I Have Iraq in My Shoe

by Gretchen Berg

  I had seen groups of Ethiopian women walking around English Village and had learned they were employed as villa cleaners by many of the businesses and families there. It was rumored that a few of them also moonlighted as prostitutes.

  I found myself wondering, again, “Are things in Ethiopia worse than here? Really?” I tried to predict where my friends would go if the only options I gave them were 1) Bangladesh, 2) Ethiopia, or 3) Iraq. I am confident that Iraq would come in last. I’m also confident my friends would be pissed that those were the only options I was giving them.

  There was a handful of expats who lived and worked in English Village. A British attorney named Joanna told me about the time she went to Ainkawa for Chinese food. Joanna had been excited about the prospect of eating something other than hummus and chicken kebabs and had passed a Chinese restaurant one day while driving in Ainkawa, so she and a male coworker decided to try it for lunch. When they walked through the doorway of the restaurant, Joanna saw that there were several Chinese women standing around and every one of them just stared at her, wide-eyed. Joanna and her coworker were then seated and given menus, but the entire time the women stared at her strangely. They ordered, then ate their meals, paid, and left. She said the food was just okay, but the atmosphere was uneasy, and the Chinese women just stood off to the side, watching her.

  Joanna was later talking about the experience to an American Army guy she knew, and he started laughing and then explained to her that the Chinese “restaurant” was actually a brothel.

  I did not need a Chinese restaurant. Not only did I not like Chinese food, but I knew, coming here, that I would be doing without many things: Starbucks, wine bars, sushi restaurants, the Nordstrom half-yearly sale, a washing machine. Wait. I did not think a washing machine would be one of those things. But our Erbil villas did not come equipped with a washer or dryer. The teachers at the main university in Suli all had washing machines in their villas, but for some reason, no one thought we, up here in Erbil, might want to have clean clothing. Warren’s solution was “Take everything to the dry cleaner!” His blatant disregard for my finances was irksome. First the hockey bags, now the dry cleaners.

  I had obviously not learned my lesson with his advice for the hockey bags, when I decided to have my clothes dry-cleaned. Everything but the dainties. I would hand wash my bras and underwear the same way everyone else living in developing nations did it: in the bathtub with Woolite. I could only imagine the potential confusion that would ensue if I sent twenty pairs of thong underwear to the Kurdish cleaners.

  After my once-color-fast clothing came back from the Erbil dry cleaner in various stages of non-color-fastness (I am now fully stocked with pale pink T-shirts and socks that used to be white), I decided I would need to be the boss of all of my clothes and wash everything in the bathtub with Woolite. I also finally decided to stop listening to Warren’s advice. Warren’s advice was increasingly inconvenient.

  * Adam became an instant fan of Sex and the City. He would burst out laughing every time Samantha said anything. At one point he asked me if I had any friends like Samantha, and I told him, “No one does. She’s not real.” He seemed disappointed.

  * There is an ongoing debate among several Middle Eastern cities as to which one is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. Erbil is one of the contenders, as are Damascus, Syria; Varanasi, India; Byblos, Lebanon; and Jericho. Erbil residents were constantly reminding us of how it was one of the original civilizations. Okay, then, let’s show some respect for your oldest continuously inhabited city and spruce up the squalor a little.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Shopping, BBQing, and Santa Claus

  Here I shop, there I shop, everywhere I shop, shop. The riding-boot purchase triggered my spending impulses. It made no difference that I was in a country whose name was synonymous with political turmoil and danger. No, no, I still managed to make it all about shopping, and when Adam and I took one of our monthly weekend trips down to Suli to do our bank transfers, I made certain I had time to shop.

  When I traveled to Suli on those weekends, Warren arranged for me to stay in the spare room in Jen’s villa, and we had subsequently become friends. She totally wasn’t a skank. Warren should have nicknamed her Buddha: she did yoga and meditated and emanated a relaxing, Zen vibe. It was such a relief to have another female to talk to, and finally to have someone to shop with. On her way to school, Jen had seen a store with mannequins in the window, wearing Western clothing, so we had one of the drivers take us there one Friday.

