WE MOVED TO a second site on the other side of the same mountain. I was now the only person left on the team that had been there from the beginning. It felt awkward, the constantly shifting personnel.
The only thing that kept me going was the COLT team that relocated with us to this new site. This time, however, we were colocated with others, and the absence of relative privacy sucked. There was a far more crowded scene up there, with probably twenty soldiers around all the time. There was a ground surveillance radar team. There were four retransmission teams spread out about a hundred meters away across the road from us, and they were okay. But there was not a whole lot for them to do, either. Their equipment picked up a signal and retransmitted it so the signal could go farther; once they had it in place they didn’t actually have to do anything for the equipment to work. Unless it stopped working. All that was left for the team to do was sit back and let the radios do their thing. They were not pushing buttons for it to operate; it happened automatically.
Efforts were made to make friends. Do the sociable thing. But I didn’t really feel into it. I got invitations to cross the road to play cards or watch a VCD, but more often than not I declined. I don’t know why. At the first mountain site I guess I got used to being more alone—or alone with the FISTers, and I was not as eager now to reach out.
Let me explain something about the FISTers.
Maybe it sounds like they were jerks who hated girls and liked to talk us down. And I would say to that: They were, but they weren’t.
In the real world, guys bond through competition. They play football games. They play video games. They verbally spar. They throw rocks at one another. Guys like to try and establish a hierarchy. They jockey for who’s on top.
Now, I can play that game. I tried to play it with Staff Sergeant Gardner, and he was probably better at it than I am. I can play it with guys who value intelligence. But I can only sort of play it with guys like the FISTers. It’s not the same with them.
The FISTers would talk trash with me to bond with me.
They wouldn’t talk trash with me if they didn’t like me. If we weren’t friends. Put it this way: They would never have insulted me all the time if I had been only a stranger to them.
Matt and I wrestled. This was definitely a guy thing to do. But we tussled on the mountain.
And the FISTers would yell out: “Hey Matt, you got beat up by a girl!”
Matt would yell back: “No, I didn’t! I won!”
The FISTers also always gave me credit when I deserved credit. They would always tell me: “You’re really smart. You’re smarter than we are.”
And I’d give them credit, too. I would tell them: “Sure, I’ve read more books than you guys. I can speak Arabic. But I couldn’t fix my truck if my life depended on it. I know nothing about engines. I would never be able to understand your equipment. You are all smarter than I am about how to make things work.”
Being around these guys and military personnel in general had given me a whole new appreciation for nonintellectual skills. These were people with manual skills. They knew how to use their hands. They were not afraid to get sweaty or dirty. And I respected them for it.
Tensions at this site only arose when one of the retrans teams informed our squad leader that we’d have to pull guard shift with them and watch the road. The retrans guys periodically started up the truck so the battery didn’t die. But that was really it. Plus pull guard.
We, on the other hand, had to work on our shifts. And we were on shift twenty-four hours a day. For us pulling guard meant ninety minutes more shift time a day, on top of our regular shifts. It was a minor gripe, but under the circumstances it took on much bigger importance. Our team had been in-country now for nearly six months working seven days a week running ops twenty-four hours a day. No break. No vacation. No time away from the people, the mission, anything. No such thing as a weekend. And so it was the small shit that began to drive us crazy. And this request to pull guard meant even less sleep than we were already getting.
At this point we’d lost Sergeant Quinn, so the three of us each worked two four-hour shifts a day. My shifts for a long time were 10:00 A.M. to 2:00 P.M. and 10:00 P.M. to 2:00 A.M. So I might sleep from 2:30 in the morning (since it always took a while to wind down after a shift) until the sun would hit me and wake me up around 8:00 A.M. That meant between five and six hours of sleep a day, which never felt like enough.
I coped with existence mainly by getting away on hikes. Rock climbing with my M-4 was not easy—it totally threw off my balance. But I did it, and it was great to get away with one or more of the FISTers for a few hours. I tended to go hiking with Matt. But I also hiked occasionally with Travis. I went hiking with Rivers once, and also Bill, our civilian linguist. Technically, at least according to those at higher levels, this walking away from base was probably not permitted, but on-site no one challenged us. So we’d go, wandering wherever. We carried handheld radios, and we were always in range of communication. It felt like a good thing to become more familiar with the area.
