One Bullet Away

We parked next to the famed Ishtar Gate, a blue portal covered with reliefs of lions, stags, and mythical creatures. I remembered only the highlights of Babylon’s history — Hammurabi, the Hanging Gardens, the death of Alexander the Great — and was relieved when a distinguished older gentleman approached us. His first sentence made me laugh: “Call me Ishmael.” Wearing a fedora and dark sunglasses, Ishmael had been an archaeologist at Babylon before the Ba’ath Party came to power in 1968. He carried a thick binder filled with maps and photographs and offered to take us on a tour of the site.

Ishmael shepherded us through Babylon’s cobbled streets. He spoke lilting English, weaving a story of mighty kings and fallen empires. Behind him, like so many schoolkids on a field trip, trailed the platoon, covered with guns and knives, straining to hear every word. We walked down the fabled Street of Processions, past the basalt Lion of Babylon, and across the stage on which Alexander is rumored to have died. Colbert slid next to me and marveled that, in only two years, we had followed two of Alexander’s most fabled campaigns — across Afghanistan and Iraq.

“Somehow I doubt I’ll be remembered as ‘Brad the Great,’” he said.

Ishmael mixed his history lesson with modern parallels: new beginnings, imperial hubris, the death of an old regime. He kept up a running commentary on Saddam’s abuses. Six of his family members, including his only son, had been executed in the 1990s. Inside the mysteriously cool natural icehouses deep beneath the floors, he quietly expressed his hope that the Americans would kill Saddam and end his terror definitively. The fear still gripped him.

Back outside, Espera stood against a wall, with the sunlight casting sharp shadows across a stone courtyard. “Look around. This great empire rose and fell. Everything rises and falls, nations and individuals, too,” he said. Lacking a cigar to point with, he leaned back on his hands. “Sometimes I think these decisions are already made; the script is already written, and we’re the last to read it. Maybe the universe is like a big watch: If you can crack the formula to the universal principles, then you can figure it all out.”

Colbert cut in. “Is this your goddamn lottery theory again?”

Espera ignored the exasperation and bent toward me. “Think about the lottery for a second,” he continued. “You buy some tickets at 7-Eleven, and you turn on the TV that night to watch some dude read numbers off Ping-Pong balls. Well, there’s nothing random about which numbers pop up.” Espera said this as if it were all self-evident. Then he narrowed his eyes and got to the point. “If you could calculate the weight of the balls, the temperature and humidity of the room, the force of the little air jets, and a thousand other variables, then you could correctly predict what numbers win.” He looked around with satisfaction. “Same thing here. Babylon fell. Iraq fell. The United States will someday fall. It’s already written. That bullet that hit Pappy had his name on it since it was iron ore in the ground. We just couldn’t see and calculate all the variables in time to save him. I’m not sure if that makes me feel better or worse.”

A small crowd had gathered. Ishmael looked uncertainly at his competition. Reyes clapped Espera on the back and said, “Don’t know if I agree with you, brother, but well said. Amen.”

Colbert wandered off, saying, “Tony, you need to go home and get laid.”

“Tell me something I don’t know, white boy.” Espera fell back into his own brooding, and we followed Ishmael toward the Ishtar Gate.

He carefully gathered his maps, tucking them back into the binder. Ishmael shook each of our hands, saying he hoped that Western tourists would soon flock to Babylon and help his people recapture their lost prosperity. Removing his fedora, Ishmael insisted that we didn’t have to pay him but allowed that any money “would buy many things of need” for his family. Gunny Wynn was a step ahead. He had collected a few dollars from each of us and tipped Ishmael a year’s wages.

We looped around a circular drive leading up the hill and parked near the palace’s front door. The view was even more spectacular than I had expected. We gazed across the entire sweep of Babylon, over the palms, and past the Euphrates. The next day, another recon platoon stood in the same place and watched in horror as a Marine helicopter crashed into the river and sank, killing its four-man crew and one Marine who had jumped in to save them. But our afternoon was peaceful, and I could almost understand Saddam’s delusion, from that perch, of keeping the whole country under his thumb. We crossed the threshold through wooden doors two stories high.