Sex and the Tent City

I was stunned. I squinted, barely able to adjust my eyes to the darkness. Suitcases were everywhere, clothes were piled on cots as far as I could see. Flak jackets and helmets were hung at the end of the beds. I slowly walked down an aisle way searching for an empty cot. At the opposite side of the tent, I found one. I had been issued two blankets and one very flat third-world pillow. I tossed them onto the cot, and turned around. To my left was an ancient silver child’s bunk bed with a bent frame, the kind that you see in pictures of Russian orphanages. I imagined several children living in that bunk, grabbing at the high rails, reaching out for someone to hug them, eventually dying of starvation. Hangars were hung on one end of it, with neatly pressed blouses lined up by color. Stacks of shoe boxes were lined up along the floor, apparently arranged by occasion. An ironing board was propped against the side of the tent, poking the fabric wall outward. To my right was a cot, with an ugly blue blanket that had a giant face of a German Shepard on it. I figured it was inevitable that I would have nightmares about the blue blanket dog attacking me. I sadly gazed at my two blankets: both a diarrhea
brown floral print. The tag proudly announced ‘Made in China’. Martha Stewart does not live here.

I walked back down the aisle way, dodging the clutter. The tent
was hot, even with all three air conditioners running. The aisle was
about thirty feet long, with the darkness it was hard to see from
one end of the tent to the other. There were standard issue
military green cots along each side of the tent, and two rows along
the middle. I guessed there were about fifty beds inside, half cots
and half framed beds. My cot did not have a mattress, but most of
the remaining beds did. It was going to be a hard night’s sleep.
Emerging from the tent, I returned to the area we had been
dropped off. Simon and Jeff were there talking with our greeting
committee: Dick, the head of HR, and a South African man from
billeting. We were each given a liter and a half bottle of water. I
pondered why the heads of HR are inevitably named Dick.

“Drink four of these a day. It is crucial that you drink until you can
drink no more. Drink even if you aren’t thirsty.”
I glanced at Jeff, stunned. “That’s six liters!”
“A gallon and a half,” he said, smiling at me.
“A day??” I asked incredulously.
“Yup.”

I was thirsty enough, but had not ever heard of anyone drinking
that much water every day. I pictured my bloated body in a
hundred degrees, feet swollen, head throbbing, fingers stiff with
water retention. Don’t you die if you drink that much water?

“You will have the rest of the day to rest if you want. Push the
water today. Get settled in your tents. The latrines and ab units are
across from your tents: female and male. The bus is available to
take you to dinner tonight. It also runs to the PX if there is anything
you need to pick up.” He pointed to the bus parked near us, a small
blue and white Nissan of international extraction. “Lights out in the
tents at 10PM. Lights on at 5. Everyone understand? There is
absolutely no smoking in or near the tents. They are coated in
kerosene to control the dust. Also, absolutely no food or drink in
the tents. Food brings mice, mice brings cobras. We had one in the
camp a few weeks ago.”

I looked at Jeff, wide eyed. “Cobras?” I croaked.
“What’s an ab unit?” Simon asked.
“Where the showers are,” Dick calmly explained, pointing to some
trailers not far from where we sat.
“Coated in kerosene??” I mumbled, sure that this had to be some
sort of joke. “And we are sleeping in them?” My mind raced: did
OSHA know about this? Whose great idea was that? Where is the
Safety Department around here, anyway? Visions of flames licking
at my cot, my officially-un-flameproof-not-for-use-by-children
blankets torched in an instant, the blue blanket dog melting into a
soupy synthetic mass of death over my yet unseen cot-mate.

We gathered our remaining possessions and returned to our
assigned tents. I was worn out, the temperature was in the high
90’s and still rising.

“Howdy, I’m Joanne,” the blond drawled. “You are our new girl?”
“Yeah. What do you do?”
“I’m in Admin. I’ll take you over to our trailer."

We walked back across the dirt lot to a complex of identical
portable trailers. I immediately panicked: how the hell do you find
your way around when all the trailers look the same? I pictured
myself lost forever amidst the portables: where did that new girl
go, anyway? Would they even miss me if I didn’t show up the first
day? Yeah, go down here, past that pile of brown dirt, take a turn
by the white trailer. No, not that dirt. This dirt. That white trailer.
What’s wrong with you??

“Hey guys, this is our new girl!” she stated as we crossed beneath
the camouflage netting and walked into the office. I wondered from
the camo netting if we were frequent attack targets.

I entered the small office, squeezing by the narrow entry. Three
desks were inside, and five people were spread across them.

“Hi, I’m Brent. I’m your Supervisor. You’ll want to sit down at that
desk, go ahead and set up your computer there.”
“No, Brent, she’s not Admin,” Joanne chided.
“Leave it to Brent. Why did you assume she was Admin? Hi, I’m
Geneva. Welcome to Iraq!”
Brent looked down at his lap. “Isn’t she Admin?” he asked, now
ignoring the fact I was listening.
“No, Brent, this is your new employee,” Geneva scoffed, smiling at
me. “I don’t know why he would assume that just because you are
female, you are Admin. We have had female employees, Brent.”
“Oh, Jeez. Don’t know what I was thinking. Sorry,” he waffled.
“That’s OK. Happens all the time,” I smiled.
“Geneva, take her over to the trailer and introduce her.”

We walked across the gravel, across a driveway to a blue 30 foot
transportation container like the ones the railroad hauls. She threw
open the door. The inside was painted white, with makeshift
plywood desks lined along the wall.

“This is Akantha. She’ll be working with you.”
The heads turned, a couple guys chimed , “Welcome to Iraq.”
Geneva scolded, “Treat her well, guys…” and turned to leave.
“We’ll get you set up tomorrow. We need to take your computer to
IT to have it scrubbed-bring it back to me today. Also, I’ll take you
over to Payroll and introduce you to Lois. If you have questions, see
her. Have you had anything to eat?”
“Not since yesterday, but I’m not that hungry.”
“Well, we have breakfast around 7, if you want to come in then we
will take you over.”
“Sure, see you then.” I started back to the tent.

Even after the sun went down, my exhausted body could not sleep.
I had put in ear plugs, but could still hear the incessant rattling of
fifty chatty women as they filed in over the course of the evening.
They took no notice to the new body on the cot, saying nothing. I
drifted in and out of an uneasy sleep, still not synchronized to my
new Middle Eastern clock. Every few minutes I was awakened by
the sounds of another jet taking off. It was a routine that became
normal.

When morning came, I had had only two hours sleep. The cot
without a mattress was harder than concrete, and I was no longer a
limber 20 year old. Even turning like a rotisserie each hour was not
enough to keep from bruising. I rose in the dark half crippled,
feeling every bit my age. I fumbling for something to wear,
dreading my first public shower since my last workout in 1993. I was
thinner then…the cruelties of time. I still did not have a towel, so I
grabbed an extra t-shirt and walked across the gravel.

Two trailers sat side by side. One had a large placard ‘FEMALES
ONLY’. The other had a picture of a small stick girl: ‘SHOWER’. I
pulled the door open and no sooner stepped inside and ran into a
naked woman.

“Howdy, girl!” the woman drawled.
I strained to recognize her. No, it didn’t seem to be Geneva or
Joanne. But there she was, naked as a jaybird, and she apparently
knew me. Faces spun around in my head, and I smiled to cover the
fact that I had absolutely no idea who this was.

“How was your first night?” she asked, drying off her back, her
breasts swinging.
“OK, didn’t sleep much.” I squeezed past her to the other end of
the trailer. It had been a while since I had had a conversation with
a naked woman. A very long while. As a matter of fact, I could not
recall ever having a conversation with a naked woman. I laughed to
myself. Where are the instructions for this? I pondered the legal
aspects of sharing nakedness with those that you work with:
blurring reality, blurring the lines of sexual harassment litigation.
But this could not be considered a ‘normal’ workplace: we live,
eat, shower, and sleep with the people we work with. Is it OK to
see the breasts of those you work with? I thought back to other
jobs, my mind spinning with gratefulness that I had not seen any of
those people naked. I thought of MR, and wondered how she would
size this up. What legally defines a workplace, Akantha? What is off
the clock? What is the legal definition of ‘pervasive’ and
‘offensive’? Research that for me, Akantha. I pondered a case in
the 80’s or 90’s concerning new female firefighters that had to live
in a firehouse together with men: the prevalence of Playboy
magazine was considered hostile environment. Interesting.

My reverie was broken by the clumsy process of undressing while
attempting to maintain maximum coverage…hard to do without a
towel. I pulled off my clothes, self consciously looking around, but
not wanting to look directly at another naked body. There was
some unwritten rule, I decided, that you are not to look at others in
a public shower. Everyone seemed to be going about their business,
pretty much ignoring the naked bodies in their proximity. I shyly
hopped in the shower, thankful to finally be behind the shower
curtain. What are the social rules here, I nervously wondered as I
shampooed my hair. How can I dry off with a t-shirt and still remain
covered? I knew I was doomed, my nakedness inevitable. I suddenly
wished I was a whole lot thinner. And younger.

I finally emerged, no longer able to hide, determined to put on my
best “I don’t give a rat’s ass” face. I dried my back, carefully
turning so I felt less exposed. I dried so quickly that I left gaping
areas still wet, but the attempt to preserve some dignity was worth
a bit of wetness. As I turned to walk away, Joanne exited the
shower.

“Hey, girl!”
“Hi Joanne. How are you?” I asked, then immediately regretted it
as she answered, standing there in the nude, reaching for a towel.
“Doing great. How was your first night?”

I paused uneasily. Where do I look when I talk to her? I aimed my
gaze at her feet, pretending to drop something, shuffling my
bathroom stuff like an idiot. “Fine. See you later.” I rushed to exit
the trailer before we had to talk more, no longer caring if she
thought me rude. This is a fine situation. How do you talk to a nude
woman that you have to work with? I suddenly feel disoriented, my
tidy Puritanical world upside-down.

I scurry to the ‘hair trailer,’ the one concession the camp had made
to its female presence. Since the voltage is 220 in the camp, most
of our hair dryers will not work. So there is a separate trailer that
has a transformer hooked up, just for blow dryers. Seemed like a
good idea, until you get five women trying to use the same
transformer. And the transformer does not preclude the necessity
for separate plug adapters, so merely drying hair in the morning
can be a process, particularly since many of the women here are
‘two-canners’ from the south (…and we all know how long they
spend teasing and spraying their damn hair). But I manage to dry
my hair without anything going up in flames, so I feel much better
than when I left the shower trailer. Yes, some might require
makeup, some might require curlers, and some even need to iron
everything. Me? The only thing I need to be presentable is a hair
dryer and two and a half minutes. I call it the middle-aged-I-don’tgive-
a-shit beauty routine. You won’t find it in Cosmo.

“Go to Payroll and get yourself a time sheet,” Geneva instructed.
“They’ll tell you how to fill it out.”

