Eu tinha um plano de carregar uma filmadora andando na rua. Quando ouvisse alguma “cantada”, eu filmaria o cara. E perguntaria por que ele fez isso, etc. Esses dias, eu descobri que esse vídeo já existe!

Autumn 2006

Traveling has taken on a novel and ironic new danger lately. The fresh battalion that recently rotated in-country is shooting at us on the road, apparently mistaking our white Land Cruisers for suspicious Iraqis.

Normally when we see military convoys, we slow to follow them, happy to let them clear the road, whether by engineering feats of detection or by hitting the IEDs themselves. “Hey,” our PSD men mutter with shrugs and evil grins, “better them than us, yeah?”

Well … yeah. Cheers, guys.

Now we see a convoy off in the distance and go through drastic gyrations of route in order to stay far, far away from them. “Silly buggers,” our PSD men mutter with a look of mild disgust. “Get with the program.”

Wouldn’t that be sick to get into a firefight with MNFI troops? If no one died it would be hilarious, but somehow death by friendly fire seems stupendously empty, does it not? It doesn’t just leave a hole; it’s like creating a vacuum.

______________________________________________________

Tonight at dinner Jeff asked if I was in the Reserves. Tom almost spit his drink all over the table.  “What?” Jeff said with a bewildered look at Tom. “I think she’d do well in the military!” 

“If someone took her under their wing and beat the crap out of her a few times,” Tom said with a bit of venom.

I couldn’t stop laughing long enough to snark him back.

“She doesn’t get along well with the military,” someone else said.

I called Colonel Jeep “sir” twice in one conversation last week, and two people stared at me with their mouths hanging open. Most colleagues have only seen me around LTC Slasher, so I guess they’re not aware that I don’t have a problem with the military per se; I have a problem with stupidity giving orders (Slasher personified).

“I almost joined the Coast Guard out of college,” I admitted to Tom when I’d gotten my laughter under control. I timed my delivery to coincide with him taking a big drink of his milk. Oops!

_____________________________________________________

Out on the endlessly flat, tan, hot, sandy desert next to one of the many beat-to-shit, single lane, supposedly paved roads, a forward operating base (FOB) is being built. I’m going to guess that it’s for the Iraqi Army. They man a roadblock nearby.

We drive this route about once a week. The construction site looks like a strangely bulky, outsized child’s building block set scattered in one discrete plot of an endless sandbox.

Three weeks ago the blocks were suddenly organized: concrete t-walls stood in tight rows with a few random outliers looking like lonely megaliths; concrete cylinders rested side by side in rows on the sand, sorted by size; conical peaked roofs of concrete sat in a row, waiting to top off guard towers; rectangular buildings, each of their four walls holding empty air, stood in rows on one side of the site.

Over the past few weeks, cranes have lifted these items one at a time, swiveling slowly to swing them into specific placements. Two weeks ago the dozen little rectangular buildings were set into two tidy rows. Last week the tall t-walls were lined up around the perimeter of the buildings, and down two sides of the compound perimeter. Today the cylinders are being stacked into tall towers at the four corners of the compound. Conical concrete roofs lie on the ground beside each future tower, ready to be placed.

On the vast desert, a monumental landscape that encourages a contemplation of the puny and superficial efforts of the small animals called humans, the building blocks of this FOB look oddly significant, almost precociously intrusive, yet completely inadequate to the objective of security.

The building blocks of a static war… stock in concrete might be a solid investment.

_____________________________________________________

Just Too Jivin’ Jake: ConRep

A Vo-Tech educated, self-described biker dude electrician, Just Too Jivin’ Jake arrived in-country with the same deployment group that I was with. Now clean shaven, first impressions suggest a rather good looking, cheerful and friendly guy. Unfortunately, the friendliness is revealed to be almost creepily perky. Colleagues, bosses, friends and strangers alike are treated to a syrupy cheer most often encountered in car salesmen or obnoxiously over-doting old grandmothers from the fifties. Many people shake themselves off like a dog when Jake walks away, as if trying to dislodge the little balls of sticky smarm left clinging to the edges of their aura.

Compounding the unpleasant treacle, Jake spews intimate and unfortunate details of his private life within minutes of meeting someone, in the apparent misguided belief that this is interesting. (Though dying to be counted as a friend of the way-cool Brit PSD teams, this unregulated volcano of personal information guarantees a sort of appalled disgust from their end.) Astonishingly self-absorbed, he’s able to proceed with the details at length, once clocking a two-hour monologue after having just been introduced to the unfortunate victim (me).

Obviously, then, it takes only moments to learn that Jake has a wife and three teenage children at home. Through his supiciously energetic efforts to explain how and why his wife is the problem in their marriage, it becomes clear to everyone but him that his wife sounds smart and interesting and that he, in fact, is likely the problem. As his naval gazing progresses and total strangers are treated to a close-up view of his drug-addicted, recently arrested, or pregnant children, the general conclusion is that he seems to be needed at home: why is he in Iraq? Well, he’s always giving to others and needs some Jake time …

Apparently that includes dates with women in the next camp down the road.

Hm.

If you’re in a meeting and someone says something that almost seems to have been intended as a joke but isn’t funny and in fact doesn’t really quite even make any sense, ignore it and proceed: it’s just Jake. To be fair – and to his credit - Just Too Jivin’ Jake arrived ignorant of anything having to do with governmental contracting, yet has worked hard to fill in the gaps. Having been under the questionable mentorship of Wo-Wo Wospecki, he was deprived of any really useful training. What has resulted could have been worse, though ignoring the contracts he claims that he doesn’t have to time to keep up with is not really a recommended strategy for success.

Too self-absorbed to be interesting, too odd to be comfortable, too familiar to be liked, Just Too Jivin’ Jake is best avoided.

Defining actions and characteristics:

1. Greets people with My friend! whether you’re friends or not
2. Tells jokes no one thinks are funny (or even really understands)
3. Wears weird big black shoes with two inch thick soles, said to have springs in them.

Why he stays:

This is his time. Maybe it’s harder to get dates when you live at home with the wife and kids? I’m not sure, and frankly, you couldn’t pay me enough to ask him.

[All names have been changed - OS]

_____________________________________________________

Lt Willy Beal – BCH Resident Engineer

Being the Resident Engineer for the Bestest Children’s Hospital (BCH) makes Willy our poster child for meaningful assignments: his son is a leukemia survivor.

Essentially a glass-is-half-full man, Willy will dwell on a problem only for as long as it takes to identify it as such and brainstorm a solution. If a solution isn’t imminent, the subject will be dropped. He wants to be happy, and he wants the people around him to be happy. A warm and sympathetic man, he’ll hold a friend’s hand for as long as necessary as long as it is necessary – just don’t whine.

Routinely dropped into positions above his skill level, Willy quickly ramps up to take on the challenge and inevitably proves himself worthy in short order. He meets adversaries honestly, with straightforward facts and common sense interpretations, earning him high marks from everyone that matters. Unearned self-importance and power plays are swiftly derailed by his forthright manner.

(What is it with Navy officers? They’re all competent, common sensical, and easy going. The Navy is doing something right that the Army must too often be doing wrong … )

Voted second sexiest eyes on base, Lt Willy Beal is a tall, handsome, barrel-chested man with a charmingly enthusiastic admiration for women. Utterly committed to his wife and children, it’s universally agreed that his affectionate attentions are cozy and comforting, protective and platonic, assuring that his hugs are welcome and highly valued. (Well, appreciated anyway … none of us women would much mind should his moral compass run adrift one evening … !).

Defining actions and characteristics:

1. If he’s missing, check a woman’s office
2. Second sexiest eyes on base (brown)
3. Oakley half jackets (love the shades, babe …)
4. Great hugs at exactly the right time
5. Good with the suntan lotion

Why he stays:

Because he has to – tell him he can leave and watch how fast he hustles his ass aboard a C-130. He likes the job and thinks it’s valuable, but he didn’t volunteer to come to Iraq.

