My Long War 2

I was jogging along the trail on the banks of the Tigris, heading south.

I was nearing the halfway point, a defunct pump station that blocked me from running any farther. It was the summer of 2004. The heat was unbearable, as it usually was. I was carrying two half-liter bottles of water, one in each hand. I was about 30 yards from the pump station when I heard an explosion, and the ground shook beneath my feet. I turned around and watched a white mushroom cloud rise up about a mile away. Close. They had hit Tahrir Square again, a traffic roundabout near the Jumhuriya Bridge. The bombers were always hitting the roundabout at Tahrir Square. They would park their car next to one of the market stalls on the edge of the roundabout and wait for an American convoy or a bunch of contractors to come in; then they would hit the gas and fly into the roundabout and crash the middle of the convoy and explode. It happened all the time.

I stood and watched the mushroom cloud for a while. I needed the rest anyway. The cloud was dissipating in the blue sky. After the blast, which itself was quite loud, there wasn’t any sound to speak of, at least not that I could hear from so far away. The buildings along Abu Nawas Street obscured my view of the square itself. If I had tried to run back to the bureau, our guys would already have left to cover it. I stared at the remnants of the cloud for a few more minutes. I tried to imagine what was happening. I took a sip of water from my bottle. I retied my running shoes. I turned and got on with my run.

It started with a face. Black, possibly an Arab from North Africa, covered by a thin layer of dust. Rubble around the head. Lips parted slightly. No blood. The Marines had found him at the top of the minaret in the southern part of town, at the top of a winding set of stairs, and snapped a photo. It had been in the evening, and the face had a bluish cast. From the start, the guerrillas had used the minarets: to shoot, to spot, to signal one another. When American soldiers first came into Falluja, 6,000 of them on foot in the middle of a November night in 2004, they weren’t allowed to shoot at mosques without permission. After 12 hours, they threw the rule away.

There were a lot of dead guerrillas, but we weren’t seeing them. By then, a week into the thing, a quarter of Bravo Company was wounded or dead. There was Romulo, the car-crazy kid from West Virginia, and Nick, the surfer from Baltimore. Jake, the mouthless mangled face. There were others. But we had gone forward anyway, rolling, absorbing the blows, moving forward through the streets. They were shooting at us, the Marines and me and Ashley Gilbertson, the photographer who was traveling with me, but we kept moving anyway. And now we were at the city limits, where the streets opened onto a big flat plain of brush and trash, abruptly, just like a movie set. End of town.

 So where did the insurgents go? They were dead, under the rubble, that’s where they were. Buried. Vaporized. Ground to dust.

A few years before, in Afghanistan, an American officer asked me, “Have you ever seen what a 2,000-pound bomb does to a person?” He was not really bragging because in this case the victims had been American soldiers. Friendly fire, five guys. “We put the remains in a sandwich bag,” he said.

Still, it was a curiosity that we had seen so few bodies. The generals were reporting hundreds of dead, thousands even — we knew that from the radio — but we weren’t seeing many. You would think by then we would have seen an arm. A head. Like in the suicide bombings in Baghdad. So I had been rolling it over, the lack of bodies, considering the explanations: the Muslims bury their dead very quickly; it’s a religious thing. That was one. The insurgents never leave their dead behind. That was another.

We were up on top of this building on the edge of town, staring out at the big plain and wondering where they had all gone, when one of the marines came over and showed Ashley the picture of the black face. He had brought us the photo to show us; he knew we needed one, a photo of a dead insurgent. The marine, Lance Cpl. Alex Saxby, tilted up his point-and-press camera to show us. “I got two dead friends,” he said. Alex’s glasses had broken at the nose bridge, and he was holding them together with a wad of first-aid tape. The photo of the dead jihadi seemed all he had left in the world. “It’s my birthday today,” he said.

我的漫漫征途2

我沿着底格里斯河旁的一条小径向南慢跑。

半途，一个废旧的加油站挡住了我的去路。现在是2004年夏。和往常一样，酷热难挡，我一手拿着一瓶水。离加油站30码时，我听到了一声巨响，脚下的地亦随之震动。我转过身来，看见一英里远的地方升起白色的蘑菇云。好险。他们又袭击Tahrir广场了。那是靠近Jumhuriya的交通环形叉口，总是遭袭。他们会把车停在叉口旁边的小摊贩旁，等着美军护卫队或是成群结对的佣兵出现；然后打开油门，飞奔向叉口，一头撞上护卫队车辆，爆炸声起！这种事情经常发生。

我停下来看了一会蘑菇云。我总需要休息下的。蘑菇云在蓝天下消散了。爆炸声很大，但是事后谈论它的声音并不大，至少不如我在遥远的其他地方听到的那么大。Abu Nawas 大街上的建筑挡住了我的视线，我看不大清楚广场。如果我现在跑回办公室，同事们早已去报道这件事了。我呆在那，看了会余烟，试着去描绘那边到底怎么样了。我喝了一口水，重扎了鞋带，转过身来继续跑。

III.

故事从一张脸开始。一张被淡淡的尘土覆盖的黑色的脸。死者也许是来自南非的阿拉伯人。头躺在碎石上。唇微开。没有血。美国海军在镇南部的一座尖塔上发现他倒在蜿蜒而上的楼梯顶端。他们给他拍了照。当时是晚上，那张脸带着蓝色的光晕。一开始，游击队就以尖塔为基地射击、找人、互对暗号。2004年12月的一个深夜，美国6000名士兵徒步到达Falluja。当时，他们接到命令，未经允许，不许朝清真寺开抢。12小时后，他们违令了。

死了很多游击队人，但是我们看不到他们的尸体。事发一个星期后，美国一小分队士兵伤的伤，死的死。他们中有Romulo，来自西弗吉尼亚的小鬼，酷爱飙车；还有Nick，来自Baltimore的冲浪手:Jack, 死时面部全非，嘴巴已无。还有其他人。但是我们还是继续前进，滚动着，迎着炮弹，穿过街道。他们在朝我们开枪——美国海军，我，和我一起的摄影师Ashley Gilbertson。然而我们继续前行。现在我们已经到了城市尽头了，街道过去，兀然而来的是一大片垃圾荒原，像看电影一样。小镇的尽头。

那么那些叛乱分子在哪儿呢？他们死了，被埋在了碎石中。埋了。蒸发了。化为尘土了。

几年以前，在阿富汗，一位美国官员问我：“被2000磅重的炸弹炸过，你还看得见人变成什么样子吗？”他并没有夸张。因为这次的受害者是美国士兵。五个人，遭同胞误杀。“我们把遗体放进了一个三明治袋。”他说。

然而，我们所见尸体甚少，着实奇怪。将军报告说有百余人——甚至千余人死亡——我们从收音机里听来的——但是我们并未看见多少。你也许觉得我们应该会看见一支胳膊什么的，或是像在巴格达自杀式爆炸中那样，看到一个头。我想了很久，并试着解释：穆斯林会很快地埋掉他们的尸体；这是一种宗教信仰。这是其一。叛军从来不落下他们的尸体。这是其二。

我们站在镇边缘的一座楼的楼顶，望着一大片荒原，思索着叛军都去了哪里。这时，一名海军跑过来，给Ashley看那张黑色的脸的照片。他把照片拿给我们看，因为他知道我们需要照片，一张叛军尸体的照片。海军Lance Cpl Alex Saxby给我们看他的傻瓜相机。“我有两个朋友死了。”他说。他鼻梁上的眼镜坏了，用一个急救带粘着。似乎这个叛军尸体照片是他能拥有的一切。“今天是我的生日。”他说.

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