I wandered across the gravel courtyard to yet another white trailer.
Luckily, this one had “PAYROLL” on it. I entered, then gasped.
There she was, only this time she was dressed. I stared for a
moment, wondering if she noticed my surprise. It was Lois, the
naked lady from the shower. I did some quick mental comparisons,
but, yes, this was Lois from Payroll.

“Do you have a timesheet for me?” I whispered, my throat suddenly
becoming dry.
“Sure, let me find it.” She smiled, and I looked down at the candy
dish, seemingly entranced by the convenient distraction. “Here you
go.”

I took the sheet, not waiting for proper goodbyes. What was I
supposed to say? Gee, Lois, your tits sure are low. But I guess
you’re doing pretty well for your age. Nice hair today. My, you wear
a lot of padding in that bra. Yes, I dragged my eyes across the room
and accidentally spied your ass. Yes, it’s hanging low also. Sorry,
didn’t mean to stare. I tried to move my glance more rapidly, but
got dizzy looking for a location sans nakedness. Oh, you wear those
big old lady undies in coordinating colors. I shouldn’t know this
much about you! Do you really paint your toenails red every day
here in the desert? Why? Missed a spot shaving, ole girl. Aaaargh!


Debbie is one of those women that one pictures when one thinks of
Texas. Big hair, big heart, big laugh.

“I’m going to call him Trouble,” she laughs, holding up a stuffed
horse. “My grandchild sent me the-iss…” she said in that mysterious
Texan way of making one syllable words sound like two. “Ain’t he
the kewtist thang y’all did ever see?”
“I love him! He needs a hug.” I reached for him, and kissed his
large brown nose. His silly horse face made me smile. “How long
have you been here?”
“Came in with Linda in August,” pointing at the cot next to me. She
was rearranging her stacks of boxes.
“What’s in all those boxes?” I asked.
“Clothes and shoes,” she replied, proudly holding up a pair of black
leather pants in one hand and a pair of red high heels in the other.
“Where the hell are you going to wear those?”
“You never know. Sometimes I like to dress up.”
“Where do you work?”
“DFAC Admin.”
“Is there much dressing up out there?” I asked, incredulous, sweat
beading on my face. The thought of leather anything in this heat
was unimaginable. But here I was, in the desert, sleeping next to a
real, live girly girl.
“Oh, sometimes. But mostly I keep them for R&R.”
“Oh. When do you leave?”
She laughed as she opened a package from Victoria’s Secret and
held up a black lace negligee, carefully examining it. “Don’t know
yet. Will be a while.”
“Well, guess you’ll be prepared for just about anything…” my voice
trailed off, wondering what ‘anything’ might arise that would call
for black leather pants. The differences between us were like night
and day: me with one small suitcase of cotton, non-wrinkle, easy fit
work clothes and Debbie with giant Texas hair, leather pants, spike
heels, lace underwear. The world really isn’t as complicated as
some make it. People get caught up in expensive psychological
studies, but I have learned-after many years of sitting at Starbuck’s
and contemplating such things-that such studies are superfluous. I
can tell you what kind of person you are by the underwear you have
on. And Debbie was one of those women who expected the door to
be held open, worked meaningless jobs in between raising kids, and
had never, ever gotten dirt under her finger nails. We were
opposites. I decided I liked her, but her underwear annoyed me.

“Hey girl!” she yelled across the aisle. “Meet our new roommate.”
“I’m Linda, she replied walking around her cot and throwing down
her backpack.
“What do you do?"
“Billeting. Where are you from?”
Debbie interjected, “She’s a Northern girl.”
“How do you like the heat?” she combed her straggly hair.
Was it my imagination, or did she have a moustache? I laughed.
“It’s horrific.” Yes, she does have a moustache.
“Don’t worry, it gets a lot worse. It has just broken. A few weeks
ago we were still 120. It’ll go to 140.”

My mouth opened involuntarily. The thought was impossible to wrap
my mind around. 96 was killing me. Every fiber was swelling,
hurting, sweating. I could physically drink no more water. I spent
half my time in the bathroom as it was, and still was only drinking
three liters a day, not the four that they required. It seemed
hopeless. I longed for snow.

“Deb, I’ll be out tonight,” she turned and walked toward the door.
“Gotcha…” she turned to me. “She has a boyfriend. She isn’t here
much at night. I have one, too!”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah, they have restrictions against sleeping with your boss, or
sleeping with one of the Marines, but it happens anyway. You know,
they sell condoms at the PX…”
“Oh, yeah?”
“…who do they think is using them?” she chuckled.
“So they restrict sex, but sell condoms?”
“Girl, they run out of foot powder, run out of tampons, but never
run out of condoms. Seems to be the only supply that the PX is sure
to have. You are treating your feet, right?”
“Yeah, got some powder at Victory.”
“Good. Your feet will get really messed up here.”
“Hey, where did you get your shelves?” I asked, trying to unpack.
“Get ‘em at the Hajji shop. And a mattress, too.”
“Yeah, that cot damn near killed me. What’s a Hajji shop?”
“Over by the PX are some shops run by Iraqis that they let on the
base. They basically steal supplies and resell them to us. Some of
them have been killed coming to work here. Of course, you can
always work a drug deal.”
“Drug deal?”
She laughed again, “That’s what they call it. That’s how most of us
got our beds, or any of the wooden shelves that you see.”
I looked around the tent. About half of the people had plywood
shelves. Without them, there was nowhere to stack anything. We
were issued a cot, period. No mattress, no shelves, nothing.
She continued, “You have to trade something to get furniture.”
“Trade something?” I felt a sudden dread. This was worse than high
school.
“You know. Sleep with someone. Or trade something that you havesome
of the truck drivers have liquor. They bring it back when they
go out to Baghdad. In spite of what they say, liquor is not illegal in
Iraq, they just want you to think it is. If you hook up with a driver,
you can get just about anything.”
“How much is the stuff at the Hajji shop?”
There was a pause. “Hmmm. Don’t know. I worked a drug deal.”
She smiled, hanging her lacy panties and matching teeny-tiny bra
on a hangar.

I reviewed a mental checklist: no, none of my panties matched my
bra. And none of them were lace. Besides, eyeing the hangar, it
would need steel reinforcement to sustain the weight from my bra.
And the last time I even had a negligee was approximately 1989. My
brow furrowed. I had arrived in my new land without currency. I
was doomed.

“They call this the ghost tent, you know…” she plainly stated.
“Why’s that?”
“Take a look around. There are fifty women assigned to this tent.”
I looked around. All the beds had stuff on them: suitcases, clothes,
books. But there was no one sleeping in the beds.
“Where are they?” I stupidly asked.
“Drug deals…” she trailed off. “…they have furniture, but they
don’t sleep here at night.”

And it was true. Each night when I rose for my 2AM trip to the
bathroom, I looked around. Out of fifty beds, the maximum night
count was six. It is a lonely, depressing, exhausting life here in the
desert. But apparently there was quite a bit of consoling going on
amidst the date palms and wide, starry skies…

I slowly woke up, confused and not sure where I was. My feet felt
wet, but I wasn’t sure if I was still dreaming. I shut my eyelids,
trying to force my way back in to my dream of cold wetness. I
turned over. Cold wetness consumed my legs; the sound of dripping
water became louder. I turned back over, now fully awake. My legs
were sopping wet. Startled, I sat up and reached for a flashlight
just as someone turned on the tent lights. I felt something sting on
my face and looked up. Water was pouring from the tent ceiling
down onto my cot and the brand new flimsy $20 mattress that I had
purchased the day before, onto my new navy blue twin sheets that
proudly proclaimed my rising wealth and seniority.

“Jesus!” I shouted.
“Shit! The tent’s leaking!” Linda screamed. It was the first time she
had slept in her bed all week.
“Gawd dammit. My clothes!” Debbie leapt out of her bunk in one
movement, grabbing her boxes of shoes and tossing them away
from the water. “Fuck!”
Suddenly, nighties were flying, women were yelling, and the tent
became a cacophony of noise as furniture scraped across the
cement floor.

“Help me move this!”
“What’s in this rain? It stings!”
“Kerosene from the tent…” I wiped the yellow stained liquid off my
face.
“Here, put your bed in between the leaks.”
“Fuck! Help me move my TV!” Emma screamed.
“Let’s get this bed away from here-this girl’s on leave.”
“Push. Push this dresser to your left.”
“Got it.”
“Unplug EVERYTHING!” I yelled, waiting for that first short that
would kill us all. I raced around the aisles, ripping cords from the
walls. “Someone help me move this!” I struggled with a large,
plywood bookcase, now soaked with filthy yellow water. The
nightlight flickered.
“Does anyone have a bucket?”
“I do,” Debbie shouted across the noise.
“Is that all we have, just one?”
“I use it to hand wash my underwear-it took me forever just to find
one!”
“Shit.”

There was no way to stop the water. Everything was leaking. The
water was coming in the sides of the tent, across the cement floor,
into the suitcases that lined the aisles. The ceiling was sagging, full
of water. Parts of the ceiling were ripping with the weight, the
water cascading onto beds, clothes, everything. I frantically
wrestled with my suitcase, lifting it off the ground onto my wet
cot. I pushed my cot out of the leak, but now I had to sleep right
next to Debbie’s bed, which she had turned parallel to mine to
escape the flood.

We had moved everything we could. We stood in our nightgowns,
wet and shivering.

“Billeting One, come in!” Debbie yelled into the radio, idly fluffing
her hair.
A long pause, then “Billeting Two here.”
“We need help. The tent is leaking. Send help.”
Five minutes later, Henry knocked on the tent door. “I have
blankets.”
“Henry, we don’t need blankets. We need buckets.”
“No buckets. Blankets,” he said in his broken English.
I took two blankets from him. “I can move you to another tent,” he
said.
“No, I don’t want to move.” The prospect of having to sleep on a
cot after finally sleeping on a mattress was too much to bear. “I’ll
stay here.”
“Your bed is wet,” stating the obvious.
“I’m fine. We’re all wet.”
“Can we get plastic?” Debbie asked.
“No plastic here.”

We looked at each other. There was nothing to do but return to our
wet beds and try to get some sleep. I took off the wet blankets, but
only had one set of sheets. The mattress was completely soaked
through, as were the sheets. I placed one of the blankets over the
bottom of the mattress, trying to block the wet. It was better than
nothing.

“Well, they said the rainy season started November first,” Linda
said as she gathered the covers over her feet. “Right on time.”

The following day the sun came out, the temperature rose to 98.
The putrid stench in the tent sickened us: wet mattresses molding,
suitcases that had not been rescued in time dripped contaminated
water. Clothes and blankets had been draped across every surface
to dry. The humidity rose, the tent was akin to an August vacation
in Calcutta.

