Our convoy was already several meters deep into the field of peculiar-looking stones before I realized we’d entered a cemetery. The lead vehicle followed a two-track trail between the grave markers, unadorned flat rocks pulled from the surrounding desert. The village at the end, known to the Marines as El Guapo, was the poorest I’d ever seen. It seemed an unlikely spot to warrant settlement. There was no visible source of water nor any sign of crops, only a few starved-looking goats. Perhaps the village’s founding fathers had been on their way to someplace better and simply gave up halfway through their trek. In fact, village was too generous a term for the crumbling cluster of mud hovels, too insignificant to be plotted on a map. There were many graves. Apparently El Guapo had been dying for a very long time.
The children saw us park our trucks behind a cracked adobe wall and came running. Their faces were filthy, their manners crude. Unlike children of other villages, they showed no timidity. We had barely stepped out of the trucks before they swarmed us.
Sonny waved his arms as if shooing away pigeons.
“Imshee!” Get back! he glowered.
He stooped to pick up a stone, threatened throwing it, and the pack of children momentarily scattered a few steps back. Their circle constricted again as the children jostled for position and the kids in the back pushed the crowd forward. Most of them didn’t have shoes. Those who did wore plastic sandals too small or big for their dusty, stub-nailed feet. Their dark hair was long and wild to match equally wild eyes and runny noses. For all the poverty I’d witnessed in Iraq, most poor Iraqis were stubbornly proud of what little they did have, and diligently kept their clothes and faces clean. These children were impoverished beyond the point of caring what they looked like.
The commotion of their pleading voices provided a suitable distraction while another group of Marines circled around to surreptitiously enter the village from the opposite direction. I glanced back to the bunch of sand-tan buildings, scanning the dark rectangles of their doors and windows. The flutter of curtains, though there was no wind, confirmed that the children’s parents watched us.
Josh and I stepped up on the rear bumper of the truck to open the hatch. The children surged forward, and even some of the teenagers whom before had felt too grown-up to beg for handouts ran out from their houses. They knew we’d be distributing something for free; it didn’t matter what.
The children squealed with delight at the first sight of our cargo of soccer balls, stuffed animals, and school supplies. I slapped at the greedy hands that tried to snatch items from between my legs.
“Sonny! Make them line up! Either they behave or no one gets anything!” I yelled, snatching back a stuffed elephant and pulling down the hatch.
“Little kids first.”
Sonny took a little girl by her grubby hand and led her to the front of the crowd. She smiled and laughed gleefully as I handed her the elephant and ran squealing back to her house waving the toy for all to see. Her older sisters, dressed in colorful headscarves, excitedly met her at the door to admire the new toy. Looking back at their unseen mother for approval, they both ran to see if they might claim one of their own.
“Wahid, wahid,” Sonny cried above the mob.
“Line up one by one, or none of you will get anything!”
The children ignored him, pressing forward with outstretched arms. Josh handed a plush unicorn to a little boy, who clutched it to his chest and pranced away wearing an ecstatic smile.
No sooner had the little boy escaped the crush of the crowd than a group of bigger boys tackled him to the ground and wrested the toy away from him. He lay in the dust crying, defeated.
Welcome to real life, kid. A cruel one it is, especially here.
Knowing from past experience that the bigger kids coveted soccer balls above all else, I hefted one and threw it as hard as I could over their heads.
Get that, you little bastards.
All the bigger kids ran to intercept the ball as it hit the ground and bounced away, like jackals chasing a rabbit. Only the youngest were left. I threw another ball to keep the bullies at bay and passed down a replacement toy to Sonny, who knelt to console the crying boy. His little face brightened and Sonny helped him to his feet. Tears forgotten, he too ran in the direction of the soccer balls.
Josh and I hurriedly distributed toys, pencils, and notebooks to the good children who remained before the bullies could return, and shut the hatch.
One of them slyly met us on the way to the village, obviously disappointed he’d come away empty-handed, with the sheepish look of a pet dog who knows he doesn’t deserve a treat. Still, he was not discouraged.
“Mistah, give me watch!” The youth tugged at my arm.
I pushed his hand away. “No, I need this. It’s mine.”
“Mistah, give me Playstation!”
I stopped midstride and turned with a raised eyebrow, amazed at the brashness of his request, and a little surprised he even knew to ask. He’d just beat up one of his little friends for a two-dollar stuffed animal, and now he pled for a two-hundred-dollar game system as a reward for bad behavior.
“What! You think I’m Santa Claus? I don’t have a damn Playstation. You’re getting coal, kid.”
“Mistah, give me gun!”
“You’re crazy, kid. Where did you learn English?”
“English? From movies! What’s your name, mistah?”
“Moustapha.”
He squinted into my eyes, half-believing me. “Nooo … Moustapha? Really? You Muslim?”
“No, I’m Christian. What’s your name?”
“I'm Moustapha.”
“Are you really Moustapha?”
“Yep. Really.”
He jabbered excitedly to his friends. I heard him repeat, “Moustapha.”
I couldn’t fault the boy for his desperate, naively outlandish requests for things he knew he could never have. He was only trying to acquire something to sell, or to distract his mind from the bitter poverty of his surroundings. He wasn’t to blame for his station in life, and I could hardly expect his parents to discipline him when many adults engaged in far worse activities than begging. Maybe they even depended on him for extra income. Survival by any means seemed his main priority, not winning my approval, and my perception of right or wrong could not be applied to his situation. An empty stomach could make anyone forget extravagant feelings like pride and dignity. It wasn’t for me to judge him without knowing the circumstances that compelled his family to seek refuge in a forgotten stretch of desert, whether it was fear, persecution, or simply acceptance of the status quo.
Neither was I prepared to lend any substantive aid in the form of food or medicine.
What is worse, to beg, or to give starving people stuffed animals instead of food or jobs?
If it were truly our intention to help the Iraqi people, we should have brought bags of rice instead of soccer balls, but helping them was in itself part of a wider propaganda battle, to appear benevolent in the media and to win the hearts of the Iraqis in spite of our record of civilian deaths and the fact that the schools and hospitals we took such pride in rebuilding were ones we had previously destroyed ourselves.
The Marines who had been searching for weapons began walking back to the vehicles, empty-handed.
“Hey, are you done? We’re done,” one asked as he passed.
I nodded and put my hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Go home, Mustapha.”
Wish I could really help you. I thought silently, and walked to the truck without looking back.