  They say first impressions are everything. As we entered the store, my first impression was, “Holy crap, this looks like Banana Republic.” To my knowledge, the Banana had not yet opened a store anywhere in Iraq, but there was a lovely Kurdish salesgirl, assisting the customers, probably saying something like, “You can belt it! Cinch it!”

  The sign above the entrance said “Istanbul Bazaar”; Istanbul was not in Iraq; it was in Turkey, but I was willing to overlook the seeming discrepancy if it meant new Capri pants.

  “Istanbul Bazaar” was also emblazoned on the many festive balloons strung up in bunches around the store. During the shopping excursion one of these balloons popped, making a loud noise that sounded like a gun firing, which caused me to shriek and have a very small heart attack for a second, but I quickly recovered.

  To engender the idea that the Iraqi people really weren’t so different from you and me, I made note of the fact that the dressing room was littered with clothing, just as it would be at Banana Republic back home. That’s right. Those bitches were just as lazy as we were, and wouldn’t hang the clothes back up after trying them on. I was pretty sure I heard one of them say, “What? I don’t work here,” in Kurdish.

  I am not only a claustrophobe; I am also a shopping savant. (Self-diagnosing is a very big thing with me.) And as shopping savants know, one of the most delirium-inducing symbols is the percentage sign. You know, our friend %. We loved %! Jen had seen signs around the store, covered in 50 percent, and assumed that everything in the store was 50 percent off. However, upon closer inspection, we recognized the fine print. I say “recognized” because it was in Kurdish, and we couldn’t read it. In a nutshell, as translated to us by the nice cashier lady, it stated that we would receive 50 percent off our purchase, which would be “refunded” us in the form of Maximall Dollars. Maximall was the sister store to Istanbul Bazaar and conveniently offered locations in both Suli and Erbil. We were practically being ordered to shop more. The Iraq was a very strict place.

  So, we left the store with a few cute, appropriately long-sleeved blouses and the aforementioned Maximall Dollars, which resembled U.S. currency, right down to Abraham Lincoln’s picture. I was proud to be helping Iraq rebuild their economy.

  I also continued to assist the economy of Italy. I bought silver Prada loafers at YOOX online.

  That same weekend, there was a university barbecue held at one of the villas. Just like at Tara! We could wear our dresses and petticoats and ignore the talk about war! I suddenly wanted a big hat with a chin ribbon.

  The barbecue gave me the chance to properly meet some of the staff and faculty, as my first few days back in March had been such a blur. It was so great to see so many Westerners milling around and so much barbecue fare on the picnic table. Potato salad, ribs, cheeseburgers, and no hummus or chicken kebabs anywhere. Chancellor Tom Pappas was there, and I thought, “Excellent, I can finally have a conversation with him while wearing something more appropriate than jammies, and hopefully produce a more positive impression than whiny jammies wearer.”

  I made polite, barbecue small talk with Chancellor Tom while waiting for the burgers to be cooked. We talked about the university, vacation time, and small-talky small talk, and I did an excellent job of ignoring the mental image of him bursting into Adam’s room wearing tighty-whities, but then Chancellor Tom steered the conversation in a weird direction and was suddenly confiding that he used to be a musician. Oh? He playe
d guitar. Is that so? He almost had a recording contract, a while back.

  I nodded and thought, “Uh-huh. Is he hitting on me? It feels like a hitting-on-me kind of conversation now. I don’t want him hitting on me. Wasn’t I just politely discussing vacation time? Wasn’t I just a whiny underling? I want to go back to being a whiny underling.” The conversation felt just the tiniest bit wrong, like when you put one of your contacts in backward. To extricate myself from the awkwardness, I exclaimed, “My cheeseburger is ready!” and steered over to Jen and the other teachers.