“Jesus, turn on the A/C,” Debbie asked.
I walked over to the thermostat. “It’s on, full blast.”
“This is bullshit. My lamp is ruined. My clothes are soaked.”
“I know.” I peeled back all the blankets, putting them into my
laundry bag. “This stuff stinks.”
“You going to the laundry?”
“Yeah, I have to. These are the only sheets I have.”
“Don’t take your underwear. They steal them.”
“What?”
“Yup. The laundry guys steal your underwear. I hand wash mine
now. They’re perverts.”

Hmmm. Would they really steal my underwear? They weren’t lacy.
They most likely did not inspire lustful thoughts, no matter how
hard up you were. I cringed as I thought of some Turk from the
laundry dancing around with my undies on his head. Or, God forbid,
streaming the video across the Internet. Look! For 29.95 you can
view the largest American panties in Iraq!! Sign up now. Visa, MC,
Amex accepted. Click here to verify you are over 18…

I decided to risk it. I sent three pairs of panties, one bra, four pairs
of socks, and a set of sheets to the laundry. The sheets came back,
nicely folded and creased. On top, my socks and brassiere. And only
one pair of undies…all the white ones were gone. Great. Not only
do we have perverts in the laundry, but they have some sort of
weird Elvis-virgin-white-panty thing going on.

Somewhere out there, someone is downloading video of my white
panties. I just know it.

The rain started again while I was walking back to the tent at the
end of another long day. Kathy, from the warehouse, had managed
to re-appropriate a roll of plastic for us. We wrapped it over our
beds, covering all that was precious. For Debbie, it was her lace
underwear and Trouble. For Linda, her hair conditioner and
rubbers. For me, my mattress and dresser holding my last three
remaining pairs of underwear. We slept in our new bubble-like
existence, dry at last, but anything left out of plastic continued to
get soaked. After weeks of complaining, they had finally located
some fuel bladders, $50K apiece, and placed them over the worst
of the leaking tents. But they had not tied down the sides, and the
wind blew under them, forming a perfect airfoil.

By the time I had walked the half mile to the tent, the skies had
opened up. I had never seen it rain so hard-not since the summer
storms of the southeast. I was soaked, completely wet to the skin. I
opened the tent door and scurried inside. The only one home was
Debbie, already in her pajamas and in bed. I walked past her bed to
mine, and saw the first of the looming disaster.

“Debbie, get up!”
She jumped out of bed. “Help me!”
The entire ceiling above her bed had sagged, and was perilously
close to ripping open. Water was streaming in faster than we could
ever hope to bail it out. We stared at each other.

“It’s going to collapse,” she looked at me, eyes bulging.
I looked up. Water was coming in everywhere. All the way around
the tent perimeter, water had collected. The sides of the tent
started to move outward, the poles straining.

“Help me push it up,” I screamed over the noise, pushing up the
lowering ceiling.
“What’s going on?” Margaret walked in, stunned. “Oh, Lord. Lord
Jesus, help us. Lord Jesus…”
“Margaret, grab that pole and push the water off the ceiling.
Anyone got a radio?”
Debbie grabbed her radio and screamed into it.
“Operations, operations, DFAC 2 Admin. We need immediate help
in Tent 7. The ceiling is collapsing.”
A long pause. “Can you repeat that transmission, ma’am?” the
voice in the radio calmly inquired.
“WE NEED HELP. THE TENT IS COLLAPSING!”
“Did I understand you to say that the tent is collapsing?”
“Listen, get help here immediately.” She was yelling into the radio
now. There was no answer. She grabbed a pole and poked at the
ceiling, to no avail. The ceiling was now too heavy for us to lift it.
“Did you say Tent 7?” the man asked again.
I picked up her radio, “Tent 7. The rain is collapsing the tent. Send
everyone that you can, as fast as you can.”
“Yes, ma’am. Help is coming. Labor 1, did you copy?”
“Labor 1, I copied. On my way.”
“Labor 2, Labor 2, Labor 1. Did you copy?”
“Labor 1, Labor 2. Good copy.”
“Carpenter 1, Carpenter 1, Base Ops. Did you copy?”
“Carpenter 1 copied. All Carpentry units report to Tent 7.
Carpenter 1 out."
“Billeting 2, copy.”

The chatter continued, the air alive with activity. The women who
had not been home came running to the tent to see if they needed
to rescue their stuff. Entering, they stood in the aisles aghast,
staring at the ceiling now streaming rivers of water and groaning
under the weight. The first men were tall enough to reach the tent
ceiling, and made repeated trips around the edges trying to push
the water off. Debbie, Margaret and I followed suit, running back
and forth pushing at the ceiling.

Five men pulled up in a truck and unloaded lumber.

“Get some poles made, and prop this up,” one of the men
instructed. Three of the men dragged in cords and saws, and
searched for plug-ins.

“Sorry, don’t mean to mess up your stuff,” one of them apologized
to Debbie as he dragged his equipment across her bed.
“Don’t worry ‘bout it, hun,” she said, standing in the crowd of men
in thin pajamas that proclaimed ‘God Loves Texas’. Her hair was
wet, and hung in straggly clumps across her face. Her hangars of
frilly underwear had fallen on the floor and were wet with
kerosene.

I turned around, and saw Dave, a fellow employee, at the door. I
smiled. “Where did you come from?”
“Are you OK? I was on the way to the DFAC. We heard you on the
radio-they turned the whole bus around and brought them all back
here.”
“You’re kidding!” I was unexpectedly touched.
“No. Look outside.”

I walked out the door. Fifty men, many I had never seen beforemany
of them not even Americans, were lined up in the pouring
rain tugging on the ropes that held up what was left of the tent.
The fuel bladder that had been tenuously attached to the top had
mostly blown off, and they struggled to reattach it. The carpenters
inside were busy sawing support poles and propping up the entire
ceiling. The laborers were moving the sand bags around, re-digging
up the tent supports with their bare hands. Everyone was soaked to
the skin. The wind was shrieking, the rain continued.

“Jesus. Amazing. Are you OK?” I asked. Dave was shivering.
“Yeah. I just got wet. I should get out of these clothes. Are you
going to be OK?”
I looked at everyone working on the tent, “We’re fine. Thanks. Go
change before you die of something. Thanks for coming back.”

A half hour later our tent was propped up with a myriad of creative
supports. The ropes had been tightened, the tarp reattached to the
sides. The rain had stopped, and a bright moon was in the sky. The
men had all left, gone back to their own leaky tents.

“ ‘Night girls,” Debbie chirped.
I shook my head. “ ‘Night Deb.”
“Tomorrow’s another day,” she smiled.
“Hey, Grandma. You looked pretty good standing around in your
wet pajamas for the men!”
She laughed. “Yeah, but my hair was a mess.”
“Looks like it’s just us here again,” I chuckled, looking around. The
rest of the women in the tent had gone off for the night. Hopefully
they were somewhere drier, warmer, and less lonely. I closed my
eyes and turned over. The plastic on my bed crinkled.
Debbie laughed. “That’s why we’re getting paid the big bucks,
girl.”
“Yup.”

Victory: My Complete Surrender

It seemed like two minutes. But I’d been asleep for three hours when the phone rang. “Time get up. Time get up.” Click. Guess that was the wakeup call. I packed away my still-wet socks, and gathered my bags. We met in the small conference room, bleary yet nervous. “I want to emphasize that Ramadan is still in effect. You will not be allowed to drink, eat, or smoke in public. Ladies, you must cover your arms.” I look around: we all have our long sleeves on except Toni, the truck driver with the perpetual harem of men surrounding her and seemingly endless supply of NYFD 9/11 commemorative T-shirts. Figures.

Simon sits next to me, popping. I look at Jeff; he laughs as I motion for him to swap seats with Simon. “I’ll take your itineraries now. Please bring them to the front of the room. We also need your passport, travel letter, shot record, and military ID. Ladies, we will be inspecting your clothing to ensure that it is acceptable for Ramadan” Fashion police in Sharjah! I examine my shirt, asking Simon “Do you think the neckline is too low?” He shrugs. The process begins as we file one by one towards the front of the room. “When you have had your documents checked, go to breakfast. The bus will load at 5:30.”

Breakfast was a dizzying array of meats, pastries, cheeses, and faux western fare. Simon pulled aside the waiter, asking for something in French. The waiter disappeared. “Excellent croissants.” “Yeah, these are pretty good.” Simon jumps up and fills two napkins full. “Might be a good idea to take some food.” He drops one of the napkins on the floor, spilling six croissants in a crumbled mess onto the clean rug. The waiter returns with a different coffee pot and pours a thick, syrupy brown liquid into his cup. “Now this is coffee!” He carries on with the waiter, louder with each sentence, swapping between French and broken Arab. Finally, he hands him a napkin. The waiter writes something down, then disappears back to the kitchen.

“I got his email address. I made a friend!” “But Simon, why would you want a hotel waiters email address??” I am curious. “He said I could stay with his family if I came back.” Jeff bursts into laughter, “Simon, you wouldn’t really go to his house, would you?” Someone else shouts “I could just see that…” “Simon would be the dinner.” “…no, Simon would be the entertainment…” Simon shakes his head. “But I made a friend…”

Down in the lobby, we have piled our luggage near the door. The doorman looks nervously around. The morning prayer was now blasting from the mosque speakers. Jeff is still kidding Simon, “You asked him out, didn’t you.” “Jesus Christ!!” Simon responds in a loud voice. A man rushes toward him “Do not say that! Have some respect for where you are!” Simon cowers a bit. “Sorry.” The man disappears back into the crowd. I think it was the same guy that was hiding a bottle of water yesterday under his shirt when the rest of us were being chastised for drinking water in public. I say nothing.

The door is swung open, and three small men start loading what must be two tons of luggage onto the truck. Finally, the doorman looks around outside, then motions us to start loading the busses. Jeff swiftly gets lost in the line, leaving me with Simon. We load onto the bus, our laps filled with our computers and other carry-ons. The route is reversed back to the airport: the same careening ride, the same abrupt lane changes-only now in daylight so we can easily see how close we are imminent maiming.

We pull up to the curb, and a man hops onto the huge mound of black suitcases in the luggage truck. One by one, he starts throwing the suitcases to another man on the ground. Sometimes the man catches them, sometimes not. People are rushing in to grab their bags, but are being knocked out of the way by more flying bags. “Oww.” “Ughhhh.” “Jesus!” I see mine cocked and loaded on top of the truck, I dive forward just as it hits the ground, pulling with all my might to get clear before the next one lands on me. I see Simon’s huge bag next. “Uffff.” “Shit.” It has landed on his feet. “Aaarr.” I lean forward, helping him to drag it backwards. “Shit, what have you got in here?” “I have enough clean clothes for a month!” “Jeez, Simon…”

Inside, we are ushered through immigration and out to a gate. No one else is there. I look up at the flight board, but there is no information posted. There are no flight attendants, no customer service reps at our gate. And it is segregated-there is no foot traffic through this part of the terminal. I wander into the duty free store. I pick up some perfume, desperate to smell better than I do after traveling in the heat in my lovely long-sleeved Ramadan outfit. I spray towards my neck, and feel nothing. I spray again. Nothing. I look down to see that it has blobbed an oily, perfumey mess all over my shirt. At least I smell better.

