“Don’t worry, we’ll be out of here in six months tops,” he promises.
“You think so, sir?” I ask, hopeful. We’ve been given no time frame, just dumped into the sand and told to exist, to work, to not die. There has been no other Army occupation deployment before us, we’re the first, and that brings all the uncertainty of knowing nothing.
“I have it on good authority.” The chaplain smiles, staring out over the burning shit.
Andres gives him a dark, sideways glare. He doesn’t believe him. Andres has a good sense of these things. His jadedness gives him an uncanny insight into the military’s interworking because in a few months, this chaplain is gone, relieved by another chaplain, just like Colonel Fox is relieved by another regiment colonel mid-deployment, snatching up their combat patches and moving on, leaving us all here to rot. It’s good to be an officer.
* * *
In the beginning, it’s only MREs. The Skittles are nice and if you’re smart enough to snag a vegetarian bag, there’s fruit. Supposedly there’s a mythical option out there with scrambled eggs and maple apple sausage, but I never see it. The redundancy of the food is disheartening. There are only so many times one can eat meat loaf for breakfast. So when a man who has next to nothing offers us all that he has, we take it ravenously.
He sits cross-legged on the men’s bedroom floor. I don’t know who he is or why he’s here. Perhaps he’s an informant. There are plenty of locals willing to help in their own way. Children mostly will run up to Humvees outside the wire and point out where insurgents had planted IEDs the night before. They swing and dance around the vehicles, pulling soldiers into games of soccer, sometimes sitting on the sidewalks and asking for help with their English homework. Some locals will tell you chilling, terrifying stories about the days before. Some, like this man, who may not speak much English at all, will give what he has for reasons I’ll never know. His feet are hard and dusty. He is old but bends easily, slanted over an impressive display of food. Silver round tins overflow with ruddy sauces, golden saffron rice, and round chunks of browned meat, all displayed on an ornate red wool woven square rug. He grins, the corners of his eyes crinkle, deep lines embedded in the dark skin. He gestures to the food with a work-worn hand.
“Eat, eat,” he says gleefully. His beard is white, bright against the rest of him.
I glance at Sergeant Lee and male King, female King’s husband, who are already devouring their shares. I crouch down beside them and the man makes me a small plate of red-curry-like sauce over meat with a side of rice. My mouth waters. I dip the offered flat bread into the sauce and it tastes like Eden.
“His wife makes all this,” says Sergeant Lee.
“From scratch?” I yelp over a mouthful, food dribbling out the corners of my lips.
“He brings it every week for the soldiers to eat.”
The man grins again, gesturing for me to take more, eat more. The brown meat is goat and it is delicious.
“Why?” I ask.
The two soldiers shrug, scooping up the last of their food with fingers.
I say, “Thank you, shukraan, shukraan,” and the man gestures for me to take more; his smile seems so genuine, his delight palpable. I don’t ask why he’s so happy, or why he brings food to soldiers who have entrenched themselves into his country’s soil. I can’t ask why, when he has so little, he gives so much away. But I say, “Shukraan, shukraan,” and this seems to satisfy him. I carve his face and his kindness into my brain as my only means of gratitude, because I don’t know what else to give him.
* * *
The camp finally gets its act together and builds a makeshift mess hall, a hut of green tarp and wobbly tables, powered by fuel and fire. No one thinks to complain about its lackluster appearance because at least we’re not eating MREs anymore. But mess hall means kitchen patrol, and that’s one hell of a duty.
I arrive before dawn for KP, staring down at my boots, struggling to stay awake.
“Go get water,” says one of the cooks, shoving five-gallon jugs into my hands. And so I do, back and forth from the water buffalo, sloshing water over the front of my uniform, because we don’t have running water and every ounce has to be hauled into the tent.
“I speak three fucking languages,” I grunt to no one, my hands crimped into a permanent claw. No one cares.
