by Natalie Hart
Legend Press Ltd, 107-111 Fleet Street, London, EC4A 2AB
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Contents © Natalie Hart 2018
The right of the above author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available.
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Natalie Hart is a writer, researcher and communications adviser, specialising in conflict and post-conflict environments. She has worked extensively across the Middle East and North Africa, including three years in Iraq where Pieces of Me is set. Natalie has a BA in Combined Middle Eastern Studies (Arabic and Spanish) from the University of Cambridge and an MA in Creative Writing from Lancaster University.
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@NatalieGHart
For Richard Hardy-Smith
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PART ONE: PRE-DEPLOYMENT
PART TWO: DEPLOYMENT
PART THREE: POST-DEPLOYMENT
PART ONE
PRE-DEPLOYMENT
1
I did not cry when he told me he was leaving.
We both knew that the war would draw him back eventually. We both knew that it was a question of when, not if. That sooner or later equipment would be organised and bags would be packed and months of separation would follow. But still, it has happened sooner than I imagined.
I did not cry when he told me he was leaving, although his words slammed into my chest and forced the air out of my lungs. Five months ago I was there myself, but I exchanged the beige of Baghdad for the vast skies and rolling peaks of Colorado. After three years of filing asylum applications for Iraqis, I found myself entering the details of my British passport into the US spousal visa form. And now, I am here. And now, he is going back.
When he told me he was leaving, I recognised the breathless excitement and the shine behind his eyes that said his mind was already there, training troops in the heat and the dust. I have watched the television footage of American soldiers going off to war, leaving behind women with mascara-smeared faces and children waving small plastic flags. What they don’t show is the excitement and the tingling limbs and the twist of anticipation in the gut. What they don’t show is that although the soldiers don’t want to leave, they often want to go.
Adam wants to go.
He wants to go and do the job he was trained for. The war needs him, or he needs the war, I am not sure which. He has lived out the battle from stateside for too long this time. He has read the reports and watched the footage. He waited while friends were deployed. He waited while I stayed out there myself. Now it is his turn.
When he told me he was leaving, I spilled over with questions.
“What’s the mission?” I asked. “Where will you be?”
“You know I can’t tell you details, Em.”
“But it’s me,” I said. “I was there. It’s different.”
He shook his head.
“No, Emma, it’s not. I can’t.”
Before we married I used to think how lucky we were to have met in a war zone, to understand deployments. Poor wives, I thought, who knew nothing about Iraq. Poor wives who had not seen the golden glow of the reeds on the river at sunset or woken to the dawn call of the muezzin. Poor wives who knew Iraq only from the television and the internet and the radio; who knew the land only as a place where husbands go to die. I thought that knowing and understanding would make it better, but now I am not so sure.
I did not cry when he told me he was leaving, but now we are in bed and I lie with my body curled into his and a pillow wet with tears. I cry for him and I cry for the me I left out there. I was the linguist, the migration specialist, the adventurer. But now I am an army wife, living in Colorado. I am a woman who followed a soldier. I am the woman who followed Adam.
I know what it is to leave. I do not know how to be the person who is left behind.
2
I must have fallen asleep eventually, because Adam’s side of the bed is empty when I wake. The indentation of his head is barely visible on the pillow and the sheets are cold. This is what it will be like every morning when he is gone.
In the kitchen, I make coffee. It has been five months now since I moved to Colorado Springs and tried to make a home in this place where I don’t quite fit.
“It will be easy,” my friends said. “After Iraq, America will be a breeze.” But in Iraq I knew who I was. What I was doing. I haven’t worked that out here yet.
I take my coffee and stand on the front porch, watching the steam rise up and disappear into the cool morning air. The street is a peaceful place, with large houses that are faded lilac and duck egg blue and the colour of tea with too much milk. Our neighbours are a mix of retired couples and families. They wash their cars on Saturday and mow the grass on Sunday and wave hello as I pass.
Most mornings this week I have sat on the step with my laptop, applying for local jobs, something to give me a purpose here. The search has been a struggle, but I have taken comfort in watching the easy morning routines of my neighbours. Not today though. Today, I am restless.
From where I stand, I can see the mountains. Amid the peaks is the Incline, Colorado Springs’ notorious hiking trail. The route climbs 2,000 feet in less than a mile. My eyes track the sandy brown path that cuts through the dark green woodland, a seam in the middle of the mountainside.
I tried to climb the Incline a week after I moved to Colorado. It seemed like an initiation rite, a way to prove that I could fit in amongst the outdoor aficionados and extreme landscapes of my new home. But the Incline was too much for me, too soon.
I wasn’t even five minutes into the hike when my chest started to ache from sucking in the thin air. Families, children and old people all passed me, but I could go on no further. After stopping for a while, I picked my way carefully back down, feeling defeated and wondering what I thought I was doing there.
