War in Iraq, a Soldier's View

Text

27-May-03 9:09 PM

Today was great, but first I’ll update you on how soon we’ll be out of here. We got news yesterday that the 110th advance party got to Adder on Friday, and the rest of the company got there on Saturday so we may be going home soon, we’re just wondering how long it will take to get an MST up here to replace us.

Back to today.

Today I went to Dogwood to get some pictures and to get some money from finance to buy souvenirs. It was an awesome trip. The first was interesting because we got to go off the freeway through the town outside Dogwood, I think it was Musaiyib or something like that, next time I’m going to take a GPS so I can Document where everything is so I can get some detailed maps at home and see where I’ve been. Anyway it was interesting to go through this little town. The outer part of the town was mostly rural farms and I got to get some pictures of people making their living here, there were a lot of enemy tanks in good condition along the road, it looks like they had been disabled by taking the engines out. Deserters probably left them there and the US disabled them so they couldn’t be used by the populace. People here weren’t as friendly as the “Traders” along side the freeway that saw US troops all the time. The worst I saw was some kids giving us dirty gestures and swearing at us in Arabic (or something like that). According to Gibson he saw two girls spit at us as we passed and another kid made a motion like he was cutting his throat towards us. But most the kids I saw were staring or waving as we passed by, sometimes they would see that I had a camera and they’d wave and try to get their picture taken. One of the kids even elbowed his friend that had jumped in front of him so he could be seen better. When we got to the main intersection the town was pretty busy, there were cars driving everywhere and they didn’t have any regard for rules or driving laws, it’s just drive through and dodge anybody in your way. It seemed all the shops in the buildings were garages for fixing different components in cars and tractors. All of the food being sold was done right on the side of the road, in some places it was hard to dodge oncoming traffic because the crowded the road so much. But most of these people were selling to the locals and not the soldiers like the guys along the freeway.

A lot of kids were coming back from school near the city in their uniforms; they looked so cute I had to get as many pictures of them as I could. The guys working in the garages behind them were less enthusiastic to see us and so I didn’t take any pictures of them. Then we headed back out into the more rural areas and past the “market” where everybody was getting stuff from Salam. We ordered some chickens to be cooked to pick up on the way back, and drove through. All along the way to Dogwood there we little shops and every so often one had soldiers parked getting things.

The “Market” here isn’t quite the same as at home. The way most Iraqis sell to others is by setting up stands along side the road; some aren’t more complex than a kids’ lemonade stand back home. But most are a little more deluxe with an awning to sit out the heat of the day and tables to show off their souvenirs. Plus they usually have a cooler to hold ice and cold drinks. The age of the person running the stand can be anywhere from 10 to 60, and most only have a small grip on the English language; they can manage, counting up to 10 and a few common courtesies like “Sir” and “Thank You”. Some are a bit easier to talk to, they have a small English vocabulary and they can get the rest of the point across with hand gestures.

The stands are all along the road in areas where vehicles have to slow down for some reason or in high traffic areas. As you drive the sellers wave a few of the products they have to try to get you to stop and buy, most of the ones that pander to the soldiers are selling cheap Iraqi souvenirs, ice, and soda pop. The others that sell to the locals sell fresh fruit and vegetables; some sell other household items like cooking utensils. Usually if you stop anywhere near a stand, even if you’re stopping to fix a tire, all of the kids hanging out at the stand will come over carrying trinkets shouting, “One Dollar! One Dollar!” usually holding up one finger but sometimes more. When you actually look through the items on the tables the seller will watch you to see what you’re interested in and hold it up and show you how it works or tell you how great it is and give you a price for it. If you don’t seem interested and walk away they’ll start yelling lower prices to get you back. When you finally make a purchase they’ll bag it for you and take your money and hold up something else and ask you to buy that too. Sometimes they’ll give you some small trinket for free, “Because, you my friend! I give to you.”