I haul another jug up onto a metal shelf in the mess hall. The water is poured into metal bins, heated by open flames. The kitchen is sectioned off from the mess hall by two dirtied nylon flaps, which ensnare the heat, circulating it around the tiny room until my hair is plastered against my skull and sweat drenches my uniform. The cooks mill about, occasionally stirring silver tins of dehydrated food, while those of us tasked to the duty clean the tables, the floors, dumping dirty dishes into the metal bins and scrubbing them clean. There’s no way to regulate the water temperature and it’s scalding, turning my hands brilliant red and peeling the skin off my knuckles.
“What do we need cooks for,” I mutter to the other guy on duty. “They just stand there while we do all the work.”
He glances over at the cooks, all huddled around one tin of orange eggs, each taking a turn stirring the watery food. “They certainly have this whole shamming thing figured out,” he agrees. Every good soldier knows how to sham—staying in plain sight while doing the least amount of work possible—and the cooks have this down to a science. They shirk the heavier work and shoulder off the labor onto KP, even as they ignore us, as if there is a caste division.
But there are those who don’t, who mingle, and McCarthy always stands next to me on the line, coyly watching as I slap food onto trays, grinning a big-toothed grin and saying, “You’ll make some man a really great wife someday,” and I laugh at the sexist compliment, because he’s actually very friendly and sweet, and it’s a shame that one day he places the muzzle of his rifle into his mouth and blows his brains out over the back of the mess hall tent.
Soldiers file in three times a day for meals and I clamor for a space on the serving line, because I’d rather smile up at soldiers and dish out food than stand in the blistering heat of the back kitchen.
Sergeant Daniels comes for breakfast, holding out his tray for me to splatter wet, rehydrated eggs onto his plate. He’s already covered in a layer of dirt, his uniform pale with salt stains and his face dark with sun and grime. He narrows his eyes at me, holding up the line. “Dostie, how many times have you done this so far?” He means KP, kitchen patrol.
I slosh eggs onto the soldier’s plate next to him. “Four or five times now?” I say.
The issue is my language abilities. Up on our work floor, packed away six stories up in a condemned building, we work twelve-hour shifts, seven days a week. But I’m not good enough, I’m not fast enough, I’ve always been a mediocre Farsi linguist. I struggle to keep up on our _____, leaning over the broken-down desk, clamping _____ to _____, brow pinned, _____ this or that, what little _____, and feeling terribly inadequate.
Sergeant Holt had pulled me aside one evening, standing in the hallway between floors five and six. He holds my _____, scowling over the _____. It’s unsatisfactory. “Dostie, if you can’t keep up, there are other ways you can be more useful,” he says and I stare down at my boots, nudging away some white debris with my toe. “You could do KP for everyone instead,” he offers, maybe because his KP duty is upcoming and no one likes the sixteen-to-nineteen-hour shift. “I’m not saying you have to, but wouldn’t you want to help the team out the best way you can?”
I grumble something, because it’s not just that I want to be useful, I have to be. War has given me reprieve from the role of the girl who reported—I’ve won freedom beneath bullets and mortars. Everyone’s forgotten either because they have better things to do or because another girl in the unit is raped and they have something new to look at. I won’t remind them. I’m not the worst linguist, but I’m certainly not the best, either. I can’t draw attention by holding the group back.
“Y
eah, sure, I can do extra KP,” I mumble, because if I can’t perform well enough, at least I know how to work hard.
In line, Sergeant Daniels shakes his head at me, a little angry. “No,” is all he says, then strides away, and I think I did something wrong again, my stomach twisting with dread, but instead someone tells me Sergeant Daniels corners Sergeant Holt in the mess hall, leans in, and reams him out. And when I’m told, I stand dumbfounded because I didn’t even know Sergeant Daniels cared. That’s the last time I ever have KP.
