I Have Iraq in My Shoe

by Gretchen Berg

  What the hell was that? It was Dadyar’s first day of work. What was going on? I marched down to the deck, all sassy boss-lady with hands on hips, and demanded, “Where were you? Were you in that villa this whole time? Why was that door locked?”

  Dadyar was either not terribly bright or an excellent actor, as he looked genuinely perplexed. This could have been because he didn’t understand what I was saying. I usually spoke more clearly and slowly with the Kurds, but I was irritated and the sentences were rattling out of my mouth like machine-gun fire. Vana, on the other hand, spoke a little more English than Dadyar and looked like she knew exactly what I was saying and what I meant. Her face said, “Uh-oh, busted.”

  I really didn’t have time to serve Moral Judge & Jury Judy Duty, and I still needed the deck and downstairs cleaned. I turned to Vana and calmly said, “I need you to clean the deck, and the downstairs in this villa,” and pointed to my villa. Vana asked, “Now?” and I said, “Yes please, now.” She replied, “Okay, I go finish five minute other villa,” so I said, “Fine.” Dadyar and Vana both walked back to Villa #69, and I turned to go back inside Villa #70 to call Warren.

  It was the weekend, and it was hot outside, so the CED staff in Suli was partying on Ellen’s villa roof. Warren was drunk when I called him, and therefore did not sympathize with my ranting. He saw that it was me calling, on his cell, and answered the phone “GERTS! YOU BIG WHORE!” If I hadn’t been so frustrated, and looking for resolution to the current problem, I would have hung up on him. As it was, I just ignored the slight (or what he probably considered a hilarious greeting) and told him what had happened so far.

  Warren: Huh. So, you think she was takin’ a ride on the old baloney pony?

  Me: Um…okay, gross, but probably. They were in there for THREE HOURS!

  Warren: Did she do any cleaning?

  Me: You’re missing the point, THREE HOURS!

  Warren: (kind of more sober) Okay, Gretch, here’s what I want you to do. Can you go over there, and just see if she cleaned anything?

  Me: Yes. And I will keep you on the phone while I do that. You do get, though, that I don’t care so much about the cleaning at this point? Does it really matter if she cleaned anything over there? The door was locked and they didn’t answer it even when I rang the doorbell. It’s his FIRST DAY OF WORK.

  Warren: Yeah, that’s weird. Just see if she cleaned at all.

  Still holding the phone, I went to the front door of Villa #69 and tried to open it. They had locked it again.

  Me: (outraged) THEY LOCKED IT AGAIN!

  I rang the doorbell, and this time Dadyar answered. I yelled, “WHY IS THIS DOOR LOCKED? THIS DOOR SHOULD NOT BE LOCKED!” He gave me the same dopey, perplexed look as I walked in the villa, still holding the phone up to my ear.

  Warren: Did she clean anything?

  Me: It doesn’t look like it.

  Upon seeing me, Vana had quickly grabbed her mop and was dragging it dramatically back and forth in the upstairs hallway. I marched up the stairs and asked, “What have you cleaned today?”

  Warren: Does it look clean?

  Vana directed me to the upstairs bathroom and said, “I clean here,” and then led me down the hall to the living room and said, “I clean here.”

  Me: (to Warren) So she’s showing me the upstairs bathroom and the living room, which I’m pretty sure were already clean since no one has been living here recently.

  Warren: So…do you think she was cleaning, or do you think she was gettin’ poked?

  Me: Erm..gross, but the second one.

  Warren was clearly less concerned with the seriousness of the situation and was really more enjoying the opportunity to trot out all of his vulgar euphemisms for sex. I marched back down the stairs, out the door, and back to Villa #70, leaving Dadyar and Vana in a state of semi-bewilderment in Villa #69.

  Warren: Okay, Gretch, here’s what I want you to do. I want you to send me an email, telling me just what you’ve told me and seen today. Is it okay if we handle this on Sunday?

  Me: Sure, that’s fine.

