I Have Iraq in My Shoe

by Gretchen Berg

  Warren: Yeah, one’s a Kempinski. You’ve heard of Kempinski, right? The German hotels? And the other one’s…well, I can’t remember the other one right now.

  Me: So, they might even have a good brunch I could go to!

  Warren paused a second and then said, “Sure!”

  This new development called for a readjustment of my expectations. I would no longer be at the main university, and I had to ask Warren an entirely new set of questions about what to expect in Erbil. He was, as usual, vague and unconcerned with details, which crippled my ability to create any type of visual to help me picture my upcoming life there. It was just a blurry unknown, Erbil. Meh, Iraq was Iraq. If Erbil was moderately fancier, with German restaurants and five-star hotels, all the better.

  While packing I came across an article I had saved from Oprah’s O magazine (October 2005). I had been single for a long time. Yes, yes, quite possibly due to the combination of control issues, self-diagnosed claustrophobia, the shoe obsession, and the cat. There had been a couple of longish relationships in my early twenties, and then a handful of shortish dalliances into my early thirties, but nothing earth-shattering. I wasn’t bitter, I wasn’t jaded, but I also wasn’t going to settle, and I would save anything in print that validated that stance. While some girls were clipping pages from bridal magazines, I saved Tish Durkin’s 2005 article in O about “holding out for real love”:

  …Thus I was always defending myself against the peculiar charge, leveled more frequently and frankly with each passing year, of insisting upon love as a prerequisite for marriage. And not sensible, better-than-nothing, he-respects-me love, either. I wanted great, big, core-connecting, fate-fulfilling, gotta-have-it earthquake love or a lifetime supply of soup for one…

  Preach! I had attended at least two weddings that could have been mistaken for funerals and knew countless couples who I was certain were together more out of convenience than actual, genuine affection. I had friends who endured numerous awkward evenings of blind dates, and even more painful second and third dates, in the hopes something would work out and they would get to wave a big, shiny diamond around and excitedly chirp, “I’m engaged!”

  It wasn’t necessarily that I didn’t want the big, shiny diamond (jewelry is fun) or the excited chirping (enthusiasm is always good), but I was bound and determined to have it be the real deal. As I reread Durkin’s article, I sprouted goose bumps. She had met her “great, glove-fitting love” in Iraq.

  I made the ridiculously incongruous mental leap to understand this meant all the tall, gorgeous, brilliant, and hilarious soul mates who had been mysteriously evading me must be clustered in some sort of Hot Man/Glove-Fitting Love Warehouse in the middle of Iraq. WMD didn’t stand for Weapons of Mass Destruction. It was the Warehouse of Men we’ve hidden from you in the Desert.

  I thought, Oh, now, wouldn’t that just figure. That I would have to go all the way to Iraq to meet The One? Like everyone else who searches for metaphysical road signs, I thought maybe the article was at least an alert. Your love alert level is now at orange.

  So that was one more thing to add to my List of Reasons to Go to The Iraq:

  Eliminate debt

  Travel

  Buy shoes (or at least have enough money to do so)

  Meet soul mate

  And while we’re at it, I should probably attempt to increase my cultural tolerance of the Middle East, shouldn’t I? They say, “Don’t knock it ’til you try it.” Who? Who says that? Probably members of a 1940s barbershop quartet, but it was still a saying that stuck in my head. I had never been to any Middle Eastern country and may have been unfairly judging.

  My new List of Reasons to Go to The Iraq:

  Eliminate debt

  Travel

  Buy shoes

  Meet soul mate

  Increase cultural tolerance

  While I was busy making lists and imagining a wildly romantic, fateful encounter in Iraq, my mom sent me this email:

  Just want you to be as informed as possible about the cultural challenges for women in Iraq even in Kurdistan.

