I Have Iraq in My Shoe

by Gretchen Berg

  GAH! The drivers know they’re not allowed upstairs! FARK! I leapt from the couch out into the hallway and leaned over the balcony.

  “Yes? What do you need?” Ahmed was carrying a plate with some plums on it, and a can of soda, and held these items up as an explanation.

  “No, thank you!” I could feel myself growing shrill, which was annoying. I hate shrill, but I was entering panic mode, with this essential stranger encroaching on my personal space.

  Ahmed said, “For you!” and continued his slow climb up the stairs. GOD DAMMIT! (Women are all whores…probably definitely single American women…)

  “NO!” I shouted, as he clearly wasn’t getting the hint with my polite/stern voice, “PLEASE TAKE THAT TO THE KITCHEN, THANK YOU!” Ahmed looked irritated and said angrily, “It’s for YOU!” His threatening tone was enough confirmation that I was justified in yelling, and I answered, “YES, THANK YOU VERY MUCH; PLEASE LEAVE IT IN THE KITCHEN.” He finally turned around and retreated to the main floor with the fruit plate and soda.

  I had been double-locking my bedroom door at night and turned the key extra hard that night, just in case there was a triple-lock option. I did not feel safe, and not even the image of Joey wearing every piece of Chandler’s clothing could perk me up. Jen later confided, “I can’t believe you put up with that for as long as you did. I would have freaked.”

  After the disastrous Rana weekend, Warren said he would make it clear that no faculty or staff would be staying in “my” villa uninvited. Although he really seemed more bothered by the fact that Rana said his pillowcases smelled bad.

  Warren confided that Chancellor Tom had developed a casual theory about why Rana and I didn’t get along. I thought it was just because she had poor manners and a wackadoo sense of entitlement, but Tom explained to Warren that Rana and I were both lionesses. We were both “strong, attractive women” and felt threatened by one another, had to prove our prowess, blah blah blah. I found it difficult to listen and roll my eyes at the same time and am not sure how the theory concluded, but I imagined it probably involved wrestling around in fur bikinis, a la Raquel Welch in One Million Years B.C.

  Dear Santa,

  Please consider the position of Chancellor at this University in Iraq. The climate might be a bit of an adjustment for you, but I would promise to help you with the Nice and Naughty lists, and I could probably find some people to help make the toys.

  Sincerely,

  Gretchen

  Adam was technically living in Erbil with me, but only during the week. He went down to Suli every weekend, and yes, often-times people stayed in his villa too; he was just rarely there to deal with it. Adam had spent the prior semester working at the main university and enjoyed the Suli compound social life in the less-picturesque, but infinitely more private, moderately Soviet-looking concrete villas, with all the front-porch beer drinking and testosterone bonding and whatnot. We got along really well and had fun during the week, but Adam wasn’t teaching any classes and was bored to tears. He was also pretty miserable, being so isolated up in Erbil, not to mention thousands of miles away from his fiancée. Not even the Sex and the City marathons could cheer him up, so Warren would send a driver to fetch him on the weekends.

  I had to limit my Suli trips to the monthly bank runs. It was a three-hour drive through topsy-turvy mountains and wasn’t something I wanted to do twice a week. Since we all make choices in our lives, and my choice was a sort of self-imposed isolation, I found things to love and keep me sane in Erbil.

  Facebook and Skype: Technology helped connect me to my old life back home, and at least let me talk to, and look at, my supportive friends and family.

  Food: The stores finally got Diet Coke, I became very friendly with Nutella, and there were peanut M&Ms and Snickers bars to remind me of the Western World.

  My new blender, which I quickly fell madly in love with: It cost an incomprehensible $26, and was glass, with an apple-green base and rubber lid. It encouraged me to consume the requisite two to four servings of fruit per day in the form of smoothies, which almost counterbalanced the Nutella and candy bars.

  I also did the unthinkable and purchased a bathroom scale.

  There was a 60 Minutes piece on Vogue editor Anna Wintour, where she claimed the scale at the Vogue offices was simply there for the purpose of weighing luggage and not making certain that all perpetually hungry employees felt daily body shame. Whether that was true, when I heard that I thought, “Brilliant!” and immediately ran out to get my scale.

