224 AMERICAN SPYAfter spending a week on the ground in Baghdad, I left my two colleagues
behind and returned to Amman via the same desert route. They coura-
geously remained in Baghdad for another month to deal with the myriad
business start-up issues.
During the drive from Baghdad to Amman, I stopped off again in
Ramadi to meet with Imad’s uncle, Sheik Omar. Chapter 29 reveals the
details of our brief but historic conversation.
As we sped west across Anbar Province, I was able to experience things
I had not seen on my way in, due to the blinding sandstorm. The western
Iraqi desert is not unlike parts of the American Southwest and northern
Baja California, Mexico. A couple of fundamental differences included the
large herds of camels roaming freely in the desert, and having to detour
around modern freeway overpasses and bridges that had been recently
destroyed by US forces.
The trip out of Iraq and into Jordan was smooth compared to the trip
in. After checking into my room at the Sheraton Amman, I opened up my
dusty duffel bag and watched a huge Iraqi cockroach crawl out. It looked as
though it could’ve been related to the one I flattened in Baghdad. I shooed
the cockroach onto the balcony and bid it a fond farewell. At that point the
pest was someone else’s problem. Little did I know at that moment that my
border-crossing Mesopotamian cockroach was a fitting metaphor for the
evil genie that had been let out of its bottle when the United States carried
out its ill-advised invasion of Iraq.