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  As it happens, Sayf was newly married to a wonderful young lady named Amina. As was the custom in this country, the marriage had been arranged by their respective parents. But despite it having been arranged, Sayf and his bride seemed to be very much in love, and within months of saying “I do,” Amina became pregnant. By the time we met the young couple during our second tour, they had a one-year-old son.

  Joseph began a friendship with Sayf, and we started seeing the couple quite often for coffee and tea or dinner. They were extremely generous when hosting us at their villa, often placing ten different delectable dishes in front of us for a meal, which I’m certain must have taken all day for Amina to prepare.

  One weekend, in order to return the favor, I spent all day cooking a meal for them. I was quite nervous because it is a challenge to figure out how to satisfy the tastes and cultural expectations of people from different backgrounds. Many people in the Arab world have a limited palate; they are used to certain types of dishes and rarely branch out. It’s the opposite of the United States, where we’re all about trying new foods and discovering new cuisines. My problem was that I didn’t know how to prepare the dishes this couple was used to. The meals I was used to making were completely foreign to them.

  I have served many diplomats and international guests throughout my career, and I’ve been shocked by how often my guests have given me feedback on what would have made the meal more palatable. “A little more lemon” (in the dish that took two hours to prepare) or “If you had put less sugar in the [homemade triple-layer] cake, it would be much better.”

  It’s strange. I can’t imagine ever correcting a host or hostess who’s spent all day preparing a meal—no matter what it tastes like. But in the Middle East, these kinds of critiques are normal. (And for the record, I’m a pretty good cook!)

  Despite my nervousness, the meal went well. I served my mother-in-law’s famous creamy chicken curry, which is actually a southern Indian dish that we have adapted to suit our own tastes—for us, the more flavor and fire, the better! In addition, I prepared roasted red pepper and chickpea salad, lamb kofta with garlicky yogurt dip, Turkish pide (similar to small pizzas), and homemade brownies with chocolate chunks.

  Even if my offerings weren’t like their traditional dishes, they didn’t criticize my efforts. Furthermore, I was just happy they ate. There have been numerous occasions when I’ve spent all day preparing dinner for guests, only to have them tell me they weren’t hungry and then refuse to touch a morsel.

  After we finished eating, we moved to the living room to have coffee, tea, dessert, and mixed nuts. Joseph had told me in advance that he was going to take Sayf out for a walk around the grounds of our apartment building in order to try to coax some intelligence out of him. I was excited that we might be at the point in the relationship where Sayf was willing to share sensitive insights about the authoritarian regime he worked for. If he did indeed share information or express discontent with his regime’s policies, it would represent a breakthrough in the relationship.

  At the appointed time, Joseph and Sayf stood up and informed us that they were going for a short walk. Amina and I replied, “Okay, have fun!”

  At this point, the situation got somewhat harder for me because I didn’t have anyone to translate for me and Amina. She was from a well-known but very sheltered tribe in her country, and her dialect was so unique—I’d never heard anything like it before. It was completely different from the Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) that I’d studied at Georgetown or the Egyptian dialect I’d learned in Cairo. Amina’s vocabulary and accent were so distinctive that her Arabic sounded like a different language altogether.

  Because of this, talking to her was tortuous. It required the engagement of every brain cell for me to comprehend what she was saying. After about twenty minutes, I had expended my full complement of Arabic. But as hard as it was, I kept telling myself that it was worth the effort if Joseph was making progress downstairs with Sayf.

  Twenty more minutes crept by . . . minute after painful minute. I was desperately hoping that Joseph and Sayf’s walk would end soon, that they would come through the door and save me from myself. As I thought about how pathetic my Arabic was, Amina started discussing family issues. She said she thought American culture was not very honorable because there was so much divorce. She said something about Americans having loose morals and rampant sexuality. Furthermore, she asked me, “Why don’t Americans value their families like Arabs do?”

  Now these are complicated topics in any language, but trying to respond to these value judgments in Arabic . . . I get a headache just thinking about the linguistic gymnastics I employed trying to respond to her questions in a meaningful way. I was completely inept and incapable of explaining the intricacies of my people and my culture to Amina.

  I kept looking at my watch, thinking hours had elapsed, but alas, it had been only five minutes since my last desperate glance at the timepiece. Talk. About. Awkward. Amina and I had exhausted our ability to communicate, and we were creeping up on an hour since Joseph and Sayf had left the apartment. I thought to myself, He’d better be getting some great intel!

  For someone who likes to make conversation and enjoys connecting one-on-one, it was the height of discomfort to sit there and merely stare at Amina. I tried playing with the baby, but he was tired. I showed Amina some of my photographs, we looked at picture books, and then we tried to teach each other a couple of useful words in our respective languages. And then we ran out of things to do. Amina yawned. I yawned. The baby yawned. We were exhausted. It had been two hours since the men had taken leave of us.

  I twiddled my fingers. Amina played with her head covering. The baby yawned again. After an interminable wait of about two and a half hours, Joseph and Sayf returned. I could not have been more relieved to see two people walk through the front door.