Outside Dogwood there are about ten shacks spread about 100ft from each other down the road, most sell items to both locals and soldiers but most focus on selling to soldiers because they pay Dollars instead of Dinar. They also paint signs in English to advertise what they have to give, usually with many spelling errors. “ICE” is usually spelled correctly (although I’ve seen AICE) but “Super Market” is often “Supper Market”.

All sellers are friendly though, if you regularly buy from them you become a “Preferred Customer” and you can usually get things for a dollar less than they usually are, but the seller will usually give you the best of the stuff they have to give. The sellers are always men or young boys, never women; but that seems to be the way the culture is here, the woman stays out of sight in the house or in the fields working while the man goes into town and sells the goods they have. Still the treatment of women here isn’t as harsh as the Army briefings made it sound. Some women walk around in veils but most just cover their hair and bodies, and they don’t always have to be accompanied by a man. And I’ve never seen a woman beaten for showing too much. Imagine 50’s America where a woman’s place was "in the home"; except that they can only show their faces after puberty. It’s not unheard of for a woman to climb pretty far up the social ladder but it’s pretty rare.

At Dogwood we cleared our weapons and went in, the water trucks went to fill up and I went to finance to get some money from casual pay. The building I went in had A/C and if felt awesome; I hadn’t been in a cold room for the last two months. The last room I was in with air conditioning was the Tent back at Arifjan the night the war began. Anyway I was enjoying being there and I went to the finance SGT and he gave me a hard time about having long hair (Two and a half inches in the Army is LONG). I told him that I had been in the field for two months and we didn’t have the facilities that he had. He just shook his head and started filling out the paper work. I joked how nice it was to be in air conditioning and he said that it sucked because it was such a hot day it wasn’t working too well (he obviously had no idea that it was at least 20 degrees cooler than outside). So I was a little pissed that somebody that was so pampered was giving me a hard time when I’ve spent the whole war shiting in a can and breathing through wet towels to cool off when I felt the heat was going to suffocate me.

Back at the meeting point we waited another three hours for the water trucks to get back and we just kept getting more and more sick of the trip for water. I thought about how every trip I take this happens, when I went to Baghdad International I ended up waiting 7 hours to get some crappy supplies from the PX (at least I got some Beef Jerky there).

We finally decided to pick up our chicken while we waited for the water trucks to get back; we just told them where to meet us. At Salam’s place I got some souvenirs and a case of Pepsi, the kid there kept trying to get me to buy things, first a few Iraqi Dinar and then a set of prayer beads, usually I don’t let people keep talking me into getting things, I don’t fold so easily, but they were all things I was thinking of getting as souvenirs anyway. While we waited I walked to the other sellers shack and looked at what he had but none of it interested me enough to bother asking how much it was, so I decided to take some pictures. First I took a panorama of the area so people could get a feel for what its like to be there because the land was really beautiful and fertile especially compared to what I had been living in for the first 5 months of the deployment. As I was taking pictures two little kids ran up and started asking about my camera. One looked to be about 5 years old and the other 7. They didn’t speak a word of English but we tried to communicate by using hand signals as much as possible. They wanted me to take their picture so I took it and I let them look at the review on the screen. They started pointing at the camera and then at themselves like they wanted it. I told them I can’t give it to them but they kept persisting so I figured they were saying something else because they can’t believe that I’d give them the camera. Finally the little kid wanted to hold it. I had the neck strap around my wrist so I let him take it but I could take it back if I wanted. I started looking all over the camera and made gestures to open compartments on it and pointing at himself. I realized that he thought it was a Polaroid and he wanted the picture of himself to keep. I told him “no it didn’t work like that” he kept gesturing but he finally realized that it wouldn’t do it so he just wanted o take a picture with the camera. I showed him which button to push, he held the view screen up to his eye and took a picture of the road and road shoulder then looked at it in the replay. It obviously wasn’t what he wanted but I think all he wanted to do was play with the camera anyway.

