The Foreign Service Journal, November 2008

was. My first entirely clear feeling was guilt, because I realized that after working with Zahra for the past nine months, I did not know how to con- tact her family, either. I had never asked. In the end, the task of contacting her family to collect her body from the morgue fell to another one of our employees. By this time in June, there were so many roadside bombs that we rarely left the compound and we were unable to travel about the city ourselves. The other Iraqi employee quit as soon as he had located the family and informed them of Zahra’s death. He fled to Dubai the following week. Without Zahra’s help as political assistant, we were unable to set up meetings with local officials. When the security situation deteriorated further, as it did throughout the rest of the country, we were at an even greater loss to explain why. When I read through headlines on the Internet in my office, I could not blame the reporters for getting it wrong. Those of us on the receiving end of nightly mortar and rocket attacks could not identify our attack- ers or explain their motivation, either. When I recall Zahra now I think of her in purple, standing next to her Christmas door, as excited as a child opening presents, emanating hope. I think how much she wanted to believe it all was true, that peace and stability had returned to her country after decades of repression under Saddam Hussein. How much she wanted to believe that she now lived in a world where the best door would win the Christmas prize. This is how I will remember Iraq. How it was cold, not hot. How I ate pork in a Muslim country. How I heard the call to prayer mingling with Christmas carols the day of the door- judging. How hard I wanted to believe I was working for peace. N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 8 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 67 When I recall Zahra now, I think of her in purple, standing next to her Christmas door, as excited as a child opening presents.