  I sat down and hammered out the email, certain that my detailed documentation would lead to the swift dismissal of the inappropriate Dadyar, and while I did this Vana finally cleaned the deck, and then the downstairs part of my villa. I paid very close attention to the time she started cleaning the bathroom and the time she finished, to have a general comparison for her “work” over in Villa #69. Maybe it did take her three hours to clean two rooms.

  It only took her twenty minutes to finish the bathroom in my villa. I also peeked out the window while she was cleaning the deck, only to see Vana bending over one of the tables, scrubbing away, while Dadyar stood behind her, holding a rag and gazing lovingly at her backside.

  Warren’s “handling” of the situation on Sunday consisted of telling me that he couldn’t really fire Dadyar after only one day of work. I, conversely, thought that would be the ideal time to fire him, but Warren spun the situation by yammering on about Dadyar being Rana’s cousin, and how he needed to be careful about how everything was worded, blah blah blah, nepotism and bureaucratic bullshit. The administration probably had their hands full down in Suli, distributing newly revised copies of the Cultural Awareness pamphlet, with complimentary bars of Virginity Soap, and trying to make sure all the female staff members were wearing oversized sweaters.

  So, Dadyar was our new driver/assistant/man-about-town. He didn’t speak English, seemed to be dishonest, and may or may not have been having a torrid affair with Vana, our pert Ethiopian cleaning lady.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Shifta

  After a very fun Progressive Dinner, where I got to catch up with Katherine and my other Erbil friends, and eat appetizers on the newly cleaned deck, I went inside and sat on the living room couch with my laptop and checked my email. There was one from Awat:

  Hi, the bes teacher i have ever had, i want viste you tomorro if you dont mind, with terrefic shfta. how about 11am? i am waitting for your answer

  Our class had been a conversation class. We hadn’t worked on writing at all. You would think that the infantile appearance of the emails would be a turn-off, but you’d be wrong.

  I responded:

  Hi! You are always welcome to visit, especially if you are bringing food. 11 a.m. sounds fine—I will be here, probably unpacking.

  See you and your fat friend tomorrow!

  I was looking forward to seeing him and was also really curious to see how fat his fat friend actually was.

  He reconfirmed:

  ok. see you tomorro, good-bye

  Maybe we should work a little on the writing when he comes up.

  Awat made the shifta, all by himself, and brought photos for proof. He showed up at my door, 11:00 a.m. on the dot, wearing the blue shirt I loved, and swooning ensued. His “fat” friend, Hawre, was not actually fat; he just had a little bit of a belly. He spoke absolutely no English but did speak Friendly Smile and seemed to be really sweet.

  Since the shifta had traveled three hours, it needed to be warmed up, so Awat lit the stove and found a frying pan. Watching him stride around my kitchen, looking like he knew exactly what he was doing, was too much. He was all smiles and casual confidence. This was terrible.

  To make things worse, the food he had cooked was delicious. I had invited Steve out onto the deck to be social and to enjoy the food with us. Every half hour or so Hawre would say something to Awat in Kurdish, and Awat would just dismiss him with a wave of the hand and say to me, “He want to go home. I say no. I am the boss.”

  We talked about food. The shifta was amazing, and I was so thrilled to be eating something that wasn’t hummus or chicken kebabs.

  I asked Awat what he brought for dessert (and was only half kidding). He bemoaned the fact that he hadn’t thought of dessert, and said we should have had fruit. Awat mentioned that he loved peaches, and Steve snarked, “Ahhhh, peaches. Do you love peaches? I love peaches. Peaches, isn’t that what you cal
l girls’… you know,” and here he held out his hands in front of his chest to indicate breasts.

  Oh, for crying out loud, Steve.

  Steve looked from Awat to me, shrugging uncomfortably, and said, “What? We can talk about that, can’t we?” Awat shook his head and said, “Only if is okay with Miss Gretchen.” I said, “No, we don’t need to talk about those kinds of peaches right now, Steve,” and rolled my eyes. I was ready for Steve to go back to his villa. I had just asked him over to be nice.