[All names have been changed - OS]

______________________________________________________

Spike Abbot – Camp Manager

A rangy Texan with a twenty-hour-a-day work addiction, Spike Abbot runs the camp with deceptively light touch. His rules are reasonable, his decisions are based on common sense, and his unwavering confidence is balanced by a self-aware humor that endears him to every intelligent resident.

Voted sexiest eyes on base, when Spike lowers his head to look at you over the top of his sunglass lenses you might want to be standing in front of an air conditioner fan. Green? Blue? Hazelish brown? Repeatedly stunned senseless as soon as those sexy eyes locked on our own, it took us (women) months to figure out what color Spike’s eyes actuallly are, and in the end we only found out by tag teaming with LTC Corviday. Immune from Spike’s charms, Corviday confirmed the color: blue.

Spike works for a large contracting firm that seems to hire infinitely more creative and competent people than does the greed-bloated KBR colossus. We count ourselves blessed. Our food is fresh, varied, and rarely fried. Our rooms are spotless thanks to Spike’s careful and cheerful Bengali cleaning crew. While KBR laundries can drastically alter the shape of a simple square cotton sheet with whatever bizarre ministrations they apply to innocent cloth, Spike’s laundry crew return even cashmere sweaters in pristine condition.

Even with his inhuman work schedule, Spike is always willing to set aside work for the time it takes for a friend to talk out a problem. He’s had years of first hand experience in dealing with personal difficulties, having a mentally ill wife at home. Sensitive without being sloppy, warm without being invasive, reflective without being ponderous, Spike is a good man to call a friend. As an added bonus, he stands up to brass like they’re equal colleagues, fighting them to the mat if need be. Go get ‘em, Spike.

Defining actions and characteristics:

1. Sexiest eyes on base
2. Tosses small stones over t-walls to hit residents on the head
3. Requires residents to do push-ups when they lock themselves out of their rooms
4. Requires less than three hours of sleep in any twenty-four hour period
5. Eats more than the six of us combined and never gains an ounce

Why he stays:

Because he makes good money doing a job he’s good at and enjoys, and the small, intense world suits him. He freely admits an adrenaline addiction.

[All names have been changed - OS]

 ______________________________________________________

LTC Corbin Corviday, a.k.a. Crowsie, Resident Engineer

LTC Corbin Corviday is a forty-something Reserve officer who started out as a naïve hick from the back woods of Alabama. He grew up with the build of a rugby player, the intelligence of a Ph.D., and the wit of a lunatic. A devoted family man, he spends half his time in Iraq mooning over photos of his wife and kids, recounting the latest news from his wife and kids, and worrying over family issues that have become quite complex since he was deployed. He feels guilty that his wife has been left alone to deal with two teenagers, an elementary school age daughter, a small dog, and a parent whose failing health incites one difficult drama after another. Try dealing with that via internet. It’s surprising that he can squeeze so many outrageous actions and jokes into the remaining hours of each day.

Occasional attacks of conservative Christian conscience move Crowsie to attempt the rare back porch conversion. Though temporarily pissing people off, the fact that Crowsie isn’t gauche enough to persist (and that he stops short of inserting God and Jesus into every subject), these lapses are forgiven.

Whereas we civilians volunteered to be here, as a Reserve officer, Crowsie was ordered to Iraq for a year. Perhaps for that reason, he is generally more sane and realistic about the inherent dangers of living in a war zone, at the same time he’s one of the first to crack a joke about it. His colonel’s insignia doesn’t affect his sense of humor; it only gives him a little more confidence in confronting fellow officers with differing opinions and unpleasant facts. Tactful yet forceful, he won’t back down from attempting to check foolishness in the business realm of our lives, and we love him for it.

Defining actions and characteristics:

1. The Crowsie pounce crouch
2. I’m so sexy to myself  (original song)
3. The Al Amarrah taunt
4. Unwavering devotion to family

Why he stays:

Because he has to – tell him he can leave and watch how fast he hustles his ass aboard a C-130.

[All names have been changed - OS]

______________________________________________________

Boss Tom, Area Engineer (later Chief of E & C)

The most oft-used word to describe Tom: steady. The consummate diplomat, Boss Tom appears to get along with everyone more often than anyone else. Once it’s understood that every word in his most deliberate sentences has been weighed and chosen with care, it’s possible to discern (and enjoy) the insults and disgust that he so adeptly veils in polite banter. The subtleties are lost on most, however, successfully keeping him off the insubordination radar. When he does get truly and publicly pissed off at someone, he prefers doling out the silent treatment with occasional razor sharp personal insults tossed off at the offender. Ignore him; it will all blow over in exactly three days.

Tom keeps details of his personal life to himself, deflecting incoming queries with a security system far superior to t-walls and bunkers: the Scorpio wit. If you’re content to accept what he’s willing to give without pushing, the veil will slowly unravel, revealing an aggravating wife, three children he seems oddly amused and puzzled by, and a great appreciation for golf and Oriental women with big boobs.

Once the veil is cracked by friendship, it’s also discovered that the inhuman balance of Tom’s diplomatic demeanor is likely maintained by two things: a rich fantasy life, and a habit of thought that generously looks for solutions instead of sticking on the problem. If you think he’s taking your bad news very well, wave a hand in front of his face to be sure he responds. He may be traveling in Thailand. If not in Thailand, you may have lucked out: he might actually be solving the problem for you.

A short little guy who is mortified by any mention of his height, Tom is nevertheless handsome and his body is ripped. An hour in the gym each day maintains the muscle. Having none of the short man’s ego compensation issues, Tom wafts through the days with an easy confidence and laid back social grace. He’s almost always willing to laugh, and is blessed with a sharp mind. As long as you don’t piss him off, Tom is good company.

Defining actions and characteristics:

1. A sneeze that must be heard as far away as Baghdad
2. If he’s in the office, he’s in his stocking feet
3. Apparent unwillingness to stand up to the brass (while secretly plotting an end run)
4. Delivering bad news with great enthusiasm and a big grin

Why he stays:

His job back home was eliminated, so he’d be unemployed were he to leave. Lame excuse! He seems to like the small, simplified world where daily chores and details are minimized: someone else cooks, cleans, does his laundry, pays the bills, raises the kids … not bad if you can get it.

[All names have been changed - OS]

Anna Lee, Adminstrative Assistant

Anna Lee is a short little fifty-something fireball from Georgia. Having been in Iraq since forever and being devoted to gossip, she’s the one to go to for any back story. She’s saved the dirt off every major and colonel who’s trailed their laundry through camp, and will share it in the back corner of a bunker if you give her a good reason. Just as fun, she’s got a reliable inside track on at least some of the PSD teams, and will trade that information if your goods are equal to it.

Graced with the peculiarly southern skill of cutting someone dead without offence, Anna Lee has been known to ask colonel’s if they’re as stupid as they look, and to tell one that if he didn’t get out of her office she’d rip his face right off his head. This without consequence. If you’ve got a fairly legitimate grievance, you can count on Anna Lee to stand on your side of the fence with her teeth bared.

If a good looking man is in view, you won’t get between the subject and Anna Lee. She has a disposable husband back home who essentially gets ignored. Her much-loved grown son is fondly kept in close contact. Sadly, she buried another son not long before she first deployed to Iraq. She’ll eventually divorce, but no action happens quickly in Anna Lee’s life unless it’s lip delivered to a deserving man: she’ll take her time.

