Redeployment

The narrator describes a woman named Zara Davies and how he meets her at Clark House at Amherst College. The class they share is called Punishment, Politics, and Culture. The narrator had served in Iraq for thirteen months and “figured I’d go learn about punishment” (169). He and Zara are the only nonwhite students in the class. She is immediately aggressive and assertive when other students say things she disagrees with. The narrator feels less certain: “The only thing I felt like I really had on these kids was the knowledge of just how nasty and awful humans are” (169). He does not understand the mystique that veterans are given. He enjoys the debates he has with Zara, who he says can see through him.

Months after the class ends, she seeks him out. She has converted to Islam and is now dressed plainly, which disappoints him. She wants him to be honest and tell her what is really happening in Iraq. When she asks him how he can kill his own people, he laughs. He is not Muslim but a Coptic Christian. Muslims hate his religion, and he tells her that this means “I can kill Muslims as much as I like” (174).

Two days later, he has a disciplinary meeting with someone from the President for Diversity and Inclusion’s office. Zara is sitting in the office with the President’s Special Assistant. She has not lodged a formal complaint, but the assistant warns that if anything else happens, the consequences will be serious. Threatening Muslims is taken gravely at Amherst. “‘She’s been Muslim for like three days. I’ve been facing that shit for years,’” says the narrator (176). In the Army, he had been a specialist in Psychological Operations. He knows he can get himself out of this, but he prefers to “bite back” (176).

He says perception is reality and that the only mention of violence had come from Zara, when she accused him of murdering Muslims. He says that he got shot at constantly and tried to do his job. He can understand why she said it, but she doesn’t know that he can’t sleep at night and shouldn’t get in his face. This is a lie. He sleeps well. He says that he did not mean to threaten her. Outside, Zara apologizes to him and walks away. He feels bad that he lied and made her feel guilty. He chases her and asks why she apologized. He says that she is wrong and the war didn’t break him. But he wants to tell her about it. He never killed anyone but wants to tell her about someone he saw die.

After classes she comes to his place, and they smoke tobacco in a hookah. He tells her that part of PsyOps is to counter the pro-terrorist messages that are broadcast over the Fallujah speakers every night. They would drive around in a Humvee broadcasting their own messages and would always be shot at. One morning while they are arranging the speakers, someone fires at them. A group of nearby Marines shoots at the insurgents, killing one. The Marine who makes the killing shot calls the narrator over and asks him to look through the scope to verify it. It is a thermal scope, so the narrator watches the body’s heat signature fade. The Marine does not want to watch. Zara does not understand why the narrator told her the story, and he doesn’t either. It feels incomplete to him. He tells her that in PsyOps his job was to talk to the Imams and tell them how to keep their teenagers from getting killed and to get them to stop sending them against the Marines. He tells Zara that he joined the Army to go to college and avoided the Marines because he did not want to become a killer.

His father and mother were targeted after 9/11, even though they were Christian. He describes his father as looking like Saddam Hussein. His father began an aggressively pro-American phase where he covered his car in American flag bumper stickers, but it did not stop the harassment. The narrator admits that joining the Army was a way to make his father proud. Zara’s assumptions are not based on experience and feel smug to him: “She didn’t seem to realize how this conversation was different from class, where we bullshitted over political theory” (197). He realizes that all he wants is for her to understand him.

He says that when he graduated from basic training, his father was proud of him. But then he immediately asked him why he didn’t sign up for infantry, and the feeling passed. The narrator studied propaganda and tells Zara that he realized that “language is a technology” (199). He tells her that he is responsible for people being killed. He devised insults to broadcast over the speakers, which would make people attack them. When they did, the Marines would kill them.

When he comes home, he doesn’t feel like he belongs there. His father shows him a bunch of e-mails from Muslim coworkers, thanking him for his service, which makes him angry. He tells his father about the insults he devised, which makes his father proud. He tells Zara the story he told his father. The narrator knew of an area run by a man named Laith al-Tawhid. The narrator had a plan to get him. He pulled up in front of al-Tawhid’s office and shouted through the speakers that they had his wife and daughters. He said “we’d fuck his daughters on the roof and put their mouths to the loudspeaker so he could hear their screams” (209). He insulted them for an hour over the speakers, and finally al-Tawhid led his men out to fight, and they were all killed. The narrator tells his father every curse he said in that hour and winds up yelling the curses in his father’s face until he kicks him out of the house.

He expects Zara to shout at him, but she tells him it’s okay and leaves. At the bottom of his stairs, she looks up at him and says maybe they can talk again another time.