  There’s something disconcerting not only in feeling like your boss’s boss is hitting on you, but also in discovering that he wished he were somewhere else, doing something else. I didn’t want to picture Chancellor Tom strumming a six-string and soulfully crooning into a microphone while having panties thrown at his head, or saying things like, “Yeah, the new track drops on Thursday, baby.” I wanted to see him interacting with the students and tossing around ideas for curriculum development or something. I, idealistically, wanted my superiors to be enthusiastic about their jobs; enthusiastic, forthright and trustworthy and compassionate and jolly and grandfatherly. Yes, if they had to be men, I wanted my bosses to be jolly and grandfatherly. I wanted to work for Santa Claus. I trusted Santa Claus. Santa would never really wish he was a musician.

  A few weeks after the barbecue, Warren said to me, “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but…” I must admit that is my absolute favorite beginning to any conversation and said, “Yes, please go on.” He went on, “Tom paid you a really big compliment.” Uh-oh. I just nodded and said hesitantly, “Uh-huh,” suddenly very sure that I did not want to hear what came next. Warren, oblivious to the strained tone in my “Uh-huh,” continued, “Yeah, he was like ‘You know, as big of a pain in my ass as Gretchen is, I absolutely love that girl.’”

  Only Warren would consider that a compliment. As far as being a big pain in the ass, I could only speculate that it was a combination of (1) not being a welcome wagon at 10:30 p.m., (2) collecting a higher salary than the other teachers in the department, and (3) making presumed divalike demands.

  I will explain.

  While Warren had proudly informed me of my higher-than-expected salary, before I signed my contract and came out to Iraq, what he had neglected to tell me was that no one else in our department was making that much. Once I arrived in Suli he admitted this to me and said that the provost of the university and Chancellor Tom had both balked at the salary amount after visiting the Erbil campus. “We’re paying her more to be up here? We should be paying her less!”

  Warren had also warned me not to tell anyone how much I was making, but then felt free enough, himself, to run around cawing about it. He had managed to get me $10,000 more than the other instructors by presenting Erbil as somewhat of a hardship: we were more isolated (true), we didn’t have the support or structure of the main university (true), and we essentially lived in our workspace (true). I didn’t even receive a formal orientation, like the one given to all other faculty and staff in Suli; I was just sort of set afloat on my proverbial Erbil raft. It really was more of a hardship, but the provost and chancellor saw only manicured lawns, spacious villas, and a pristine neighborhood environment.

  I finally decided to ask for a washing machine for the Erbil villas. It was absurd that we didn’t at least have one, between Adam and me. It wasn’t as much of a problem for Adam, since he went down to Suli every weekend and just used the washing machines there, but I needed to do laundry more than once a month, on our bank-transfer trips. When I made the request, Warren said, “Okay, but you have to ask for a dryer too.”

  But I did not need a dryer, I tried to explain to him. You could hang clothes on the stair railing and they were dry in twenty minutes. It was a dry heat. I just needed a washer. You could practically hear the banjo music blaring out of my villa as I hovered over the tub, scrubbing away like Granny Freaking Clampett, and I was nursing a perpetual backache from trying to thoroughly rinse the clothes. “If you don’t request a dryer,” Warren threatened, “you won’t get a washer.” Since Warren made occasional trips up to Erbil, he wanted the dryer for himself. He also wanted to make sure I was seen as the one whining about it. I surrendered the argument, and emailed the formal request for a washer and dryer, ultimately cementing my role as whiny pain in the ass.

  Santa wouldn’t have made me beg for a washing machine.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Serenity Later

  That initial scary nighttime surprise-chancellor visit was just the first of many infringements on my desperately needed privacy. One Friday afternoon, back up in Erbil, Rana, the HR director, called me at 2:00 p.m. and simply said, “Do you have extra room in your villa?”

  Although Warren was always ranting about Rana’s apparent stupidity, I had to admit this was an ingenious way in which to phrase that question. “Do you have extra room?” Of course I had extra room. I had three extra rooms. I was caught off guard and so responded, “Um, yeah.” She asked if she and another female coworker from the university could stay in my villa that night. I responded with a hesitant, “Sure.”