One of the theories as to why nothing gets done quickly in Anna Lee’s personal or professional life is her ADD. Her stories start in the middle and wander from there, so patience is required to piece together some semblance of order through one’s own creative abilities. Work instructions must be given a minimum of three times; often it’s just easier to sit with her while she completes the request, essentially doing it yourself. How she’s been able to keep a job for so long, no one is sure. Perhaps the majors in charge of her employment are hypnotized by that broad Georgia accent.

Defining actions and characteristics:

1. A wild, show-stopping laugh that pisses off anyone not laughing at the table with her
2. A lover of secrets, dramatizing even the lowliest of them in ways that exalt their otherwise forgettable existence
3. Muddle-headed, drive-you-crazy inefficiency
4. Insatiable appreciation for the male of the species

Why she stays:

She’s probably not sure what else to do; the small world suits her.

[All names have been changed - OS]

___________________________________________________

Spring 2007

Today CMD Mike went to the site of a small water treatment plant in order to conduct the final inspection and sign off on the paperwork, releasing the project into the custody of the village.

The project, located in a small village in Thi Qar province, experienced a rocky beginning. The project location was identified in the contract as a village name and a lat-long position. The name alone could have referred to any one of five or six villages, being a common village name. The lat-long location that designated the project location was more effective, narrowing it down to one village, but when the Iraqi contracting company initially visited that lat-long location, they found that the US Air Force was already funding construction of a water treatment plant on that very site.

Although many people seem to believe that the Corps of Engineers initiates and funds projects, that is not the case. The Corps has no money of its own. The Corps is essentially a project design and management branch of the military, so what it does is design and manage others’ projects with their funding. Here in Iraq, specifically, the Corps is paid by the Army and the State Department to organize the necessary information for contracts, sometimes design the project, award the contract, and finally to manage these reconstruction and military construction contracts.

The water treatment project in this small village that I’ll call Al Ma was funded by the US State Department. The project was initiated, however, by the Thi Qar Provincial Reconstruction and Development Council (PRDC), a body that is composed entirely of Iraqis coached by the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT). In an exercise intended to encourage ownership in the reconstruction projects, and to encourage and train the Iraqis to identify and prioritize projects in their provinces, the State Department designates a certain dollar amount of reconstruction monies to each PRDC. The PRDC accepts project applications from communities, then sorts the ideas, prioritizes the ideas, and chooses which will be funded. The PRDC is then required to develop a project description, including project location, for each proposed project. In a perfect world, the PRDC is actually supposed to design the project, although the PRDC’s in our area have never provided even detailed project descriptions. What we normally receive from the PRDC is a village or city name, a lat-long position fixing the construction site, and a brief project description: “xx/hr reverse osmosis water treatment plant” for instance.

When the PRDC has their list of projects completed and prioritized, they pass it on to the PRT, who passes the list to the State Department, who passes the approved list to us at the Corps. We, the Corps, then take the list of essentially bare bones project descriptions and build them into contracts. We design what needs designing, draft the contract, advertise the contract, accept bids, rate the bids, and award the contract. We then manage project implementation; in plain English, we babysit the contractor to be sure that contractor is following the contract and applicable laws.

… Wow, this all sounds so orderly and functional when I describe it like this! In reality, an astonishing – perhaps infinite – number of difficulties complicate this process in ways that continually tempt me to beat my skull against the nearest wall.

The little water project in the village of Al Ma began as an example of one way that contracts can get screwed up. When we received the project description from the PRDC through the PRT representatives that liaise with us, we didn’t require the PRT to ground-check the location or verify ownership of the proposed project site, nor did we go out in the field to ground check it ourselves. We assumed the location provided by the PRDC was good. Oops! We wrote up the contract, sent it out for bids, and awarded the work to an Iraqi contractor.

Who, upon driving to the site to begin work, discovered another contractor, funded by the Air Force, building a water treatment plant on the site identified in our contract.

(The fact that the US Air Force would be building a water project on a location that the US Army and State Department had approved as a location to build a water treatment plant might properly be seen as a colossal failure to communicate, but I’m going to just note that and sail right on by, as this sort of snafu is, though not common, at least not surprising.) 

I would have solved this by taking the location back to the PRT, personally, but the field office chose to send one of their Iraqi engineers out to investigate.

The Iraqi engineer sent out to investigate the mystery of the project location was a man I’ll call Ali, who had been twice fired by the Corps for suspicious actions in connection with projects he’d been assigned. Without going into specifics, he was a man who seemed to have his own self-serving agenda. Although he was suspected of nefarious back door dealings, CMD Mike refused to fire him (again) because Ali was effective at solving problems. (My pointing out to CMD Mike that he caused as many or more problems than he solved only earned a wry laugh.)

Our initial theory was that the PRDC had identified the project and site without actually securing ownership of the site. While Ali investigated out in the real world of Iraq, CMD Mike and I separately sought off-the-record discussions with the PRT representatives, and with our bosses, and with one person in the State Department, suggesting that it was a land ownership issue and assuring them that we had the inquiry under control. We wanted these interested parties to know that there was a problem and that we were actively seeking a solution so they’d know why the project was delayed, and we wanted it off the record so that no one panicked and stepped in to mess things up even more … (which is a functional and even tactically critical strategy that I, for one, have learned the hard way!).

Ali returned to the office every few days with some piece of news, then with information that contradicted that news, then with some other tidbit of possible fact, then with more. He went back out to investigate.

About one month after Ali had originally been sent out to investigate, he returned with an unwavering opinion: he had concluded that the project was not meant to have been built at the lat-long provided in the PRDC description at all, but rather at another village named Al Ma, located twenty miles north of the original village of Al Ma. I voiced my concerns that Ali had relatives living in this village, or that he’d extracted payment from the village on behalf of his proposing to us that this village was the intended site – (hell, the villagers may even simply be calling this village Al Ma for a few weeks in order to get a water treatment plant!), but CMD Mike was pleased with the results and didn’t want to tinker. When I suggested that someone at least confirm the new Al Ma conclusion with the PRDC, I was brushed off. The Al Ma twenty miles north desperately needed a water treatment plant; the Al Ma of the contract description was already being taken care of by the Air Force; the Al Ma twenty miles north had a location that would be perfect for a water treatment plant; and we had a contractor itching to go to work.

A contract modification was written up, changing the lat-long to match the Al Ma twenty miles north. No one at the PRT or PRDC came screaming into our offices, so it was assumed they approved of the new location. The State Department signed the modification without comment.

Success!

The contractor went to work. He not only went to work, his construction was of excellent quality. He chose high quality components and installed them with skill. His equipment was well cared for, the site was kept tidy, and his men all wore hard hats and boots. He stayed on schedule. He finished a 200cm/hr reverse osmosis water treatment plant in three short months, and he trained a local man to operate the plant.

Beautiful.

When CMD Mike arrived at the site this morning in order to conduct the final inspection, he was met by the entire village of Al Ma. When he’d climbed out of the truck, men, women and children swarmed him with huge smiles on their faces. Adults and children grabbed his hands to hold while they thanked him.

When things calmed down, the head of the village then formally thanked CMD Mike for this water treatment plant. With tears in his eyes, he explained that until now the village people and animals drank from shallow wells. The children were often sick, and many had died from the bad water. They were too poor to buy water from the trucks. “Our village,” he told CMD Mike, “has not had clean water before sixteen years.” The village had not had clean water for sixteen years.

This is why we love working in Iraq. Even when we hate it.

______________________________________________________

Jakiś czas temu ktoś podsunął mi dwa tytuły: „Nil by Mouth” i „War Zone”, ale nie miałem okazji, czasu albo najprawdopodobniej chęci by się z nimi zapoznać. Niedawno natrafiłem na rekomendację dokładnie tych samych dwóch filmów i okazało się, że często przy jednym z nich pojawia się odwołanie do drugiego i vice versa. Skąd ta zależność ? A stąd, że w obu obrazach poruszana jest pokrewna tematyka – mroczne zakamarki ludzkiego umysłu. W obu produkcjach główną rolę odgrywa brytyjski aktor – Ray Winstone. W obu filmach po drugiej stronie kamery stanęli znani aktorzy – Tim Roth i Gary Oldman. Czytaj dalej, jeśli chcesz wiedzieć czy są to udane debiuty reżyserskie.