* * *
Outside the wire, there are the convoy details, and it’s a very different kind of ride from our journey up to Baghdad. Here there be insurgents. Here we blaze down the streets and begin to calculate:
Lumbering dump trucks filled with Iraqi workers: insurgents with handguns
Crumbled plastic cans on the edge of the road: improvised explosive devices
Glassless windows cut into apartment walls: snipers
Riding the swell of a bridge: explosives under the structural supports
Ducking beneath an overpass: bombs dropping onto the passing convoy
Iraqis on sidewalks: rifles hidden beneath traditional cloth and dresses
This is the way our war is now. Rides are tense. Sergeant Daniels sits to the right of me, one hand on the door, stubble-covered jaw working around a wad of chew. We both see the debris rolled up with cans and loose plastic bags at the same time. My eyes dart to the mirrors, checking my lanes, but there’s a stone barrier on my left, a Humvee on my right.
“Dostie, don’t run over it,” Sergeant Daniels orders, his right arm reaching up to grip the roof. I have nowhere to go. My foot hovers over the brake, my heart pounds, the Humvee on the right blocks my way and I grip the steering wheel, twisting the metal in my hands.
“Dostie, don’t run over it!” Sergeant Daniels yells again, one leg rising up, bracing against the dashboard, pushing against it, as if he can shove himself out of the vehicle completely.
It’s either crash into the barrier, crash into the Humvee, or risk the IED. I take the risk, every muscle rigid, breath held, body clenched over the wheel as Sergeant Daniels screams, “DOSTIE!,” a final attempt at an order, and we both squeeze shut our eyes, our bodies, our fists, our legs, and wait for the blast to rip open the bottom of the Humvee and fill the vehicle with fire.
But it doesn’t.
I exhale, a hot, wet sound as the debris passes silently beneath us. Sergeant Daniels turns to me, rage burning across his face, still curled, and for a moment I wonder if he’ll reach across the space that separates us and punch me in the jaw. I’d probably deserve it.
“There was the Humvee on the right,” I say, but my voice sounds soft and watery.
He turns away, the muscles in his jaw dancing as he clenches his teeth. He says nothing to me for the rest of the ride. He eventually gets a new driver once we change camps.
* * *
Inside the wire we live like prisoners behind twenty-foot-high stone walls. Beneath some buildings are literal interrogation centers, complete with a torture chamber in one of the basements. Foreign-language messages are carved into the walls of jail cells. We do our time, staring at the same walls, the same faces, one day scrolling into the next, counting down until we can go home while we coil, and pace, and rage, and itch. Itch to get out, itch to release, to have a target, a new face, a bloodied direction, a visual purpose, gritting our teeth and drowning in a growing fury that makes us say things we shouldn’t say and want to do things we shouldn’t want to do.
Indiscriminate
We’re both invaders and novelties. For as much as any nationalist should hate an occupying force, the Iraqis surrounding our camp seem far more curious than they are angry. American troops sit up in stone towers that sporadically decorate the camp walls and Iraqis are drawn to the strongholds, undeterred by concertina wire and M16s. I think we like the attention. It’s good to be the hero, even if our heroism is in our own minds.
Some come to practice their English. “Hello, hello,” says a group of young boys. “Me speak with you? Speak English with you?” they ask with such big smiles, sitting down on the dusty sidewalk on the other side of the concertina wire. “I like music. You like music?” or “I go to school. Come to America one day!” Simple sentences but spoken with such intensity, bouncing their stunted language off us in earnest.
Some come to beg for water or an MRE. I throw my MRE lunch down the tower wall to a young kid dressed in dusty trousers and a worn sweatshirt. He halts mid-sentence, snatches the package out of the air, and dives for his bike, pedaling away as fast as he can, as if he now possesses some treasure, as if I might suddenly ask for it back.
“You know that’ll probably feed his family for a week,” the soldier on guard with me jokes as we watch the kid’s dust trail disappear down the corner of the street.
“I doubt it,” I snort, because that seems like a stereotype. No one is that poor.
* * *
Some come to the tower for the novelty. “I marry her,” says one Iraqi man to my guard tower partner, pointing at me.
“Her? Sure, I’ll sell her to you.”
“What?” I squawk. “You can’t sell me!” I elbow him hard in the flak vest.
“Four camels,” he calls down to the man. “I’ll give her to you for four camels.”
The man shakes his head with a grin. “Too much!” He holds up two fingers. “Two. Two sheep!”
