I was more annoyed than anything else. Late-breaking story: Internet trolls in The Iraq. The anonymity of the Internet had created a culture of spineless crybabies. While Arie was not, technically, anonymous, he was whining and complaining and name-calling from the safe comfort of the dark cave of cyberspace. Part of me wanted a face-to-face with this person, and I was secretly hoping that Arie would enroll in an English course. God knows his writing could use it.
I later calmed down, took a few deep breaths, and thought, “Poor Arie is probably some high school kid who takes a lot of pride in his culture and community, and he was just lashing out at an imagined injustice.” But he was also a brat. The best way to deal with foul-mouthed brats, who are not yours, is to ignore them. In the same way I ignored Warren’s threat to make me move to Suli, I ignored Arie’s last two comments. He gave up and didn’t bother commenting again.
My blog had not only attracted a disgruntled local, it had also attracted Australia Katherine.
One day while checking my email I received this, with the subject line “Heya”:
… happened upon your blog while googling “ladies gym Erbil” (to no avail!).. and thought i would drop you a line…
Am also in English Village and (i think) quite close to you.
In fact it was on my list of things to do to come and say g’day to you as we visited the university in Suli last week and Tom said there was a branch here. I work for a legal consultancy and we meant to ask you and Adam over for lunch.
Apologies for rambling monologue.. too many cold and flu tabs.
Would be good to catch up at some point!
Katherine
I had a quick flash of irritation at the thought that Tom could have introduced us to Katherine months ago (she had been in Erbil two months longer than we had) but obviously hadn’t thought to do so. Who cares about the Erbil kids? No one, wanh-wanh. I let the irritation pass and brightened to the thought that there was a new, sunny social spot on the English Village horizon.
Chapter Nineteen
Erbil is Da Bomb
As Dalzar was prone to talking and “uhhhhhhhh”-ing through nearly every lesson, listening comprehension continued to be a challenge for him. The English textbooks we used came with audio CDs to supplement the lessons.
Listen to each conversation, then write the reason each person changed his/her mind.
Marie: I remember that gorgeous Swede you were going to marry.
Juliet: Oh, yes, Sven Svenson. He was some hunk.
Marie: Whatever happened?
Juliet: I guess my tastes changed. I married Luigi instead.
I turned off the recording and asked, “Why did Juliet change her mind?”
Renas and Dalzar: She tastes changed.
Me: Her tastes changed. Good.
Dalzar: Is apreecher?
Me: What?
Dalzar: Uhhhhh, yes, uhhhh apreecher is, uhhh, some persons give the advise?
Me: Appreciate? Preacher? What are you asking me?
Dalzar: Uhhhh, persons stand in front and tell many peoples things—apreech? adviser?
Me: Like, in church? “Preacher” would be the person telling people things. What made you think of that?
Dalzar: Yes. Uhhh, Martin King.
We had discussed Martin Luther King Jr. a few classes ago.
Me: Dalzar. We were just discussing the conversations and reasons for people changing their minds. What made you think of Martin Luther King?
Dalzar: (smiling and nodding) Yes.
I was shaking my head thinking, “No…” when Adam came in. “Uh, hey, I just got an email from Warren, and he said there’s a suicide bomb threat for Erbil, and they’re sending a driver, now, to pick us up and take us to Suli.”
Me: What?
Adam: Yeah, I don’t know. That’s just what the email said.
Me: So we have to go to Suli?
Adam: Yeah.
Me: Like, now?
Adam: I guess.
Me: So, I have to stop teaching now.
Adam: Yeah. They’re sending a car from Suli, so you’ll probably want to pack some stuff.
Dalzar and Renas just sat, looking blankly back and forth between Adam and me. I didn’t sense any kind of surprise, but maybe they just didn’t understand what we had said. So I said to them, “I guess we have to go to Suli…so you guys can go…um…I am not sure when we’ll be coming back? Soooo, I guess, just wait for an email from me…I’ll probably see you on Sunday?”