„Nil by Mouth” jest pewną formą rozliczenia się Gary’ego Oldmana z własnymi korzeniami, wywodzącymi się z robotniczej, południowej części Londynu. W filmie ukazana jest społeczność nękana problemami biedy, narkotyków i alkoholu. Na główny plan wybija się wątek Raya (Ray Winstone), drobnego rzezimieszka, pijaka, który cały swój niepohamowany gniew kieruje w stronę swojej rodziny – szwagra i żony (za tą rolę Kathy Burke otrzymała nagrodę w Cannes). Przez cały film jesteśmy świadkami ćpania, drobnych rozbojów, mordobić, przemocy w rodzinie itd., a wszystko to ukazane w dość surowym, mrocznym stylu. Film jest dość nierówny głównie przez zupełnie niepotrzebnie wydłużony wątek szwagra – amatora wszelkich form narkotyków. Gary Oldman pokazuje nam mocny obraz klasy robotniczej w Anglii, nękanej narastającą frustracją, poczuciem beznadziejności i brakiem porozumienia, mimo chwilowych przejawów ludzkich uczuć, ale na tym się kończy. Ot, zwykły wręcz dokumentalny portret dobrze znanej reżyserowi społeczności.

Tim Roth przedstawia nam z kolei obraz, złudnie szczęśliwej rodziny, która po przeprowadzce na wieś, oczekuje dziecka. „War Zone” początkowo ukazuję trudy codziennego życia w nowym miejscu (trudy asymilacji w nowym otoczeniu, przejawiający się w rozmowach ojca brak pracy itd.), aby nagle zaatakować widza problemem molestowania w rodzinie. Ray Winstone, początkowo zwodniczo ukazany jako przykładny mąż, okazuję się być dewiantem i seksualnym oprawcą, który wykorzystuje swoją córkę. Świadkiem tego wszystkiego jest syn, dla którego dom stanie się tytułową strefa wojny i to na jego reakcji skupia się reżyser (praktycznie nie ma sceny bez jego udziału). Zdjęcia w dość ascetyczny sposób ukazują odludnioną, wzmagającą poczucie niepokoju wioskę, aby w kulminacyjnej scenie gwałtu przytłoczyć widza pełnym naturalizmem. Film wymęczył mnie swoją wtórnością i analizą tematu. Mamy tu żonę (Tilda Swinton) kompletnie nie zdającą sobie sprawy z zaistniałego problemu, mamy zagubioną seksualnie córkę, no i mamy też walecznego syna, który nie potrafi zidentyfikować genezy tej chorej sytuacji, więc miota się pomiędzy nienawiścią do siostry i ojca. Zostaje nam chyba najciekawsza postać zdeprawowanego ojca (Ray Winston), który nie postrzega siebie jako złą osobę i do końca pozostaje nieodgadniony.

Żaden film mnie nie zachwycił, żaden nie był nawet wystarczająco dobry, aby zasłużyć na notę 2/3. Nie wystarczy podjąć się ciężkiej tematyki i naszpikować film nieprzyjemnymi scenami, aby zrobić film dobry. A niestety takie jest podejście obu panów w swoim debiucie – stworzyć przytłaczające obrazy z dominacją ciemnej zieleni, brązu i żółci, czyli kolorów potęgujących wrażenie brudu i moralnej degradacji. Zdecydowanie na pierwszy plan wybijają się kreacje Raya Winstone’a, który stworzył w miarę barwne, niejednoznaczne postacie. Przyszła pora ocen i nie będzie wysoko. Pojedynek wygrywa nieznacznie „Nil by Mouth” z oceną 1/3+, a „War Zone” dostaje 1/3-.

Early winter 2006

Until today, one of my favorite projects was dead on schedule, a rare occurrence in this environment. The project is one that will benefit a large portion of the population of the country, and the contractor’s work is of exemplary quality all the way down to the smallest detail. As a dubious bonus, it’s located in a very picturesque spot that visiting VIPs and journalists love to visit. All in all, it’s considered a star.

My Iraqi field engineer informed me today that the project will be falling behind schedule. A key piece of equipment sitting in the hold of a ship lacks the proper piece of paper to be unloaded. In any case, the ship is standing offshore in a long line of ships, all waiting their turn to enter the port.

“Who issues the paperwork,” I ask my engineer. I’m wondering if I know anyone who knows anyone who can pull a few strings.

“There is one woman in Baghdad who issues these papers,” my engineer tells me.

“For all the ships?” I ask. “One woman doing all the papers for each piece of cargo on each ship?”

“For each piece of imported equipment, yes,” my engineer says with a straight face, as if this is a perfectly normal way to do business.

Madness.

I spend the morning trying to track down a contact phone number or email address of this Paper Lady in Baghdad. I don’t get anywhere before I leave for the field. I’ll try again later, just as soon as I can think of someone else I know in Baghdad who might know someone who would know someone who might know someone else who would know who to call to light a fire under this woman.

In the meantime, since I’m out visiting projects, I stop in at the office of a State Department friend who knows the port in hopes that he can fill me in on the ships lined up waiting to dock. I hadn’t known there were so many. I think it might be useful to know if this sort of delay is likely to affect some of my other projects.

“How many ships are waiting to dock right now,” I ask when I’ve tracked the man down in his camp near one of my projects.

“Sixteen and counting,” State Man answers. “Some have been lined up out there for two months. The so-called port security force is militia. They’ve insinuated themselves more and more into the business of the port over the past year. They won’t allow a ship to enter port without paying a bribe, and once docked they have to pay again to get the cargo unloaded. Security,” he said in a voice dripping with sarcasm, “is worming their way into customs now. The port authorities are powerless to stop them, getting no support from Baghdad.”

“My equipment could sit out there offshore and rot, then,” I conclude.

“It’s possible,” he agrees. “And even if the ship docks and gets unloaded,” he says with a shrug, “then you have to find the right container.”

Eh? I think, making a quizzical face.

“There’s no system for container storage at the port,” he explains. “Ships get unloaded, and the containers just get stacked randomly in the yard. They’re not recorded anywhere, and there’s no filing or tracking system for them. You’ve seen the container yard …”

I nod. I have: containers stacked in rough rows, four high. Acres and acres and acres of containers.

“Are you telling me that for someone to find their container, they have to cruise around through that whole yard reading the numbers on every container until they happen to stumble across their own?” I say, thinking that I might have misunderstood.

“That’s it,” State Man agrees. “There are containers that have been sitting there for years. There’s no telling what’s out there.”

We both stare at each other, thinking about the intriguing possibilities. Huh.

***

This evening I catch a break, making contact with someone who knows someone who knows who the Paper Lady is and how to contact her.

There my luck ends.

“You’ll get no joy from her,” I’m warned. “She’s a dragon-lady, running on her own time, doling out papers at her own snail’s pace.”

When I reach her by telephone, sure enough, I’m stonewalled. “One by one!” she snaps. “I approve in order! You wait!”

***

I’ve had to do so many time extensions on projects, it doesn’t take more than ten minutes to get this one written up.  

______________________________________________________

The man who wrote this letter to me in the winter of 2006-07 was one of the Iraqi engineers on my staff. He has two sons in their teens, and while they were growing up, the family lived in a three by three meter room. With the money Iffat earns now, he’s having a proper house built for his family.

