We spent three days at the Dead Sea, which turned out to be the right amount of time. We could have kept going south toward Petra, the ancient Nabatean city that is Jordan's most popular tourist attraction. Next time, we told ourselves. Instead, we decided to take the long way north back to Amman, up the winding, terrifyingly narrow highway to Mount Nebo and then on to Madaba, famous for its Byzantine mosaics.
As we drove into the city Luma immediately noticed that most of the women wore long dresses and head scarves. She was still in a spaghetti-strap shirt, appropriate at the Dead Sea and the disco in Amman but not Madaba, she concluded.
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 reached into her bag to pull on a long-sleeve shirt, and I took off my fishing cap and threw it in the back of the car. "Get out of here as fast as you can," she instructed me, and I floored the Nissan and headed back to the modern city.
I was sun-kissed and rested when we touched down again in Baghdad five days later. I could never have imagined such a journey, this trip with Luma. I had seen the most beautiful sunsets, written in my travel diary by candlelight on a balcony where I could see the flickering lights of Jerusalem across the sea. I climbed Mount Nebo with my Muslim translator to one of the holiest places in Christendom, a place where both sought peace. I had watched Luma live.
"Welcome to Baghdad," the flight attendant chirped. Luma scowled. "Don't welcome me home," she said.
An hour later we climbed into the armored car that would take us back to our drab hotel. I sat in the back and watched the grim postwar landscape pass us by -- the wreckage, the dusty terrain, the garbage piled up against barbed wire. In the passenger seat, Luma blinked back tears.
"I hate this country," she said. "Look at the tanks. Look at the guard rails," which were mangled by roadside bombs. "I just want to close my eyes and someone will wake me up in the morning and say, 'Come on, here is your flight.' I don't want to be here. I just want to live normal."
On our last night in Amman, I had discovered Luma dancing in our hotel room, the curtains open, the sounds of the city filtering through the cracked window, the sound of a life she wanted. She looked so happy, so free, dancing in her jeans and baby blue T-shirt.
This had been a vacation for me, something altogether different for Luma. We had traveled the same road but we had not had the same journey.
Sometimes you go away and you disappear into a place until you feel so much a part of it that you don't want to come home. Sometimes you have no choice. I thought of this, as I listened to her cry. There was nothing I could say.
Epilogue: Two weeks after returning to Iraq, Luma quit her job as a translator. And just like that, she disappeared back into her mother's fold. She did not even call to say goodbye.
Jackie Spinner is a staff writer for The Post's Business section, currently on assignment in Baghdad.