I was vacillating between anxiety about a suicide bomber and annoyance at having to pack in a hurry. I think TV had desensitized me to actual danger. Thinking about the other expats and their evacuation protocol, I wanted to know what New Friend Katherine had to do. Did they have to evacuate as well?
I picked up my cell and dialed her number. There was no answer. I deduced she, and the rest of her company, were in a similar state of disarray and panic and were quickly planning an exit.
While sitting out on the deck of the villas with Adam and our hastily packed bags, waiting for the driver, my cell phone buzzed and I received a text message from Katherine: “Maximall is fantastic!”
What???
Katherine had been thrilled with my tales of the Iraqi Banana Republic and had clearly wasted no time in getting her shop on.
I texted back:
We’re being evacuated due to suicide bomber, and you’re shopping???
That text prompted a phone call.
Katherine: What do you mean, “suicide bomber”?
Me: Warren emailed Adam about an hour ago and said we were being evacuated to Suli due to a suicide bomb threat. Have you not heard anything about this?
Katherine: No! I am going to call Brad; he’s dialed into all the security issues in Erbil, and if anything like that is happening, he’ll know about it. I’ll ring you back.
When she called back, Katherine said that Dialed-In Brad had confirmed that yes, there was a suicide bomb threat in Erbil. There were three suspects, two of whom had been apprehended. The third was still at large, and was a female on foot.
One bomber? On foot? That was it? The trip to Suli was around three hours, and I had things to do this weekend. Katherine had bought a paddling pool for her backyard, and we were going to make drinks in the blender and everything, and there was a Progressive Dinner involving multiple villas and multiple meals… there were things! I did not want to miss the things!
I turned to Adam and said, “Ask Warren when we get to come back up here.” Adam was already on the phone with Warren, and dutifully asked, “Gretchen wants to know when we’ll be able to come back to Erbil.” He was quiet while Warren was responding, and then said, “Uh-huh…uh-huh…okay, man, talk to you soon.” Then he turned to me and informed me that Warren said we wouldn’t be coming back until Sunday. I did not take this news well.
Me: WHAT?! NO! I have PLANS! I don’t WANNA GO TO SULI! I mean come on. The suicide bomber is on FOOT. Erbil is HUGE! English Village is so far away from the actual city. What are the chances she would come here? She would be walking forever.
Remember that day Adam and I walked to the restaurant? Yeah, that was an hour and a half of walking. A smart suicide bomber would want to explode in a densely populated area, not in a far-flung compound where the villas weren’t even very close together. That would just be poor planning on her part.
Adam: Warren says you don’t have to come down.
Me: (excited) Really?
Adam: Yeah, but he says if you’re not coming down, you need to send him an email right now, explaining what you’re doing…
Me: (hurriedly) Yes, yes, saying that I take full responsibility, blah blah.
I was halfway into the villa by that time, en route to my work computer to send the email. Hooray! Weekend fun, here I come! Stupid suicide bomber, trying to spoil my paddling-pool plans and blender-drinks plans and Progressive Dinner plans.
Chapter Twenty
The Real Housewives of Erbil
; There was Western life for me in Erbil, thanks to Katherine: perky, energetic twentysomething Katherine, with her massive Rolodex of expats and neverending calendar of social extravaganzas.
Because Katherine worked for a legal consulting firm, she met all the Westerners who moved here, or at least the ones who needed legal assistance in setting up their various businesses or nonprofit organizations. She also put in the hours required to cultivate a very active social life, which was something I wasn’t doing. Her schedule made me tired.
In one of her frequent emails she joked, “You’ve not been to the track? Lordy. You haven’t LIVED!”
“The track” was the Erbil Speed Center, which was a mile down the road from our compound. It was composed of a sleek-but-smoky bar, a sleek-but-smoky restaurant, and an actual racetrack, neither sleek nor smoky, where you could drive go-karts.
Katherine invited me to the racetrack to “meet an astronaut.” Astronaut Bill Shepherd was going to be at the racetrack and was being honored for something or other. Although I had never heard of Bill Shepherd, and wasn’t particularly interested in the space program, I thought “Meh” and decided to go.