Mr. H was a contractor’s engineer on one of my projects. His thirteen year old son was kidnapped in front of his house, and held for five days before they found him. Three or four months before that, the same man’s father was kidnapped. The father was held for twenty days before they could pay enough money to the kidnappers to have him released. Through all of this, Mr. H’s mother was very sick with cancer.

Hello Seren,
Mr. Ali called me just now and told me that his son was released
and he is in his home. You are absolutely right that Iraq is
a hard place to live in but what can we do, the other choices
are very hard. some times i think that i must go out side to
protect my family and to build a good future to my sons but
it's not easy. When i was in Libya, some of my Friends traveled
and went to Europe and they asked me to go with them, i told
them that Iraq will change to a paradise after the collapsing of
Saddam's regime so we don't need to go outside Iraq to live
because the foreign people will come to Iraq for work and tourism,
also i told them that all our problems are from one source which
is Saddam but i was wrong.

Many thanks,

Iffat

______________________________________________________________

“Is it a good thing that Saddam is gone?” I ask Faaris, one of my Iraqi engineers. I know from other conversations with Faaris that he has high hopes for his country now, believing in the possibilities that some form of democracy might offer. But I know he thinks all around any subject and is honest about difficult things, so I wonder what nuances he might teach me in answering this stark inquiry. He lived a few years in Scotland when he was young, and besides giving his English an amusing bit of Scottish brogue, living in the UK seems to have graced him with a willingness to answer almost any question I put to him, no matter how impertinent. My other engineers seem more wary with political subjects.

 “Is it better without Saddam?” Faaris says. He looks off at middle distance for a few seconds. “In the days of Saddam,” he says when he has his thoughts in order, “my wife never had to wear a scarf over her hair. This was not important to anyone. The schools were open to all children, and the night clubs and theatres were open.”

I offer him a cigarette. He lights both mine and his own.

He blows out the smoke slowly. “In the time of Saddam,” he adds with a shrug, “You could take your friends to the restaurants and have a drink of whiskey. You could buy alcohol in the stores and drink it in your house.”

Then he smiles. “Now I buy whiskey like I’m doing a deal for marijuana,” he tells me. He pulls up his collar and looks around as if to be sure no one is watching. “I’m like this in the street, buying a bottle of whiskey from the trunk of a man’s car …” He makes the motion of dealing out some cash to his dealer, looking over his shoulder to be sure the coast is clear. He grabs the imaginary bottle and quickly tucks it under his arm, inside his shirt.

“I am a criminal!” he cries, and we laugh.

“Seren,” he says then, lowering his voice, leaning forward to look directly into my eyes, “during Saddam we had personal freedom but we had no political freedom. Now we have political freedom, but we have no personal freedom. Who can say that one is better than the other?”

His own eyes carry a look of thoughtful resignation.

______________________________________________________

Tonight the Brit Mil runs an op in the city. On the way in they hit a string of IEDs, then get tangled up in a prolonged battle. Explosions light up the distant horizon. Every once in awhile the deep and prolonged low blast of a really big piece of weaponry bumps the air. The concussion is so low and deep, outside a war zone the sound wouldn’t even be noticed. But we’re fine tuned. If someone drops a book in the opposite wing of the office, a couple people hit the deck on our side.

I stand outside in the dark listening to the battle, guns and tanks a far off rumble. Otherwise the night is like any other: hot and still.

As I step into the office to grab a bottle of water out of the cooler by the reception area door, Crazy Rob rushes out from the office wing. “One of my Iraqi engineers just called me from the city, Seren!” His face is red and he’s clearly agitated.

I’ve been standing quietly outside for twenty minutes, listening but deliberately not thinking. About anything. I hardly ever get to do that. What Rob’s just said takes a few long seconds to sink in, and then I can’t connect it to anything. “From the city … ?” I echo dumbly, wondering why he’s so worked up about that. It’s night, so of course the engineer is calling from the city, from his home.

“They’re shooting at his house!” Rob says. “The Brits are fighting in the city and they’re shooting at his house!

Now I have a different disconnect. “He called you on his cell phone?” I ask stupidly. “In the middle of a firefight?”

“Yes! Yes!” Rob shouts, which is not necessarily a fair indication of anything since he shouts all the time; his voice is as large as his bearlike body. But his face is red and his eyes are big and his grin is nervous. “Did you hear them fighting? You can hear it if you go outside! He called me, then he got cut off!”

“What did he say?” I ask stupidly, wondering what one could possibly find to say on a cell phone from the middle of a battle. LTC Corviday wanders into the room in his sweaty PT clothes and grabs a bottle of water out of the cooler.

“What did who say?” Crowsie asks us. “What are you worked up about tonight, Robbie?” He holds a bottle of water out toward me, raising his eyebrows. I take it from him without answering his questions, still processing this whole scene.

“One of my engineers just called me from the battle!” Rob repeated for Crowsie. “His house is right in the middle of it!”

“He called you from his cell phone?!” Crowsie asks, incredulous, laughing. Good – so I’m not the only one who thinks this is bizarre. “What did he have to say? How’s the battle going?”

Rob is practically hopping up and down by now, clearly having expected some other response than our laconic confusion. “He said,” Rob shouted, “The British are shooting at my house! We’re all on the floor to hide from the bullets! Then we lost the connection! I could hear the women and children screaming, and the battle going on in the background!”

Crowsie and I look at each other blankly for a moment, then both burst out laughing.

“Why did he call you?” I ask Rob. “Does he think you can call off the Brits or something?”

“Yeah!” Crowsie cries. “Get on the phone to Brit command! Tell them to quit shooting at our engineers!”

Crowsie and I are laughing again, loving it.

Crowsie crouches in the characteristic pounce-stance he gets when he’s about to play out something good. “Excuse me, Brit command? Yes? This is Rob over at B- …” Crowsie says with a calm but worried expression and his hand held to his face as if holding a phone receiver, “I need you to call off some of your guns in the city. We’ve got engineers living there. What? No, I don’t have an address. Can your high tech whiz kid equipment stuff zero in on a cell phone and just avoid shooting at that? Huh? Oh sure, hey this is great – let me give you the number …”

I’m bent over laughing, and Crazy Rob is calming down a little bit, laughing with us.

“Hey, we could go get them, Seren!” Rob cries. “You and me – you’re game, aren’t you?”

Sure, I’m all caught up now. “You go snag a white pickup from the construction site next door,” I tell him. “I’ll go find a couple sheets. It’s dark. If we put them on like robes we can get to the city, no problem …”

“Then we just flash our IDs when the Brits stop us,” Rob shouted. “We’re in! Hell, the Brits might even give us an escort!”

“Are you nuts!” I cry, “They’re going to be way too busy! Once we’re in the city we’ll be on our own.”

“Let’s grab a couple of your PSD guys,” Rob suggests. “They can take care of any Brits that mistake us for Iraqis – you know, if we can’t get the robes off quick enough!”

“Right!” I agree, already running through the teams in my mind, picking the guys I want with me. “I’ll round them up while you steal the pickup …get a beat up one if you can …”

This cracks us all up again. Is there any other kind?!

“I’ll go put on some cocoa,” Crowsie says, heading for the door. “You guys are gonna want a little pick-me-up by the time you get home …”

Crazy Rob and I spend another half hour fine-tuning our plan, getting closer and closer to believing we could pull it off while we wait in vain for Hakim to call again.

… Just another day in the land of tangible terror and pain. Later I lie awake in bed, wondering whether Hakim is still alive.

 _____________________________________________________

 [A few days after Joost has flown home …]

Even on the busiest days, there are spaces between. Between reality, between action, between words, between particles. I rest there, mind perfectly still and empty.

Today was particularly trying. A general trailing a pack of colonels; more inane madness from LTC Slasher; calculations not adding up in time to make report deadlines; a dull PSD team … in the spaces between, I wandered the back roads of the United States in a convertible Cadillac with Joost at the wheel: hair loose, arms uncovered, legs in shorts, barefoot.  

