From Baghdad with Love by Jay Kopelman (a court of thorns and roses ebook free .TXT) 📕

because journalists made especially functional targets out on the streets, with their deaths reported worldwide. Since the invasion in March two years before, seventy-five journalists and their drivers, interpreters, and guards were killed in Iraq by either insurgents, US forces, or Iraqi troops. In the past year alone thirty journalists had been kidnapped.

Now that the initial election is over, Anne expects the violence to get worse. As she reports on NPR: “Sunday’s election was the easy part.”

On the day of the election, hundreds of insurgent attacks were reported in Iraq, but now as the country waits for the ballots to be counted—a process that will take several weeks—violence barrels in with mud on its shoes. The Shiite Muslim majority expects big wins, and the Sunni Muslims aren’t taking the expected loss very well.

A few days after the election Osama bin Laden’s top deputy calls the election “forged” and issues a renewed call for holy war. Al-Qaeda meanwhile promises to continue killing Americans and any Iraqis who help them, and keeps true to its word.

Three days after the election two Marines are killed and twelve Iraqi soldiers are executed. Four days after the election a Marine from Camp Fallujah is killed in action and one Task Force Freedom soldier is killed and another wounded when their convoy is hit with a roadside bomb. Five days after the election two Task Force Danger soldiers get whacked and four others get wounded by an improvised explosive device. Seven days after the election twenty-four Iraqi recruits die from a suicide bomber. Eight days after the election another twenty-one join them.

That same week, Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena is seized from her vehicle by armed men near Baghdad University where she’d just interviewed refugees from Fallujah.

“It’s still tense around here,” Anne reports.

Anne enlists the help of one of the Iraqis who helps take care of the compound to watch Lava when she goes out during the day. That takes some guts, because she stands a good chance of losing him.

For one thing, most Iraqis hate dogs. They think they’re unclean.

For another, there’s an intense hatred of any Iraqi who works for Americans. If you’re Iraqi and work for Americans, you are worse than the Americans. First you receive a written warning addressed on the outside to “Brother of the monkey and the pig.” Then, on the inside, it reads something along the lines of,

Dear brother of the monkey and the pig:

We regret to inform you that unless you repent and return to your God and your Country, you will see a similar fate as that of your fellow brother spies who are rats and the afterbirth of rats. We are sorry for any inconvenience our violence may cause you, your wife, or your children.

Sincerely, the Self-Sacrificers

The next message is less diplomatic:

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! You are the enemy of God and Country. We give you this one last warning before death. Signed, Self-Sacrificers.

Then they might paint death to spies on your house or leave a dead animal at your door. There’s rarely a third message left—and if there is, a homemade bomb is usually attached.

While American deaths are meticulously accounted for by the US government—by the end of that January, several thousand and counting—no credit columns are kept on how many Iraqis, whether insurgents or American-hired civilians, are killed or missing.

So I can only imagine what’s going through Sam’s mind (I’ll call him Sam, because if he’s still alive, and I really hope he is, his real name can’t ever be associated with what he did) when Anne asks him to keep an eye on the puppy.

“What, that wild thing? I’d rather sacrifice an eye.”

“Please?”

“No. I do not keep eyes on crazy animals. No.”

“Please.”

“Why not you ask me to shoot a bullet in my foot instead? Ask me to eat pork. Ask me to jump from airplane . . .”

“Please.”

And I can only imagine what goes through Sam’s head as Anne drives off to work that first time, leaving Lava at his feet staring up at him with that innocent look he gets when he needs to get it, that ears-forward, head-cocked, I-didn’t-mean-to-chew-up-the-only-porn-magazine-in-the-barrack look that causes you to bend down and scratch his little ears as you piece the pages back together.

At first Sam is responsible for only two things: feeding Lava and making sure he doesn’t destroy the compound. After a few days, though, Anne notices that he’s expanding his responsibilities. She’ll come home and find Sam giving Lava a bath, or rolling a soccer ball around trying to teach him how to block.

One night she finds Lava pawing at a two-inch-wide men’s leather belt hanging around his neck. It’s way too big, but when she looks to Sam for answers, he explains that “that dog” needs a collar.

Sam is soon out on the streets of Baghdad in search of food and toys, also improvised in the end, because just about everything in the city is in one of two states: chaos or short supply. The price of meat, fruit, and vegetables has risen by at least a third since the US occupation. Electricity, water, and gasoline are also in short supply because of attacks on Iraq’s oil infrastructure by insurgents and because the Coalition Provisional Authority is so corrupt and/or inept, it “lost” at least eight million dollars of its budget within a fourteen-month period.

But Sam goes out on the streets anyway, and one of his most valuable discoveries—found while dodging insurgents, hired mercenaries, and American convoys that warn in block letters do not come within 100 meters of this vehicle! deadly force will be used!—is puppy biscuits.

In the meantime, Anne reports that as the election results continue to be counted, Sunni clerics claim any winners will be “illegitimate,” President George Bush announces in his State of the Union address that it is still “too soon” to withdraw from Iraq, and soldiers with the army’s First Cavalry Division stationed in Baghdad are allowed two bottles of beer each during a replay