I'm doing pretty good so far. I'll be home in May for a couple weeks then maybe as early as September for good. But more likely November. Going to be single by then?? :)
Here's my latest journal thang for you since I didn't have your named on the list. It will be on it next time.
Foreign relations is a tricky business. Foreign relations with people who speak a language with absolutely no english cognates is even trickier. Hand gestures are useful. Body language works too but when it comes down to it you're still a unwashed American trudging through sand. I try not to offend usually. There's days when the right combination of caffeine, sleep deprivation and frustration set me right on the edge of homicide but mostly I'm a passive observer watching hands and faces through the glass porthole of my cocoon in the rear of the humvee.
Some time ago while pulling security for a meeting between civil affairs and the Iraqi workers they support I was given a falafel (some falafel?) to eat since we were going get back after the DFAC closed. If you've never had it, falafel is kind of like peta bread stuffed with what I guess are little fried balls of some kind of bean mush spiced up and laid on a bed of lettuce and chopped tomatoes and onions. Depending on the vendor they are usually pretty tasty especially if the bread is fresh. There was a group of teen age Iraqi kids that had been asking me questions all morning sitting to my left and by the time the food came around I was getting pretty tired of playing "what's this?" with the stuff on my kit so I had removed myself from their semi circle and sat off alone to space out for a few minutes while I enjoyed the first thing I'd eaten that day. As I ate I noticed that they had somehow become even more interested my activities and I tried to ignore them staring at me and asking me questions in arabic that I was sure they knew I didn't speak by that time. As I finished I swept a little pile of crumbs that had fallen on the floor and one of the kids jumped up which made me jump up and start to raise my rifle. A middle-aged man in a tan leather jacket who had been following the exchange from halfway across the room walked and with a disapproving glare and looked down his nose at me as the boy who had jumped up began to speak to him in rapid spurts. The man then asked me if knew God. In the way you'd ask a child holding a baseball bat, who broke the vase.
"We believe that food is a gift from God and to disrespect food is to disrespect God," he continued. "The boy wants to pick up your crumbs for you and dispose of them properly. That is what he's been asking you to do."
Well of course, silly me how could I have misinterpreted that? There were two distinctly separate reactions going on in my mind at that moment. One was a feeling of total embarrassment and the other was the urge to put the butt of my rifle through this mans face for talking to me like I was supposed to understand the nuances of Muslim culture because my job forces me to spend time under it's watchful eye. In the second it took me to decide my course of action I went with embarrassment. I felt stupid, uneducated and disappointed which aren't three things I'm used to feeling especially at once so I apologized and looked like an idiot as I bent over the bulk of my kit to pick up pea sized falafel bits off a dirty floor. The boy came over and took them from my hand and disposed of them properly... which was to put them in the ashtray. So in the same day I learned though God isn't so hot on feet, he isn't above refrying the occasional Newport.
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I'd like to tell you that we do wild and crazy things. I'd like to have stories that are exciting. I'd like to say that we did a chinese fire drill in the middle of a busy Baghdad street. But we've definitely never done anything like that.
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Everything you've ever been taught about anger is a lie! The kind and gentle grease we use to lube the cogs of the social machine is a fabrication, a fiction woven to usher the meek in to their position of biblical prophecy. No really though, think about the last time you were really angry for a good reason. A righteous fury. Do you remember the feeling that swept through you entire body, the pulsing, pounding energy, the strength it gave you to fight for what you believed in, even if it was just the fact that your position at the register got swooped because you were oogling the cover of US Weekly. It's a rush and I think we rob ourselves of one of our most useful emotions by tempering our feelings. Just make sure you're right first.
I wear dark Oakley wrap around sunglasses during the day on patrol. It helps the ol' crows feet from getting any worse and it's like a shield against stares. People in this country have a staring problem. Like a real glaring into your eyes for way to long kind of problem. It's not something you get much in America even if someone doesn't like you. It's unnerving at times and I've had to teach myself not to look away. I make it a game now. Who can stare longer. Usually I win because... probably because I'm the only one who knows it's a game. But one day I was caught off guard.
In my usual seat in the back of the truck I was staring out at traffic with my body turned toward the outside resting up again the 240 ammo cans. This sometimes makes my back feel better after sitting in my gear for a long period. The cars were at a stand still waiting for our trucks to move so everyone was upset to begin with. There is no patience in driving here. Every little delay is a catastrophe in the mind of a Baghdad motorist and in this city there's always a delay. It's not unusual to watch a myriad combination of wild gesticulation accented by yelling and the ever present sound of the horn. But this was different.
A man with a scraggly black beard was staring at me from the cab of his white flatbed truck. Not staring at my truck or the machine gun mounted on top or our driver but directly at me. His face glistening with new sweat and his dark blue shirt dirty and loose around his neck he actually was leaning forward around another man to his side to look at me. I looked away. It didn't bother me at first because like I said it's not unusual to see any of this but something started burning inside me chest. A strange sensation began to build inside me and I looked back at him from behind my dark glasses and I occurred to me that I wasn't playing around with this one. I was getting mad. Really mad. I took my glasses off and stared with what I can only assume was a face I tried to configure into an internationally recognizable look of "I don't feel like being fucking stared at". But he kept glaring at me his face stuck at this infuriating point between stupidity and anger. And I exploded.
"I'm going to come out of this truck and FUCKING KILL YOU!"
The vic system on my ears went silent. The rest of the truck had been chatting back and forth before my outburst but all was quite now.
"Doc, you ok?"
Uhh. Yeah. The man was no longer looking at me. He had sunken back into his seat so far I couldn't see him behind the man at his side who was nervously avoiding everything in our general direction. My whole body was quivering. I felt like a lion inside of a tiger riding an elephant on a rocket. And for what? I don't know but it was amazing. I never get angry but for that brief moment the crystal clear vision of throwing open my door, jumping up, slamming my M4 through the window of that truck and laying waste to everything on the other end of the barrel seemed like the only sensible and correct course of action given my circumstance. Do I recommend that to anyone? No. But everyone should have that experience at least once. Or if you're our TC, once every 15 minutes.
