Sunrise Over Fallujah by Walter Dean Myers

where the line met the door, there was a huge chip in the cement. The top of the front door was intact but the bottom was gone.
    A group of women sat to one side in the shade of a tree. They were cutting up strips of cloth and rolling them into small bundles. Ahmed went over and spoke to them. One of the women turned and pointed to a low building about fifty yards away. There was writing on the walls and a circle that looked like some kind of logo.
    â€œBirdy, go with him,” Captain Coles said as Ahmed started for the building.
    â€œBirdy?” I was surprised. “That’s my official name now?”
    Captain Coles laughed and checked out my name tape. “ Perry , go with him,” he said.
    I caught up with Ahmed, who told me that the local chief owned the store we were headed toward.
    â€œYou understand everything they say?” I asked.
    â€œJust about,” Ahmed said. “But the woman back there pretended she didn’t understand anything I said.”
    â€œThey don’t like us over here, I guess.”
    â€œNo, it just means that they don’t trust us,” Ahmed said. “Whatever else we deal with, that’s going to be part of the picture.”
    We got to the store and found a really fat man sitting beside a pile of shoe boxes. There was clothing in the small store; most ofit was American-style clothing, some Iraqi stuff. I thought about buying some Iraqi clothing and taking it back home. Mama would like that.
    Ahmed started talking to the man in Arabic. The guy didn’t answer. There were coins on a table near him, and as Ahmed spoke, he pushed them around with one stubby finger. Finally, after a while, Ahmed stopped talking and the man looked up at him, then away. He didn’t look at Ahmed when he spoke.
    I wished I knew what the guy was saying. He was very calm as he spoke, very deliberate with his words. He didn’t gesture with his hands but kept pushing the coins around the table. Ahmed spoke once in a while, and his voice was low, matching the Iraqi shopkeeper’s.
    â€œWhat’s he saying?” I asked.
    â€œHe’s saying the mothers of the dead children don’t want our money, they want their children,” Ahmed said. “I don’t know if he wants me to beg him or something. I don’t know.”
    â€œAsk him if he’s refusing the money,” I said. “Tell him if he is, we’ll just go.”
    Ahmed spoke to the guy again and he answered.
    â€œHe wants to know if you’re my commanding officer,” Ahmed said. “I told him no and now he wants me to go get Coles.”
    â€œYou should have told him I was your commanding officer and the most dangerous man in the army,” I said.
    We went back to the Humvees. Marla, Jean, and the othernoncom woman were already with the children. Captain Miller was talking with the women.
    â€œShe speak Arabic?” I asked Captain Coles.
    â€œA little,” he said. “What’s the situation with their chief?”
    â€œHe’s playing it cool,” Ahmed said. “He was kind of chewing me out in a calm way. Asking me stuff like if I thought the money was going to make up for the death of the children. I didn’t answer that. Now he wants to see you.”
    â€œWhich means that he’ll probably take the money,” Captain Coles said.
    As we started back toward the store the guy appeared at the door. He called to some of the women and two of them—I figured they were the ones who had lost children—came over.
    Inside the store the man spoke to the women. Ahmed said he didn’t understand what they were saying, that they had switched to a dialect he didn’t know. The women started yelling at us.
    â€œYou don’t need to speak Arabic to understand what they’re saying,” Ahmed said.
    He was right. We stood there for about ten minutes while they screamed at us. One woman spit on the ground in front of my feet.