He lost interest with the camera and gave it back, then he pulled out some Dinar and asked a dollar for it. I was trying to get more as souvenirs so I traded him 100 Dinar for a dollar (good trade on his part) but another kid came up and saw the wad of Dinar I had gotten from the kid working for Salam. He ran up and started arguing with the little kid saying that the wad was worth 5 dollars. I figured that he had thought the kid had sold me a wad of Dinar for just a dollar (still a good deal considering the Dinar is nearly worthless to the dollar) but I told the kid that we had only traded the 100 Dinar and the dollar, he finally got the hint and pocketed the dollar and started to leave. The little two kids that had treaded me looked sad that their hard bargained dollar was walking away so I grabbed the kid and had him give the dollar back to the little kids which made them really happy. I walked back to Salam’s market and the kids followed me and two more started to tag along. By time I was at the market the two new kids were interested in the camera. One spoke a few words of English so he wanted his picture so I took one of him and his friend and showed them the replay on the screen. He joked if I wanted to sell the camera, I said, “No... Too Expensive!” He smiled and told me his name was Mustafa, and his friend was Anise (pronounced Ah-Neise) Gibson had been watching the whole thing so I told him, “His name Trent. My name Dustin.” They smiled and repeated Dustin and started trying to talk about the wrecker (we were standing in front of it), they were pointing at the shackles in front and saying “pull” while making motions of pulling one hand with the other. Gibson the ever proud wrecker operator said “yeah we pull big things with this!” The kids looked up into the grating and pointed at a few things then Mustafa pointed at it and asked “You sell to me?” and him and his friend broke up laughing.

Our troop carrier pulled up and all the Iraqi’s looked up at the new customers to see if they were interested in anything. I walked over and Brian showed me the coin of Saddam that he had gotten, they asked me if I wanted to go up the road to look for some Diet Pepsi for Durham and I hopped in. We got up there and I bought a new Styrofoam cooler and some Ice and asked the 16 year old seller if he had any Bayonets, he pulled out three nice ones with wooden handles but I wanted one with a scabbard, His friend said he had one for 10 dollars at his shack down the road. So me, him, and Rebecca walked 100ft over to his shack and got it. He tried to sell me some coke and candy he had there but I said no, thanked him then hopped in the troop carrier that Blen brought over and we went back to catch up with the water trucks that had passed us on the way up. I hopped in with Sgt Anderson and told him the buys I had been making.

While we were taking a kid rode by on the holding an older man on the back of a motorcycle. Anderson told me the kid, Mohammed, was the cousin of Raheed a friend of his here that was going to Baghdad University. He knew some English and Anderson always talked with him when he came through. The kid beckoned him down to Raheed's shack and so we decided to go down and take to him while we waited for the rest of our group.

As soon as Raheed saw us pulling up he started waving and shouted “Alan, Alan!” Sgt Anderson waved back and we hopped out to talk with him and his friends. The kid and the old man on the motorcycle pulled up and came over and started talking too. Sgt Anderson told me that Raheed always gave him free things for no reason just because they were friends and sure enough he grabbed a box of crackers off the table and handed them over to him saying, “For my friend Alan.” As Sgt Anderson was thanking him he reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of Iraqi candy and gave them to me saying, “Here. For Friend” Anderson and Raheed started talking about a picture that they had taken together before, Raheed said that it’s on his wall at home so he could always see it. Anderson told him that he came through a few days before to get a picture of him and Mohammed but Mohammed wasn’t there that time and this time he forgot his Polaroid. Raheed introduced the people around us two were other students about my age from Baghdad University but they didn’t speak English, three of the kids were kids that had just gotten out of school and were hanging out at the store for the afternoon, one of them, Mohammed was with his father. His father gestured to Mohammed and said something in Arabic and Raheed translated that he said, “He’s my little child” and put his arm around him. It was obvious from the way they put their arms around each other that they were VERY close as Father and son. Raheed told us that his friends wanted to be in the US Army, and they asked us how long we had been in. They were amazed that Anderson had been in thirteen years, they told us that the conscription for being in the Iraqi army was three years and if, as Raheed put it, “If you don’t go Army, government kill.” While pointing his hand as a gun aimed at his head. We told them that they can become Us Soldiers if them come to America and be a citizen. Mohammed said he wanted to go to America and joked, “I go home with you!” We all laughed and Sgt. Anderson asked if any of them had been in the Iraqi army. Raheed was quick to say no, like he was a little afraid that if he said yes we’d have to take him in or something. He pointed at himself and the two other guys his age saying, “Job, university” Then the three kids saying, “Job, School” and finally at Mohammed’s dad saying, “Job Farm.”

