Criminal That I Am (21 page)

When I was in college, I finally got to see the criminal process up close. My freshman year, I located and then visited the municipal court located a few blocks from campus. When I saw that a rape trial was in progress, I took a seat in the front row of the gallery just as the victim was taking the stand. I was so transfixed that in my memory I
didn't even take a breath. As she described the heinous details of her ordeal—her ex-boyfriend storming into her home, him locking her into the bedroom while her small children sat at the door, her placing her own hand over her mouth so that her children would not hear what transpired—my chest tightened as though it were happening now, happening to all of us.

I so misappropriated my relevance to this woman's testimony that when she stepped down from the stand sobbing and burst out of the courtroom, I found myself walking behind her, following her to the ladies' room. I had no concept of what she had been through, not a thing to say that might sound right. But I still stood next to her as she cried over the sink, mostly saying nothing, occasionally handing her a rough paper towel from the dispenser against the wall.

Now, as I lie in bed waiting for air-conditioning to arrive, I remember this woman, her damaged blond hair, her long flowered dress. At the time, I told myself that I ran to her out of concern, out of empathy for her suffering, respect for her courage. But I see now that this was only partially true. What also led me there was the promise of proximity.

It's possibly not a healthy thing, to want so badly to see crime and punishment up close, to watch its underbelly rise and fall. The compulsion likely renders me an oddity, a fork in a drawer full of spoons. All things considered, I suppose it was only a matter of time before I found myself exactly where I stand.

“S
ecrecy” is a common theme in Iraq's criminal court system. The court is located in a secured purgatory between the fortress of the Green Zone and the rest of Baghdad, closed to public viewing. Access is permitted only with advance government clearance. I receive such clearance by virtue of my U.S. passport and the helpful assistance of a member of the U.S. Embassy who vouches for the legitimacy of my research. Without similar clearance, Iraqi citizens are not allowed.

This level of restriction is not surprising. As a security measure against insurgent attacks, Iraq's entire political apparatus is located inside the Green Zone, outside of the access of the citizenry. The result
is that Baghdad is reduced to two separate and unrelated spheres. The general populace has no oversight over its representatives, and the government regulates people and places it cannot see.

To everyday Iraqis, the Green Zone's impermeability is absolute: no one ever goes in, and no one ever comes out. It is the premise of
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
, except with grave violations of the Geneva Conventions.

In traversing both spheres, I can confirm that they bear no resemblance to each other. The Green Zone boasts newly constructed homes on pristine streets. The happy hum of air-conditioning is constant. But while the Green Zone is clean and cool, there is something disconcertingly sterile in its construction. The entire setup looks as though everything has been unpacked out of a box, the contents of which could just as easily exist in Boise as they do in Baghdad.

My family asks me what the Green Zone is like. My cousin's wife, a notorious neat freak, asks me if its streets are cleaner than those in Baghdad proper.

“Maybe just a little,” I lie. It's not as though she will ever know.

When we reach the area containing the court, my driver/translator directs me to security. Although I am accorded clearance in advance, I'm nonetheless at the whim of the Iraqi military officials who stand guard. It has thus been suggested to me that in order to ensure entry I should “try not to act Iraqi.”

I therefore engage in the following exchange:

IRAQI SOLDIER (IN ARABIC):
Passport, please.

ME (IN ENGLISH):
I'm sorry, I don't understand.

IRAQI SOLDIER (IN ARABIC):
You don't understand the word “passport”? [He is dubious because the word for passport is “bassbort.”]

Me (steadfast, in English):
No, I don't.

IRAQI SOLDIER (IN ARABIC):
But you understood what I just said.

ME (SILENTLY CURSING, IN ENGLISH):
I'm sorry, I don't understand.

He ultimately lets me through and directs me to a series of buildings. Except they are not buildings, they are trailers, arranged in a manner that suggests that there is a film being shot nearby, or FEMA has recently stepped in.

“What is this?” I ask my driver.

“It's the criminal court,” he says.

T
he series of FEMA-like trailers that I encounter actually house individual proceedings of both chambers of Iraq's criminal court, the investigatory and trial chambers, with defendants sporting nacho cheese–colored jumpsuits shuttled in between. It seems rather odd, the hundreds of millions of dollars spent to establish this trailer park. Perhaps since the public can't observe the proceedings, appearance is not considered a top priority.

I'm hoping to take a look at the court dockets. But I soon learn that in keeping with the theme of secrecy, court documents and records are not readily made available to the public.

“Why would they even want to see them?” a judge asks me when I inquire.

“But if they did want to see it, would you show it to them?” I ask.

“I suppose. Yes, if they came here and requested it, we would probably show it,” he says.

“But how could they come here to request it without special clearance?”

He shrugs. “I don't know,” he says.

I think about my own legal troubles. In this system of criminal justice, I think to myself, no one would ever know my criminal case existed.

In most of the proceedings I see—all of them terrorism cases—the entirety of the evidence consists of an anonymous witness statement claiming the defendant is guilty. When I inquire about the obvious drawbacks of this procedure, and the unfortunate history associated with its prior use, the judges insist that the use of secret evidence is necessary. The security concerns surrounding terrorism cases are very real, and without allowing witnesses the ability to keep their identity secret, they say, the cases could not be brought at all.

But the issue is not apolitical, I am told. In many instances the witnesses are American and Iraqi soldiers, and because their supervisors do not allow them to testify, the system allows them to accuse without consequence.

“Does it bother you,” I ask a trial judge, “that in a criminal trial in the United States these witnesses would be required to testify, and here they are not?”

He thinks about this for several moments. “Not really,” he finally says. He seems ready to say more, but doesn't.

