A tall, polite American with a tight, painted smile greets me when I enter the house. After a brief chat he walks me to my room telling me that its permanent occupant will be returning from abroad in a few weeks. Until he does, the room is mine. I thank him, enter the room and close the door.
I look around. A droning air conditioner in the corner blows cold air and an old ceiling fan, its wires spliced with green electrical tape and its blades unbalanced, whirs above my head. The room is tacky and worn, its dull plaster interior unbroken by trim or other such details. The furnishings are sparse, and the low, wide bed is adorned with a blanket featuring a gaudy, unintentionally comical African safari scene. Scuffed, empty suitcases are stacked up against a barred, narrow window on the left side and thick, mid-1970s style curtains hang from a wall-length window behind the bed's headboard.
I notice that both windows are covered by a clear, plastic film. It is there to prevent shards of glass from being blown into the room in the event of mortar or rocket or suicide bomber attack.Six months before I arrived, a rocket had plunged into the front yard of the house across the street and detonated. The explosion severely damaged that home, destroyed several massive palm trees on the property and blew out and cracked some of the windows of the house I am staying in. Pictures taken the morning after the impact show the destroyed home's brick and plaster perimeter fence scattered across the street like a child's pile of wooden blocks. I am told that had the rocket landed on the street side of that fence, the damage to the house I am staying in would have been much worse.
My friend Maher was in the room next to mine on the night of that attack. It was 5AM and he was asleep. A short screech awoke him, then a huge explosion shook his bed and the window behind him exploded into the room, covering him in glass. Plaster dust and the acrid smell of spent explosives filled the air around him. His ears rang. His heart pounded against his ribs. Following the blast he lay still, awaiting rescue. Then, as the haze of shock lifted, he carefully felt his body for shrapnel and other wounds. He discovered that he hadn't received a scratch.
I stare through the window at the wrecked house. Some workers are hand mixing cement on its patio while others stuff plaster into the wide, jagged cracks in its smooth, stucco walls.
My eyes wander over to a cracked-open door in the plain, dark, built-in cabinets on the room's left side. I open it, look inside and see a loaded machine gun, a pistol and spare ammunition clips nestled against a crumpled-up, checkered keffiyah. I remove both weapons, familiarize myself with the operation of their safeties, and put them back. Then, pushing against my desire to sleep, and prodded by addiction, I decide to take a walk to buy some cigarettes.
On my way out the door, I encounter a young woman who offers to drive me. She is small and pretty with straight, jet black hair, light, freckled skin and large, dark Middle Eastern eyes that flash from joy to concern and back within a single sentence. She speaks English well, with an Arabic accent. To protect her identity, I shall call her Janan.
After exchanging pleasantries, Janan leads me through the blazing sun and into the heat of a car that has been parked too long in Iraq's sun. We drive slowly down the narrow street, weaving around bumps and potholes, and dodging the trash and construction debris that spills off the sidewalk from one end of the street to the other. In front of every house and house trailer, men with guns stand guard. As we drive past them, they stare at us, and move towards the street. Their index fingers move towards the triggers of the assault rifles they carry. I ask Janan if this is normal. She laughs and says, "Yes, of course."
We drive for a few blocks and stop in front of a beat up, squat, single story brick and plaster building with steel grates on its windows. I open its simple door, and follow Janan inside. The building's interior is dark and cool and the air inside is smoky. Men sit at small tables, sipping tea, smoking and chatting quietly. A small television blares from a corner of the room. The place has the look and feel of an aged social club or VFW hall. Janan wanders over towards a table of young men. I notice that heads have turned, and all eyes in this place are now locked on me.
I am the only Westerner in the room. I realize that in spite of my Arabic features and olive skin, I am obvious. I feel nervous, but try not to show it. I approach the tiny cigarette stand that is crammed into a corner of the room. The man behind the counter stares at me with a cold hatred in his eyes. I reflexively return the look, only worse, and we are instantly locked in combat.
Seconds later it ends when he breaks into a warm, toothy smile. I smile back and ask for a pack of Winston Lights. In badly broken English he gestures that he doesn't carry them, so instead, I select a pack of Marlboros with Arabic script on its sides. Janan sidles up next to me and says a few words, in Arabic, to the man behind the counter. He nods. I pay for my cigarettes in American dollars. Then we leave.
I ask Janan if she will take me to buy some toiletries since I had packed hastily, forgetting to bring any with me. With a smile she agrees to take me over to the base exchange, or BX. Then, rather incongruously, she launches into a snap analysis of my personality. With laughter in her voice she tells me that she bets I am a funny and crazy man. She is half right. "I will show you around this place, no problem," she says.
We drive into the compound where the BX is located and step out of the car. All around there are soldiers, mostly Americans. I remember that back home, the press most often paints them as hapless, uneducated types--underpaid and sadly destined to torture and murder innocents at the behest of a stupid, cruel leader. Certainly, they are underpaid. The rest is a wicked lie. Around me I see uniformed men and women who carry themselves with confidence. I have found them to be respectful, friendly, loyal to a fault and extraordinarily courageous. I will tell you some of their stories later.
Janan and I walk towards the PX through rows of heavily armed Humvees. Soldiers, dressed in full battle gear are milling around some of them. I look to my left and watch a close-by helicopter lumber upward, its massive, churning rotors thumping out deep, stacatto, pipe organ notes. Like a giant bug it rises through the date palms surrounding it. It slowly gathers forward motion and pumps skyward. As it disappears from view, the noise of its machinery trails off.
Whoomph! -- It hits me in the gut, like a massive bass drum note at a rock concert. Almost immediately I see thick, black smoke rocket upwards from behind the huge concrete blast walls surrounding the compound I am in. Distant sirens pierce the shocked silence in my head. I ask Janan if it was what I think it is. She nods. Then, without a hint of concern, but with mild sadness, she says it is common.
I feel a twinge of sickness watching the color of the car bomb's ugly cloud lighten as it rises. I think of the horror and madness beneath it.
I wonder if this awful mark on the bright, blue sky, this black proof of obscenity under God's sun, contains the souls of the newly dead.
My transfixion on the black cloud is broken by Janan's small voice. "This happens every day. You'll get used to it, let's go," she says. I look around and notice that only a few, small, scattered groups of people are watching the cloud. I try to shake my nausea, as the death-cloud expands, lightens, fades. I can smell things burning beneath it. I think how absurd that, within minutes, I am going from witnessing a mark of awesome violence to shopping for soap, shampoo and toothpaste.
I follow Janan, and a handful of soldiers, out of the sun and into the air conditioned expanse of the BX. Its interior resembles that of a budget retail store back in America. Its clientele does not. Soldiers, security personnel and civilian contractors wander through its aisles. Many carry rifles, handguns and knives. It is an odd, disquieting sight seeing men and women, standing in store checkout lines while draped in weaponry. In my pressed shirt and dress shoes, I feel completely out of place.
I make my purchases and Janan and I walk out the door and back into the sun. Her cheerful voice has become a soothing, white noise to my tired, collapsing mind. I ask her to take me back to my room. Before I step into the car I see that the black cloud is gone. As Janan drives, the cloud's significance occupies me. I am thinking that like the cloud has disappeared, all memories of those whose deaths it had announced, and all memory of the sorrow it had caused, would one day also vanish.
