I Have Iraq in My Shoe

by Gretchen Berg

  “Completely fenced-in yard” meant we could loll about in the sunshine in our whorish bikinis, slurping the frothy alcoholic drinks of the infidels, and complaining about our probably-deserved hangovers. This was the Real Housewives of Erbil: the cookie-cutter villas, the pristine, manicured lawns, the bright, hot sunny days, and the inane conversations about our kids.

  Katherine’s kid was her thirty-nine-year-old boss, Piers, who, while creatively entrepreneurial and dryly hilarious, was incapable of doing anything himself (he once sent her to his villa to get his “good shoes” because they had clients coming). My kids were Renas and Dalzar. There was also the incessant bitching about the gardeners and the housekeepers. Someone’s gardener had left the hose on overnight and flooded her backyard; Katherine’s housekeeper continued to wash her clothes, even after shrinking several cashmere sweaters and having Katherine beg her not to touch her laundry. Liz’s housekeeper decided not to show up for a few days but still expected to be paid. Slurping our blender drinks, we unanimously agreed, “It is so hard to find good help,” and then burst out laughing at ourselves.

  I was down to one kid. Just one. Dalzar was still in the nest, but Renas had flown away to greener pastures. Can I mix animal metaphors? Renas would be attending the University of Texas– Austin. Hook ’em horns! And I had hopefully armed him with enough English to keep him from being wedgied, swirlied, or locked in someone’s locker. That was really more of a high school thing, but I was feeling protective of my now-former student and was really hoping that everyone would be nice to him. If I were in Texas with him, I’d be packing his lunch and writing little notes of encouragement on his napkins. I was a little worried about an Iraqi Kurd going to Texas. I had seen an episode of Primetime that John Quiñones did on people’s treatment of a Muslim woman at a convenience store somewhere in Texas, and it wasn’t too encouraging. I just had to cross my fingers that Renas would have a positive experience there.

  I modified the class (you know, the class of one) to suit Dalzar’s learning needs. We would begin with essay writin’, continue on to some book learnin’, and then take a half-hour break where we would adjourn to the deck to have conversation practice, or as I preferred to call it, Chatty Time, with Adam. I thought it would be helpful for Dalzar to hear two native English speakers having conversations, in which he could also participate. Naturally, given Dalzar’s mild ADD, we occasionally veered off topic. One day we were discussing the textbook’s unit topic “Controversial Issues” and wound up discovering that Dalzar was a part-time beekeeper. Or had a beekeeping facility at his workplace. Or liked the letter “B,” but I was pretty sure it was beekeeping-related. To my knowledge, beekeeping was not controversial in Iraq.

  In June, we finished the semester, and class was over. Dalzar took Adam and me out to dinner as a thank you, which was sweet of him. It didn’t help him pass his TOEFL exam, on which he received a score of 483 out of 550, but it was still a thoughtful gesture.

  I was suddenly free, for the next six weeks, to traipse around The Rest of Europe and visit family back home in the United States before returning to Iraq in August. I was looking forward to summer vacation but also looking forward to returning to Erbil. I loved teaching the students, and I had finally made friends and settled in. Erbil actually felt like home. Although the honeymoon was over, it looked like this marriage had some promise.

  ASTOUNDING

  ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF PART 3

  Running total spent on overweight luggage: $2,920 (I do feel it is an accomplishment that this has not increased).

  Debt eliminated: $14,063—SUPEHSTAH!

  Countries traveled: 2—still just Austria and France from last time. I’m getting antsy.

  Pairs of shoes purchased: 3—aren’t you proud of me? Still only three at this point.

  Soul mates met: 0

  Cultural tolerance level: 9—it was pretty easy to focus on the positive when heading into a six-week vacation.

  Part 4

  Change is Good

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Happy Birthday! Kind of.

  The first three weeks of my summer freedom were spent in Austria, Croatia, and Greece, and I didn’t bother with a budget. I had never been granted the luxury of doing that before; I always had to pay attention to how much meals cost, how much transportation cost, how much shoes cost.