When I arrived back to camp today I found two email messages.

One message was from Engineer Fahd. To understand this joke, you must know that Bado means Bedouin; traip means tribe; caw means cow, and mudy means muddy. Sometimes of means off. You can figure out the rest.

Sarin, he wrote,

you have a good back ground about the Bado. Each traip the smart and oldest one of them they keep him as the leader (boss) So: one of Bado his caw want to drink water from the tank (mudy tank) after it put it’s head in the tank it can’t pull up it’s head from the tank so they went to there leader and ask him to solve the problem.

“You now what he told him –???

“1- cut the head of the caw

2- broken the tank – so he can get the head of the caw (he lost both caw and water tank).”

This got me giggling because I can hear Fahd’s voice with the thick accent, and see his handsome, animated brown face crackled up in a delighted grin when he’s finished.

The other  message was from Yoost.

“Where are you?” he wrote. “Yoost.”

“I am still here,” I replied. ”Resting between. Where are you?”

______________________________________________________

Today is the last day that Joost and I will meet at Alamo Road. Joost will fly home on leave later today, and if he returns at all it is unlikely that he’ll be sent back here to Alamo Road. I’m unhappy about his impending disappearance. Something absurd or mildly alarming is often taking place at Alamo, and since I am only a transiting observer to the contractor’s soap opera, the events are entertaining to me. Because Joost lived at the site with the Iraqis, he was able to collect the stories to share with me. Without Joost, the only other ‘westerner’ on site, I will rarely hear about some of the most charming or peculiar events.

Besides providing me with amusing stories, Joost has been a thought-catalyst, an imagination spark, asking wonderfully simple questions that lead to conversations that wander freely through many subjects. This isn’t true of any other people that I converse with here in Iraq. I feel as if Joost is my innocent secret life: outside the military, outside the t-walls, behind the backs of my PSD guards, he is a breath of real life, where creative people meet and talk about many things that might touch only briefly on construction difficulties, rockets, rules, or frustrations unique to a war zone.

I know that I’ll miss Joost. I also know that once he’s gone, it will only matter that he was ever here. That is not misworded … it will only matter that he was ever here.

***

When I arrive at Alamo Road today, Joost greets me as I climb out of the Land Cruiser. He looks quite comfortable and alert, which is not always the case because it is almost always too hot for a large man to look alert and comfortable.

“I have been very busy being useful this morning,” he tells me as we walk to his office trailer. “It is only ten o’clock in the morning, and already I have saved a man’s life.”

“Now you must tell me the whole story,” I request, laughing because Alamo Road has provided me with another surprise.

“I will tell you the story from the beginning,” Joost assures me when we’ve settled ourselves in his office. “Where all stories start …”

I nod happily.

“Over the past few weeks,” Joost begins, leaning back in his chair and wiping a nine of sweat from his neck, “at nine o’clock each evening many men at the site will line up at my door for surgery.”

This is surgery in the British sense, meaning that they are lining up in front of his door as they would at a medical clinic.

“I would open my door at nine o’clock exactly,” Joost says with a grin. “Just like a real doctor! I would listen to the health complaint of each man, and then decide on the treatment. One man would receive aspirin. One man would be given a shot. Some needed injuries bandaged.”

“I am trained only as a combat medic,” Joost explains without apology. “But there is not a doctor here for the men. I do not have a wide selection of medicines in my med kit, but I have many aspirin and many bandages. Many men receive aspirin tablets, which I will tell them is other, more interesting medicine.” We grin at each other. Hey, whatever works …

“About a week ago,” Joost tells me, “I ran out of medicines and bandages. At nine o’clock I did not open the door, having nothing to give the men. They waited patiently outside my door for a long time before one of them knocked. When they knocked, I opened my door to announce to the line of men that I must close my surgery.  I have run out of everything – medicine, bandages, needles.”

“One man shakes his head and tells me, You must use the medical kit that belongs to the medic!”

“The medical kit that belongs to … what?” Joost said, looking at me with mild surprise. “Did you know that there is a medic here?”

I shake my head, knitting my brow. “I’ve never heard of a medic here,” I admit to him. “That seems like something we would have heard about …”

“Yes,” Joost says in a baffled voice, and we both looked at each other for a moment then burst out laughing.

“So I was confused and intrigued at this news of a medic!” Joost continues. “I quizzed this man who mentioned this and discovered that, yes, there is a mysterious company medic at the site, and he has been here all along. No one talks about him, and no one will go to him because he keeps his med kit locked and won’t give anyone any medicine from it!”

There is no use asking why a medical man with a medical kit refuses to do anything medical … this is not a big surprise in Iraq, and I can’t explain why. Just because it is not a surprise, though, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t strike us as quite funny!

“I asked the men where this mysterious medic lived,” Joost continues, “and they led me to his trailer. I knocked on the door while all the men stood clustered behind me watching. Perhaps there were twenty or thirty men watching me knock on the door.”

Joost and I grin at each other again, as we both know that this is perfectly normal behavior for the Iraqi men, to cluster closely around one man who is doing something, although it seems peculiar to us.

“After I had knocked two times and waited without getting any response,” Joost told me, “one man behind me said, The medic is on leave. He will not be in the trailer. The other men all nodded and said, Yes, he is away on leave and has been for some time.”

“Why did they not tell me before I knocked?” Joost asked rhetorically. We both burst out laughing. It can’t be explained logically why the men didn’t tell him, but it is also perfectly predicable behavior for the Iraqi men.

“Well, although there is not a man in the trailer, it is possible that there is a lonely med kit in there, patiently waiting to get to work … so I asked the men if someone has a key to this mysterious medic’s trailer.”

Joost pauses to wipe a little sweat from his face and gather his thoughts.  

“A key is a very small thing,” he tells me thoughtfully, “and this is a very large desert. It took me awhile to find this key.”

Delighted with the way he has worded this, I smile and close my eyes for a moment. I want to remember this clever phrasing without interrupting the story.

He smiles back, I think also quite pleased with his words. He pauses to pour himself a bit more tea and to take a sip of it.

“I knocked on some other doors,” Joost resumes, “and drove around in the truck a little bit to find this man or that man whom some other man had said might have the key. In the end, I found the man who did have this small key. If you are persistent, you may find even a very small thing in a very large place,” Joost said smiling.

“I opened the door with this key, and there on the floor of the trailer was the mysterious medic’s kit,” he says with satisfaction. “It is a very elaborate kit, with everything needed for combat injuries as well as headaches and stomach ailments. Since this medic did not want to use such a fine kit himself, I reasoned that he would not mind if I did.” Joost grins at me, enjoying his own silly logic. I nod in happy agreement.

“I picked up the kit and carried it to my office,” he concludes. “The following night I am back in business, opening my door at nine o’clock in the evening for surgery …”

“Is this the kit you used to save the man this morning, then?” I ask, ready for the rest of the story.

“It is,” Joost agrees. He offers me a cigarette from his pack, and waits to begin the story until we have both lit our cigarettes and taken sips of water and tea.

“Before you arrived, then,” Joost began, “I had been sitting here in my office contemplating many things. Suddenly the door flew open and three men rushed in shouting that a man was dying and that I must save him.”

“I ran outside to find a man lying on the ground suffocating with an asthma attack,” Joost says calmly.

“Was he breathing at all?” I ask.

“Just a little!” Joost tells me. “He was nearly unconscious. I ran back inside and grabbed one of the oxygen bottles from the mysterious medic’s med kit. I ran back outside to the dying man. But when I tried to use the oxygen bottle … it was empty!”

Joost pauses so that we can both grimace at each other, because this sort of circumstance in an emergency is also not a surprise in Iraq. One must be prepared for important things to be broken or empty.