  This was not a social call, in the interest of spending time, being friendly, and getting to know the new Erbil girl (me). This was a request for a free crash pad for Rana and her friend Carey, the finance director who had shared my immigration experience with me. I liked Carey, and Rana had seemed nice enough when I had met her back in March, but I had had no further interaction with either of them since my arrival week at the school. There had been no emails or phone calls to see how I was settling in or if I needed anything (like extra pencils or a washing machine). Rana seemed to ignore the “human” part of human resources. I would have loved to have visitors (hooray, new friends!) if I thought they were there to see me. This was not the case.

  Scarlett had to deal with this in Gone with the Wind. Once the Civil War ended…

  Tara suddenly lost its isolation. And for months thereafter a stream of scarecrows, bearded, ragged, footsore and always hungry, toiled up the red hill to Tara and came to rest on the shady front steps, wanting food and a night’s lodging.

  Dang freeloaders. When they arrived, Rana announced they were going to dinner with her brother and some friends, so they weren’t expecting food, but Rana also did not invite me to join them. Mammy would have stood, sturdy arms crossed over her chest, shaking her head and clucking her disapproval at the poor guest etiquette.

  When they returned from dinner and started getting ready for bed, Rana began complaining the pillows in Warren’s room smelled.

  “Are these sheets clean?” she demanded, her nose wrinkled in disdain. I was standing in the hallway, thinking about how she had called me a short three hours before arriving, and wondered if she had expected me to run around washing sheets and towels, and drying them in my new fancy dryer, for her arrival. I shrugged and admitted that I didn’t know if they were clean. It was Warren’s room.

  Rana then set about opening other doors, searching for a more suitable sleeping situation for herself. She turned up her nose at the empty room with the single bed, as it did not come equipped with an air conditioner. In my opinion the only room suitable for her at this point would be one with one hundred mattresses piled up and a small pea in between the first and second mattress. Carey seemed fine with sleeping in Warren’s bed, even with the prospect of smelly pillowcases.

  Rana opened another door and said, “Why can’t I just sleep in here?” I could almost hear Mammy saying, “Aw no you don’t.” I smiled tightly and answered, “That’s my room.” Imagine all those Confederate soldiers showing up at Tara, then stomping around the rooms, smelling the pillowcases and complaining, when they should have just been grateful they had a free place to stay.

  I used to think I enjoyed nicknames that began with “Princess,” but now I could see that you really had to earn a title like that. I could not believe how inconsiderate this girl was. She invited herself to stay at my hou
se, didn’t invite me out to dinner, complained about the quality of the bedding, and then expected to sleep in my room.

  After they left the following morning, I called Warren and told him the entire story. “This was more of a hotel than a house!” I wailed. “Why do people just expect to come up here and stay in our villas? I have no privacy!” Privacy was so important to me, and I had thought I had communicated that to Warren during our many phone conversations and emails prior to my coming here. I missed my cozy one-bedroom apartment in Seattle, where it was just me and Herb. No smelly drivers, no “SURPRISE” chancellors, and no obnoxious, ungracious HR directors with an unfounded sense of entitlement.

  That we lived where we taught was already kind of a challenge. There were random Kurds ringing my doorbell at indiscriminate hours of the day and evening—and on the weekends—showing up to inquire about English classes, and now staff and faculty, who viewed Erbil as an exciting weekend-getaway destination, expecting to come up and stay in our villas. I was losing my sanity. Warren claimed he understood and kept saying, “Gretch, that’s your villa, it’s YOUR villa.” How? How was it MY villa?

  I had finally put my foot down about the male drivers sleeping in my villa. There were about twenty different drivers who interchangeably chauffeured people and supplies up to Erbil. I’d never met many of them, and they would just come in and make themselves at home, preparing their dinners in my kitchen, helping themselves to my precious Diet Cokes. My cooperative veneer promptly shattered when one night I was sitting and watching TV, trying to ignore the fact that the hairy, hulking Ahmed had to stay overnight and was in the room downstairs, talking loudly on his cell phone. I was uncomfortable enough just knowing he was there, and the discomfort amplified every time I heard him bark into the phone. I was trying to immerse myself in an old episode of Friends when I saw that Ahmed had finished his phone call and was slowly and inexplicably making his way up the stairs.