Mainly if we came across locals, the locals were Yezidis. I continued to be overwhelmed by their amazing generosity.
Their Arabic was not great, and whatever Kurdish we spoke was limited to a few basic phrases, so conversations tended toward the most common of denominators. And after a time there was a remarkable degree of repetition in these little talks with the Yezidis we met.
On one hike we came to a small Yezidi dwelling in the mountains, and the men practically pulled us over to sit down with them.
Matt and Bill and I sat awkwardly around on the ground while the men watched us, and one prepared tea. These were very poor farming people. They grew pomegranates and grapes and some vegetables. The men told us that they stayed there in the summer months; in the winter they lived in the village below with their families.
Then this one local with a handlebar mustache placed three glasses before us, and there weren’t enough glasses to go around. So we drank tea while they sat there. They offered us grapes. And then he got out a raw onion that he chopped into quarters, and laid the pieces out for us. He then sprinkled some coarsely ground salt on a plate, and also set down a large piece of flat bread.
We looked at one another, and then down at the raw onion slices. And then again at one another.
“Eat,” the man said in Arabic.
I said, “It’s a raw onion.”
“Eat. Eat.” The man was not understanding our hesitation.
“It’s a raw onion,” I repeated.
“Yes. You dip it in the salt and eat it with bread.”
The guys were really not sure about this.
“You’re kidding me?” one of them said.
“No. Eat it.”
So we ate it to be polite. And it wasn’t that bad, though it was nothing I would serve as an appetizer back home.
Then, as always, I had the obligatory conversation I had with all the Yezidis. No matter what, no matter when, it was always the same conversation, and it went something like this:
“We are Yezidis,” the Yezidi man began.
“Yes.” I had heard this before, and knew precisely where it was heading. “Yes. I know. You are Yezidis.”
“Do you know of the Yezidis in America?”
“No,” I would be feeling weary already. “No. Nobody in America has heard of the Yezidis.”
“Will you tell the Americans about us?”
“Yes. I will do my best.”
“We are not Muslims.”
“I know. I got it. You’re not Muslims. You’re Yezidis.”
“We are like Jews. And we are like Christians. But we are not like Muslims.”
“Yes. I know.” Yes, everyone here told me the same thing. “Yes, I’ve got it.”
“We love Americans because you hate Muslims. And we hate Muslims, too. So that’s why we love Americans. And we want America to stay here forever. You—or Israel. To protect us from the Muslims. Because they cut down our fig trees and stole our women.”
“Okay.” I did not want to start a debate here or an argument, but I wanted to be clear. “We don’t hate Muslims,” I began. “That’s really…um…not the point. We don’t hate any religion. And we’re here so that you can have a democracy. And so you can have freedom. And in a democracy everybody gets to help decide how to run the government and how to run the country. And even the Yezidis can help. You can participate in the new government under a democracy. Because you’re going to have freedom. That’s why we’re here, to help establish freedom and democracy. And then we’re going to leave.”
“No, no.” He waved away this speech, as if it was foolish or irrelevant. And he spoke now as if to someone who was a trifle dense. “No. It will never work. This would never happen. Americans have to stay here forever.” He paused. “Or Israel.”
“Israel is never going to come.” Now it was my turn to make a point that seemed too obvious to mention. “Let me tell you. Israel will never be here. They will never be in Iraq. They will never establish anything here. I promise you. They are not coming.”
Somehow these conversations were on a tape loop, and it began again at the beginning.
“We are like Christians. We are like Jews. We hate the Muslims. Like you.”
“No. We don’t hate the Muslims—”
“Will you please tell Mr. Bush about the Yezidis?”
I guess the thinking here was that I was not getting it. So they might as well go right to the top. Get the president involved, since this soldier was not grasping the issues.
“I don’t know him.” I said this as politely as I could.
“Will you write him a letter? Will you call him? Will you tell Mr. Bush? Does Mr. Bush know about the Yezidis?”
“I do not know what Mr. Bush knows about the Yezidis.”
“Tell Mr. Bush. Tell Mr. Bush about the Yezidi people. Because we are good people.”
“Yes, you are. You are good people. You’re generous and kind and friendly people. You give me food all the time. You’re very nice. You’re very kind. I love the Yezidis.”