After a narrated video and speech from the guest of honor, Katherine and I were introduced to Astronaut Shepherd by his cohort Duke, a slight, thinning-gray-haired, weathered man in his sixties, wearing a polo shirt and khakis. The first thing out of Duke’s mouth was, “See, Bill? I told ya we’d have girls for ya.” I may have audibly groaned. I mean, really, dude? I was a teacher and Katherine was an attorney, but as far as Duke was concerned we were just a couple of hookers.
The astronaut was nice enough. He seemed fairly jet-lagged and bewildered at the surrealism of the racetrack bar in the middle of Northern Iraq. Duke, on the other hand, was neither nice, nor bewildered, and when he started a sentence with, “Listen, honey…” I had to tune him out. I chose, instead, to entertain myself by imagining Duke dressed in a pink ballerina tutu, licking one of those giant, round rainbow lollipops, and fluttering his false eyelashes at the other men in the bar.
You weren’t allowed to bring pork products into Iraq, but there were more than enough servings of pig to go around.
Katherine was a force of resilience and diplomacy. She had built up a very high tolerance for bullshit and didn’t mind going to the track for social interaction. “Carey and Scott are here from the university, and Sirwan is taking them to the track tonight. If you wanted to go say hi.”
Carey was the director of finance, who had been my immigration partner back in March (and the one who didn’t complain about unsuitable sleeping accommodations and smelly pillows). Scott was a friend of hers from home who had recently been hired at the university. I totally appreciated that they had not asked to stay in my villa, but also thought it was odd that one of Warren’s drivers (Sirwan) would be taking Carey and Scott to the racetrack. Maybe it was a different Sirwan. I responded to Katherine and asked questions like “Where are they staying?” and “Who is Sirwan?” and “How does he know them?” and then pointed out that I was being pretty gossipy.
Katherine’s response:
This is not fun gossip at all!!
Apparently he [Sirwan] went to college with them? Or something?
Fun gossip is stuff like Sirwan pulling the moves on me and me getting confused and wailing to my coworker, “I don’t understaaaaaaand… is this what DATING is? It’s crap!”! Can’t I just tell him I’m Australian and we don’t do this bollocks at home? Eeew… I think I might have kissed him when I was boozed but not so sure…”
Her gossip was definitely better. Katherine was ten years younger than I and had more energy for the hooking up and running around and drinking. I had done all that in my twenties, and while it was fun at the time, I was thoroughly relieved not to be doing it anymore, particularly here, where the world seemed to be shrinking at an alarming rate.
The Sirwan she was talking about was not Warren’s driver, but the brother of Rana, Princess Smelly Pillowcase. According to the Erbil gossip, Sirwan was a bit of a man-whore and had been nicknamed Sleazewan by a number of people. I wondered if Rana had given Sirwan a copy of the Cultural Awareness pamphlet.
I didn’t want to completely give up on a social life in Erbil, so when Katherine suggested I go with her and a few friends to Hawaiian Night at The Edge, I said okay. I let my curiosity about the social whirl of Erbil’s gossip get the better of me. The Edge was a bar, which was in the middle of the concrete maze of the USAID compound in Ainkawa, and consisted of a shabby room with a bar, and an outdoor patio with swimming pool.
The USAID compound was exactly like the Iraq you would see on CNN, complete with gun-toting guards and high concrete walls garnished with curling barbed wire. After going through a security check, and having to leave our cell phones and cameras at the front checkpoint, we walked through the concrete maze of streets to the “bar,” where we were greeted by a pretty Western girl in her twenties, handing out leis, dressed in a grass skirt and coconut bra. I was taken aback as it had been awhile since I had seen that much skin. I mean, I get it, it’s Hawaiian Night, but seriously?
The girl’s name was Corey, and she was well-known around the expat scene, in the notorious sense of “well-known.” To me she seemed like a genuinely friendly, nice person. She exhibited none of the competitive cattiness that is prevalent in many social situations with females and would probably have no place in Chancellor Tom’s lioness scenario. A couple of Katherine’s friends referred to her as “Whorey,” which I thought was kind of nasty and pretty catty. I just felt sorry for her.