My guard partner breaks out into hysterics, face red with laughter.
“I’m worth at least four camels,” I grumble, affronted. They both ignore me. “Two sheep and a goat!” the soldier counters.
The Iraqi laughs along with him. “I see what I can do,” he says, shaking his head, and walks away with his own little laugh.
Each is equally mocking the other.
Another time, another man is a little more straightforward. “I go to the mosque to pray you be my wife,” he says. At least he tells me directly, which is nice.
I smile and wave. “Okay, sure,” I say. Two marriage proposals? I’m flattered.
* * *
And among all the different types that come to see us soldiers up in our towers are the entrepreneurs. Majid is one such businessman, a young boy of sixteen, scrawny but with a quick tongue and a sharp mind. His brand is trust. Give him twenty dollars for a black-market DVD and he’ll return with exact change, waiting to be paid only after he brings back the requested item. He never runs off with the money, he never overpays, he never skims from the top. He earns a reputation among the soldiers; we know him by sight and he works the towers with brilliant efficiency.
Anything that isn’t an MRE or DFAC food tastes delicious to us, and Iraqi food has that extra something that melts in the mouth. It’s full and heavy and vibrant. Majid knows this. An ATM gets planted in the dusty corner of our tiny PX shop, which means soldiers finally have access to our money, and all possibilities lead to food. Except: We’re not allowed to eat anything that hasn’t been provided by the Army. In the back of our minds, we understand this. There’s no way to regulate food coming from outside the gates. Food is easily poisoned, after all. But Majid has marketed trust and it’s never wise to kill off your best clients. Lamb, flatbread, kebab, coffee, tea, even pizza—we can have it all.
I love lamb kebab. I can’t get enough of it. Majid brings back the order to the tower and I hang over the stone edge, ready to catch the package when he tosses it upward.
“Come down.” Majid gestures to the locked metal door in the wall. “Come get it here.”
Frankly, I didn’t even know the door opened. My guard buddy shrugs. He doesn’t see a problem with it. I glance back toward the camp, making sure no higher-ups are around, and scuttle down the ladder and to the camp wall. The metal door is heavy. It groans as I shove it open, heart pounding, realizing I could be opening the door to enemy attack, to letting insurgents in, to getting shot while standing in that doorway, but it’s just Majid on the other s
ide. He slinks through the rows of concertina wire like it’s nothing more than a nuisance. He grins, young, with white teeth and dark, gentle eyes.
“You’re beautiful,” he says, and gestures one hand around his face. “You look like the silver moon at midnight.”
I blush red, glance down, because I’m aware that I’m still fat, although I’m not sure anyone can tell under all this gear. “Thank you,” I mumble, taking the white, grease-soaked package of lamb kebab.
Majid is a sweet kid. He likes talking with the Americans. He likes American music. He says he needs a CD player to listen to his American music and I happen to see one in the PX one day. I buy it on a whim. Forty dollars isn’t much when thousands are loading up in the bank, mostly untouched because what can we spend it on here anyway? I ask our local contract linguist to write a letter out for me in Arabic, a sort of quick little note, and the linguist grins, sitting back in his chair as he scrawls the letters out over a scrap piece of notebook paper. I can sound out the letters, but that’s as far as my Farsi will take me with Arabic.
“Wait, doesn’t habibi mean ‘lover’?” I ask, pointing to how the letter is addressed.
“It’s for friends,” he says, waving away the concern. “Between close friends.” He smiles, though he’s always smiling, so it’s hard to tell if he’s pulling my leg or not.
The next day I toss the package down to Majid, who has come to the tower with a few other boys, this side of the wall an open green field where some of the boys play soccer.
Majid tilts his head as he reads the letter. Two boys glance over his shoulder, reading along with him, and suddenly there is a loud bluster, boys rocking back on their heels with laughter, pushing Majid’s shoulders. “Habibi, habibi,” I hear them mock, and Majid ducks his head, not looking at me. I shift uncomfortably up in the tower, wondering now exactly what the letter says.
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