“Tell Mr. Bush.”
“Yeah. All right. Yes. I am going to write Mr. Bush a letter and tell him how great you are.”
“Thank you. Thank you.”
After our little picnic, we took pictures of the men and their donkey. Then this guy with the handlebar mustache—he was about fifty years old—led us back up the mountain. And he scampered up the mountain in plastic sandals like a goddamn gazelle. Here we were, thinking we’re bad-ass Army soldiers, but we couldn’t keep up.
And the very next time I met a Yezidi, I had almost the identical conversation all over again. Word for word.
One day these random young people just showed up at our site.
“Hey,” they called out to us.
“Hey.” What the fuck was going on?
One kid was from Chicago, and started talking to Matt about growing up in Illinois. He was thinking about possibly attending college in Matt’s hometown. But Matt was trying to dissuade him.
“Nah,” Matt told this one American teenager. “I wouldn’t go there. You can’t watch your cornhole that much.”
Turned out these kids were volunteers from some Christian group, and they’d all come there to assist the Iraqis.
So we pulled out a bunch of MREs and served lunch for these American kids. But they were having trouble eating out of the pouches like we did. Luckily we happened to have some paper plates; that worked. And the soldiers began to explain how to make the MREs.
We were stoked. We hadn’t seen real people in forever.
Matt got all cute.
“Oh, let me help you with that. Let me get that for you.”
The kids had come up our way to see the Yezidi shrine. Check out all the great sites of Iraq.
Here’s a trash pile! Here’s a destroyed tank! There’s another rabid dog!
We had the only healthy grown dog in Iraq. The FISTers named her Rak Hammer. She’d been beaten a lot and hated Iraqis. She’d been adopted and then left at the site by the Pathfinders, and when they rolled out, she stayed with the fire support team.
It was a violation of General Order No. 1 to keep pets or mascots. Pets were specifically outlawed—like porn and liquor. But almost everyone we knew in Iraq had a pet of some kind. I knew people who had a cat, a hedgehog, a falcon, and lots of people who had dogs.
Packs of wild dogs roam Iraq, and some are rabid. In Mosul soldiers would even go on dog-eradication projects and shoot dogs. This was hard for a lot of soldiers to do.
Dogs in Iraq that soldiers adopted often hated the locals with a deep and abiding passion. The locals tended to throw rocks at dogs. And beat them. While we fed them and were friendly to them. So our dog made a big ruckus when locals approached. Which proved convenient. She also became very protective of her territory and kept all the other local dogs away from us. She became fiercely loyal because we treated her well.
We also had a little puppy. One day I was told an older dog killed the puppy—which was an unpleasant thing. (Though I learned more than a year later that it was Sergeant Kelly who accidentally killed the puppy. He’d thrown it up into the air, and it fell hard onto the rocks below. It was maimed, so he killed it.)
Our pets were extremely important for morale. Our dogs became a pretty big part of our lives. I took a lot of pictures of our damned dog.
The Army puts out an informal policy against physical contact. Even though the Army is one of the few environments in the States in which men can touch each other and it’s okay. Guys pat each other on the ass all the time in the Army. It’s called a “good game.” Guys can also half hug each other; not front hug, but a little side shoulder hug. That’s perfectly manly and acceptable. If two men in civilian clothes hugged like this it might be considered gay. But Army guys can do it whenever they want—because they’re Army. Real tough guys.
But physical contact was more or less something I did not have during my deployment. Guys were extra careful not to touch me. As a female I was not really a part of the “good game.” So having pets around was important for this reason: Here was a creature I could touch and love.
The Yezidi shrine at this mountain site was a small rock building with objects dangling from the ceiling. There were little alcoves in the shrine where locals placed offerings and worshipped. People came and left money that anyone else could take, if someone else came who needed it more. Or people took the money to use toward the upkeep of the shrine itself. And inside the shrine there was another door to a smaller room that I never entered or saw. No one exactly explained the purpose of the shrine, but we sometimes heard accusations from local Muslims that the Yezidis were devil worshippers. The dangling objects appeared to have more to do with the rays of the sun, but nothing was made clear.
One day a father came to worship with his several children, and the oldest daughter in the family appeared mesmerized by me.