Today, I feel the fresh call of the challenge. Adam has offered to go up with me before, but I am determined to succeed on my own. This morning I crave the cool empty air to quiet my racing mind. The months to come will be full of their own mountains and I want to prove to myself that I can take them on too.
I throw the dregs of my coffee decisively onto the lawn, then pull on my trainers and get in my Jeep. The closer I drive to the Incline, the more imposing it seems. Shadows from passing clouds darken the top of the path. The route looks vertical and I feel the low buzz of adrenaline that I got every time I flew back into Baghdad. It’s a feeling I’ve missed.
In the car park at the base of the Incline, I check my backpack: water, energy bar, phone, tourniquet (a habit I still have from Iraq). I lock the car and put on my sunglasses. They say that Colorado has 360 days of sunshine a year. It is nothing like England and a different kind of light to Baghdad. The daylight here is more blue and the sunrises are more yellow. The colours have sharper edges than in Iraq, where soft be
iges and peaches blur and run into each other.
As I walk along the path to where the Incline trail starts, I can already feel my chest rising higher. Although I have acclimated to the altitude, it will never feel entirely normal to me. But today I can push through. This deployment will happen whether I am ready or not.
At first the gradient isn’t too steep. The steps are wide, so I do a half step between them, which enables me to alternate the leading leg. It isn’t long before I feel the burn in my muscles, but I fix my gaze on my feet, trying to ignore the seemingly insurmountable task ahead. As I move up one step, then the next, I remember the advice that my history teacher Mrs Edwards gave me while I was preparing for my A Level exams.
“Rome wasn’t built in a day, dear. Take it one brick at a time.” Mrs Edwards loved a classics-related proverb, even when it didn’t quite fit. Her enthusiasm was contagious. In class we talked about culture and war and romance and went on school trips to see the remains of intricate mosaics in Roman villas that told stories about all three. Maybe for me that was where everything started. I wonder how Mrs Edwards would feel if I told her that now.
I take another step. One brick, one step, one day at a time.
I pass the place that I sat last time, frustrated and breathless, before turning back. The trail gets steeper, but I continue. My legs give the occasional wobble but I am okay. I am strong.
A few minutes later, I hear pounding feet and heavy breathing behind me. While I haven’t looked up at the ascent, I haven’t looked down either. Now I stand to the side and glance back, realising just how far I have come.
A group pass me, easily recognisable as military by their army T-shirts and matching black shorts. In the International Zone in Baghdad there was a monthly 5K run, which was usually a mix of soldiers and contractors. I see these men and women on the Incline and I am taken back to the pad of running shoes on gravel. Clouds of dust rising from feet. Light grey shirts turning dark with expanding patches of sweat. It feels strange not to be part of this group, but I am not one of them now.
I continue walking steadily as the group moves away from me, their shape stretching out up the mountain the further they get. The fibres in my legs are burning now, but I push on. I focus on the satisfying sound of stones crunching together with each successful step.
I look up. I must be nearly there. But what I see, just a few steps ahead of me, is not the summit that I had been aiming for but more mountain face. More steps.
I stand, catching my breath, overwhelmed – the combination of the hike and a long sleepless night. I notice another woman nearby, also pausing. She is middle-aged and stocky, with light hair that is pulled back by a nineties-looking scrunchie. She looks at me and grins.
“Did no one warn you about the false summit, honey?” she asks.
I shake my head.
“Happened my first time too. My trail partner thought it was better not to tell me. I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to throw her off the edge or myself!”
I let out a breathless laugh, pushing back the wisps of blonde hair sticking to the sweat on my face.
“Do you want to do this last part together?” she asks.
“Oh, yes please!” I say, glad for the company. I see her notice my accent. I noticed it too. It is more pronounced here.
“Penny,” she says, holding out a hand.
“Emma,” I say, wiping sweat onto my trousers before taking her hand in my own. Her grip is strong but her palms are soft. I notice that her hands are flecked with colour.
We set off, maintaining a slow but steady pace for the remainder of the hike.
“When we get up there, I’ma ask you where you’re from,” the lady says between breaths. “I just can’t be sparing the oxygen right now.”
I smile, relieved that she is feeling it too.
The last part of the hike feels easier. Perhaps it is the company, or perhaps it is the reassurance that the end in sight is definitely the summit this time.
As I take the final step, I make a noise that is somewhere between a whoop of joy and a relieved expulsion of air. The woman wraps her arm around me and I feel the heat radiating from her. I notice again the flecks of colour on her hands and it tugs at something in me.
“You did great, honey,” she says, “you should be really proud. First time up the Incline is a big deal. Here, let me take your picture.”
