As U.S. troops leave Iraq, an officer honors the memory of a young interpreter

A teenage Iraqi interpreter, code name "Roy," served with a reconnaisance platoon in Iraq in 2007. (Blake Hall)

"They beheaded your two best friends, Roy?"

"Yes, sir. I walk to the base the next day and give them my name to work for you. I hate the Qaeda."

I believed him. His eyes had the look of a man who has seen death and experienced traumatic loss. My country had been attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, and I knew I had to fight back when I saw my countrymen leaping from skyscrapers. Our hatred for al-Qaeda united Roy and me.

In the months that followed, Roy translated Baghdad for me. He made meaning of the Arabic calligraphy. He told me when graffiti indicated a hostile neighborhood. He let me know when the mosque wasn't broadcasting prayers but rather a call to attack the infidels. When he stood next to the scouts I led, he looked like a waterboy for a varsity sports team, but without him, my platoon was culturally blind and deaf.

We called him Roy because if an insurgent heard his real name, then he and his family could be in danger. The contracting company that hired interpreters had assigned him that alias, yet it seemed to fit him. The name made me think of young boys pretending to be cowboys, and Roy looked like he was 15 at most. He always swore to me that he was 19, but I trusted Roy's word on all subjects except his age. You had to be 18 to work for the Americans, and Roy, more than most, desperately wanted to work for us.

* * *

Roy and I were lying still on a rooftop observation post with one of my scout teams in Dora, a neighborhood in central Baghdad. The night was quiet but for the intermittent crackle of gunfire, and the lack of electricity meant there was no artificial light to dim the white stars. After two weeks in Dora, my battalion had more wounded men than we'd had in more than a year of combat. Now, perched on top of a 10-story building that had rows of windows but no glass, my scouts and I waited in silence for our enemy to show himself.

The stillness was shattered by the wail of a muezzin from the minaret of the mosque down the street. Startled, I nearly jumped up. But the luminescent digits on my watch read 0310, and I relaxed -- the muezzin was right on time for the first of the five prayer calls that Muslims heed at nearly the same times every day.

"Allahu akbar," the muezzin cried out.

"God is great," I whispered.

"Ash-had an la Allah illa Allah."

"There is no God but God."