She was excited to see a female American because she could talk to me. It was not appropriate for her to speak to the men, but she was permitted to speak to me. And it was the first time I encountered a young local woman with whom I could spend some time talking.
She didn’t know how old she was, since the locals didn’t have a real way to record birthdays, but she estimated that she was about sixteen.
Our conversations were extremely stilted, given her near-absence of Arabic and my difficulty making myself understood as a result.
Her name was Leila, and we became friendly, if not friends.
She returned to the shrine with her family three or four more times while I was there, and we began to exchange gifts.
The mother never joined her family on this pilgrimage.
I noticed that all the girls in the family had tattoos on their faces, but none more than Leila. Small dots on her chin, her forehead, and the sides of her face.
I tried to ask what these dots on her face meant, but there was too much of a language barrier. The only thing I could ascertain was that the girls seemed to receive more of these tattoos as they grew up; Leila’s youngest sister had no markings on her face, but her other sisters had one, two, and four as they got older. But whether the dots were religious or cultural, I never learned.
At another time in Iraq, when we were among the Bedouin people, I noticed from a distance that the women appeared to have tattooed writing on their feet. But again I never learned what it meant; I also never got close enough to the Bedouin women to read the tattoos. I was always very curious.
Besides my general interest in the locals, and my desire to get to know what the civilians were like, it was just great to see a girl. This was such a male environment otherwise. And even though our conversations were hobbled by our mutual inability to make ourselves easily understood, there was just a sense of relief. For me. And, I began to suspect, for Leila as well.
Jimmy the Ice Man has arrived. Are we glad to see him!
No one knows his real name, or how he first found out we are up here, but everyone calls him Jimmy the Ice Man. The “Ice Man” part is easy: Jimmy brings us slabs of ice he buys down in the village. Jimmy is probably Kurdish or maybe Yezidi; we don’t know that, either. We also don’t know where “Jimmy” came from; probably some smart-ass soldier’s sense of humor that stuck. Anyway, Jimmy is an awesome guy who has quickly and efficiently mastered the skills of the marketplace. We respect this about him. We respect how quickly he has found a market, and how he knows immediately how to exploit it.
The arrangement goes something like this: First Jimmy hires a taxi for the whole day for five dollars. He then loads the taxi with consumer goods—anything and everything he thinks he can sell to a captive American military audience stuck out in the godforsaken wilderness with little to do and absolutely nothing on which to spend its money. Jimmy starts with the essentials. There’s the ice, of course. By this point in the summer we are talking temperatures of a hundred degrees most days, even in the mountains. The ice is very nice, especially when combined with the cases of soda Jimmy hauls to us in his rented taxi. It’s a great combination. Buy the ice, and buy the soda to chill on the ice. Prices are reasonable, given that Jimmy is sole vendor for our AO (area of operations). We fully recognize that Jimmy is pulling in a huge profit margin, but we respect and admire his ingenuity. Big slabs of ice about two or three feet long and six inches across that he’d pick up for a quarter. And he’d charge us three dollars. An amazing mark-up on all the same stuff we could get way cheaper at base does not appear unreasonable to us under the circumstances.
“Hey, Jimmy! You got that shit we talked about last time!”
From this basic plan of action, Jimmy gets ambitious. Branches out. He begins to take orders. Anything he can get his hands on, he will happily serve as mule. He wants his customers happy, and he works the crowd to make sure folks are satisfied with the service.
This means lots of business. Soldiers wanting just about anything you can imagine. Cigarettes, gifts for girlfriends or wives, knives, lighters, soccer jerseys, propane tanks, prayer beads—you name it. (Personally, I buy a lot of scarves.) Most of it is junk, but we purchase it. Happy to keep Jimmy happy. Happy to have something, anything, to distract us from the routineness of our routine.
The local kids have been bringing us food almost every day since we got to this new site. All sorts of good stuff. Two kinds of eggplants (green and purple), green peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes, onions, eggs—it’s their offering to us. Their welcome to the American liberators. They have no sense of what their food should cost, so they start asking for small change. Maybe a dollar. No big deal. We meet their monetary demands with a chuckle.
As Jimmy continues his trips up the mountain with a taxiload of goodies, though, the children grow bolder. Wanting more money for their product. And then they begin to jack up the prices. Two dollars for a bag of vegetables. Then three dollars. Five dollars. And upward. Testing out what the market will bear.