  I would never pay fees for overweight luggage again. NEVAH! (Here is where I visualized Me-As-Triumphant-Scarlett-O’Hara, or Me-As-Triumphant-Joan-of-Arc or She-Ra. I mean, how does She-Ra get around the overweight baggage fees? Her outfits are all made of metal.)

  There were other, unexpected joys in Erbil, the newfound Paris of Northern Iraq. One of them was Bakery & More, the Lebanese-run bakery Adam and I tried to walk to that one day. After being driven there by Chalak, I realized how far off we had been. Although it would have been worth the extra hour of walking.

  Bakery & More offered croissants, cookies, cakes, and other fancy baked goods and had a refrigerated case with deli meats and cheeses on the first floor and a small restaurant on the second floor. The restaurant upstairs offered pizzas, sandwiches, and my Holy Grail of hangover cuisine: mozzarella sticks. Naughty cheese. This was officially one of my Happy Places. One of the men who worked there always gave me a big grin and a wave when I walked in, and then he would sneak me a couple of pieces of chocolate when no one else was looking.

  Given the endless parade of sugar and fat, I really needed to find some way to work out. The Women’s Fitness Center had been frightening, it was a million degrees outside (which killed the idea of just running around English Village), and my Biggest Loser Workout DVDs had lost their allure. Adam was still researching women’s gyms, in hopeful anticipation of his fiancée coming to join him here. His fiancée would not have been okay with the bird-doody, broken-down equipment, velour-tracksuited aerobics gym, so he kept searching until he found the J&K, a mere five minutes’ drive from the Village, very close to Ainkawa.

  It was probably slightly sacrilegious for me to call the J&K Women’s Fitness Center “Mecca,” but I did anyway. You did have to pay to experience Mecca (about $15 per visit), but it was worth it. The entrance displayed a lush, finely manicured lawn and the lobby was a study in sprawling luxury. I mean, yes, it was still understated Trump, although with purple accents, rather than the usual gold leaf. There was an actual workout room, with actual, plugged-in cardio machines.

  The workout room overlooked an Olympic-size swimming pool, where women wore bathing suits. Not the futuristic, confining burkinis, but regular tanks or even two-pieces. Men were not allowed inside J&K, so the women roamed about freely, wearing whatever they liked. One heavyset woman even liked running on the treadmill in her bikini. To each her own, and go sister, go.

  Mecca, naturally, had a day spa. There was an honest-to-goodness nail salon, where I spent a deluxe hour getting a completely professional pedicure from a charming woman named Sangela. She was a godsend, and God sent her from Nepal. I have been to Nepal, and absolutely loved it, and therefore could not understand why she came here. I asked her why she left, and she said she could make more money here. I guess that shouldn’t have been so hard to understand, since I could make more money here too. The Kurdish women who ran the salon were dismissive and abrupt with Sangela, which irritated me, and I wasn’t certain but thought it might have been just because she was Nepalese. If no one was looking, I would slip her a little extra money before I paid the women at the counter.

  It was weird to witness racism here, but I had seen and heard of Kurds talking about the Ethiopians and Bangladeshis like they were no better than animals. I felt like this was probably a backlash, because that is exactly how many Arabs and Turks (and some Europeans) viewed the Kurds. When will people learn to simply judge others by their shoes? It’s so much more ci
vilized. Crocs, you are low man on the totem pole.

  So, aside from the possible racism of the Kurdish salon women, the J&K was another one of my Happy Places and a veritable bastion of serenity. Rumor around town was that the owner of the J&K had been granted $500,000 from the U.S. government in order to set up a women’s refuge. I did consider the J&K to be a refuge, but probably not the kind the U.S. government had in mind.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Actual Assimilation

  The next time I went down to the university in Suli I was careful to avoid Chancellor Tom’s office. I only spent one day each month at the main university, and it usually consisted of floating between the teachers’ office, the bank, the cafeteria, and Warren’s office. I always looked forward to seeing Jen, and the other teachers, and some of the local Kurds who worked at the university, in particular the tea-and-coffee-boy Daroon.

