"Luma," I said quietly, pleading. "You know I never ask anything of you. You know this. But please, I don't care how long it takes us to get to the Dead Sea. Please, please drive the speed limit. . . . Do you know you're driving on the shoulder?"
"What's a shoulder?"
On a holiday from Iraq, the author and her translator soaked up the sun at Jordan's Movenpick resort on the Dead Sea.
(Movenpick)
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Subject of Travel Feature Killed in Iraq
She had never flown before, and she was scared, Luma had confessed. Don't be silly, I told my Iraqi translator. You are one of the bravest people I know. Well, she told me, I prayed for three things just in case. The first was that God would protect my mother, the second that God would take care of my daughter and the third that we will go to the United States. Of course, I reassured her, while we waited for our flight to Jordan at Baghdad International Airport. The next trip will be to the United States.
On Nov. 24, Luma, who was featured in an Oct. 3 Travel story, was shot and killed at a U.S. Army base in Baghdad. The Army is investigating.
Luma, whose last name is being withheld to protect her family, was one of a kind. She lit up a room when she walked in. This compensated -- as it had to -- for her complete lack of English skills. Each day I gave her a word list to help her grasp the foreign language of The Washington Post Baghdad bureau: explosion, barricade, suicide, amputate, courage, sweat, blaze. She was a fast learner.
One of her first days in the office, she was driving to work and Omar, our office manager, spotted her pulling her BMW up on the sidewalk of a downtown Baghdad street. She drove as far as she could and when she reached a big drop-off, Omar watched as several men abandoned their own cars to help her back onto the roadway. When they both reached the office, Omar asked her what she had been doing. You told me I had to be in the office by 9 sharp, she told him. We quickly learned what the "Luma way" meant. She always got it.
Luma leaves behind a 6-year-old daughter, her mother and a brother.
Jackie Spinner is a staff writer for The Post's Business section, currently on assignment in Baghdad.
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She eventually slowed down, cranked up the radio, and I sat upright again to watch our descent through the valley toward the Dead Sea. The sea is a remarkable place because of its geography and place in biblical history. We were within half a day of the ruins of King Herod's fortress in Machaerus as well as Mount Nebo, where, according to the biblical account, Moses climbed to see the Promised Land before his death.
Luma and I also made the 15-minute trip to Bethany, which claims to be where Jesus was baptized (Israel says he was baptized on the west bank of the Jordan River, within its territory).
The site, which opened in 2000 after Jordan began excavations six years earlier, is tucked along a narrow two-lane road that passes camel ranches and sheep farms. Our English-speaking guide spent a considerable amount of time putting forth the defense for why Jesus was baptized there and not in Israel, even citing passages from the Bible to back it up.
The baptism spot itself is now a dried-up riverbed with ancient steps leading to it. The Jordan River, a meandering body of water, is a few hundred yards away, reached by a shaded gravel footpath.
My Muslim translator seemed as excited as her Catholic reporter to reach the river water, where we dunked our feet in the murky green liquid and looked out at a short tree line that marked the boundary with Israel. "Can't you just imagine Him walking to this very spot," she said eagerly. We both filled bottles of water to take to our mothers.
A Difficult Homecoming
The Dead Sea resorts are all fairly self-contained. This is not a place where you can walk out and mix with villagers. The other visitors were an odd mix of European travelers, a few stray Baghdad journalists like myself looking for a respite, Iraqi families on vacation out of their country for the first time and conservatively dressed Muslim women with their families.
At an outdoor cafe one night while drinking red wine and listening to a Jordanian pop singer coo old Persian love songs, we sat next to a man smoking flavored tobacco. His wife fed a giant ice cream sundae to her three small children. She could not eat any of it herself because her entire face was covered in a black scarf, except for the tiniest slit for her eyes.
The husband watched us closely as we ordered a second glass of wine, but made no comment. The family soon left. Luma had her first hangover the next morning.