Some of the guys get pissed. They start saying things you’d rather not hear them say. But it’s not like we all don’t have similar thoughts at one time or another. “Get these fucking locals away from me” or “I’m tired of them asking me for water” or “I’m tired of them asking me for money” or “I don’t want to deal with these fucking people.” And you understand this attitude after a while. After all these kids are always underfoot. Always wanting something. And am I really going to fork over five bucks for some damned eggplants the size of my fist?
Finally we refuse to deal with them, and the situation normalizes. Someone speaks to the kids. Settles them down. Still, you can’t help but take note of how fast the free market has taken root out here in the Kurdish mountains.
Jimmy the Ice Man is a real character. I love this guy. And he provides some memorable moments.
Like the time he brings us Osama bin lighters. Picture this. A butane lighter with the image of Osama bin Laden and the Twin Towers in New York City. And there’s a plane flying into the Twin Towers. And a little red light. When you press down, the light glows red. It’s an instant classic. Every soldier wants one. It is gruesome and morbid, but it also reminds us of where we are—and why. (Or at least what our fearless leaders wanted us to think about why we are here; we all knew there was no connection between the war in Iraq and 9/11. We talked about it all the time.) Or how about the lighter shaped like a heart? And it has the faces of both George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein. And the top of the lighter is a fighter plane. Very strange. (Made in China. What’s up with that?)
I loved this about Jimmy. That he does this. Capitalism in its purest form.
Sometimes, though, Jimmy’s entrepreneurial spirit goes a little too far, and we have to set some boundaries. Or at least I do.
“No, Jimmy,” I’m telling him for the umpteenth time. “I do not need dresses. I do not need skirts.”
“Skirts for you,” Jimmy says in surprisingly good English, pushing a stack of fabrics closer to make sure I am not misunderstanding that this is a special deal he wishes to make. “No one else. You.”
“No, Jimmy,” I say. “Thank you for…um…your interest. Thank you. But no.”
“But who else?” He smiles. But he is also disappointed; I can tell. “Who else will wear such things here?” He gestures to all the guys at this site. I am the only woman.
“I don’t know,” I say. But I haven’t asked you to bring me clothes!
“Look, Jimmy,” I try to explain. “Thank you for your interest. And the effort. But I am not allowed to wear anything but my uniform.” I point to my uniform. I try to make this the point, as if I too am disappointed that I am not going to be able to model these clothes which are, in fact, beyond hideous. Their bright array of mismatched colors defies easy characterization.
Jimmy is not easily dissuaded. He relents, but then next time he taxis up to us, he tries again. Same dresses. Same skirts.
On another occasion Jimmy wants to know how much we make as soldiers here in Iraq, working for the U.S. military. This is not a simple matter to explain to a man who must consider the fifty dollars he might make on a good day selling ice and soda to twenty Americans in the Sinjar Mountains a small fortune. So I try to make it make sense in a way I hope he can grasp.
“Two thousand dollars a month,” I begin, and I see his eyes grow large with wonder. “But—but there are lots of costs involved.”
“Costs?”
“Expenses. Back home. We have many things for which we must continue to pay. Even though we are living here. Like, for example, I own a house in America. And I have a mortgage. That’s six hundred dollars a month right there. For the next thirty years. And I own a new car. That’s three hundred dollars a month for the next five years.”
Jimmy is quiet, calculating these expenses. And it’s all true: I am underpaid. Soldiers of my rank and below with dependents qualify for food stamps. But I’m hardly done.
“And there are other things. Heat for the winter. And electricity. And home insurance and car insurance.”
Jimmy is looking increasingly somber, studying me carefully as I itemize the costs of an ordinary American life.
“I just want you to understand—it’s expensive.” I’m on a roll. I’m almost convincing myself. “We make a lot of money—by the standards here. But—it’s expensive. And there’s more—”
“Food, telephone—” he interrupts.
“Yes, yes,” I say. He gets it.
“Take it, please.”
He is holding a can of soda out to me.
“For you. Please. No cost. Free soda. It’s on me.”
Jimmy the Ice Man, whose impoverished people have suffered for centuries at the hands of one oppressor or another, has taken pity on my small salary.
He insists, pressing the soda gently into my hands.