  It was good that I was excited to go back to Erbil, though, because not returning was not an option; so said the credit card bills. When you allow yourself the luxury of indulging in the carefree, money-is-no-object vacation, you must continue to bring in those tax-free paychecks. Yes, I had eliminated much of the crushing debt, but not all, and my savings account was still empty. Plus, all my stuff was still in Erbil. I liked my stuff. But even more rewarding than having stuff was the sense of accomplishment that came from teaching my kids. I give you my Yahoo inbox:

  JUNE 24—SUBJECT: Hi

  Hello Mis. Gretchen, I reached Houston on Saturaday afternoon. I couldn’t open my email since I left my home. I bought a laptop yesterday. We are 10 studnt in this scholarship but 4 of them not coming yet. We have an English language course in St.. Thomas University and our flats are in Rice University. The weather is hot with too much humidity, I don’t like it. Until now I am waiting the TOEFL test, may be in these 10 will appear. I will inform you immediately. Thanks, Renas

  JUNE 26—SUBJECT: Another Hi

  Hello Mis. Gretchen, What is your class news? Are you still teaching? Or you in vacation? I have an English course here in Houston in St. Thomas University. It is some how boring we are 18 student in class. I really miss your class Mis. gretchen. In 6th or 7th I will move to Austin there is also another English course prepared by UT. Thanks, Renas

  JULY 12—SUBJECT: TOEFL Score

  Hi, Haw are you Ms Gretchen? I reaaly miss your class, thank you so much for your teaching. I got my score of TOEFL test of May 9, unfortunately it is 527. Any way, now I am in Austin, I reached there 3 days ago. Here also I have an english course at ESL and at end of the course we have an unofficial TOEFL test but the teachers said that this test is acceptable by UT (university of Texas). I hope this time I would be better. Whre are you now Ms Gretchen? In New Zealand or Brazil or or or…! I moved to Austin 3 days ago, and yesterday I went to San Antonio, it was a nice place. Now, I am living in a dormatory name Castilian. Regards, Renas

  I received that last email on my birthday, and it was one of the best birthday gifts ever. One of my kids was using his English and successfully living in the United States.

  I landed at Dallas–Fort Worth on July 11 and practically French kissed the customs agent, I was so thrilled to be back in the United States. I didn’t even mind the four-hour layover, where I sat at TGI Friday’s, gorging on American milkshakes and American cheeseburgers, before finally flying to Portland to stay with my parents. I entered the house and made a beeline for Herb, who looked startled. I hadn’t seen him in four months, and he had definitely put on weight. As I lifted up his fat body and pressed my face into his furry belly, I gave my mom a reproachful look. “He is fat, Mom!” Overindulgent grandparents, feeding him table scraps. Hmph. I could tell he was a little fussy and wanted to punish me for being gone so long, but he didn’t try to jump out of my arms, and I hugged him tight and swayed back and forth singing, “Her-bie, Herrrrrrrrrr-bie.”

  Once in the comfort and quiet of my parents’ living room, after everyone had gone to bed, I read through Renas’s emails and got a little teary-eyed. I quickly responded with some encouragement, and thank-yous, apologized for the delayed response, and told him to keep in touch.

  I basked in the sunshine of Renas’s accomplishment and thought about how this experience was turning out to be pretty satisfying. I was as surprised as anyone, and I sat with my laptop thinking about how weird it was that I was really looking forward to going back to Iraq.

  Then I saw Jill’s email.

  Warren had hired Jill as his deputy director, to eventually succeed him as
director of CED when his contract was finished and he left Iraq (although knowing him, he’d leave before his contract was up). I had only met Jill once or twice, but my snap judgment upon meeting her was that I really liked her. She was a cheery, friendly, short-haired, blond Canadian, a few years older than I, who had spent time teaching English in Dubai and had the dubious distinction of having been Warren’s baby-sitter when he was little.

  Her email did not give me the same warm and fuzzy feeling that Renas’s email had given me.

  JULY 12 - SUBJECT: Hi!

  Hey Gretchen,

  We have had an unexpected increase in enrollments for our summer conversation classes, and so we’ll need you here in Suli for August and September. Please let me know when you will return to Erbil.

  Cheers, and see you soon!