“I ran back inside and grabbed the other two bottles …” Joost continued. “But they were empty as well!” 

Yeesh!

“So I ran back inside once more,” Joost said, ignoring my laughter. “I rummaged quickly through the kit for some fancy medicine, which I found. By the time I got back outside, the man was not breathing at all. He was turning quite blue!”

I shake my head, unhappy with this, even knowing the happy ending.

“I gave him a shot of this fancy medicine, jabbing him through his clothing. Have you seen the medicine that is used for people who are dangerously allergic to bee stings?” he asks me. I nod.

“This is the fancy medicine that worked,” Joost tells me. “Within minutes, the man was sitting up!” Joost opens his hands in front of him to accept this miracle all over again.

“Half an hour later, the man was standing up laughing, all the other men teasing him about having collapsed and for having looked so funny trying to breathe.”

“They are wonderful, aren’t they,” I say. “They will laugh at everything.”

“They are good people,” Joost agrees. He leans back in his chair and studies my face, smiling.

“So you see, I have been very busy being useful this morning, my last morning at Alamo Road,” Joost assures me.

An hour later Yoost walks me to my truck. He watches as one of the PSD men opens the door for me. I climb in and buckle my seatbelt.

“Enjoy your leave,” I tell Joost. The PSD men are ready to go, waiting for me to close my door. “Be safe.”

“Be safe,” Joost replies, the standard Iraq parting phrase.

I pull the door shut. He lifts one hand in farewell as we drive away. I hold my palm against the window, knowing it’s probably the only thing he can see through the tinted ballistic glass. 

It seems likely that I’ll never see Yoost again. In another place, another time, I would have hugged him for a long time and thanked him for all that he gave me – all the stories, all the laughter, all the fine and easy companionship amidst the rubble of Alamo and the rumble of camp life.

But this is Iraq.

I sleep soundly on the two hour drive back to camp, jarred awake only on the worst parts of the dusty tracks and broken pavements.

 ______________________________________________________

“You must tell me one secret,” Yoost requests, leaning forward, making the space between us intimate.

“What sort of secret?” I ask, leaning my elbows on my knees, leaning in. “A secret about someone, or something, or about myself?”

“No, no – a secret about yourself,” he says firmly.

So I do.

Now he is the only person in Iraq who knows this about me.

_____________________________________________________

Joost and Fahd and I spend the morning teaching each other useful phrases in each others’ languages. Phrases that strike us as important to know might not be found in standard tourist phrasebooks.

I will burn down your house!

Ek sal brand af jou huis!

وسوف يحرق بيتك

(You never know … )

________________________________________________________

Joost walked me outside to one of the little white trucks to show me a wap that the men had caught on the desert and tethered in the bed of the pickup.

I’ve seen many of these lizards on the dirt tracks as we drive here to the site each day, yet I am surprised by the size of the reptile that Joost introduces to me.

(Everything becomes distorted through the tinted ballistic glass of the armored trucks, and I spend so much time in the truck … perhaps many things seen without the filter of ballistic glass become memorably vivid and true in comparison…)

Some of the PSD drivers aim for the waps on the tracks, like some people in the States aim for squirrels and speed up to kill them. I don’t say anything to the men; they would only tease me and my words wouldn’t change their inclinations. (In any case, wouldn’t it sound absurd to object to the casual death of a wap in the midst of a war zone? Never mind. So many things in Iraq seem regrettable but ultimately forgettable, transitory. It is not a truth, but an accurate description of perception.)

The wap bodies don’t cause our truck to bump when the men run over them, so I had assumed the lizards were quite small. Perhaps we have only seen young ones. The wap in the truck bed is four feet long.

It raises itself high on its sturdy front legs when we approach, and opens its mouth wide. The red mouth looks like a raw gash against the backdrop of its wide yellow body.

“It looks quite vicious,” I told Joost.

“The men say that they are vegetarians,” he replied.

“What will the men do with this wap now that they’ve caught it?” I asked.

“They will eat it,” Joost told me, studying the wap with his head cocked slightly to one side.

I thought about that for a moment. “In stew? As kebabs?” I asked. “How will they cook it?”

“I had not thought of this,” Joost admitted. “Perhaps in a taco?”

 _____________________________________________________

 Spring 2007

Joost taught me how to make a petrol bomb today. I’d share the details of his recipe here if I knew no one would try it at home, but when people are not in a war zone they might be more likely to be a bit too curious about exploding objects while being less than discerning in the application than are those of us in a war zone. We have legitimate applications for these things. Joost claims there’s no better way to get rid of a derelict trailer that’s cluttering up camp than to toss a petrol bomb in one of its broken windows (first taking the precaution, of course, of moving it away from the semi-derelict trailers that the engineers occupy …).

When I’d memorized the petrol bomb instructions, we contemplated the possibility of designing a bitumen bomb. Two hundred metric tons of bitumen are sitting at the site waiting to be put to good use, and since the contractor doesn’t seem interested in using it to actually build the road …

Well, we’re still working on the design. Bitumen is a tricky substance.

______________________________________________________

By this time the contractor was not doing any actual work on the Alamo Road project, although the project was not yet complete. The project manager had quit. The owner of the contracting company ignored phone calls and emails. The contractor’s engineers, pavers, truck drivers, cooks, laundrymen, security guards and other assorted workers were all still living at the project camp, though, collecting paychecks while patiently awaiting instruction.

Joost had been sent to the site by the contracting company owner to guard the project manager. Being that there was no project manager at the site, Joost had nothing to do.

I was under orders to visit the project every single day. Being that no work was being done on the road, and there was no project manager  to talk to at the site about when work would begin again, I also had nothing to do.

Joost and I got into the habit of doing nothing together for two hours each day. We would sit in his erratically air-conditioned office and tell each other stories …

(With any luck, men from my PSD teams will never read this; if they knew that I kept them standing outside in the brutal sun for two hours while Joost and I leisurely chatted about anything and everything but business, they might hunt me down looking to deal me some suitably nasty retribution …) 

***

Another day at Alamo Road … one South African man and one American woman sweating in a ratty office trailer tricked out in cheap indoor-outdoor carpet and blond paneling, set up inside a berm topped with razor wire, guarded by fifteen Iraqis with dusty AKs and one very old, rusty machine gun that probably doesn’t work, donkeys wandering by with tin bangles, Iraqi engineers wandering in to shake hands and smile and walk back out, AirCon cut off in order to conserve fuel, dust languidly rolling in the open door then drifting gently through the air in a brown haze to settle as fine, thick of dust on everything, including our eyelashes …

I arrived at Joost’s office at the usual time. As another dust storm blew up on the drive out here, I welcomed the bottle of cold water that Joost offered.

Joost is a big blond bear of a man, at least 6’4” tall, with blond curly hair and fair skin. Gracious and unselfconsciously thoughtful, he has a very low-key demeanor, a steady temperament, and a quirky, dry sense of humor that he’s willing to apply to nearly any subject.

When he was settled in his chair with a cup of hot tea and we had lit our cigarettes, I asked him if he knew a good story  to tell me because I had none.

“Well,” Joost told me with his usual thoughtful voice, “You know that we have many donkeys here in camp.”

A number of donkeys live at the site: feral donkeys, strays. The donkeys have wandered in from the desert and stayed. I nodded to Joost and leaned back in my chair, wiggling my body armor to get it into its comfortable groove.

“You also know,” Joost said with a twinkle in his eye, “that the men here in camp toss their empty food tins over the berms around the camp, and especially in one area.”

I nodded. Trash is scattered all around the berm, the lighter bits of it blowing up to catch in razor wire strung along the top of the berm.