  Because everyone was so clearly tired at that point, the family thanked us for the meal and immediately went home. Once they had gone and we had put on sound masking (to hide the conversation from any potential hidden audio devices), I asked Joseph what I had been dying to know all night: “So how’d it go? What did you get? What happened?”

  His one-word reply was strange. “Nothing.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “How’s that possible? You were gone for two and a half hours!”

  “You’re not going to believe this,” he said, “but we didn’t talk about anything. We didn’t even take a walk. We got into his car, and he drove to a local bar to meet his girlfriend. I had to sit there, twiddling my thumbs, while he kissed and groped her. It was ridiculous.”

  Quite shocked, I said, “What? Are you kidding me? He used his time with you as an excuse to go see his girlfriend . . . at a bar?”

  “Yep.”

  “While I babysat his wife?”

  “Yep!”

  I could not believe what I was hearing. “So Sayf was smooching his local girlfriend while his wife was sitting on my couch, telling me how immoral American culture is?”

  “Yes indeed!”

  Smoke was coming out of my ears. “This is so wrong in so many ways!” I said.

  And that, my friends, is the joy of being an intelligence officer. Sometimes things go really well, and sometimes they are simply terrible. Sometimes they are exciting, and sometimes you’re so bored you just want to poke your eyes out. And sometimes you have to babysit someone’s wife so he can execute his own covert activities.

  Either way, it’s all that much more enjoyable when you have someone to share it with.

  About a year after we arrived at our first post, I headed out one morning to make the twenty-minute drive to the CIA compound. Joseph was traveling, so I was by myself and more nervous than usual. It took about twenty minutes to get from our house at the southern edge of the city to the CIA compound. My colleagues and I had to be especially careful when navigating the streets of this unforgiving place because as American citizens and US
government officials, we represented the perfect targets for al-Qa’ida, whose presence was well established throughout the city.

  Because of the training we had received, we knew that we were most vulnerable in our vehicles while coming and going from our residences, and while entering and exiting the work compound. These were the easiest places for attackers to lie in wait, to set up on us.

  I was keenly aware that American diplomat Laurence Foley had been assassinated at his residence in Amman, just seven months before we began our deployment in a country with elements far more hostile than those in Jordan. The gunmen shot Foley just as he was about to get into his car and drive to work. The two killers—a Jordanian citizen and a Libyan citizen—carried out the operation at the behest of future al-Qa’ida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

  I had no intention of becoming another fatality—if I could help it. I carefully exited the walls of our compound and scanned the empty lots around me, looking for anything or anyone that seemed to be out of place. Nothing appeared strange or amiss, and I left home without incident. As I drove out of the residential neighborhood and onto the main street, I checked my rearview mirror often to ensure no one was following me.

  About halfway to work, I came to a stop at a red light. I patiently watched as a couple of pedestrians crossed the street in front of me. One of the men, who was walking very slowly, glanced up at the vehicle and saw me through the windshield. I was sitting by myself in the driver’s seat of a large SUV. As the man’s eyes honed in on me, they flashed the look that I know well after living in some of the most conservative cultures in the world. It was the look of a hungry dog that had just seen his first meal in days. It was a look of perversion, depravity, and darkness that was so revolting it made my skin crawl. You would have thought I was completely unclothed in the driver’s seat. For the record, I was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, so all he could see was my face and neck, but apparently that was just too much for him (or whatever spiritual darkness was in him).

  He stopped crossing the street and planted his feet squarely in front of the vehicle. To my horror, he started gesturing with his hands, acting out an incredibly inappropriate sexual act. I was startled. I could not believe what I was seeing. I had traveled quite a bit, but I had never encountered anything like this before. How can he possibly think it is all right to do this in public? This kind of behavior isn’t okay in any country, in any culture. Blakhh.

  I figured the man would get it out of his system and move along, but he just stood there in his white dishdasha (long, flowing robe), kaffiyeh (head wrap), and Western-style sports jacket with the tag still sewn onto the sleeve. He continued making the obscene gesture for what seemed like an eternity. Soon other men on the sidewalk started noticing, and I felt my face flush. I was mortified. The light eventually turned green, but I couldn’t go anywhere with this man standing directly in front of the vehicle.

  Getting more and more annoyed, I gestured toward the sidewalk and yelled, “Get out of here, you jerk!” I kept waving my arms, shouting at him to move in both English and Arabic. He couldn’t hear me through the glass, but I kept shouting nonetheless. Meanwhile, a small crowd of men started taking interest in the spectacle and began moving toward the car to get a better look at me. They didn’t appear to be disturbed by the man, but they were supremely interested in me. They just had to see what was behind the glass, eliciting such a reaction. Ever since I’d joined the CIA, it seemed like I was either ignored because I was a woman or the center of attention. I just couldn’t catch a break.

  After living in █████ more than a year, I knew how quickly men swarm a vehicle in the wake of a car crash. It was the strangest sight. Hundreds of men would surround the vehicle, pushing their faces up against the glass and trying to look at the people inside—particularly if there were women. (No, they really don’t have enough to do.) They would stand there, noses scrunched up to the window, just staring. The chance to see a woman, up close and personal, was an opportunity they could not pass up. And that day at the intersection, I was the only female for miles.