  Daroon was unwittingly instrumental in my assimilating into the Kurdish culture. Thus far, I had really only made an effort to incorporate things into my Iraq life that reminded me of home: Diet Coke, wine, Snickers bars, a day spa. That wasn’t assimilating; it was procrastinating. Enter Daroon and His Magical Turkish Coffee.

  Everyone adored Daroon. We would describe him as mellow in temperament and sweet in disposition. He always greeted you, arms extending with upraised palms, with a slight nod of the head, and a humble “Welcome.”

  Daroon called me “Flower,” which was a much better nickname than “Gerts.” Dara, one of the other teachers, had a six-year-old daughter whom Daroon called “Baby Flower,” so Dara was subsequently “Mother Baby Flower.” I later discovered that he called most of the female teachers “Flower,” but that didn’t make the nickname any less appealing. I would take compliments where I could get them. Whenever I was sitting in the teachers’ room, Daroon would come in, look surprised to see me, and say, “Oh! Flower! Welcome, Flower.”

  Daroon, in addition to being a charming presence, made fantastic Turkish coffee. I tried to resist it at first, when Warren attempted to talk me into having a cup. I was finally learning to ignore Warren’s suggestions. Baby steps. I explained to him that I hated coffee, and it didn’t matter which country it came from. Warren refused my refusal. He had Daroon bring two Turkish coffees up to the office, in cute little china cups with saucers, which I eyed suspiciously after thanking Daroon for welcoming me. I squinted into the little cup, sniffed at it, and whined that I didn’t want to drink it. Yes, whined. I really didn’t want to drink it. Coffee was nasty. Warren rolled his eyes and said, “Just try it. You might like it, you might not. Just try it.”

  This was the Warren I liked. He wasn’t calling anyone a skank; he wasn’t wearing his Terminator sunglasses, gesturing wildly with a cigarette while making fart jokes; and he wasn’t giving me the used-car-salesman hard sell about something I might not like. Of course, he also wasn’t listening to me when I said I hated coffee.

  I took a few sips. It wasn’t bitter like normal coffee. It was strong but had a slight sweetness to it and was delicious. I loved it. I loved coffee! I was assimilating and being grown-up. I associated coffee drinking with grown-ups, and I never quite fit into that ideal. I was jealous of the grown-up coffee drinkers, always running around waving their Starbucks cups. When I found that I could get a chai latte in one of those cups I was thrilled. I could just fake being a grown-up.

  Warren was pleased that I liked the Turkish coffee and patted himself on the back for suggesting it. It was such a welcome change to have him back like this. We just hung out in his office for an hour or so, talking, joking around, and drinking our Turkish coffee. I missed this Warren.

  The Turkish coffees became a habit, and I drank them every time I went to Suli. I was a grown-up, Turkish-coffee-drinking flower who was assimilating. Warren should also be given credit for introducing me to za’atar, which, while not specific to Iraq, was very Middle Eastern and very awesome. It was kind of like a flat-bread pizza with green herbs and sesame seeds and other spices, and we could get it at Bakery & More. Sometimes I would get crazy and eat za’atar and drink Turkish coffee at the same time.

  Assimilating meant more than just consuming what the locals did. It also included dressing as the locals dressed. Contrary to my prior beliefs, burkas were not commonly worn in Kurdistan. I had yet to see one. I did see some hijabs/niqabs, which were the headscarves, and abayas, which were basically burkas minus the face-covering. The abaya looked similar to a nun’s habit.

  YOOX didn’t sell nuns’ habits, so I sometimes struggled with what to wear in Iraq. I wanted to be careful not to offend anyone, and remembered the Cultural Awareness pamphlet’s “dress code” section. I had been trying to pay attention to what the local women were wearing.

  After several months of close observation, I had reaffirmed my original conclusion: showing skin was bad, but covering your entire body with skintight clothing was perfectly fine. I was really surprised to see that so many women wore colorful tops with skinny jeans and high heels. Now, they may have been wearing those skinny jeans and heels with a hijab, but still. Also confusing to me was the seeming disparity between what was deemed sartorially acceptable and what was being sold in the clothing stores.