“The donkeys walk through this area of tins,” Joost explained, “and often get a tin stuck on a hoof. They walk around all over the desert, then, with the tin stuck on that hoof until the bottom of the tin is worn through or pops off. Then the tin is caught on their ankle! They have a tin can bangle on their ankle.”

“The tins don’t fall off?” I asked.

“They do not fall off!” Joost cried, laughing. “And Seren,” he said, “some donkeys have four or five tins stacked up on their ankles! Then the tins jingle when they walk around, like women with many bracelets.”

I laughed, delighted and charmed by the idea of feral donkeys jingling around like scruffy little desert versions of Santa’s reindeer.

“You think this is funny,” Joost said with mock severity. “But they are not around your ankles! Three days ago,” he said, “I became bothered by this, and so I caught one of the donkeys with many tins on its legs. I took all the tins off of this donkey’s legs, and then I gave the Iraqis a lecture about cleaning up their camp.”

“I told the Iraqis that they must use their machinery to dig a great hole,” Joost said. “I told them that it should be a deep hole. Then they should scoop up all the tins and all the paper and plastic lying about the outside of this camp, and put it into the hole. Then they must light it on fire and burn it. When it has burned down, they must bury it deeply so that the dogs and foxes don’t dig it back up.”

Joost paused to light a cigarette, then smiled at me through the smoke. “The Iraqis stared at me as if I came from another planet,” he confessed. “Finally one of them said, Why? Then they all stared at me some more.”

“So you see,” he concluded, “the Iraqis don’t see the mess that they have made around them. They don’t see that they make a mess of their home. I come from Africa, which is also a mess in many ways,” he admitted. “But never do people leave such rubbish about, because if they will, the animals come. The hyenas will come, and then they will attack people. They will be a problem. So everyone in Africa will pick up their rubbish and carry it with them until they can burn it, and then they will bury it properly.”

“Now I have a question for you,” Joost said, abruptly changing the subject. He leaned forward over the desk as if he would tell me a secret. “Why are Americans so loud?” he asked.

I said that I didn’t know why, but that I was aware that it’s true.

“You are not like other Americans,” he said. “You have a soft voice. You are not loud like other Americans, so I will ask you this. Why must they speak so loudly? We are right here, just beside each other, but they speak so loudly as if they would like the whole pub to know about their marital problems and their personal life. Why do they do this?”

“Once I spoke to a man about this,” he said. “This was a (Afrikaans word) … do you have a word in English for the short man who wants attention and power?” I laughed and admitted that we just called them short men compensating. “Yes!” Joost cried nodding and grinning, “this sort of man.”

“This American man that I asked, he was a very loud man himself,” Joost explained. “I asked him why he felt he had to do this. He told me that in America, if you speak softly people assume that you have no self-confidence and no power.”

I shrugged and said, “I think many American men believe that.”

“I think this is plastic self-confidence,” Joost declared. “Noise is only plastic power, and I don’t like plastic. I think that small man was very insecure,” he concluded, “and so I think many American men might be quite insecure, to rely on such plastic.”

“I will agree with you,” I told him. “I like the British PSD men that I work with for this reason, and also because they’re always willing to laugh at themselves. Americans take themselves very seriously. You’re like the Brits, Joost.”

“That is a sad way to live,” Joost said. “Isn’t it sad, to be unable to see the absurdity of life in each day?”

I agreed.

“Now I will ask you another question,” Joost announced. “What does egalitarian mean?”

I explained what the word meant. We smoked for a minute while he thought about that.

 The Iraqis are egalitarian,” he finally said. “The cooks will sit down to tea with the engineers who have nothing to engineer, and with the man who doesn’t iron the clothes, and with the machinery mechanics who have no machinery to fix. The man who supervises the man who doesn’t iron the clothes will sit down to tea with the guards. They all sit together and just talk. They will not compete with one another; they will just talk about different things. Is this true in America?”

I thought about all the places that I’ve lived and worked: Minnesota, north Florida, Wyoming, Mississippi, Oregon, South Dakota … Joost waited while I did that.

 I have to think about this,” I finally said.

“In South Africa,” Joost told me, “the gardener would never be invited to sit for a cup of tea and a visit, because of apartheid.” We both agreed that in England that would also be true: we agreed that the Brits, even here, are snobbish to anyone that they consider beneath them. They won’t have a conversation with the Ghurkas at the gate, or the cooks.

“Americans,” I told him, “in general would be friendly to people like the Ghurkas and the cooks and the Bangladeshis who clean our rooms here in Iraq. We would chat with them, thank them, and perhaps sit and drink a Coke with them… but there would often be limits to the friendliness, I think, for many Americans.”

“What would the limits be based on,” Joost wondered.

“For instance,” I said, “how much money people have and how they view themselves with that money. Whether they think the money puts them above others. Also,” I said, “it depends upon what part of the States people are from. For example, it would not be considered good form to sit and drink tea with the hired help if you lived in the South. And if you did sit and drink tea with them, the conversation would probably be carried out in such a way as to acknowledge the class or income difference between the two people.”

We told each other some short stories about living in lower class/lower income parts of different towns, then moving to a more prosperous side of town. In both the States and South Africa, we concluded, the people in the lower income areas will spend much more time chatting with their neighbors. They will spend more time outside in their yards or gardens, and generally are more laid back and friendly toward everyone. In the more expensive parts of a city or suburb, people tend to be defensive about their own space and often will not even know the names of their neighbors.

Joost lives in a neighborhood where many CEOs of large companies live, and many ministers of the government reside. “They are all very aware of how much money they have,” he said thoughtfully. “They want to spend that money in obvious ways, so that others will notice that they have this money. They compare themselves to each other.”

“That’s the same in America,” I told him. We thought about that for a few minutes.

“Do you speak with your colleagues in this way?” he wondered. “When you eat dinner with your friends on the base, do you speak about these things?”

“You’ve been on a military base,” I said laughing. “And you must know some engineers.”

He laughed.

“These conversations keep my brain from atrophying,” I told him.

He leaned forward again, alert. “Now you have taught me another word,” he said. “You must explain to me what this word means …”

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October 2006

The prison project experienced a peculiar and amusing twist this week:

You’ll need to know that we manage this contract on behalf of the US Army. In other words, the Army instigated the project, approved the designs, supervises our management, and owns the project when it’s complete. The Army is the customer.

The contractor recently bought one kilometer of chain link fence fabric, needed to build the final piece of the project in order to finish by tomorrow, the legal contract completion date.

Two days ago, the Army commandeered the fence fabric, guaranteeing that the contractor will not complete the Army’s contract on time.

The Army stole the Army’s fence fabric!

I’m betting that the Army colonels who frequently harass me for project status updates are not the same Army colonels who stole the fence fabric. And I’m betting that the colonels who stole (ok, ok – commandeered) the fence fabric didn’t give a heads up to the colonels who are responsible for tracking the status of this project …

So I anticipate an avalanche of emails and phone calls from the Army tomorrow, screaming to know why the Army’s prison contract hasn’t been completed on time.

This could be fun! I’ve never had a bombproof excuse for a late completion, but I’m guessing this one will work. I’m guessing it will be very effective in redirecting those colonels pretty quickly, leaving me free to concentrate on some projects with real problems …

______________________________________________________

Each cool morning I carry one
bowl of porridge across camp, crunching
boots across small chilled gravel to the north
berm of the parking lot to dine
alone.

From here the sky is widely
available.

Large portions of sun
rise without gazing through chain
link, without
craning over t-walls.

This morning
Muttley the dog sniffs twenty
one cold trucks waiting in the
lot, looking for explosive
evidence.

After a late night of
discipline, planning to
plan a plan,
Muttley
offers my drowsy mind a fur
driven reminder that ego
driven pony shows are slipshod
illusion, only an officer’s
wet dream in a
war zone.

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