  Love, Mom

  “Iraqi women—attacked and fighting for a voice

  Iraqi activists are trying to counter the rising influence of religious fundamentalists and tribal chieftains who have insisted that women wear the veil, prevented girls from receiving education and sanctioned killings of women accused of besmirching their family’s honor…”

  This continued in an MSN.com story I decided not to read. I loved the word “besmirching,” but “religious fundamentalists” and “tribal chieftains” were not things I wanted to think about. They would only make me second-guess my decision to go. I was normally not a big fan of ignorance; however, I was a big fan of bliss. The road to bliss went straight through The Iraq, and I would be taking it, apparently in some sort of convoy, while wearing my chain-mail tunic and matching headband.

  Chapter Five

  Hockey Bags, Eh?

  The frequency of my phone conversations with Warren increased as March drew closer. I was still feeling apprehensive about such a monumental life change. I loved to travel. It made the world seem a much more manageable place. Being surrounded by a culture—the sounds, smells, and general feel of a place—allowed me to really see how other people lived, and I could weather a mild-to-moderate case of culture shock for brief periods of time (two weeks in China, a month in Nepal).

  One whole year had been a struggle for me. I was in Korea from 1995 to 1996, when email was a radically new form of communication. Most people were still writing actual letters, with pen and paper, and using the abacus for financial transactions. Very few people used email regularly. Keeping in touch with friends and family back home was a challenge, which made Korea an isolating experience. There were many Crying Days in Korea. Ergo, I publicly declared I would never live overseas again. Never say never. There’s a reason Justin Bieber is so popular. He’s very wise.

  I would be living overseas again, which meant schlepping stuff. I needed to know how much stuff I could or should bring, and whether or not it could be shipped, to avoid unnecessary schlepping.

  Warren: Gretch [not “Gerts”—we were making progress], I just came back here from Canada, and I had five hockey bags, each about ninety pounds, and I had no problem.

  Me: Hockey bags?

  Warren: Yeah! Get a couple of hockey bags, and just load ’em up! Bring everything!

  Canadians. I didn’t know what hockey bags looked like, but I was assuming they were sturdy enough to carry big ice skates and hockey sticks, the Stanley Cup, and maybe a goalie. That actually sounded like a good idea. Some of my shoes bore a faint resemblance to ice skates, in both structure and weight.

  I ordered two “medium” hockey bags online at Amazon, and two bags were delivered (unlike the ski-bag experience, which I’m still saying was not my fault). When they arrived, I opened them up and discovered they could sleep two people, comfortably. I don’t know how everyone else likes to pack, but I want the bags to be completely full, practically bursting. No empty corners or pockets; just keep stuffing them. Did I really need to bring forty-six pairs of socks? Probably not, but they fit into those empty corners so nicely.

  I packed everything. Warren had transported five ninety-pound hockey bags with “no problem,” and I only had two ninety-pound hockey bags (so I thought) and two suitcases, which were probably around seventy pounds each. By my crafty powers of deductive reasoning, the airline would practically be thanking me for packing so light.

  My mom went to the Delta Airlines website to look up their weight/baggage restrictions. She came to me with a worried look on her face and said, “Honey, they say you can only take two bags, at fifty pounds apiece.” I rolled my eyes in typical childish exasperated fashion and said, “Mom, Warren said he brought five hockey bags that were ninety pounds apiece. I’ll be fine.”

  Mothers. They could be so meddlesome sometimes.

  It is possibly my least favorite thing to be st
anding at the Delta Airlines counter, at 5:00 a.m., listening to the agent say, “You can’t take any bags over seventy pounds.” I had four bags, two of which were one hundred pounds each (stupid hockey bags with their stuffable corners, and my inability to balance them on the bathroom scale at home); the other two were seventy pounds. I was told there’d be no math at the airport.

  If you’re saying, “I’ll bet you’re regretting packing all those socks now, aren’t you?”… you’re right. If you’re a mom, you’re probably also saying, “I’ll bet you’re wishing you had listened to your mom now, aren’t you?” Yes, ma’am.

  From Portland’s PDX to New York’s JFK, I paid a staggering $1,530 to get almost everything to travel with me. I got the hockey bags down to ninety pounds each, and the baggage agent took pity on me and let them go through. I had my mom take a few things back to the house, like the heavy Lonely Planet guides for Greece and Sweden (both part of The Rest of Europe, and potential vacation destinations) and a few pairs of shoes (dammit!).