Taking it all in, I am struck by the malleability of criminal justice, how this system manages to be so different from the one that produced the American lawyers who birthed it. Justice is apparently not carved in stone, but made of something pliable, something that can be shaped and stretched to fit whatever shape man prefers.

It's not difficult to see in this system that the absence of the right to confront is problematic. I privately conclude that while I don't want the Escaleras to exercise this right, I don't doubt it is a right they should have.

The principled part of me thinks what has been accomplished in this court system is a profound disappointment, a missed opportunity. But another part of me recognizes the impulse behind its construction. I know all about breaking rules to achieve what I believe to be a better outcome, choosing lawlessness for what I personally believe to be an overriding good. I can sympathize with the urge to game the system to achieve a self-interested result. It's not right, but the criminal in me understands.

A
lthough I manage to remain somewhat focused on my research, my personal travails remain close. Every day before I go to court and after I return, I check online to search for any updates in the Escaleras' case.

At first, there are few. At some point late in the summer, inmate locator indicates that Cameron has been transferred from Pennsylvania back to New York City. This does not give me great pause, given that he was moved there once already and nothing came to pass.

A few days later, I receive a Google Alert leading me to an article in the
New York Post
reporting that Cameron is no longer on the government's witness list. Unfortunately, the story doesn't make enough sense for me to be excited. I can't imagine the government would go to the trouble of moving Cameron to New York City and not place him on the stand. But I have no way of obtaining the transcript in Baghdad without undergoing significant inconvenience, and so I forward the article to my lawyer, who writes back the next day to say that Cameron will still be testifying and that the trial seems to be moving forward.

And then one morning I check my e-mail and find a link to an article in the
New York Post
:

MORE DOUGLAS TROUBLE

I swallow hard and start to read:

The feds won't let anything block Cameron Douglas' role as the star witness against his alleged drug suppliers—not even additional lawbreaking.

The troubled Hollywood scion—currently serving five years in the slammer for dealing meth—has been caught in “additional criminal activity,” according to court papers filed yesterday.

I take from this that the government has provided information of my crimes to the court. I read ahead to see if any details of what I've done have been disclosed to the press.

Lawyer Lloyd Epstein, who represents Eduardo Escalera, said he had no idea what trouble Douglas had gotten into, or if it had occurred during the time he has been locked up.

I read the article again in the hopes that the second time around it will say something different. It doesn't.

My head somehow feels heavier than it was. I look at my watch.
With the eight-hour time difference, every possible person with whom I would like to discuss this development—my lawyer, my mother, Best Friend—is fast asleep.

I rub my eyes. I stand up and pace. I go back to my laptop. I sit on the bed. I lie down. I pull the blanket over my head.

I don't know how long I am lying there when I hear a soft knock on the door.

“Jennie?” It's my aunt.

“Yes?” I don't bother moving, so I suspect my voice is muffled.

“Don't you want to have breakfast?” I hear her open the door.

“I'm not really hungry.”

In keeping with Iraqi tradition, she is equal parts galled and worried. “How can you not be hungry?”

“I'm not feeling too well,” I announce through the blanket.

“Why, sweetheart?” From the sway of the mattress, I can tell she has sat down next to me.

“I—”

She pulls back the blanket and places her hand against my forehead. I'm hoping that the heat underneath the covers has caused my forehead to feel warm.

“You don't have a fever.” She looks me over for a moment with my mother's same trademark precision. “Are you upset?”

“No,” I lie.

“Then what?”

I'm not sure what I could possibly say about this to her. I can't really tell her that it seems increasingly likely that I'm about to lose everything that seems worth having. So I say something technically true but very incomplete. “I just miss my mom.” I feel myself tear up.

As soon as I say it, I fear she might take this as a veiled criticism about my stay. And for a moment, I think I can see this thought pass across her face. But she looks at me with sympathetic eyes and wipes my cheek with her hand.

“I know,” she says. “I miss her, too.”

I sometimes forget that my mother had a life before she was my mother. That she and my aunt spent the first two decades of their lives at each other's sides, two peas in a pod, two halves of a whole.
But they then spent the next four decades on opposite—and opposing—sides of the world, visiting each other only in e-mails and phone calls.

The last eight years of this time apart have been very difficult on my aunt. The war has forced her into early retirement from a medical practice she loved. On two separate occasions, kidnapping threats from insurgents have required her and my uncle to pick up everything and leave the country. Her friends have suffered unspeakable losses. Her immediate family lives in a shroud of uncertainty, not knowing if they will stay here or try to find a new home somewhere else.

In remembering all of this, I recognize that I am being a self-­centered asshole, thinking my problems to be worthy of such melodrama. I sit up and wipe my eyes.

“Come on,” she says. “At least have tea with me while I make lunch.”

I nod and get up. We descend the stairs to the kitchen. The table evidences that she is preparing stuffed vegetables in pomegranate-­infused water. I see that several eggplants have already been gutted and that next to her ashtray many others await evisceration.

My aunt does not heed my declaration of not being hungry and places before me a plate of leavened pita bread, clotted cream, and date syrup. My appetite miraculously returns, and while she works her way through the eggplants, I smother the bread with the cream and drizzle it with syrup. It tastes so good that my horror over the
Post
article begins to fade.

My aunt is a multitasker, and so while she whittles vegetables and smokes a cigarette, she is also watching the kitchen television set. This is always set to a Dubai-based television station called Fatafeat, a food channel that carries popular cooking programs from every continent. My aunt watches this channel so much that my uncle often remarks that he is not sure if my aunt is married to him or to Fatafeat.

My aunt gestures toward the television show with her eggplant. “See, Jennie, this is an American show.”