  Awat and Hawre stayed for three hours before I finally made them leave. Poor Hawre was supposed to meet friends at his house, and he had been so patient with Awat all day. I felt sorry for him.

  The day had been far more formal than our private classroom talks, and I wasn’t sure what to make of that. The departure was equally formal, since there were four of us standing there, saying things like “thank you” and “have a safe trip home.”

  Awat spotted my cell phone on the counter and exclaimed, “You have a phone?!” He couldn’t have really been that surprised—everyone in Iraq had a cell phone. I said, “Yes.” And he asked if he could have the phone number. For a split second I thought, “I should say no,” but instead said, “Okay,” and let him plug the numbers into his phone. I had one additional brief moment of misgiving about that, but then thought, “How can I keep in touch with my soul mate if he doesn’t have my phone number?”

  At 5:30 p.m. my cell phone rang. I had been looking through the photos on the CD Awat made for me. Some were of him cooking (for proof), and the rest were from the Student Appreciation Dinner. Awat’s name popped up on the small screen of my phone, and my stomach jumped a little. It was a cocktail of excitement, remorse, and massive twinges of guilt.

  Me: Hi!

  Awat: I calling to assure…

  Awkward pause.

  Me: Are you calling to let me know you got home okay?

  Awat: Yes, I arrive home…my mother and brother’s wife and sister send their greetings.

  The connection was kind of bad, and that combined with the language barrier made the conversation kind of stilted. It was completely different when we were face-to-face, and I realized how much of our communication had been nonverbal.

  Me: Thank you! Tell them I said hello! I sent you an email.

  I wrapped up the conversation because the line was cutting in and out, and I felt nervous. After he had left, I had sent him an email and attached a few photos I had taken while he was being all sexy and cooking in my kitchen. You could really never have too many sexy-man-cooking photos:

  I am so excited to have REAL FOOD to eat!!! Thank you so much for making shifta, and coming over for a visit. It was good to see you.

  My favorite photo is “Awat preparing,” because you’re smiling. You should smile in all your photos—you have a beautiful smile.

  Good luck with your new class, and I’ll talk to you soon.

  Gretchen

  The tone of the email was more casual than I felt. His response came a few hours later and must have been sent right when he had gotten home.

  i am so sorry i do not imidatily replay your email because my enternet conection did not working, i am in the coffe Internet now…thank you for everything, especially for photos. be sure i will smilling in photos, sure i will visit you again

  WHEN?

  He had gone to an Internet coffee shop specifically to email me. This was crazy. Even though we were no longer student/teacher, we were still twenty-four-year-old/thirty-nine-year-old, Kurdish/American, and Muslim/not.

  Assimilating is a good thing, but I had inadvertently surpassed normal assimilation. I had reached the point where I thought it a completely feasible and logical idea to date, and maybe someday marry, my Muslim student. I began Googling things like “marrying a Muslim” and “Kurdish weddings” and, of course, had to reinvestigate “oral sex and the Koran.”

  I had completely lost my mind.

  Islam is not known for its open-mindedness, or support of women, so I had to find out just how challenging things would be—you know, when I married my sexy, young Muslim Kurd.

  Wikipedia was unable to assist me with this, so here are a few things I discovered from various forums and message boards:

  “At first, the man will be charming and considerate. He knows, about a woman he is pursuing, that ‘once she is in the cave, I can eat her.’ The man will change and become his true self after marrying.”

  “If the man is unhappy, it is all your fault, and if he divorces you, the children are his. Arab men have very hot blood, so easily hit women, and the Koran says that is OK.”

  “On the wedding night the man places his hand on his new wife’s forehead and orders out all the evil.”

  “No alcohol could be served at the reception.”

  None of these things were good, because I was sure the “once she is in the cave, I can eat her” idea did not have anything to do with oral sex. And I absolutely could not imagine a wedding reception without wine.