  In █████, women aren’t permitted outside the home, with the exception of trips to the vegetable market, the grocery store, or the homes of family and friends. Local women are munaqabeen, which means that they are completely shrouded in flowing black cloth. No part of their bodies can be seen, with the exception of their hands. █████ is such a conservative country that if an advertisement on the street bears a woman’s face, it isn’t long before someone defaces the sign, blotting out the perverse image. Outside of their mothers, sisters, daughters, or wives (yes, plural), men don’t really know what other women look like.

  My stomach clenched as I shifted from being shocked and appalled by the man’s behavior to realizing that he was placing me in danger by causing a scene and refusing to move out of the way. █████ is one of the carjacking and kidnapping capitals of the world. In fact, one of my predecessors at work had been carjacked right there in the city. She related the story to me like it was no big deal, because those were the good old days when the kidnappers would treat you like an honored guest. They would often use Western hostages as leverage to negotiate with the government for some essential service they needed in their village, like a school or medical clinic.

  More recently, however, kidnappings had turned into a deadly sport that usually ended in the deaths of the victims as a result of botched government intervention or al-Qa’ida’s involvement.

  Kidnappings weren’t necessarily planned in advance. Rather, foreigners were often a target of opportunity. Tribal men would take foreigners captive and sell them to al-Qa’ida for desperately needed cash. And one thing I knew as a counterterrorism officer—those kidnappings never ended well.

  With all of this racing through my mind, I knew I couldn’t let fear take over and cause me to freeze. I couldn’t just hunker down and hope the situation didn’t deteriorate further. Without thought, my security training kicked in, and I felt the sudden urge to “get off the ‘X.’”

  In CIA lingo, the “X” refers to the site of an attack. This is the location in which the attackers have the greatest advantage because they control the environment. Attackers increase their chances of success by stopping, surrounding, or disabling your vehicle, making it difficult for you to get away. From a target’s perspective, the “X” is the position of greatest vulnerability, where you have the least amount of control over the outcome of a situation. Therefore, we are taught to do whatever we can to get off the “X” and away from that location.

  At that intersection, I was sitting squarely on the “X.” The crowd of men approaching the vehicle was growing by the minute, and if there happened to be any extremists amongst them and they discovered I was alone . . . well, I didn’t want to wait to find out what might happen. Unfortunately, I was sandwiched between the instigator and a beat-up sedan idling a couple of inches behind me.

  Like a zombie movie unfolding in slow motion, local men, bearing various types of weapons—mostly ceremonial knives—were advancing from every direction. They were emerging from storefronts and sidewalk perches along the road to get as close to my car as possible. Within the span of two minutes, the group of bystanders had expanded and was now a crowd of twenty or thirty leering men. Very shortly my SUV would be surrounded and I would be unable to move.

  My mind raced. What do I do? How do I get out of this?

  In a moment of sheer desperation, I took my foot off the brake. The SUV lurched forward, and the front bumper hit the man with a soft thud. I wish you could have seen his face—his expression was one of pure shock. Never in a million years did he think I would be bold enough to hit him with my vehicle. But he quickly recovered and defiantly regained his stance in front the SUV, even more determined to stand his ground.

  At this point, even more men were succumbing to curiosity—they just had to know what inside the SUV was causing such a scene. Out of the corners of my eyes, I could see the zomb
ie men closing in. They were crossing the street and walking up the sidewalk toward my SUV, and as they walked, I could see the glint of their knives affixed to the wide belts slung across their skinny waists. My panic grew. My thoughts were jumbled and desperate. I would be surrounded in seconds. I had to get out of there.

  I took my foot off the brake and tapped the gas pedal. I hit the man harder, and he fell back several steps onto the pavement. I yelled, “That’s right, you creep—get out of the way or I will run you over!” I held his gaze, wild-eyed, while revving the engine like the crazy woman I had just become. Vrooom! Vroom! His eyes widened. He threw his hands up and began to slowly back away from the car. The crowd of men temporarily froze and stared in shock, wondering what I would do next.

  The second the pervert stepped out of the road, I gunned the gas and shot through the intersection. My heart was pounding, and I was shaking violently. I raced through the city toward the office, refusing to stop for any more stop signs or traffic lights. When I finally made it to the relative safety of the CIA compound, adrenaline was surging through my body. It took hours for me to calm down.

  That day was a stark reminder of how quickly things can spiral out of control when you live in a place like █████. Who knows what would have happened if I had just sat there in shock, waiting and wondering to see what was going to unfold. The longer I had stayed on the “X,” the less control I would have had over the situation, and the more likely it was that I would have been at the mercy of people who did not have my best interests in mind.

  There are many stories of people—both diplomats and civilians—who became paralyzed by fear and ended up victims of brutal terrorist attacks. Incidentally, that’s why the fight-or-flight response is now called the fight, flight, or freeze response. Because sometimes when the odds are overwhelming and we don’t know what to do, we neither fight nor flee. More often than not, people die by simply not doing anything. That’s what the instructors were trying to condition us for in the simulated ambush—to conquer the tendency to freeze. They wanted to be sure we had the capacity to react, to move.