The crowd grows at the gate. Still no airline posting or flight information. “Maybe they don’t want anyone to know?” Simon mumbles. I wondered if merely stating that we were American contractors would get us shot, but then dismissed the notion as obvious. Contractors were being shot every day now, and it was up to us to remain as un-American as possible. But that is never possible: our shoes are leather, our clothes are new, our hair is trimmed, we smell better than any other nationality in the world that I know of. Thank the Puritans for something, I guess. But we are American, and definitely look it. I sit down in an uncomfortable seat, suddenly aware that we are in a part of the world where people readily kill for what you are, for what you represent. We have no defense.

It is hot again, but my arms are covered. It is 7:30AM, and already 98 degrees. After an hour, I am thirsty. There is a small café nearby, but no one is in it. I slip off to the bathroom, thinking I can sneak a drink of water, but am shunned away by the cleaning man. “Down there.” He points me to the other end of the terminal, but there is no bathroom there. I lick my lips, dreaming of Diet Coke and a life far away. Defiant, I push my left sleeve up, then rethink it and slide my sleeve back down. It’s all wearing on me now.

An hour later a guard opens up the glass door to the tarmac. We line up and travel down a long, dark hallway to the outside. We load onto a bus and travel out to a plane ominously surrounded by police. There are no markings on the plane, nothing to identify it. No logo, nothing. One by one, we load onto the stairway and into the plane. We are not assigned seats, so I head for the exit row. The seat ahead of me is broken, and leans back in front of the door. I look up: the ceiling panel is cracked and stained yellow. Apparently smoking is still allowed in flight. Or maybe there has been no maintenance on this plane since smoking was eliminated two decades ago. Neither option would surprise me. The carpet on the floor is ripped; the signs at the front of the plane burned out a long time ago. The plane reeks of stale...something. I can’t quite place it. It is not good. There is no gasper air, and the hot interior has now passed 103 degrees. Is it OK to roll up my sleeves? I don’t wait to answer my own question.

Finally, the door is closed. The not too bilingual flight attendants attempt a safety briefing, but will not speak loud enough for any of us to hear them. They meekly run through the speech, but when they get to the part where they grab the seat belt buckle and demonstrate the oh-so-complicated movement of buckling it, one of them drops the buckle and does not pick it back up. Instead, she just skips over that section of instructions. Nope. No FAA here. Someone says something from the flight deck, but no one can decipher what they are saying. What? The weather in lovely downtown Baghdad is a cool 110 degrees today…enjoy your vacation? This is the flight to hell: please do not hesitate to assume the crash position at any time? Don’t bother with the seatbelts, it won’t matter anyway?

Out of the rear of the plane comes a smell. It seems vaguely curry-like, but I can’t quite place it. Curry and pate, kind of. No, curry and raisins? Curry and carrots! The cart rolls by, and the flight attendant whispers something at me. I can hear nothing, there is air leaking at the exit door. I look closely at the window and see drops of water leaking down the sidewall. I look back at her, and she is handing me a can of Sprite. At least it isn’t Fanta. I turn the lever and pull down my tray table, but it is broken on one end and sags into my lap. I lock it back up and pull down the middle one. She deposits a lunch gently on the table. It smells no better than it did when it was being warmed. I open the package, and out pops a slurry of a yellow egg-like substance filled with something brown. I suspect it is mushroom, but it is slimy and has a texture that certainly does not resemble any mushrooms that I know. I gingerly hold it up to my nose, attempting to decipher the ingredients. No luck. Finally I take a small bite. Now, I can likely stomach about anything, and by this point I am hungry, tired, and have eaten things I certainly would not have wanted to a month ago. But this has surpassed the most horrific foodstuff that has ever been served, and it remains completely unidentifiable. I spit it out, not even marshalling the pretense of manners, and wipe my lips off in complete disgust. I look at the large man sitting next to me. He is asking if there is another breakfast available. My eyes are wide. “Oh, I’ll eat anything.” He laughs. Apparently so.

Two hours later the plane suddenly lurched to the left. I’d heard about the ‘unusual approach’ into Baghdad. It was the stuff of new-hire folklore, passed down through the extensive rumor mill in orientation.

“Yeah, one guy said…” “Well, I heard…” “I know a guy that just came back, and he said…” We were all waiting, breathless, not sure whether we should fear it or just start finding the Lord right now. The plane straightens out for a moment, then turns again, this time more sharply. I look out the window, “My God, we’re right over the airport!” I searched my brain for some sort of flight pattern where the plane can land at an airport while still being at 2,000 feet. I could find nothing. “It’s called the military approach,” someone behind me said.

“What’s that?” “A corkscrew.” I looked across the aisle. Some were smiling, some were hunkered down deep into their seats. We turned left again. We were now perpendicular to the runway, and still turning. “Jesus Christ.”

The plane groaned and flexed with each turn. The stow bins rattled, their doors flexing and banging as the g forces increased. The ceiling panels moved, the curtains-or what was left of them-swung back and forth. The air leak at the exit door had now reached a shriek, and water dripped onto my leg a steady stream. The window in the door fogged over as I was pushed back into my seat by another turn. We were now going straight in, but we were still at 700 feet. OK! So this is it! All this, and this is where my life ends. For some pimply fuck up there with a few thousand hours of flight time and not-so-jaunty hat. Yes, he’s probably having a great ole time, slamming us to the side of the plane, then dropping straight out of the sky. Yee-haw. I look across the way at Toni the truck driver, and she is smiling some sort of goofey ‘yeah, man this is waaaaay cool’ smile on her harsh, too tanned face. Yup. We’re going to die.

The plane slams onto the tarmac and taxis across the runway. There are only two other planes at the airport: another white anonymous one, and a Jordanian Airlines. I look out the window at the terminal: Baghdad International. There is no need to pull into ramp since there is no other traffic. Wouldn’t matter anyway, since there is no power to move the ramps. We exit the stairway down into what feels to be an oven. The temperature is 101 degrees, and we head for the terminal entrance. Or at least what appears to be a doorway. A man with a gun looks at us suspiciously, and points us inside. We enter a nearly dark terminal and form three lines. There is no air conditioning, and the heat inside the terminal is beyond oppressive. I have never felt heat like it: a heavy blanket that makes it hard to breathe and even harder to move. Still, I cannot push my sleeves up until we are on American soil. That will be hours from now.

There are only a dozen employees still working at the terminal. We are told that they have not been paid in months. Three of them are inside plastic, bulletproof cages and appear to be the immigration officers. Not too much demand for their services these days. If you are not a contractor, you do not fly into Baghdad anymore. One by one we file up to them, and produce our passports and travel letters. He knows who we are, yet asks a few perfunctory questions. We are interrupted by an Iraqi man gesturing wildly, yelling at a man who appears to be the immigration manager. They seem to be trying to throw him out of the airport, but he is not leaving. Their yelling gets louder, and their arms are flailing mere inches from each other’s face. Finally, the man leaves. He will not be entering Iraq today. I will.

We are routed over to a dark area where the baggage belts are. But the belts are not running, and only a few lights are still on. I look around: the airport is frozen in time. This is an airport that just shut down, out of the blue. People escaped, fleeing from Americans descending with bullets in the darkness. There was life here then: flights, employees, travelers from all over. Now only three light bulbs are still on, baggage belts are still, electric doors no longer operate, the bathrooms are cordoned off and have not been cleaned in months. We can smell the stench from three hundred feet away, the heat baking the remains into a putrid gas stinging our eyes. Flight numbers from long gone flights remain on the baggage boards, ghostly reminders of when this was a functioning cog in the Iraqi machine.

We stand in front of the baggage belt, expecting it somehow to creek to life again. It does not. A half dozen Iraqis are bringing in all our baggage through a back door, and piling it into a heap on the floor. Our NBC bags, the ones with our biological suits, helmets, and flak jackets are brought in by small boys staggering under their weight. They are thrown onto the heap of suitcases. Just as we begin the formidable task of sorting out all the bags, the lights go out. We had heard rumors that there was a car bomb at the airport entrance the day before, and someone was killed. When the lights go out, the Iraqis run for the nearest door, leaving us in the middle of the baggage terminal in the dark, confused and not quite knowing what will come next. One man hits the floor, covering his head. I look around, no one else is moving. We stand, paralyzed, waiting for something to happen. Nothing does.

Thirty minutes later, the Iraqis return to the terminal. We are still in the dark, wide eyed and waiting for imminent death. Slowly, we begin to sort through the huge pile of black bags-hundreds of them. The NBC bags are all identical, and Jeff and I had the brilliant notion to mark our bags with orange duct tape so we could find them with ease. However, we had not planned on attempting to locate them in complete darkness, and our prodigious idea is thwarted. We are thrown into the heap of people, amidst the heap of luggage on the floor. Almost an hour later, we emerge with all our luggage. As we do, we are approached by a fleet of Iraqi baggage handlers who are now making a great living in the new Iraqi economy separating American contractors from their money by hijacking their bags and placing them on the four remaining luggage carts in Baghdad. I hand a dark, hairy man $2 for taking my bags-admittedly very heavy-to the curb. Simon hands another man a ten, and seems concerned that this amount is not sufficient. I explain, “Do you know that their average salary before we came here was around two grand?” Simon does some quick calculations. “I guess I overpaid…” Jeff shakes his head.

We are warned that we must quickly get on the bus, that remaining at the curb-or what is left of it after several car bombings-makes us a target. Our group rushes, but is caught in another luggage cluster next to the bus. Several Iraqis offer to help, for a price, but are shooed away. Thirty minutes later, we are loaded and on the road. None of us is sure of our destination, only that the bus is not armored and we are scooting along at a pretty good clip. There are huge holes in the roads, charred barriers, and no buildings with any glass left in the windows. The landscape is sparse, brown. What plants were once living are long dead now. Someone has sprayed “Texas rules” on a wall, punctuated by mortar holes. There are no people walking, no vehicles. It is simply a ghost town.

We weed along barriers, and approach a barrier. Two Marines approach, guns drawn. We hold up our military identification as they circle the bus. We are waved through, only to approach another checkpoint. Heading up a long road, and I finally understand our seemingly circuitous route has only been a large rectangle. Now on the opposite side of the airport, we move toward the entrance to Camp Victory, then up another long road. We are stopped by a traffic jam and get in line behind assorted strange looking military vehicles, purpose unknown to me. On the route, the curtains in the bus were closed to prevent anyone from seeing a bus full of Americans, but now the curious are opening them up to look around. We are on a road between a large field and a barrier wall. We sit for twenty minutes, then run out of things to talk about. The bus grows silent. Military vehicles are now speeding past, some turning around after getting to the front of the line, which we still can’t see. Finally a truck driver behind us gets out and walks forward. Ten minutes later he returns. “IED on the road.” Someone asks, “How long before they clear it?” The man in the front passenger seat says, “…could be hours.”