  I had arranged to have a weekend stopover in New York, to visit friends and my favorite cousin, before taking the final plunge and leaving the United States for the unknown. This did not work in my favor. I ended up having to pay extra-baggage charges twice: once in Portland and once in New York, rather than just the one time, had I flown straight through. Do not listen to airlines that are whining and complaining about being bankrupt. I am supporting many of them solely through my overweight baggage fees.

  Dante’s Eighth Circle of Hell was Fraud. My Eighth Circle of Hell was the Royal Jordanian Airlines counter at JFK’s international terminal. Royal Jordanian apparently only allowed two checked bags, at a maximum of seventy pounds each. That should not have been surprising to me, as it was similar to Delta’s policy, but those details were back in Portland, days ago, and it had been 5:00 a.m. then. The Royal Jordanian desk agent informed me that it was impossible for the airline to accommodate my two (agreeably colossal) hockey bags of now-ninety pounds apiece, two suitcases, and one small duffel bag. He explained that I could bring all one hundred eighty pounds of hockey-bag-what-have-you, but it had to be distributed among three bags, not just the two hockey bags. That was not logical. It was not efficient. It was not flier-friendly. But if I had to use various adjectives to describe Royal Jordanian Airlines, those adjectives would not include logical, efficient, or flier-friendly. Also not flier-friendly was the $850 in additional charges to get my luggage from JFK to Sulaimani, Iraq.

  Wasn’t there some special loophole for people moving overseas? I was moving overseas. For two years. I wouldn’t bring all this stuff if I were just going for a week in Amsterdam, come on! Nope. No special loophole. I was forced to purchase another duffel bag, which was conveniently sold a mere eighty feet from the Royal Jordanian counter.

  The monster Geryon transports Virgil and Dante across a great abyss to the Eighth Circle of Hell, known as Malebolge, or “evil pockets”…

  —From a Spark Notes summary of Dante’s Inferno

  I assume these “evil pockets” are where Royal Jordanian keeps the money I pay them for the duffel bags.

  I parted with still more money ($40 for my new duffel bag) and was then forced to use a vacant luggage scale to redistribute 180 pounds of stuff between the two hockey bags and the new duffel bag. By this time I was frustrated and hot and stressed and frantically zipping and unzipping bags, while yanking items out of one, then shoving them into another. Pillows, sheets, bottles of mouthwash and shampoo and Woolite, jeans, sweaters, DVDs, books, magazines. I was trying my very best not to pull out anything like the Costco monster-box of Tampax, or any other humiliating accoutrement, as there were roughly forty other Royal Jordanian passengers standing in line, waiting to check in and observing me. I so wished I were just having a nightmare and at any moment my alarm clock would begin its stuttered beeping, but no, there was my alarm clock, next to the monster-box of Tampax. Quiet as could be.

  The rest of the procedure was a blur, but I know that I was eventually relieved of my two stupid hockey bags, two suitcases, two duffel bags, and $890. I was then ushered to the security line to enter the ticketed-passenger part of the terminal. After clearing security, and huffily re-dressing myself (shoes, belt, etc.), my mood shifted. I saw a bright light and could almost hear angels singing.

  I pledged my undying gratitude to the gracious Korean masseuse at Xpress Spa, who prevented me from crying by guiding me to one of the leaning massage chairs and then prodding and kneading me into a state of “Now I don’t care about the $890 anymore” for thirty minutes. It was a half hour of Relaxy Time, in between the nightmare of flight check-in and the dreaded twelve-hour flight in the ever-shrinking economy class on the very unfamiliar, illogical, inefficient, flier-unfriendly Royal Jordanian Airlines. I almost stayed for another thirty minutes, but I would have missed my flight. I signed my credit card slip, and the gracious masseuse handed me an Xpress Spa pen, with a slight bow and a smile. She must have known there would be something to write about on my flight.

  Chapter Six

  As the Dude Turns

  We all have friends and acquaintances who are one-upper downers.

