The close quarters I kept with my Iraqi partners built a level of trust that soon began to cut both ways. Sometimes my attempts to improve my U.S. peers’ understanding about coalition operations would produce heckles: “Don’t go native, man. Don’t let them get inside your head.” I was expected to help the Iraqis understand the coalition’s methods and plans—not the other way around.
Iraqis were equally frustrated. “Can’t you make the coalition understand why we can’t do it that way?”
And when it came to addressing the inevitable failings and fatalities that come with combat, Iraqi partners would frequently take out their frustrations on the closest American they could find—an advisor whose job included listening.
Not surprisingly, the most meaningful things I saw and heard came from Babakir himself. Whether meeting with U.S. congressmen or chiefs of defense from dozens of other countries, visiting his family or fellow leaders around the world, discussing topics like Baghdad security planning or his many thoughts on the U.S. effort in Iraq, or just watching Oprah in his living room while drinking tea and discussing life, there seemed to be no limits to our interaction with each other.
In that one year, I saw more of the world and learned more about human dynamics than at any other time in my life. The experience could just as accurately be described as “my adventures with Babakir” as “my combat tour to Iraq.”
Some of my experiences were better rendered at the time in journal entries and letters than they can be rendered now. In my journal, I wrote about the day I met the general:
I sat down with Babakir today in his ministry of defense office for our introductions. Babakir is a small man in stature. He is a Kurdish Sunni, which is the same as saying he is just a Kurd, as most Kurds seem to place ethnicity over religion. Like many Iraqis, Babakir uses his first name with his title, so he goes by “General Babakir.”
We sat on couches, and the setting was casual, but the conversation was awkward—my first with a translator. Plus, Babakir’s son Arjeng (twenty years old) sat directly across from me in an office chair and stared at me like I was a rare zoo animal. I didn’t mind. I figured I might be staring at him and his father the same way.
I felt a lot of pressure to present a good first impression as we fumbled through polite small talk like we were on a forced blind date. Groping for things to talk about, Babakir’s chief of staff, Jamal, brought up my experience working for our own chief of defense (General Myers) in the Pentagon. That felt even more awkward, as well as overstated. I asked if we could switch to a subject that we both knew a lot about—family.
“I am the father of three boys, which includes a set of twins,” I said as I pulled pictures of Kristin and the boys from my wallet. Then I added, “I am also a twin.”
I could tell that really impressed him. “God smiles upon you,” he said.
He told me he had nine children and explained that Kurds liked having large families. I excitedly replied that my mom was from a family of fifteen children, which seemed to impress him even more.
I noted that Babakir was a thin man and offered that my grandpa had a theory about why fathers of so many children could remain so fit.
“Tell me,” Babakir said as he nodded.
“Well, have you ever seen a fat rooster?” I asked.
He paused for a moment, then laughed. Mating chickens, not work, seemed to have helped us break the ice and bridge the cultural divide.
Babakir explained that he heard many good things about me and that he was very eager to have my help. My predecessor had been gone for more than a month, and Babakir was already feeling the pain.
Sensing an appropriate close to the conversation, I asked to return to work. “No,” he said, “join me for lunch.” I politely declined, but he insisted, and he immediately called for his driver.
En route to Babakir’s house, the realization set in that we had no translator. In our very first day together, I felt like trading in my nine-millimeter pistol and a couple months’ pay for language training. Arjeng was a reluctant English speaker, but once I convinced him that he spoke very well (and he did), he was like a godsend. Babakir and I spoke about our backgrounds in the army. He liked that I had been a soldier before becoming an officer, then offered that it was important to personally visit soldiers, talk to them where they worked, or to shake their hands or to kiss them. The kissing part threw me, but I later learned its importance. Kissing on the cheek is a sign of friendship and family in the Middle East (and other parts of the world).