Mohammed’s dad gestured at my camera and said something in Arabic. Raheed asked if that was a camera. I said yes and popped off the cover and showed them how it worked. An interesting guy was walking beind us in the field and Sgt. Anderson nudged me and mumbled under his breath that he was looked just like Jesus, and he did, with his shawl wrapped around his head. Raheed and his friends said, “take picture of him”, pointing at the Jesus look alike, I said, “ok” and fired up the camera to take a picture. But all of the guys started shouting, “No! No!” so I stopped and looked at them with a puzzled look, Raheed said, “Not really. He no like picture. He afraid of gods.” While gesturing at the sky. I wasn’t sure if he literally meant gods or if he meant spy planes that flew over and didn’t know how to say it. Either way this would explain why a lot of people glared at me when I took their pictures as I was driving by. Mohammed’s father asked me to take a picture of him and his son, so I took one and let them see the picture on the screen they were impressed but unlike the younger kids they didn’t expect me to be able to give them a copy. Then he asked me something and Raheed translated, “how much camera?” I told them $600 American, and they were all shocked, I told them I saved up a long time to afford it and they all just laughed and nodded.

Some guy pulled up in a Mercedes and walked up to the group, Sgt Anderson gave him a wave and the guy gave a kind of courtesy wave but otherwise ignored him and walked past with a scowl. Suddenly Raheed told Anderson, “Alan, walk with me.” And wandered down the road twenty feet. Mohammed’s father started talking to the guy and gave him the ice he wanted to buy. The rest of the group surrounded me and we tried to have what conversation we could but all we could manage is what all our names were, one of the kids tried to ask me something about how he could move to America but he couldn’t get his question across and faltered. So we wandered over to Anderson and Raheed and joined their conversation. Me and Anderson talked about what the whole thing about him getting called away was about, and we figured that the guy getting ice had a little anti-American sentiment and even though he was sensible enough to keep it to himself with us there Raheed wanted to keep us separate from him till he left.

I caught up with the conversation when Raheed was telling us that there were 27 million people in Iraq before the war and now there was 25 million. We asked shocked that may people were killed in the war? He hurriedly said, “No! No! Not all Americans kill, many Shiite, Sunni kill. Iraqi kill Iraqi.” Making a gesture punching his two fists together. Anderson tried to tell him that we respect all Iraqi people for all the things they’ve had to deal with. Raheed didn’t understand respect and it was had to get the point across, he didn’t know the words honor, integrity, or trust. Finally we told him simply, “Iraq people are good.” Then he got in and said, “Yes Iraq people good, we strong, we keep going.”

As we were talking with Raheed he kept asking about, “where was Bucka?” We couldn’t figure out what he was saying till I realized he was talking about Rebecca (Becca). He said that she was very pretty and wanted to see her again. Sgt Anderson told him that he’d bring her by and take a Polaroid of Raheed and her to give to him. We also asked what the river nearby was. He kept saying how nice the water was and it was nice to take a swim in it, finally after a bit of prodding he realized that we were asking him the name. He kept saying some name we didn’t understand, he told us there were two rivers in Iraq, both were names we didn’t recognize. Anderson told him that we called them the Tigris and Euphrates, one of the guys recognized Euphrates and said it quicker. Turns out that is the word Raheed had been saying the whole time he just pronounced it, ooh-fra-tis. We also asked him what the name of the nearby town was, he said it was Musaiyib and said something about Hillya. He asked us how much the bike that Mohammed and his father were driving cost in America; I answered about 3 thousand American. He said that he got it for 1 million Dinars and 1 million was about 1000 dollars. This interested Raheed and he asked what the carton of Marlboros he was selling cost in America, we told him about 20-25 dollars and he was shocked, he told us, “it only 15 in Iraq, we sell for 20.”