  Jill

  NOOOOOOOOOO! The blood drained from my face. This was not a good birthday present. I did not want to move to Suli! Erbil was my home away from home now! I decided I did not like Jill anymore. She wasn’t the boss of me! Once we had gotten past his petty threatening, Warren had promised me I would be teaching in Erbil for the entire duration of my contract. Where was he? Oh yes, he was on his summer vacation. Stupid Warren, on his stupid vacation. He wasn’t due back in Iraq until September and did not take time out of his stupid vacation to respond to my desperate emailed pleas for clemency.

  I immediately began to freak out. Things were different in Suli. No one likes change. Never mind that I would be thrust into the belly of the university beast, with its dramatics and bureaucratic confusion and inappropriate-theory-concocting chancellor; there were no microwaves in the Suli villas. How would I cook? Okay, not cook, but how would I heat things up?

  I really would be like poor, downtrodden Scarlett, forced to yank cold vegetables out of the ground and eat them raw. And even worse, the commute between home and school required coordinating with other teachers and drivers, not just walking down the stairs of the villa. My shoes! They were in danger! This was serious. There were also no Progressive Dinners, no Bakery & More, no J&K Women’s Fitness Center & Spa, and no paddling-pool Real Housewives time at Katherine’s villa.

  Wow, I sounded spoiled.

  Once again, I found myself sobbing into my metaphorical apron. “I can’t think about that right now. If I do I’ll go crazy. I’ll think about that tomorrow.” I’m pretty sure Scarlett would have been pissed if she had gotten that news on her birthday. I’m also pretty sure she would have marched straight to her closet, whipped open the doors, and proceeded to console herself by ripping open the myriad boxes from YOOX, Zappos, and Barneys that had been waiting for her. There is always solace to be found in Jimmy Choo gladiator sandals.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Kicking and Screaming

  My Portland-Dallas-London flight went smoothly. My two nights in London went smoothly. I accidentally bought a pair of Christian Louboutin suede fringe booties in London, but because they were on sale for half price, that purchase went smoothly. The London-Vienna flight went smoothly. Everything went smoothly until I had to check in at the Austrian Airlines counter for my Vienna-Erbil flight.

  The counter may as well have been covered in prickly stucco, it so interrupted all the beautiful smoothness.

  While I was home for summer, my friend Christine had gotten me the most awesome and practical birthday gift ever: the Balanzza. The Balanzza is a handheld luggage scale, which has been featured in such lauded publications as the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog and SkyMall. You attach the sturdy strap to the handle of your bag, then hold the scale in your hand and lift. Balanzza would tell you what your luggage weighed in both pounds and kilos. It was totally bilingual. Never again would there be a need to pay extra luggage fees! I had carefully weighed both of my suitcases, and both were at precisely twenty kilos (or forty-four American pounds). I was a packing genius.

  The Austrian Airlines representative at the counter did not agree with my self-appointed label of packing genius and harshly informed me that my limit was twenty kilos. Total. Period.

  Me: Twenty kilos total? Not per bag?

  My insides went molten. Not per bag. This was for an international flight. Twenty kilos? Total? I attempted to explain to the counter representative that she must have been mistaken and that I was permitted two twenty-kilo bags, on the same airline, Austrian Airlines, flying the same route (just in reverse) from Erbil to Vienna, a mere month ago. Her very unsympathetic response was, “Well, you were lucky.”

  That was not the way I wanted to start my day, nor my return trip to The Iraq. Five hundred fifty euros later (around $800), both twenty-kilo bags were checked, and I defeatedly whimpered through the terminal toward my gate.

  Back at the Erbil villa, I packed up two large suitcases for the two months I would be in Suli. Since I was no longer speaking to my hockey bags, I considered trying to shove the enormous microwave into a duffel bag, but that would have taken up shoe room. I was then whisked down to Suli, leaving a purportedly depressed Katherine in my wake. When I emailed her to wail about my unwanted relocation, she had immediately responded, “Is anything written down in your contract re: location? Am dismayed at this turn of events. Dismayed! Don’t leave me!” I was certain her dismay and depression would only last until the next happy hour, or Progressive Dinner, so I wasn’t too worried.