We stir. Our legs have long ago lost feeling. We’ve been stuck in this bus for nearly three hours, and someone finally suggests that we turn around and go back to the DFAC to get something to eat. The driver agrees and begins the maneuver. We return past the last checkpoint and make a turn. We stumble out of the bus and approach a tent. “I have no change left, I gave it all to the luggage man. Do we have to pay?” I laugh, “Simon, they feed us for free. Just pick out what you want.” We enter into a long hallway into a sea of khaki uniforms. “Jesus. They’re kids.” I can’t even remember being that young.

Back on the bus, we return to wait in line. Another hour and we finally move forward. Slowly, we creep up to another check point and at long last enter the base. VICTORY NORTH the sign proclaims, followed by insignia of several military groups. Looks like acronym city to me: it is all equally indecipherable. The bus passes by row after row of tents. Brown tents, rubber looking tents, canvas tents, white tents, yellow tents, large circus tents. We are told that there are thirty thousand here. We are too stunned to respond.

We pull up to a long rectangular building. “Gather your luggage over here. How many of you are destined for BIAP?” We had been tagged earlier that morning. Mine says ASA. Ten people were tagged with BIAP, and they move forward. “You come with us.” I gather with the ASA people. “Any of you destined to other locations, come over here.” Simon, Jeff, and I move toward the line. “You will wait in line and be issued a hooch for the night. Get your blanket and pillow, and check into your hooch. Report for a mandatory meeting at room 106 6AM tomorrow. Make sure you keep drinking water.” I am not sure what a ‘hooch’ is, nor why I would want to be issued one. But I am thirsty, and it is still very hot. I grab some water, finally push up my sleeves, and line up in yet another line. An hour later, I finally reach the office. I have consumed another liter of water, and now I have to go to the bathroom. But there are no restrooms in sight, and I’m not going to the back of the line. I look around the office. I turn to Jeff, “What’s a hooch, anyway?”

“It’s where you’ll be sleeping.” The sign on the door says ‘Transient Billeting.’ I’m not sure what that is, but I look around. There are piles of completely flat pillows and torn sleeping bags in wooden racks along the wall. The lady behind the desk yells, “Take a pillow and sleeping bag. Fill out your name and destination here.” She nods toward a clipboard. “Your employee number?” “Uh, I don’t think I have one.” For a moment she seems pissed, but says, “Use your social. You’ll be in A2.” I enter it in, and am waved out the door.

“Well, this is it. Do you want to go to the PX?” I ask Simon. “Sure, in an hour.” I head toward the pile of luggage. A fleet of tiny Iraqi boys follows me. The billeting lady yells across “The boys will help you, but I expect you to be good to them.” I’m not sure what that means, and briefly wonder how many American women have “been good to” these teenagers. I gave away my dollar bills at the airport, and have only a fifty left. But I have no intention of attempting to carry the dreaded NBC bag and knew that I’d have to hire them. I motion for the bags, and they pounce on them. The NBC bag is bigger than the guy that is carrying it, and the other bags are equally heavy. They struggle with them as I search for A2, my assigned hooch. I walk out to row after row of trailers. Identical white trailers, as far as the eye can see. It is hot, still over 100 degrees, and I am wandering around in the glaring sun looking for some sort of identification on these trailers. I can see none on the end where I am, so I walk a hundred yards to the other end of the row. Finally, a marking. I return with new purpose, thinking to myself that I am checking into a hotel room of sorts. A bed, some AC, some privacy after a very long day. I drag one of the suitcases up the staircase, no longer caring if it is even on it’s wheels. It is hot, and the suitcase is winning. I key the door, and throw it open. It takes a minute for my eyes to adjust…the room is dark, and there seems to be two sets of beds. The Iraqi boys follow me into the room, then wait expectantly. I search for my purse, and can find nothing but change. I turn my purse over onto the bed, and dozens of coins fall out. I motion for them to take them all, and they dive forward. I am sure that I have overpaid, but no longer care. I just want them to leave so I can be alone.

As they leave, something on the bunk stirs. I turn on the light. A voice from under some blankets asks “Hi, are you new?” “Uh, yeah.” Hmmm. Apparently we are double-bunked. “How long have you been here?” “Oh, I’ve been waiting for four days to get out. I just came back from R&R.” “You’ve been in this room for four days?” I am incredulous. It is barren, with only a ceiling light, a handmade wooden bunk, and a cot by the wall. I take the cot. “Be glad there isn’t a third person in here. I’ve been through six roommates in four days…” Hmmm. “Any advice?” I ask. “Yes, get yourself a transformer, a DVD player, and start treating your feet immediately for athlete’s foot. Treat ‘em twice a day. Also, take toilet paper with you when you go back to the airport. You’ll need it.”

She rolls back over as I begin to search for a T shirt. No Ramadan on the base, thankfully. I throw it on and head for the bathrooms. This is not what I had in mind. The bathroom trailer has twenty toilets. The shower trailer is next door, and has ten showers. Ugh. I’m dreading the morning rush hour. I feel crowded, violated. I want to find my contract and see if there is anything in it about having to share a room, a toilet, a bath. I suspect there is not, and suspect I am in for more of the same. I have no idea. An angry dialogue plays in my head: I can’t believe this. They must not know who I am. Who do I need to talk to to get a private shower? There’s no TV in my room-I can’t believe they expect me to stay there! The drone slips into the background as I realize that there is no one to complain to, that it doesn’t matter who I am, what I’ve done, where I’ve been. Nothing matters here, and we are all in the same boat. Our past successes are now meaningless, our advanced degrees earn us no more than they guy who has nary a GED. Nothing matters here. Nothing.

I meet Simon at the PX. “Do we have to pay to go in here?” I look at him incredulously, “No, Simon.” He walks up to a Marine, “Is it OK if we go in here?” I keep walking. The Marine looks confused, “Uh, yeah man.” I shake my head.

We have heard that this PX is the largest one at any of the bases, so we are eager to look around. With visions of Walmart dancing in our heads, we enter. Music is blaring, thumping. Crowds are gathered in front of rack after rack of CDs. We wander through, but are disappointed. “If this is a good PX, I wonder how bad the bad ones are?” There is a lot of stuff: T-shirts, shorts, camouflage outfits for every occasion, even camouflage chairs. Camouflage baby items to send home, “My Daddy is in Iraq” diaper covers, shirts, sweatshirts. USMC shirts, shorts, boxers, hats, umbrellas. Probably not a big call for umbrellas here. We settle on athlete’s foot powder and call it a night after finding a phone and making our first calls home. Yes, we have arrived in Baghdad. It is hot and ugly. I want to come home.

In the morning, I try to beat everyone to the shower, but there is one other woman there. I shyly undress and hop into the shower. There is no soap, and no towels. What was that he said? “They’ll furnish the soap and towels, don’t worry about that…” So here I am, drying off with a T-shirt and cussing my beloved. Different war, honey. There’s no personal supplies in this one. They’ll give me a hundred pound flak jacket that I can’t lift, but not a stinkin’ bar of soap and a towel.

Next on the list: drag my suitcases up to the bus loading zone. There is no time for breakfast, and we realize we have had nothing but water for two days. Again, we load everything on the bus for the ride back to the airport. We hear a rumor that yet another car bomb has gone off at the airport, so everyone is nervous. No one will confirm or deny: it is a trend that holds to this day.

Once at the airport, we are held on the bus until everything is unloaded. “Exit quickly and enter the building as rapidly as possible. If you drop something, do not stop to pick it up. We will get it for you.” Simon looks at me with wide eyes. The line begins as we grab our bags and file into the terminal. We are now at a different end of the terminal than we were yesterday. There are a few more lights on, but little activity. There is no departure information, no indication of any activity at all. We line up at security, which consists of three robed women and a man at an ancient baggage X-ray machine. There are no signs warning of prohibited items. There are only two walk through X-ray machines, and no requirement to remove shoes or to be wanded. I walk through, and am waived over to the ticket counter.

Two women struggle with the processing. We are told that they are new on the job, that all the people here are new on the job. The old airport employees had not been paid in months, some were killed in various car bombings and their colleagues never returned to work. So now only the very brave were working, but the turnover rate was very high. The ticket counter women could not perform even the simplest task without additional instruction-I had heard that after years of Saddam’s rule most people (almost two generations) had grown up in an environment where even simple decisions were impossible for them to make. This was living proof: “Mimi, what tag do I put on this bag?” “Mimi, what do I write for the destination?” “Mimi, where do I place the tag?”

A man from security approaches me. “Yours?” pointing to Simon’s large suitcase. I shake my head no, and point back to Simon, apparently caught in security for excessive change in his pockets. I move forward towards the gate. Simon is opening his very large suitcase and the entire line has ground to a complete halt. Security removes the offending spray deodorant.

At the gate, I sit in a lime green chair. The rug is lime green also, as if the room is stuck in 1972. Yeah. Flower power. There are arches across the ceiling, with free floating tubular lights hanging from chains. But all the lights are burned out now, and the overall effect is one of complete gloom. I can smell something foul, but am unable to place it. I look behind me, and there is a woman selling some sort of velour pictures of mosques and some lukewarm foodstuff from a crockpot. I decide to stick with water. After another half hour, I am looking for a bathroom. Someone points me toward one side of the building, and I enter a completely tiled room. It has two stalls. Fine, familiar enough. But there is a raised area on the end of the row of stalls. Cautiously, I approach. There is a hole in the floor, covered with excrement. The walls are covered. The tile is covered. There is a sink hose coming out of the wall, but the water was shut off long ago. My empty gut wrenches, and I recoil in Puritan horror. I grab a stall, and now understand why my room-mate told me to bring toilet paper. I thank God I did. And I thank my Puritan predecessors for making me a neurotic American. Something about this whole crapping in a hole just doesn’t seem right…

A man in a filthy uniform approaches and silently opens the door outside. We are lead across the tarmac and under an ancient plane. I try to place it…is it Russian? Yes, it looks Russian. But it doesn’t look like anything I have ever seen. Again, no markings on the plane. There is a rickety stairway in the rear of the plane, someone motions for us to crawl up the stairs. Simon and Jeff have put on their flack jackets for some reason, and I wonder if I have missed some sort of announcement. Jeff, ex-Marine, looks completely at home in his jacket, and now has gone into military mode. He wears a pair of khakis, black turtleneck, and mirrored sunglasses. The flak jacket, to him, is merely a fashion statement. He is GI Joe personified; or more correctly, a Chesty Puller incarnate. ‘Action Jeff to the rescue. He bends, he fires, he fights off entire enemy countries with his bare hands.’ The boxed set is coming out this Christmas. Simon, on the other hand, is stumbling uncomfortably in his jacket and tailored shirt, struggling with the Velcro closures and whining about security taking his deodorant. I sense he is the last one I want to be next to if gunfire were to erupt.