  On another shopping excursion with Jen (we had to use my Maximall dollars), I was sitting in one of the comfy, loungy chairs set in the middle of the store, waiting for Jen to come out of the dressing room, and watching one of the friendly salesgirls arrange a rack of clothing. She looked at me, smiled, then selected a pair of Barbie-size denim hot pants from the rack. She hugged them to her chest, with the same dreamy, faraway look in her eyes that I get when talking about my love of cheese. I said, “Ahhh,” aloud and laughed with her, but then found myself thinking “Can she even wear those? Where can she wear those?” Even with tights or leggings underneath, hot pants would still be pretty racy.

  The only racy part of my Iraq ensembles these days were my shoes. Since my “commute” simply involved my walking down the stairs and into the classroom, there was no danger of my shoes being defiled by any of the dust, dirt, mud, or trash of the Kurdistan streets. There was an episode of Sex and the City where Carrie went to Paris and accidentally stepped in dog poop in her Christian Louboutin pumps, and it made me cry a little.

  My solution to the requirement of dressing nonoffensively was wearing Capri pants under just about everything. On one particular occasion I was wearing a loose safari/khaki sort of short-sleeved shirtdress with black Capri pants underneath (and Jean Paul Gaultier gladiators).

  Dalzar had spent several minutes of class ranting about the fact that women in his office dressed like they were going to a nightclub. I was distractedly excited at the prospect of there being a nightclub in Erbil. I hadn’t been dancing in ages. I gasped, “There are nightclubs in Erbil?!” to which he looked at me blankly and said, “No.”

  Deflated, I asked, “Then how do you know how women in nightclubs dress?” He simply answered, “TV.” Dalzar then looked me up and down and declared, “Okay, you give Kurdish woman, uhhhhh, one million dinar? She not wear what you wear.”

  Renas stared at Dalzar, mouth slightly agape.

  Me: Okay…

  Dalzar: One million dinar, and Kurdish woman still not wear that.

  One million dinar is around $100,000. It’s a sizable sum to turn down.

  Me: Why not?

  Dalzar: Because it is not sexy for the man!

  Cue uncontrollable laughter. It was the kind of doubled-over laughing where you can’t really catch your breath, and there is wheezing and eye-watering, and you’re seriously hoping you don’t fart. This continued for about a minute, with me sobbing and laughing, while Dalzar and Renas just stared at me, perplexed. It was honestly one of the funniest things Dalzar had said in class, and he said a lot of funny stuff. I had to wave my hand back and forth, shaking my head, indicating I really couldn’t explain my reaction to them.

  I mentally filed the khaki shirtdress/black Capri pants ensemble into my “totall
y acceptable” outfit list. This assimilating thing was easy.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Inshallah

  Renas and Dalzar were keeping me entertained, and I was trying to keep them engaged in the learning process. It was still making me crazy that Renas constantly spelled people “peaple.” And Dalzar spelled “their” like “thier,” although I had friends on Facebook who did this. There are a lot of Americans who can’t spell.

  Dalzar continued to bulldoze through conversations but was getting much better about listening, as I practically barked, “DALZAR! LISTEN!” at him frequently. He responded by pausing, nodding his head, smiling, and saying, “Yes!” with a flourish. Every time.

  I instructed Dalzar do a couple of things that may have seemed unconventional in the teaching realm: quit smoking and watch Oprah.

  Smoking was just a nasty habit. Watching Oprah was just good common sense (and would help Dalzar with his listening comprehension). After watching several episodes, Dalzar came to class one day and said, “I think…uhhhh…people like her very much—the black woman.”

  He had no idea. That was something else that perpetually astonished me: how little the Kurds knew of the outside world. I had to keep reminding myself that they had been completely cut off from anything beyond the Iraqi borders throughout most of the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s. I’m not sure when international television station broadcasts were permitted in Kurdistan, and that undoubtedly helped inform people about the outside world. But even in 2009 there were restrictions on which Kurds could even apply for passports. The students had never even heard of The Beatles.