  One-upper downer (n.): Someone who tries constantly to outdo your bad personal experiences with their own bad stories, which in their eyes, is always worse.

  —Urban Dictionary

  You had the flu? I had swine flu. Your kitchen remodel cost two thousand dollars? Mine was forty thousand. You had reconstructive knee surgery? I had every single bone in my body replaced with titanium rods. Sometimes it’s fun to one-up down yourself. Yes, the flight check-in was bad, but it was nothing compared to the first half hour on the airplane.

  I was seated across the aisle from an American guy, probably in his early thirties, with that scruffy, disheveled, “I do Bangkok, frequently” look. I called him “Dude,” but just in my head. He wasn’t the moderately entertaining kind of Dude who takes twenty minutes to make your coffee because he’s slightly stoned and subsequently engrossed in all those wavy lines that appear on the surface of the latte, but rather the more repellent kind of Dude who, while seated on a crowded airplane, pulls out a plastic cup for his chewing tobacco spit.

  While most of us were patiently waiting for takeoff, on the ground at JFK, Dude used the wait time to make some phone calls. We waited, and he talked for about an hour.

  Dude: Babe, are you coming?

  (Pause for Babe responding.)

  Dude: No, no, whatever. I’m already in Jordan.

  What? No, you’re not—you’re still at JFK. We’re sitting on the tarmac, but whatever, it’s not my phone call.

  Dude: So, you’re not coming.

  (Pause for Babe.)

  Dude: Whatever, Lisa.

  We will stop calling her “Babe” now.

  Dude: You didn’t bother to call me for the last three days, and now you’re not coming.

  Dude’s tone was becoming more aggressive, and I was becoming much more invested in this conversation. Lisa was supposed to go with him! But she’s not here!

  Dude: Well, have a good time with your BOYFRIEND, you fucking whore—you’re such a fucking whore, and have you ever even been out of the COUNTRY or out of California before?

  OH MY GOD! “…you fucking whore…” I mean, we were on an international aircraft, not a Greyhound bus. (Also, my personal guess was Lisa had possibly been to Mexico. It’s just right there, below California.)

  Dude: Who is that? Is that that military fuck?

  Ooooh, a love triangle. I like it. (Here is where I deduce that Military Fuck takes the phone from Lisa.)

  Dude: Oh, YEAH? Oh, YEAH? Is this the Marine? Please tell me this is the Marine—you sorry son of a bitch—what do you call yourself? G-Funk?

  Hey! Sometimes my friends call ME G-Funk! Not the right time, though, I know, I know.

  Here, Dude lowers his voice, slightly, and hisses “nigger!” into the phone while muttering threatening-sounding expletives.

 
; OH MY EFFING GAWD! PEOPLE DO NOT SAY THAT! I very badly wanted to move to another seat far, far away from Dude, but I was also dying to hear how this played out.

  Lisa or Military Fuck must have disconnected because Dude began dialing again. He muttered something into the phone, then looked at the phone and dialed a bit more.

  Dude: Well, have a nice life. Yeah. And oh, I gave that guy I know? That guy who does things? Yeah, I gave him your address, so have fun with that. Have a nice life!

  This kind of thing really only happens on CSI—you know, in those blurry flashback scenes.

  Dude was dialing again.

  Dude: Lisa, do you even give a flying fuck about me?

  Lisa, you needn’t have traveled outside of California and Mexico to have the common sense to answer no to this question.

  There were a few more instances of Dude looking at his phone, then redialing. I had no idea if anyone was even answering on the other end anymore.

  Dude: (in a soft, inside voice) Are you gonna marry me?

  I must admit this was the best soap opera I had ever witnessed in my life.

  Dude: When? September? Gimme a kiss.

  Wait a minute. Is this Lisa, or someone new? These soaps are so hard to follow!

  Dude: Where do you wanna do it? Lebanon?

  This couldn’t possibly still be Lisa. She’d never been anywhere other than California and Mexico. She would never agree to a Lebanese wedding. Who was this mystery fiancée?