A rickety stair is extended from the rear of the plane. We gingerly step onto it, one person at a time so it doesn’t depart the aircraft. Once inside, we are slammed with the smell of mold, cigarettes, and sweat. The smell is so overpowering, I reflexively pull backward and pause a moment. I look up, and a youngish man with very bad teeth and even worse body odor, motions me onto the plane. I hold my breath and duck down. Inside, I move toward the front of the seats. Simon follows. Once seated, I look around. The seats are torn, the floor rugs are frayed. There are no window shades, and the signs are in Russian.

Once everyone is seated, our smelly ‘flight attendant’ quickly walks through and distributes juice. The plane is an oven, there is no air conditioning, and we eagerly take the juice. Expecting him to come back with some sort of food, I wait to open my juice. He never returns. This is apparently not the snack flight. Gotta talk to my travel agent…

Two men join the flight attendant outside near the side door behind the cockpit. For some reason, they do not want to load the luggage into the rear of the plane. Instead, they start piling the luggage in a mound behind the cockpit door. It is not restrained, and as they continue to pile it on, the top luggage starts falling back into the passenger compartment. They quickly run out of room, and decide to start moving the luggage into the first row of the passenger seats. The NBC gear bags weigh 70 pounds a piece, and all of them are piled together on one side of the plane. I do some quick calculations, and decide we are going to die.

After ten minutes of what appears to be cussing in Russian, the three men pound the door closed. With a thunk, more luggage falls to the floor. Engine 1 starts up with a blast of black smoke, and the vibration shakes the rack above my head. No stowbins on this plane. No shades on the windows, either, just someone’s homemade curtains on a rod. I’m pretty sure the parts were never certified. The other engine starts up. There is no safety briefing, safety is irrelevant on this flight and we all know it. I look around at the interior, and am amazed that the plane is still flying. Nothing seems to work,, and everything seems to be taped together. We taxi off down the runway, and I am hoping that we go to Al Asad first since this flight will be making three stops. I figure the faster I get off, the less pressurization cycles I have to survive. Or the plane has to survive…I look out at the engine and the cowl is vibrating violently. I picture it ripping off, flying into the prop, and taking out the left side of the airplane. I eye the prop, looking for bad nick repairs. I cringe as we start our corkscrew up and out of the airport, and wait for the rip of metal as the plane disintegrates. So far, so good.

An hour later I decide to journey to the restroom. I tentatively look behind me. I can see no signs, no friendly indicator that someone is occupying the restroom. No signs even telling me that there is a restroom. But I get up anyway, and walk to the back of the plane. There is a cargo net, and what looks to be a submarine door hatch that I presume is the bathroom. I twist the lever and enter. It is small, cramped, and the Russian writing for “no smoking” was scratched off eons ago. The light bulbs are burned out, and there are cigarette ashes in the sink. There is no toilet paper, a disturbing trend. I exit the bathroom and smell smoke. Fire! Fire!! Oh, no. The loader and the ‘flight attendant’ are behind the cargo net smoking and flipping through an electronics catalogue. There are no restrictions on smoking on Scare Air.

Two stops later, and three juices, I make a return trip to the bathroom. It is occupied, and the ‘flight attendant’ motions me to sit down. I do, and idly ask him about the airplane. He says it is an Antonov 24. I say, “a 124?” He replies, “Nyet. 24.” “When was it made?” I begin to reel, to swoon with terror as he answers “Made 1965.” Yes, 1965. This plane is thirty-five years old. I didn’t know you could fly something that old. I didn’t know that an airplane that old could still fly. I’d never heard of anyone flying something that old. I’d never read about any guidance for flying something that old. I only know of the FAA’s “Aging Aircraft program,” but that is for planes that are only twenty years old. I picture the skin ripping away with the next corkscrew approach, the engines imploding due to severe metal fatigue. What was that I read about Russian maintenance being the worst in the world? Or that maintenance was sacrificed because the economy in Russia was shit? I returned to my seat, certain of our imminent death. I am resigned now, defeated.

The corkscrew begins for the sixth time, and we have reached Al Asad. I peer out of the window as we land…it is brown, flat, and extends forever. Once on the ground, the luggage is thrown on the tarmac. A bus pulls up. “Gather your suitcases and load them in the back of the bus.

Welcome to Al Asad.” We again wrestle with the NBC gear, and lift it overhead through the back window. When the last suitcase is loaded, we grimly file onto the bus. As we drive, the HR woman points out the sights: “That’s where that car bomb went off.” Simon’s eyes widen, “Car bomb?” “Yeah, the one that killed 11 Iraqis lined up at the gate waiting to apply for the Iraqi police training.” No one says anything.

The driver reaches for a radio, “Roadrunner, roadrunner, coming into tent city.” We stop in front of a container that has been transformed into an office, and get out. A man walks up, “Hi, I’m Dick, the head of HR. Let’s have everyone take a seat on the cot.” We line up and take a seat. He begins a speech of sorts, what to do, what not to do, make sure to drink four liters of water a day, blah blah. I tune out. He drones on, and I look around. Jesus. It is flat, brown, ugly. Even uglier than Texas. I am tired. I want to go home.

We are taken across the road to another container. Again, we fill some forms and are given a blanket and pillow. Dick takes me aside, “Follow me, I’ll take you to the ladies tent.” “OK.” We approach a dilapidated circus tent, “Go inside, find an empty bunk, and put your things on it.” I enter a dark tent and walk to the back. There is one empty cot, no mattress, no drawers, no shelf. Just a cot.

Welcome to Al Asad.

Same World, Different Planet

The phone rings. I clear away the empty shot glasses and answer.
Simon is clucking again. Pop, pop, click, pop. He is in a cab riding
around somewhere looking for a bank. The taxi driver speaks no
English, and seemingly is holding Simon hostage. Jeff returns and
sees me on the phone. “I’m not here.” I flash him a pleading look,
begging for a way out of Simon’s increasing panic. Jeff laughs.
Three hours later, Simon reappears.

“I hope you didn’t pay him,” Jeff scoffs. Simon is breathless,
indignant: “He would not let me out of the cab. He took me south
of downtown and would not let me out of the cab! I had to call the
police!” Simon is wide-eyed, and nearly spitting. Jeff and I look at
each other: this will be a long night. “Do you have anything that we
could give him?” Jeff asks. I laugh. He’s serious.

The rest of the group is clearing security. One by one, they join us
in the lounge. What started out as one beer and some wings is now
a full fledged party. Our last gasp, you might say. We are too
convivial, too familiar. Each one of us is wondering why we are
doing this, but no one will address it. Instead, we drink. It seems
like the right thing to do.

I nurse a too-cold glass of cheap wine as someone tells of his wife in
Wyoming, another of his ex-wife in Texas; of dreams of buying new
cars, new motorcycles, new women. Inevitably, Jeff tells Marine
stories. I drift off as he begins with another camel joke. Simon
nervously glances at his watch, stating that he “…doesn’t want to
get fired for drinking.” “Yah, right” is the unanimous response.
“Simon,” Jeff taunts, “you can’t get fired for drinking until we’re
in country.” “No, no, they said ‘no drinking.’” Pop, pop, click, pop.
Simon rises in a huff and walks off, as if he can be fired for merely
associating with us. “You’ve got something to give him, right??”
Someone trips backward over my foot, “Yeah, we gotta drug him.”

Finally, the boarding call crackles. As we board, I glance up at the
Door 1L manufacturer’s plate: yup. Boeing. Great. I strain to read
the plate, but can’t quite get enough information to figure out if
this was the plane. You know, the one that we forgot to bolt the
tail onto. Or whatever the hell else it was that we chose not to do.
I began to flash back to the fights: Mike threatening to “flatten my
head.” Or his crew so nicely waiting until I crawled inside the
vertical fin to start riveting the skin next to my head. “Sorry. We
didn’t know you were in there…” Or maybe this is the one with the
contaminated hydraulics. Or the one where we used the T2024-O
metal to fasten the sections together. Or the one where the
Supervisor said that the Quality Procedures were only a
“guideline.” Or the one where the inspector bought off all the
electrical tests without anyone doing them. Or the one…..I catch
myself as a tear is in my eyes. I look down so the very stern, very
sturdy looking Dutch flight attendant won’t see. As I take my seat,
Jeff is already asking for drinks. It’s 9PM, and we’ve been up since
4AM.

I’d always heard that KLM had legendary service. Well, it’s a bit
tattered around the edges these days. Yes, the drinks were all free
(South African Chardonnay for me); yes, they brought hot towels
before each meal. But the food seemed familiar: yes! Yes, it
certainly seemed like the food that United used to serve before
they went into peanut and pretzel mode. Chicken that is a little too
rubbery, salad that is just a bit too cold, bread that has been
warmed in a microwave and is rock hard by the time it is served.

I watch the flight tracker as we make our way up through Texas and
fly right over McAlester. Northward across Kansas and Nebraska,
South Dakota. I dream that I can make a left turn at North Dakota
and just go back home. I picture the plane turning on the screen,
and if sheer will could have made it turn, we would have. But
instead we make a wide right turn and head across Canada, out to
Iceland, and across the pond. After two TV shows, one boring
movie, the proverbial “snack” and a meal, and five drinks, I
attempt to sleep. Jeff moves to the front of the plane, and
continues slamming vodkas. Simon is passed out cold. I know
nothing about how he got that way. I snap a picture. Tomorrow
we’ll be in Amsterdam.

It looks wet, cold. A lot like the NW. If you really didn’t look too
hard, you would think it was. I turn backward trying to see around
the wing: puddles, green, cars on a highway. But the sign posts are
different, and the houses are small. There are farms, animals,
puddles. Dikes, barns, puddles. Bicycles, busses, puddles. Glorious
puddles! After three weeks in hot and humid Houston, I want to
dance in the rain and FEEL COLD! This must be Amsterdam.

Our connection is short, just an hour. But I have time to visit the
gift shop, and see what I presume annoys the locals (just as the
endless array of “Sleepless in Seattle” t shirts annoy me at Sea-
Tac): shelf after shelf of blue and white Dutch girls and clogs. Clogs
with chocolate in them, clogs with fruit, clogs with tea, clogs with
biscuits. Dutch girls kissing each other, bent at the waist, with frilly
skirts skimming their ubiquitous clogs. I look around at the
salesperson: thankfully she is not dressed in the same outfit.

The waiting room is cramped. When the flight is finally called, we
board yet another Boeing plane, this time a 77. Well, for all the
pink plazas and morning “working together” circle jerks, it looks
pretty good. The ceiling panels a curvy, providing lots of headroom.
Yup, this was the plane that they designed all by computer. None of
that old manual crap like the 47. Nope. Never mind the panic when
the all-CATIA parts didn’t quite line up, or that they accidentally
omitted the Class III mockup. Oh, well. If they got a plane right, I
guess this would be it. I smile. Maybe it was better I never worked
that line.