At Babakir’s house, he insisted I keep my boots on, but I took them off like everyone else. (Just like at our house.) Babakir left the room and returned a few minutes later dressed in his traditional Kurdish Peshmerga uniform, which looked like formal pajamas.
When lunch was served, Babakir ate fast, leaving a spotless plate in front of him long before I was done. “You eat slow,” he said.
“My grandpa, the one with fifteen kids, says I eat like a bird,” I replied. And that gave him another good laugh.
One of the first things I reviewed was Babakir’s personal security detail, which consisted of seventy soldiers. That’s when I met Ali Yousef, the chief of Babakir’s personal security. Ali had a larger-than-life personality. His movie collection consisted almost entirely of James Bond films, which appeared to serve as his only training.
Ali was loud, bighearted, and looked like the miniature version of the Buddha, which accounts for the first Kurdish words I learned in Iraq: Az berseema (“I am hungry”). The only English he could speak was “Not a problem,” words I would gain enough confidence to make fun of occasionally by replying, “No, Ali. Big problem.”
As funny as this was to me at the time, I realized that “Not a problem” and “I am hungry” would not suffice in a security crisis. We needed to be able to communicate with more than smiles and grunts.
Within the first week of meeting Babakir, I decided I needed to learn Kurdish. Arabic was an option, but Kurdish was Babakir’s native tongue, and I was always surrounded by family and friends ready to teach me.
Within three months, they said I could carry on a conversation with relative competence, but I always felt just as apprehensive as Arjeng during our first week together.
About three months into my assignment with Babakir, I sent an email home that showed a growing sense of comfort with my discomfort.
Kristin—
Well, considering my dilemma with the “runs” this week, one would think the flu was in season. But it must be the Iraqi food. In any case, my digestive system is in chaos.
Babakir and the gang heard about it and had a grand time busting my chops and laughing at my expense. (I laughed right along with them.) Intestinal problems are a pretty common thing among the Iraqis. And since they don’t use toilet paper, I’ve learned to carry it the same way I carry my weapon and ammo.
Speaking of food, we had lunch the other day with the soldiers of the Iraqi Sixth Division. When we arrived, the tables were already filled with huge beds of rice, sprinkled with almonds, chickpeas, and what looked like raisins. Huge chunks of lamb (still on the bone) were buried in the rice. Suddenly I was aware that the raisins were not raisins. They were dead flies that had apparently been “captured” during preparation.
Aside from the flies, the food actually looked and smelled pretty darn good. Too bad my face didn’t communicate that message. The Iraqi sitting next to me said, “What the matter, my friend, why you are not eating?”
“There aren’t enough flies on this food.”
“The flies, they make you strong … from the inside,” he replied.
“You mean from getting sick so often that your immune system gets stronger?” I said with a smile.
“Yes, yes. Come on now, eat,” he said without even looking up from his plate. “Just pick them out.” He spoke about it like we were talking about picking out mushrooms.
Still, as disgusting as it was to me, this was their life, and they weren’t exactly as
king me to eat poison. I grabbed a spoon and dug right in (minding the flies). Wasn’t too bad, and the meat was actually delicious. Still, the flies.
Afterward we enjoyed some mouth-watering baklava and a nice warm Pepsi to wash it all down. Mmm. Ain’t nothin’ like a warm refreshing Pepsi in 120-degree heat.
Speaking of the heat. You know it’s bad when you start wishing for a return to the low 100s. The temp is sure to climb to above 120 degrees this summer. This stuff just takes your breath away. Every time I breathe it in, I think back to our days in Minnesota and recall the days when it was so cold you could feel your lungs freeze as you breathed in the air—but at least you could breathe it. The heat here is suffocating. May sound stupid, but now I know how SpongeBob and Patrick feel in that movie (the one the boys watch all the time) when they’re being dried out under that sun lamp.
Love,
Me
And it wasn’t just the physical discomfort I was getting used to. It was moral discomfort, too, as I told Kristin in another letter.