I was talking to one of the ex-military/security guys later by the pool, and I asked about Corey. He said she had told him once that she felt like a nobody back in the United States, but here she felt really special, like she was really important. That was heartbreaking to me, but I guess if she felt special, then her life here was a sort of improvement. I still wanted to give her one of those “You’re better than this!” pep talks, and a sweater to put on over the coconuts.
Later on in the night, after many mai tais, Katherine admitted to me, “Whorey hates me ’cause apparently she was sleeping with Sirwan and saw me and him out heaps.” (“Foster’s” is Australian for “beer.” “Heaps” is Australian for “a lot.”) It was just like college. Rana really should have her brother take a look at that pamphlet.
I made a halfhearted effort to be friendly and social at The Edge, but my favorite part of that night was discovering the pound cake on the buffet table.
At both the Speed Center and The Edge, I felt like I was part of an exotic traveling exhibit at a woman-zoo. The male-female ratio was probably close to twenty-to-one. The Western men there were a mishmash of entrepreneurs, consultants, and ex-military/security personnel (and astronauts), and the vibe was palpably predatory. It didn’t even matter what you looked like; you were female. There were just so many of the men, leering or saying, “Well, hellooooooooo there,” eyebrows waggling, and their inconsequential wedding rings flashing and clinking on their beer bottles.
It was almost worse than being in a woman-zoo; it was more like being a juicy cheeseburger in a room full of starving desert-island castaways. Everyone looked really hungry and really creepy. It would not have surprised me one bit to run into Brandon, of the Royal Jordanian flight, spitting his chewing tobacco into a glass and screaming obscenities into his cell phone before turning to waggle his eyebrows at Katherine and ask if she wanted marry him in Lebanon, or Leinenkugel.
Erbil’s expat social scene was something I could only handle in very small doses. Or really just one dose, like a tetanus shot. You only have to get boosters for those every ten years.
The social antidote to the creepy, lecher-ridden bars was the Katherine-helmed Progressive Dinner in English Village. This was a monthly occurrence and included all expats living in the English Village compound. The casual, emailed invitation would usually look something like this:
Stop one: Dean’s for drinks
S
top two: Swedes for starters
Stop three: Matt and Liz’s for mains
Stop four: TRC ranch for dessert
Like Warren loved giving nicknames to people, Katherine loved giving nicknames to her villa. She sometimes called it the TRC ranch (TRC was the name of the consulting firm she worked for), and at other times would refer to it as Club 319 (her villa number).
When I was first invited to Club 319, I was confused. Once again, my subconscious was crying out for a dance club, and I exclaimed, “Oh my God, Erbil actually has a dance club?” I should have remembered, per Dalzar, that it did not.
English Village was home to so many Westerners I hadn’t known were there: Dean, from England, who worked in insurance; Piers and Alan, also from England, who owned, and did the accounting, respectively, for TRC; Eric and Martha, an American couple who worked for a tomato-processing plant; Liz and Matt, who used to work for the U.S. State Department but were both now doing consulting work; and a whole mess of Swedes. It felt more United Nations than anything else. The Cultural Awareness pamphlet did not apply here.
Parties like the Progressive Dinners allowed us expats to temporarily forget that we were living in Iraq. The food was Western (courtesy of the deli counter at Bakery & More), the drinks were Western (Jacob’s Creek Chardonnay), the dress code was Western (no Capri pants necessary), and the conversation was Western. We could just drink and laugh and discuss politics, religion, and sex freely. I hadn’t changed that much, though: I was still uninterested in politics and really preferred to talk about my dress.
There were always hangovers following the Progressive Dinners. Always. And the best way to cure the hangover was a pool party at Katherine’s villa. Katherine would fill up the new paddling pool she found at Naza Mall, one of the large local Targetesque stores, and invite a bunch of women over to sit on the cushy lawn chairs in her completely fenced-in backyard to enjoy the frothy drinks, made in the blender I dragged over in a duffel bag.
I Have Iraq in My Shoe Page 13