We played a selection of CD’s from the plane’s entertainment
system. We watched the flight tracker. We watched a selection of
movies and TV shows that we could pick ourselves. Finally, a real
passenger’s plane! Ultimately, my exuberance was tempered by our
imminent landing: no one was drinking any more…we had settled
into nervous anticipation. At least in Amsterdam, they still used
English letters. By the time we get to Dubai, we won’t even have
the same alphabet.

Time is a funny thing. Everything is so neat in the US, so arranged,
so orderly. But crossing the world begins to test reality. Day
becomes night, night blends into day, and the endless hours seem
to melt it all into one messy splash in my ever-present, very
organized Outlook program. I no longer know what day it is, nor
what time it is back home. I struggle with even the easiest
computations, and still can reach no conclusion. It is as if I can hold
onto my old world if I can just adjust my watch to keep west coast
time. But I know it is too late for that. As we exit the plane into a
huge, bright hallway, we are stunned to see the opulence of the
airport. Giant palm trees are in the center arboretum, lit up like
Christmas. Modern stores surround us, still open at this hour. The
clock says it’s close to midnight, but the airport is full. Women in
abayas whisk silently past the Maserati’s and Bentley’s that line the
halls. The rich, the poor, Eastern, Western: it is all jumbled here. I
reach to roll up my sleeves, and remember that it is Ramadan: I am
forbidden to reveal my arms in public. And we cannot drink, eat,
smoke, and God know’s what else.

As we make our way to immigration, there are armed guards
roaming the hallway. I remember the National Guard at Sea-Tac
following 9/11 and how piqued we Americans were when our public
spaces suddenly seemed under an omnipotent military-like
presence. I watch the officers: short, dark, angry. Pacing. We are
not in Kansas any more, Mommy. Men in ghotras line the
mezzanines overlooking immigration.

The line moves slowly, and I am hot. It is midnight now, and still
over 90 degrees. A passenger steps across a yellow line, and the
officer rushes to point her back in line. She drags her ripped
suitcase and shuffles back, saying nothing. He catches my eye as I
watch, and seems suspicious that I am watching him. I look down.
I’m hot. And I want to push up my sleeves.

As I’m called, I approach the bulletproof glass. My bags are in my
right hand, and I hand him my passport from my left hand. He
pauses, and does not reach for it. Perplexed, I put down my laptop
and switch hands. He whisks it from my right hand, eyeing me
sideways. “Origin?” the man inquires. For a moment, I am
confused, and fear that the wrong answer will get me hauled off to
the back room, where I’ll be beaten, thrown into a dark cell, and
forgotten forever. Does he mean origin of this flight? Or the origin
of the original departure from the states? After an uncomfortable
hesitation, where I feel his eyes burning into me, I croak
“Houston.” “Go ahead” he barks. I breathe a sigh of relief, start
walking ahead, and push up a sleeve. “Hey!” Simon is looking at
me, then at my arm. I have committed the ultimate offense: my
arm is exposed in public. “But does that count after dark?” I don’t
really want to hear the answer. I push my sleeve down again, and
the sweat is pouring off my face. We are herded outside, after
dropping off the NBC gear, and wait in a hot corner underneath the
parking garage. It is even hotter outside, with no ventilation and a
hundred taxis idling in front of us. I look at the others: we are all
drenched, our hair still looking like we’d been asleep for days, our
clothes wrinkled and wet with sweat. We smelled no better.

“He wouldn’t take my passport?” I complain. “I handed it to him,
but he just stared.” Simon replies “Which hand did you use? You
can’t hand anything to them in your left hand…that is the one they
use...to clean themselves.” “Oh.” I struggled to wrap my mind
around the concept.

Men above us are working on a scaffold replacing lights. It’s well
past midnight, and I idly wonder why they are working so late. It
then occurs to me that this is the coolest part of the day. I wipe the
sweat off my face, again.

“Three lines please!!” The woman barks. She is large, sweaty, and
very tired looking. And apparently cranky. “I said three lines.
Straighten up!!” We shuffle, dragging all our bags, crashing our
carts into each other in what could pass as some sort of airport
roller derby. A small, dark man comes by and hands each one of us
an envelope containing a key and a number. A second man comes
by and chalks the number onto our bags, then starts loading the
bags onto a large, open sided truck. It bears an awful resemblance
to the truck that the Jim Jones gunmen of Guyana rode into the
airport before they whacked Leo Ryan and company. We are taken
up to a parking lot, line by line, and placed on a bus.

Through the streets we careen. It looks much like what we had seen
on TV: small storefronts, Arabic everywhere. Someone asks the bus
driver what the speed limit was: he replies that there is none.
There are few street signs, and no advisory signs that I can see
anywhere. He comes up on another car fast, then veers into the
other lane. I am fairly certain we are going to die, but I am so tired
it seems like a good option.

We reach the hotel. It is tall, and nice looking from the outside. We
are taken to a meeting room, and “the process” is explained to us.
It is 5:30AM before we are allowed to go to our rooms. We are told
to rest, we have another meeting at 4PM.

The lobby was misleading. The room is a throwback to the 50’s: the
headboards are nailed to the wall, there are no electrical outlets in
the bathroom. There is mold growing under the sink, and a
clothesline in the tub. I glance at the mold, and consider-just for a
moment-that it might be better to just do a complete wash down in
the bidet. But it comes with no instructions: do you sit forward or
backward?

By the time I fall into bed, the sun is rising. I look out the dirty
window, and see a world in shades of brown, tan, buff. Buildings
are low, hunkered down against the blaring sun above. Stone
buildings for the most part: no shiny skyscrapers, no hint of
modernism. Nothing that resembles anything I have seen before.

Mostly, no green, no blue, no color at all. We have transitioned to a
world of dust, parched russet as far as the eye can see. I recoil,
physically pained by the striking sparseness. I return to the TV, idly
flipping the channels. There are only five. Two are Hindi. It’s time
to sleep.

Following the meeting, we are again warned that it is Ramadan,
and cautioned that the women cannot be seen in short sleeved
shirts. Those in T-shirts reach for a jacket; a bizarre sight for the
temperature outside is approaching 100. One man carrying a water
bottle is told to return it to his room. We are then taken to dine in
a shuttered off area where we cannot be seen by Muslims. The
hotel has allowed us “westerners” to eat prior to the Muslim iftar
each night, but we must be cordoned off from all sight and smell of
Muslim hotel occupants. The shutters are closed by young men who
drift in and out of the dining room without speaking.

Following dinner is our first opportunity to venture out: two by two
we sign out of the hotel and cross the street to a crowded village of
Indian storefronts. The fact that it is an Indian section of town
indicates that the hotel is in the poor side of town. We are actually
in the Emirate of Sharjah, a far cry from the modern city of Dubai.
Sharjah is more conservative, and far less westernized than it’s
neighbors, and this, too, is a deliberate move to keep us out of the
bars (and out of trouble) that are available in Dubai.

We cross the street and enter into a never land of narrow, winding,
unmarked streets. Simon looks up at the street sign, “I know where
we are.” “Are you sure that you can find your way back??” I ask.
“Sure.”

We head off. It does not take long to get lost in this maze, and I ask
Simon if he knows where we are. “I am lost. I am horrible with
directions.” Pop, click, pop. Stunned, I look around. All the alleys
look the same. All the storefronts look the same. “Do you know
what street the hotel was on?” “No.” My anger flashes, “I thought
you were looking at the street sign!” “I was, but I always get lost.”
Pop, pop, click, pop.

We move forward. I am determined that if I keep turning left we
will somehow wind up back at the hotel. But I don’t know that for
sure, since we are no longer walking along perpendicular streets. I
take charge, “This way.” Simon follows. Great. Lost within three
minutes of leaving the hotel. So much for Simon, my little world
traveler. So much for Simon and his five languages. So much for
Simon and his damn OCD. They will never find us. Our flight will
leave tomorrow without us. They will use us as a cautionary tale
back in Houston, I can just hear it: “…we lost two employees
because of their own stupidity. They took off into a slum in a third
world country and were never heard from again. Be aware of your
surroundings!”

It is getting dark, and some of the stores that were closed are now
opening following iftar. Merchandise is piled in front of the stores in
heaps: TV’s from the 50’s missing antennas, holes in the tubes,
covered in a thick layer of dust. I silently wonder if they are moved
inside when it rains, but decide that this is a stupid American
question. Plumbing supplies, lamps-outdoor, indoor, it doesn’t
seem to matter. To me, it is beyond junk: I have thrown away stuff
that was in better shape than the goods that they were selling.
Tubing, silk fabric, “silk like” fabric, denim pants wider than any I
saw in the 70’s. Plastic shoes from Russia. Dishes from China. Car
parts from Turkey. Food carts squeeze in between the jumble of
junk: something that looks like fried vegetables, some kind of meat
in sauce, a hunk of meat on a dirty kabob stick. And Fanta
everywhere! Fanta is definitely the drink of choice: orange cans in
lines above the food carts, orange cans in windows beneath signs
screaming ‘Fanta. Sale!’ Simon and I venture into a grocery store,
and press in between the aisles. A man turns up the stereo,
screaming into the customer’s face, “See, velly goo. Velly goo.”

Simon shrieks, “Baca! Baca!” I reach back to my now limited
memory of Spanish, and cannot place the word. “What?” “Baca.
Have you ever had these?” Pointing to the candy aisle, he is
practically jumping up and down. “Baca. Baca!”

I wander off to spices. Row after row of strange concoctions, some
with little labeling. Guess there’s no FDA or anything to worry
about. I lift, and smell, and shake little containers of Masala curry,
coriander, fenugreek, coffee beans, more curry. Not too many US
exports here, but I laugh when I see them; this is apparently the
graveyard of all the banned US items: Coca-Cola still has the rip off
tab here, and nearly all of the lotions, deodorants, and other items
are packaged in pressurized spray cans. So much for the
environment. But I guess you have to have trees to protect, and
there are certainly none here.

We wander back out to the street, Simon clutching two packages of
Baca close to his breast. I step over a smelly river that looks to be
urine. There are more people on the street now, but none are
female. I walk slowly, taking it all in, but I feel an increasing
presence watching me. When I look at the shops, I notice that the
men exit their shop to watch me walk by. Some are eating now, but
they put down their food and silently walk toward me. As I walk by,
they stare, and they don’t stop until I am out of sight. My arms are
covered, and I have not had anything to drink or eat in public. Yet
they stare. I wonder if something is hanging out that shouldn’t be,
or if I have broken some sort of religious law that I know nothing
about. They say that ignorance is no defense: I can be jailed
without question for violating laws I know nothing of. I begin to
worry. I can’t remember if I am supposed to meet their stares or
look away. I look away. Some of them are following me now.

