How Do You Say Clueless?

T he noise of the C-130 was deafening. One week after the liberation of Iraq, I was bound for Baghdad. The plane's gray and red colors and the crew's khaki uniforms were in sharp contrast to the attires of the 20 or so passengers: State Department types in suits and ties, women in Eddie Bauer outfits, a few men in blue jeans. At the tail end of the plane, a young woman in uniform, her legs dangling from the edge, was "manning" a gun.

Bottled water and foam ear plugs were distributed to us. The tall cowboy from Oklahoma sitting next to me volunteered to show me how to knead the foam, in order to insert the plugs in my ears. I thanked him and introduced myself. Noticing my accent or the peculiarity of my name, he asked in a loud voice: "Where from?"

I mumbled a few words about being from Northern Virginia and added that I was born in Najaf.

He looked at me as if recalling someone he had known before. "Oh, that's India, right? Never been there, but someday I will." He shook my hand firmly and I learned that Bill was an Army Reserve lieutenant colonel being deployed to Baghdad to work with a unit dealing with civil affairs.

On the bus from the airport in Baghdad, I felt a mixture of exhilaration and nervousness. How, I wondered, would I reach the family with whom I had lost contact since the start of this war? They were unaware of my coming and I had no idea as to their safety or well-being.

The last time I had been on that road was back in October 1981, during the Iraq-Iran war, when, with a broken spirit, I had left Baghdad for the last time. After I had made "Rasheed Street," a film about the history of Baghdad's famous main street, Saddam Hussein's henchmen made me an offer that they said I should not refuse: to make a big budget film with an international cast about the life of the "great leader." Once I rejected their offer, they banned my film and made my life, and that of my family, very miserable. After spending a few days in jail and having all the money in my bank account confiscated, I left, promising never to return until the monster was gone. Now, the absolute thrill of being back in a free Iraq, liberated from that hideous regime, was so overwhelming that I shoved all my anxieties aside and contemplated my task ahead.

I was assigned by the State Department to interpret for the Baghdad Conference (to establish an interim government) and later to provide language support to both Barbara Bodine and retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, the two highest officials in postwar Iraq. I didn't know how the experiment would turn out. But as I arrived in Baghdad, I really believed the United States had an efficient, well-studied plan to put Iraq together after toppling the Saddam regime.

What I witnessed in the year or so I spent helping U.S. officials on the ground in Iraq, and what I have seen more recently, has made me doubtful about our competence for nation building, an exercise the United States initially claimed to have no interest in carrying out. Perhaps for that reason, America didn't seem to have studied Iraq's long history of repulsing occupiers. When the British attempted to build a nation in Mesopotamia at the end of World War I, it was confronted with a great revolt that continues to be a source of pride to Iraqis. I sometimes worry that, like the British enterprise, the U.S. effort to build a pluralistic, democratic society in Iraq will be remembered primarily for the insurgency it has spawned.

When we arrived from the airport, we were ushered into the Baghdad Convention Center, given flimsy mattresses and blankets and told to find a place to sleep. I tried to sleep but the acrid smell of burnt gasoline or rubber tires made it difficult to breathe. With no electricity and in the pitch darkness, everything was stirring in my mind like a film in fast forward. I imagined the voice of Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore from "Apocalypse Now" echoing across the halls of the Convention Center: "I love the smell of napalm in the morning . . . The smell, you know that gasoline smell . . . smelled like . . . victory . . . Someday this war's gonna end." Eventually I collapsed and fell into a deep, deep sleep.

The conference was reminiscent of the commotion in "Lawrence of Arabia," when the British officer T.E. Lawrence gathered the citizens of Damascus back in 1918. There were clerics in white and black turbans, men in traditional tribal headdress, and many who wore Western suits. As Garner addressed the gathering, the audience was shouting complaints about looting and the lack of security, electricity and other services. There was no semblance of order in the hall. Responding to his unruly audience's demands, Garner started assigning security functions to some of the clerics and the tribal sheiks. "Rebels, especially successful rebels, were of necessity bad subjects and worse governors," Lawrence wrote amid the chaos of liberated Damascus. It seemed that the same could be said of these Iraqi generals, clerics and chieftains.

Not long after, my new friend Lt. Col. Bill came to ask me to teach him a few words in Arabic. He said he was assigned to deal with the former Ministry of Culture and that he needed help to interact with its department heads. He inquired if Iraqis' "language" is different from that of Saudis. He wanted to know whether Iraqis say marhaba , instead of greeting each other with salaam alaikum as they do in Saudi Arabia. I managed to teach him how to say shukran, for thank you. And I promised him that learning one phrase per day would make him as good as a native speaker by the time we left Iraq. I could easily tell he did not get the cynicism in my promise.

The motorcade of the new Boss arrived at the main gate of the palace in mid-May. Many smartly dressed men and some women got out of their vehicles. I was trying to get a glimpse of this new presidential envoy, who was sent to make things right in Iraq. The gentleman in the blue suit, striped red tie and combat boots was L. Paul Bremer. He looked sharp even at this broiling temperature. I wondered how long it would be before he started dressing casually like Garner. To me, he looked like a new head of state and I knew that we'd be working closely together. I was assigned to be his interpreter.