  There were also so many horror stories about Western women who had fallen in love with, and married, Muslim men. The infamous Not without My Daughter story was frequently mentioned as a cautionary tale.

  Chapter Thirty

  Crazy Pills

  My social life was certainly looking up, but things with work were going from bad to worse. The first minor annoyance was that I had to “go Security” again, this time with Steve and Dadyar. Dadyar drove us to the same small building where Chalak had taken Adam and me so many months ago. I wondered why they had to ask me the same questions all over again. Somewhere in the undoubtedly overflowing filing cabinet of Erbil’s Security Department, there are now two documents detailing my single status, my parents’ retirement, my irrelevant American work history, and, if the recording secretary had a sense of humor, possibly the fact that I enjoy long walks on the beach.

  Nothing made sense in Erbil now. We had a new Man-About-Town who spoke even less English than our last driver, and we also had Andy. Andy was sent up to Erbil in October to “coordinate” things, facilitate structural changes to the villa (they were turning the main floor of Villa #69 into a testing center), and to generally handle any issues that arose.

  At first Andy seemed like a great “go-to” guy. He was constantly asking, “Anything I can do for you guys? Just let me know.” He was a large, pale man with thin blond hair and a very small head, whose daily uniform was loose-fitting cargo pants, cargo shirts, and work boots. Andy lived in Villa #69 with Steve, and Steve said Andy spent most of his spare time on the Internet, Skyping with his wife who was a Filipino nurse, living back home in her country. We weren’t sure of Andy’s medical acumen, but he kept the refrigerator stocked with various prescription pills.

  Andy always seemed to be in the middle of doing something, or going somewhere, or going somewhere to get something for the other thing he was working on. I received an inordinate number of either phone calls or texts from him on a daily basis, usually just asking me to reconfirm something I had confirmed for him the day before. “Yes, Steve and I have class tomorrow, and again, no, we don’t need any additional supplies, but thanks.”

  As the weeks went by, we noticed that Andy needed an awful lot of reassurance in regards to his projects, and also needed to confirm and reconfirm, and then reconfirm yet again, anything Steve and I had talked to him about.

  Andy’s progression of crazy was slow but steady. Steve and I grew increasingly uncomfortable with every interaction we had with him. The university had arranged for him to teach an off-site class for some company, and when Andy would leave in the mornings, Steve and I would get together and compare notes on the level of craziness we had last experienced.

  Steve had the winner. He had planned to go to Oktoberfest at the German restaurant a few weeks back when some friends came up from Suli; however, Andy had given him painkillers for a sore back. The painkillers were actually Xanax, and Steve had taken two, rendering him completely comatose. While the rest of us w
ere sitting at the outdoor picnic tables, drinking real German beer out of steins, eating sauerkraut and bratwurst, and waving our steins around to the imported oompah band (or, as I drunkenly referred to it, the Oompa-Loompa band), Steve was at home, stoned on the couch.

  Andy had been told, by Warren apparently, to give interested Kurds who stopped by inquiring about classes a spiel about the classes, as well as a tour of the classrooms. These, of course, happened to be in my villa. Andy would call and text, asking me to unlock the door in order for him to conduct his tour. I would typically oblige.

  One night, around 7:30 p.m., Andy called with the usual request. It was dark outside, I had PMS and was cranky, and had gotten into my pajamas for the evening. We had never had a visitor show up this late before. I was so fed up with the lack of privacy, and the possibility of a potential student seeing me in my jammies, that I told Andy no. “It is too late for someone to just be showing up for a tour,” I said.

  Andy became aggressive on the phone and growled, “Well, you’d better be the one to tell Warren then!” I responded, “Okay, I’ll send him an email.” God, it was ridiculous how terrified some of these people were of the Wrath of Warren. Honestly.

  I sent Warren this email:

  Hey,

  I know you want Andy to show potential students the facilities—this is fine. But I do not want people wandering through here at all hours of the night.

  Andy just called, and had 2 students he wanted to show the classrooms to.