My left turn plan ultimately leads me back to the main street, and
the hotel, thankfully, is in sight. I nearly drop to the ground
thanking Allah myself. I spot another from our group: he has his
laptop strapped across his chest, and a butter knife for protection. I
am mystified. We pass a mosque, and hear the prayers blasting
through the neighborhood. The shoes are lined neatly in rows across
the dirty steps. We walk on, not sure if we can even look at the
mosque without inviting irate stares from the locals. By the time
we get back to the hotel, I am drenched in sweat, and exhausted
again. Nothing makes sense in this world. I miss home.

Returning to my room, I drop on the bed, and numbly turn on the
TV. The only English language show is an old rerun of “The
Simpsons.” I wonder if Marge and Homer have now become our
international ambassadors. Great. Marge, Homer, Ashcroft, Bush,
Phyllis Schafly. Visions of Clinton playing the saxophone flick
through my sinking consciousness. Monica, OJ, Kobe Bryant, Michael
Jackson, Britney Spears, Gerry Spence. What is America?
I drop into a fitful sleep, no longer knowing what day it is, what
time it is, where I am. I feel drugged, but am not.

Tomorrow we are bound for Baghdad.

Open the Pod Bay Doors, Hal

In the surreal world I now inhabit, war is good. No mention of death
here, other than the reluctant nod to the life insurance booth
parked outside the cafeteria. Yes, they are open Tuesday through
Thursday: “no war zone exclusion” and “easy payroll deduction”
draw forth the fretting few suddenly considering their mortality. No
mention of whether the Iraqis like our occupation, no mention of
anything other than how lucky they are to have us there to teach
them how to run their world in a manner acceptable to the
American government. The project briefing begins not with a tone
of serious reflection, but with blaring music. “God Bless the USA”
screams from the speakers, timed to coincide with a rousing
PowerPoint presentation of photos of 9/11: firefighters putting
down the flag, dust covered firefighters, firefighters removing their
masks, caskets of firefighters. But interspersed are a couple of
photos of mushroom clouds quickly jumped over by the presenter.
Nope. No need to mention those darned WMD’s again.

The fact that “our mission” has morphed into the purely political is
as irrelevant to the presenter as it is to his audience…after all,
there is no need to pretend that we are there for anything more
than the money. Industrial mercenaries we are, every last one of
us. There is no doubting our greed it is the one thing we all have in
common. It is a simple fact of American life that if you throw
enough money at a person, they can be made to perform any task.
Even the ugly ones, the unpopular ones, the ones that are morally
repugnant. Me? I am intelligent, educated, politically aware, but I
cheer with the rest of them as I overcome each obstacle in this
process. “The Apprentice” has nothing on me: this is a difficult,
three week job interview that-we are reminded hourly-can be cut
short for nearly any reason. Test positive for drugs, alcohol, or
contrary opinions? Gone on the next flight out. Done. Finito. Hope
you didn’t already begin to spend the money. I suspected there
would be a test. Of endurance, of patience, of conformity, of the
ability to tolerate every personal and legal indignity. And it has
been interminable lines, confusion, anxiety. The first night began
with a sweaty wait at the airport following a too-long plane ride
next to a fellow mercenary. He’d married a wife he now hated,
survived cancer, and surrendered body parts to Alaska salmon
fishing. Older and presumably wiser, he now embarked on this job…
more to escape the shrieking wife than to collect riches, as he is
confident that she will disappear with it all by the time he gets
back. Luggage is everywhere on the bus. It is in the rear, the
overheads, the middle aisle way, in people’s laps. We were
instructed to bring little, but it is hard to let go of those details of
our lives. We are nomads now, identified only by what travels with
us. For me, it is a backpack and a small Travelpro. I wanted nothing
of this new life to contaminate the old. Upon arrival, we were
issued temporary color coded badges. I, and my fellow travelers are
lime green. The week before us is orange. The colors were finally
explained to me by a nice fellow limey who was kicked out of the
process and sent home to resolve some criminal harassment charges
that she was unaware had been filed against her. She now returns,
is reassigned to the limey group, and is nice enough to show me the
ropes. Criminal charges or no, she will be going as HR. She’s never
worked as HR, and doesn’t know why they placed her in this
position. We share a dinner table after a confusing sign-in process. I
notice that social order has already been established: for the most
part, the orange badges do not eat or talk to the limeys. It is
humorous that even knowing the hell ahead of us once we land in
Iraq we must still adhere to our pecking order, the function of
which still remains a mystery. We are assigned to a hotel, and I
quickly realize that hotel assignment is also related to pecking
order. The Wyndham is at the top, and is generally reserved for
those nearest to departure. For me, at the bottom, it is the Palace
Inn. It is new, has suspiciously stained bedding and a creepy front
desk man. I am told by the bus driver that this hotel is “special.”
He claims it has sparkled ceilings and a black light on the wall. I
refuse to believe him, thinking that this is but one of the many
hazings I must endure in this process. When I check in I am amazed
to discover it is all true….but at least there are some nice clouds
painted on the ceiling to accompany the sparkle and black light.

Monday starts bright and early after a refreshing three hours of
sleep, punctuated by jet takeoffs and jake brakes from the freeway
mere footsteps from my door. Our mission is applauded voraciously,
and we are dispatched to a round of check ins. Line after line, hour
after hour. We are fed, watered, and sent to the next processing
station. Passports, backgrounds, medical, ad infinitum. It takes
nine hours, then another meeting. We are not bussed back to our
hotels until well after 10 PM, easily an exhausting 18 hour day. We
are warned to rest up, for tomorrow is WABI day, followed by
Medical screening. More on that later. Medical processing is one of
those things that become legendary in circumstances like this. The
orange badges pass on stories of people being carted off in the
middle of drug testing, of catheters being placed in those who
claim they can’t give a sample, of those who completely break
down after hours of humiliation. So I try to rest, but find that the
creepy front desk man is partying outside my doorway with his very
large, very loud Indian family. I think I smell curry. Yes, curry. As
11PM approaches, the children are merrily playing on the stairway
and saris are blowing in the humid breeze. My anger flashes, but I
say nothing. They speak no English. Eventually I drift off into a
troubled, broken sleep. We have been fasting for nearly twelve
hours by the time we reach medical. Due to the size of the group,
my group spent the morning at the passport office. Loaded on yet
another bus, delivered via freight elevator to a special opening of
the State Department office. After swearing that I was who I said I
was, I was off to drug testing. Not sure of the correlation, if any.

Two by two, we pee. An officer arrives, along with the “short bus.”
I am told that it is a very bad thing to be hauled away in the short
bus. The process is not tight, with little control over water access,
but at least it is over relatively quickly. Only two hours. We are
then delivered to a large WWII hangar with portables inside. Giant
fans blow the hot air around: it is 95 degrees today. My fingers
tingle: the kind of numb, cold tingle that you get right before you
pass out. The process begins with musical chairs as we slowly
advance to the BP check. I deliberately breathe, trying to ensure
that my already high BP does not shoot through the roof before I’ve
even advanced to the second station. X-ray, spirometry, ECG,
audio, visual. It is true that people pass out during this process, and
that more than a few of us are medically disqualified. Those that
are shuffle to the end trailer to have a “medical consult” with a
“doctor.” Most emerge heads down, lost, confused. For some
reason, I am not disqualified, even following a questionable ECG.

By the end of the day they have drained out seven vials of my
blood, taken genetic swabs of my DNA (to identify me if I die),
spent considerable time standing in a trailer with eight nearly
naked men, and stripped in front of women I’ve barely met. We are
all exhausted, hot, hungry, and questioning why we came here.

Over lunch, new found friends discuss what they’re going to do with
“all that money.” It is a recurring theme. Meetings again take us
past 10PM, and we are up the next morning by 4AM. Time is
becoming irrelevant. I didn’t know it then, but that was deliberate.

Wednesday is filled with briefings, training, waiting. We have now
become more confident: we are ready for NBC. If the WABI didn’t
get us, NBC will. The WABI? The Orwellian psychological test that
became the first stumbling block for 42 of us. It is filled with
questions of dubious validity, and rumors abound as we wait for
results. We are told that we will immediately be escorted off the
premises if we do not pass. We are told that last week ten police
officers were present to ensure that no one went crazy upon losing
their slot from failing the WABI. I look around: no cops that I can
see. We gather, all 450 of us, and the rather grim head of HR begins
the names. It appears to be in alphabetical order, and when Becker
is read, I finally breathe. We don’t know what it means, nor are we
ever told, but we are aware that those of us remaining in the room
have passed another significant hurdle. I debate my answer of
‘agree’ to “I don’t enjoy skydiving or bungee jumping.” I clearly
enjoyed skydiving when I did it. But, at this stage, bungee jumping
does not sound like something I would do: I would likely be killed by
the recoil of my rather, uh, pendulous breasts. So is that a yes or
no? That was the easy one….

When the WABI failures are removed, we spontaneously cheer. It is
clearly now a game show, a competition, and this is but another
audition. The prize? Money. Money beyond your wildest dreams. Pay
off the mortgage, send the kids to college, buy a bright, shiny
Dodge Ram. From the talk, anything is possible. I wonder if any of
these people realize how easily it slips out of your hands…

NBC is an uncomfortable test of gas masks and very hot rubber
suits, overshoes, gloves, and hoods that completely encompass our
bodies until, they say, “the threat has passed.” It is obscenely
uncomfortable, stiff, hot, and scary. The training lasts all day, and
culminates in a full donning that is then duct taped closed. The
temperature is likely 120 degrees inside the suit, the sweat pours
down our faces, our full faced respirators slip amidst the moistness.
It is quite simply, to me, the toughest test to endure, and I
ultimately decided that if biological weapons are ever indeed
launched, I am surely destined to die. A slow, agonizing, blistered
death from chemical agents is far preferential to EVER donning that
suit again. I was not alone in this sentiment. Finally, contract
signing night. We’d given the company everything: blood, urine,
dignity, and now we would finally see what they were to give us.

When they were handed out, following another long wait in line, we
were not given any opportunity to read them. We were taken
through each page and told where to initial, sign, date. Each
paragraph seemed to me to be resultant from prior litigation, a
section on mandatory arbitration, a section on overtime and break
infractions, endless terms detailing numerous offenses that could
result in termination. It seemed a sad contract, one which clearly
defined our desperation to work, our willingness to surrender
everything in exchange for work. I seemed to be the only one to
deliberately scan through all thirteen pages, but I guess it wouldn’t
have really mattered what was in there… and I can’t even con
myself into believing that I would not have signed anything they
placed in front of me. For me, they extended a lifeline that I
eagerly grabbed. For me, it is merely the path back to myself, my
abilities, my confidence.

Friday was the first day off. I slept for six whole hours, and then
attempted to wash socks and be otherwise productive. I was
surprised to get a phone call at 10AM urging me to pack up my
stuff: I was being moved to a better hotel. Things were looking up.
Next was the issuance of the company computer and military ID:
the last lengthy process taking much of one day. Now it was just a
waiting game until my flight was called. Two weeks later, it was.

My bags are packed. Friday we leave.