Just like my deployment to Saudi Arabia, it is hard—really hard—to manage the personal biases I have as an American. You know how much I read and how much I try to stay plugged in, and yet I realize I don’t have a clue. I can’t help but imagine what it might be like among soldiers who don’t make any effort to understand these surroundings.
Every day I am subjected to the blunt distinction of these two worlds in a dozen little ways:
In the morning, I make my way through the embassy to a breakfast that reminds me of royal dining halls. Of course, this has much more to do with the fact that the army contracts out its food service, which requires strict cleanliness and preparation standards. But still. It’s a sight. The amount of food that is thrown away every day is grotesque when I think about the starvation occurring in some of the surrounding neighborhoods.
That starvation is NOT our problem, but it still bothers me. Then I make my way out to the parking lot, which is full of brand-new Ford Explorers and dozens of armored Ford Expeditions and Chevy Suburbans armed to the teeth.
On my way, I pass the PX food court where, if you’ve not managed to stuff your face enough with the free food, you can willy-nilly spend your bucks and gorge on Burger King or the Pizza Inn. I usually pick up a copy of the Stars and Stripes newspaper, and my “favorite” days are when there’s a story about Michael Jackson on the cover. (Not.)
Within minutes I am transported to what I like to call “the Wild” and things change dramatically. These guys [Iraqis] drink out of the same cups, drink water from the tap (which is not safe), take dumps without toilet paper, drive old vehicles that barely run, leave the safety of the Green Zone every afternoon, and then brave what’s called the “Assassins’ Gate” every morning on their way into work.
Iraqis accept this dichotomy without much complaint—until they taste what we have. Let me tell you, they don’t need to be convinced that one is better than the other. Forget sports, entertainment, business, modern medicines, or material goods. They just want the basics. How basic? I’ll just give you one example that shook my senses:
Colonel Jamal, one of the Iraqi officers, told me last week that he needed some time off. He wanted two weeks, which was too long by any standard, especially for the position he held with Babakir. Plus, he always seemed distracted and a little scatterbrained. I thought it was laziness. I’m used to hearing lame excuses, so I was ready for a whopper when I finally asked, “Why do you need to go?” He said that he needed to go to Syria to get his family and bring them back to Baghdad now that he had secured a home in the Green Zone for them.
I didn’t need to hear any more, but he continued the story and I listened. He had been in the Iraqi Army all of his life, but never in positions of great responsibility or command. He married and had three children, all of whom are still under the age of fourteen. He learned English by watching American movies, and speaks it well. When U.S. forces crossed into Iraq in March 2003, he was serving in Baghdad and clearly remembers when the bombs started falling. When the war ended and the army ceased to exist, he melted into the population like everyone else. Then he received word that the coalition was looking for a “few good men.” His low rank, modest background, and English-speaking skills made him an easy pick.
He and his family began receiving death threats immediately—two or three of them over several months. He ignored them. Then his neighbor and their entire family were killed. Jamal panicked. He immediately packed up his family and left Baghdad without telling anyone.
Shortly after his arrival to the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, an insurgent “checkpoint” stopped a group of a dozen or so vehicles. Everyone was brought to a small clearing and interrogated to see who worked for the coalition. One poor dude had some sort of coalition identification on him. (Jamal said that thankfully he did not.) The insurgents forced everyone to look at the young man, announced that what was about to happen would happen to them as well if they worked for the coalition, and then proceeded to cut the guy’s head off.
Jamal explained, with a disturbing calm, that the man “shook like a chicken. And the blood, it shoot everywhere. Right in front of my kids, man,” he said with misty eyes.
He immediately went home, packed up all his belongings, and moved his family to Syria, where they’ve been ever since. “I have no other family; I have no other reason to live. No mother, no father, no brothers or sisters, no aunts or uncles … my wife and kids, they are all I have, you know?” God, I can only imagine.