  Once in Suli, I moved into the extra room in Jen’s villa. Jen had taught classes through the summer and was leaving for her six-week vacation a few days after I arrived. We had a little time to catch up and gossip about all the stuff that happened with the university over the summer. She said it had been rough.

  Jill had hired a handful of new teachers for short-term, three-month contracts. While Warren didn’t have a knack for truthfulness, he was a quite gifted judge of character. Everyone Warren had hired for the regular term at the university all had some sort of personal connection to him (former coworkers, baby-sitters, etc.) and were all very solid, stable, easygoing-yet-hardworking, fun and funny people. I had to give him credit for that. I really liked the people in our department. Since Warren was back in Canada for his summer vacation, Jill had to do the last-minute summer contract hiring.

  One of the people Jill hired was an older British woman named Virginia. Jen told me how Virginia would loudly and frequently proclaim how much she hated Americans, in addition to other random, unsettling outbursts. To put it in her preferred British vernacular, Virginia was barking mad. During one of her particularly bad episodes, she jumped out of the transport car and stood in the middle of a busy Suli street screaming, while everyone else in the car just sat in varied states of stunned paralysis. She was relieved of her teaching duties before I arrived, though, and I never saw her craziness up close.

  I do not do well with Crazy. I am all about trying to rationalize things (international travel requires more than twenty kilos, total), and Crazy usually doesn’t pay any attention to reason (no, it’s twenty kilos total). Crazy screams and shouts and jumps out of cars, and all of that just takes far more energy than I have.

  If Virginia was certifiable, Nina, another summer hire, was certifiable light. Jen warned me about Nina: she dominated conversations, made absurd comments, and frequently offended people. Dara and Kelly were two teachers in CED who were married and had brought their husbands and children to Suli with them. Nina informed them both that it was totally irresponsible to bring children there. She would proclaim to anyone who would listen that she was the only truly qualified instructor because she had completed a TOEFL teacher’s course. She piped bizarre revelations into everyday conversation: “The only reason I went to Korea [to teach] was because I couldn’t get laid in America.” And during a very awkward car ride she growled to a twenty-seven-year-old Bobby, “You’re just ripe enough for me.” Dara confided that on one trip to Zara, Nina wore shorts that were so short you could actually see bum cheek. Where was the Cultural Awareness pamphlet? Did I take the last one?

  Nina was thirty-nine, pale skinn
ed, and very thin, with a wiry blast of red hair. She was smugly proud of her birdlike frame. She was obsessed with talking about weight, and would declare, “I’m thin and hot!” and would yammer on about how there were twenty-year-olds who weren’t as thin or hot as she was. No one really knew how to respond to this.

  She really didn’t seem like a bad person, but she definitely had some sort of mental imbalance that resulted in her floating around in an alternate reality, where she was the Queen: the most beautiful, most fascinating, most intellectually gifted incarnation of human-unicorn there ever was. It was nice that some people were perfectly content in their delusions; I just couldn’t find any common ground with them.

  I felt bad for Nina but also suspected that she wasn’t all there as far as mental capacity went. The best I could do was be polite and try to avoid engaging in conversation with her. Especially when she said things like, “I definitely want to have a baby. The world needs more Ninas! Don’t you think?” I did not think. When Warren came back from his extended summer break and met the new hires, he said to me, “Oh my God, I feel like I need to shower after I talk to her. She is fucking weird.”

  Suli was going to be an exercise in avoidance tactics for me. In addition to a mentally wobbly coworker, Jen had also warned me that she had seen a scorpion crawl out of the drain in the shower.

  The faculty and staff villas in Suli were about a twenty-minute drive from the university. We had three Kurdish drivers, Karzan, Karwan, and Sirwan, who each commandeered an SUV, to transport us around. Karzan and Karwan were half brothers who used to live in Baghdad and drive for Saddam Hussein’s regime. “Saddam Hussein’s regime” has a dark and sinister sound to it, but the brothers were these two diminutive, smiley, jokey nuggets. They were the Iraqi version of Chelsea Handler’s sidekick, Chuy.