She takes a photo with my phone that confirms I look as red and exhausted as I feel, but there is something else there too. The dark shadows that were a permanent feature under my eyes during those final months in Baghdad are gone now. My face looks more relaxed. My smile more easy.
In the picture, the trail drops away behind me. A patchwork of green and brown landscape melts into the grey of a distant town. My dad would have loved this place. When I was young, we would go on family walking holidays in places with peaks and valleys, my father carrying my sister while she was still tiny. When we were all tired and aching, he would stop and take in a long deep breath, as if he was inhaling the very landscape into his being. Savouring the struggle, savouring the beauty. Then he would open his eyes, smile and say, “Yes, there it is, we can keep going now.”
“So where are you from, sweetie?” Penny asks me. “And what brings you to these parts?” She has been taking photos of the landscape herself and now zips her phone back into her pouch.
“England,” I say. “And my husband.”
“Ah, you came here for love, of course,” she replies, pulling out her scrunchie to retie her hair. “He military by any chance?”
I nod. I hope that she doesn’t ask what I do here. I used to wait keenly for people to ask me my job, but I have nothing to tell people in Colorado. Not yet.
“What about you?” I ask her.
“You know the little art shop in Old Town? That’s my baby. I’ve had her for nearly twenty years.”
The flecks of colour on her hands make sense now. An art shop. An artist.
“Oh, how lovely,” I say and Penny chuckles at the expression. “My mother loves to paint,” I say. Or at least she used to. After my father died, the painting stopped. The paint palette and the easel were moved out to the shed, covered with a sheet, left unmentioned. And now? Now I do not know.
“Do you paint too?” Penny asks.
“No,” I say and pause. “But I’ve been meaning to take up something now I’m here. Perhaps not painting, but something creative… I just don’t know exactly what yet.”
“Well you should drop by the shop, sweetie,” she says. “Have a coffee with me and see if anything sparks inspiration.”
“I’ll do that,” I say.
Penny gives my shoulder a squeeze.
“I need to start heading back down. The shop won’t open itself!”
“Thanks for the support on the way up, Penny.”
“It was all you, honey. All you.”
She gives me a final sweaty hug and leaves. I lean against a rock to rest my legs and take in the view. The burning in my lungs has lessened and my legs feel like solid objects again. I feel good. Colorado stretches out before me. Clouds cast giant shadows that move quickly over the ground. Manitou Springs is directly below and my eyes follow Route 24 as it meanders out of the town towards Colorado Springs. After that the land keeps going until somewhere it transitions into a bright blue sky.
Baghdad was all boundaries and barriers, compounds and checkpoints. The blast walls that flanked the sides of the roads were supposed to keep explosion impacts out, but it felt more like they just kept us in. Baghdad meant claustrophobia. But here the world is vast. Open. Glorious.
I look down for a moment and notice a smooth square piece of rock by my foot. It is a deep yellow colour, the colour of the mountain between the trees. I pick it up and run my finger around the edges, testing the corners against the flesh of my fingers, then I slip it into my pocket. I raise my eyes once more. This place, this space, is what I needed. I close my eyes and take a deep breath in.
3
I did not go to war looking for love. I did not go to war at all really, although I was locked deep in its heart, in a compound where the cogs of war ground steadily against each other. The razor edges of the International Zone separated me from Baghdad, but I was still close enough to feel the tremors from downtown explosions and taste burning metal in the air.
I do not remember why he was in the International Zone that day. At the time, he was just another man in uniform, and there were plenty of those around. The International Zone was a melting pot of military personnel, international politicos, security contractors, journalists, aid workers, construction workers, translators and kitchen staff. It had the same mix of nationalities as an international airport and the same sense of transience too. Not many people stayed for long, although some of us stayed longer than others.
I know it was a Friday when I met him because I was at the pool. While the vortex of conflict raged around us, we lived and worked in a surreal calm at its centre. Sometimes we wondered if the storm would ever pass.
Many of us in the compound worked six or seven days a week. Friday afternoon was our time to relax, so the sun loungers were inevitably full. We would laze around with cheap beer, listening to the latest American country music or thumbing through dog-eared novels, generally pretending we were somewhere else.
When I first arrived in Baghdad, I didn’t go near the pool. I couldn’t reconcile the idea of sunbathing and swimming with being in a conflict zone. How could people discuss casualty figures in one breath and backflip techniques in the next?
My job in Iraq was to listen to the stories of what happened outside the walls of our compound. Each day, I interviewed Iraqis seeking special immigration visas to the US. They talked to me about the relatives they had lost, the threats made on their families, the fear they felt each time they left their homes. I recorded each story in minute detail, preparing the case for the next stage in the application process. I hadn’t come to a war zone to sit by the pool. I had come to Iraq to help people find safety; to help people leave.