In sharing this daily perspective about my observations of two different worlds, I want to be clear. This is not a “bash America and its ways” fest, or “this is why we need to be out of Iraq.”
I’m merely pointing out a personal struggle with perspective as I live in two very different places each day. Our sports and entertainment, as well as our business sense and preoccupation with material goods, are just so out-of-this-world different from this place. It’s hard to balance.
And then there were other moments when the worlds seemed to come together as one. From my journal:
Today is Saturday in the States, but “Sunday” in Iraq. In Islam, Friday is the holy day of the week and the first day of their weekend; thus Saturday is their Sunday.
I arranged a dinner last night at Babakir’s house between Babakir and Brigadier General Cris Anstey, a new Aussie general assigned to MNSTC-I. It was quite entertaining. As usual, Babakir had me sit next to him at the table. (I have dinner or a late lunch at his home about three or four times per week, but usually with his staff in the kitchen. I prefer sitting with them and learning about how things work behind the scenes.)
They brought the food to the table, and we all dug right in. This was Anstey’s first week in the country and his first informal meeting with Babakir. Anstey looked across the table and commented in his thick Aussie accent, “Ahh, couscous! I love couscous.” (Pronounced “coos coos.”) The table erupted in laughter. Couscous is apparently a mixture of barley and meat—in Australia. Arabs and Kurds eat the same thing, but they don’t call it couscous, and for good reason. Apparently a word pronounced “coos coos” in Arabic (or Kurdish) refers to a woman’s private parts.
The subject really broke the ice at the table and unavoidably started a discussion about women. Babakir commented about how things in the Middle East were not much different than anywhere else when it came to humor about some women. Then he told a joke:
There once was an Arab man who kept a picture of his mother-in-law on an end table at his home in Germany. A visiting stranger commented that the Arab must really love his mother-in-law to have her picture in such a prominent place in his home. The Arab replied that his mother-in-law was actually back in his home country, but that he didn’t miss her at all because he really didn’t like her. The visitor was stunned and asked about the obvious contradiction. The Arab replied that what he really loved and missed was his home country, but he kept that picture visible so he would be reminded of what came
with the deal.
After dinner, we sat in the living room and had tea while Babakir scrolled through the TV channels. He stopped at Oprah and set the remote down. The show was in English, but had Arabic script running across the bottom of the screen. I wanted to pinch myself.
Oprah’s guest was Shania Twain, and Twain had just finished talking about her childhood, how poor she was growing up, and how badly she wished she could share her present-day experiences with her deceased mother. She cried as she told the story, and Babakir was clearly moved by it all.
I later learned that Oprah was a bit of a favorite in Babakir’s home, and once again I was humbled by the strange way the world seemed to turn. Oprah in Iraq? Why not?
By the time I took my second trip to the Kurdish region of Iraq with Babakir, it became clear to me that he (and his family) considered me to be much more than just an American army officer. They bragged to everyone they knew that I was a Kurdish American. Babakir’s family prepared a feast that took several women three days to prepare.
All the men sat in a circle at the Kurdish kitchen table (the floor). When we sat, Babakir tapped the floor next to him and nodded for me to sit next to him. He treated me like one of his children, and I truly felt like one of them.
That evening, Babakir received a dozen guests into his living room, and I was invited to join them. I wore the traditional Kurdish dress of the Peshmerga soldier (the formal-looking pajamas I’d seen on Babakir six months prior), a gift that Babakir’s cousin Otto had made for me. The sight drew excitement and surprise from the men, all of whom were dressed the same way, and giggles from the women, who sat separate from the men.
I took up a spot on the couch, and conversations sprang up all around. I felt very uncomfortable wearing their Peshmerga uniform. I hadn’t earned it. I suggested that perhaps I should change, and I was unanimously yelled at to sit down. They would not have it. I was Kurdish as far as they were concerned.
Tell My Sons: A Father's Last Letters Page 16