.” “Dog handler.” Every other week or so, our com- pound received shipments of food and water and mail that arrived on heavy pallets. The pallets could only be moved by forklift. We also had five or six dogs on compound that sniffed for explosives in cars and trucks coming into the compound. “Didn’t know we had State Department folks on this compound,” they said as they left. When I think of Zahra now I remember her in purple, as she was the day she won the door contest. Flowing lavender tunic over dark, loose trousers. A white head sock cov- ering her hair, wrapped in a purple hijab. Gold jewelry at her neck and on her wrists. A tiny diamond sparkling in her nose. In our minds, there was no way she could not have won. Even though it was Saturday and her day off, she came to work that morning, earlier than usual. Parker had seen her putting finishing touches on her door and plugging in the blinking lights. “She said she was worried someone else might ruin her door,” Bill said. “Sabotage.” “Really?” I said. “For a Christmas door-decorating contest? What was the prize, anyway?” “Zahra won a CD player. She seems really happy.” It was true. When I saw Zahra later that day, she was glowing. Purple was a good color for her, and I noticed her jewelry. She had dressed up for the occasion. It was a Sunday in June when I learned that assassins on motorbikes had followed Zahra and her husband home from the compound that day and shot them each in the head while they waited at a traffic signal. This is how we learned of her death: at the morgue, the Iraqi morti- cians went through Zahra’s pockets. When they found the cell phone they were looking for, they looked through the last numbers dialed from Zahra’s phone. Assuming that she would have been in close contact with her family, the morticians called the last regis- tered number, thinking they would get a family member who could come col- lect her body. What the morticians didn’t know was that Zahra never called her family on her work phone because she would never put her fam- ily at such risk of being identified in association with the Americans. So when the morticians called the last registered number on her work phone, they got me. When I pieced together what they were telling me, between my tiny bits of Arabic and their broken English, the first entirely clear thought that came to me was how efficient their system for locating family members 66 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 8 “Didn’t know we had State Department folks on this compound,” the two contractors said as they left.