MISSION: IMPROBABLE 223Imad had turned one of the villa’s offices into our bedroom, complete
with three comfortable twin beds. Our meals were prepared outside and
brought in daily. Food was always plentiful, and it was, without fail, delicious.
One of my two American colleagues had planned to lose weight during his
month-long stay in Baghdad. I’d told him about the weight I’d lost during my
wartime “Sarajevo diet” and cautioned him the situation in Baghdad could
be similar. I could not have been more wrong. Instead of losing weight, my
colleague put on fifteen pounds during his stay in Baghdad.
Just as I had done after surviving the deadly trek into Sarajevo, I slept
like a baby once we reached Baghdad. Arriving safely at ground zero is a
welcome relief; it’s the anticipation and the risky trip in or out that pro-
duces the adrenaline rush. Before hitting the rack, I would position my flip-
flops next to my bed to avoid stepping on a cockroach with my bare feet in
case I had to get up during the night. On my first night, I got up in the dark
and stepped into my sandals, squishing a giant cockroach that was resting
comfortably on top of the left one. Welcome to Baghdad.
While in Baghdad, we checked out potential office buildings and even
made some preliminary sales calls on prospective customers. We also inter-
viewed our first potential employees, including one named Osama. Abdul
happily drove us around Baghdad in a little white car, seemingly tempting
fate at every turn. During one trip along the banks of the Tigris River to
the Babylon Hotel, he got into a one-sided road rage argument with some
unseen Iraqis inside a BMW with blacked-out windows and no tags—not
the kind of people you want to mess with at that particular time in Iraq’s
history. Another time, he failed to slow down as we approached the Pales-
tine Hotel, ignoring the commands of US troops who were understand-
ably nervous about potential suicide car bombers. We were fortunate the
troops did not light us up as we approached. Abdul also failed to declare his
hidden gun and was lucky the troops did not discover that as well. Back at
our villa, wild man Abdul kept us entertained with his antics and even pro-
vided wake-up service in the mornings with a couple of pokes to the chest
with his AK. He spoke no English, and we spoke almost no Arabic, but we
still managed to communicate. Whenever we’d hit the deck after hearing
small-arms fire outside, Abdul would point toward the sound of the gunfire
and say, knowingly, “Ali Baba.”