Then the rest of the convoy came through and it was time to go, Sgt Anderson, told Raheed it was good seeing him again and we said our farewells to the group. As we were leaving Raheed asked if Becca was married, Anderson told him no. He said, “Tell her I marry her, she beautiful lady.” Anderson said sure and we left. As we were leaving Rebecca was waving at the guys and they waved back, then Raheed blew her a kiss.

As we pulled away they waved to us and me and Sgt. Anderson waved back. The rest of the trip back was pretty much the same as the trip over there, I got a lot of pictures and we dealt with a few irate drivers yelling at us as we crossed the intersection in the middle of town, but most of the time I was thinking about the talk with Raheed. For the last tow months I have been looking at the homes nearby wondering what the locals thought about us being here and now I finally got the discussion I’d been waiting for. It was a little frustrating because there were so many other questions I wanted to ask, Raheed’s English wasn’t good enough to have too in depth discussions but it was still great. I hope there are many more people like Raheed and his friends; with them over here this country will be in good hands. It amazed me how friendly the people here are. There are alot of people indifferent to Americans but that’s to be expected, being able to talk to some Iraqis and have them treat us as equals gave an insight on how they look at others under normal circumstances (when they’re not occupied by foreign armies).

Mohammed and his dad were one great example about how important family is here, the infant mortality rate is much higher here so parents treasure their kids. When I saw Mohammed’s father look at his son, you could tell by the look in his eye that he was the world to him. And with Mohammed being 15 at that point in his life where he starts showing that he’s not a child anymore, he’s becoming a man. Mohammed didn’t fit the American Arab stereotype, if he spoke English you would have easily mistaken him for a homegrown American boy going to school, with the goggles he had on his head he even looked like an American teenager. And he was obviously becoming a man socially, during the conversation he kept joining in and giving his opinion whereas the younger kids just watched the adults talk and smile when people laughed. And every time he talked his father would look at him, proud of the man he had become.

And watching how the group of locals reacted to other Iraqis that past showed how close communities were here. And cars would pass horns would honk and the driver would wave and yell something in Arabic as they past. The whole group of guys would wave back and one would shout some answer back and they go back to talking with us. One guy came by on a bike and yelled “<Something> Raheed!” And Raheed yelled back some reply to the greeting.

After seeing how kind these people are you wonder how you could ever assume that they could bear any ill will to any other person. Sure there is a bit of animosity towards us soldiers when they see us, but we’re outsiders. If we weren’t here as conquerors and just as tourists or ex-patriots who want to live in a new country I’m sure that they’d extend the same kindness to us. It’s amazing how nice they are to us the way many US soldiers treat their country. I don’t think I’d be as kind if the roles were reversed. It’s so true what Sgt. Anderson about respecting how well these people handle their lives. If any American had to live in the circumstances that they have here they wouldn’t be able to do it, they just don’t have the patience.

It always shocks me how much Iraqis and Americans have in common. Iraqis don’t even look like the Arab stereotype that we give them back home, most people here would fit right in America with some more western clothes and if they could speak American English. It’s a shame that a few bad apples have ruined our countries perspective of the people here. If we could get over our own superiority and realize how great people are here we could have some great allies for our country. Again I wonder what will become of this country in the future, and how their relationship with America will be. This country has so much potential right now. Most of the infrastructure they have here is enough to get by but there’s so much room for growth, and with the economic turn they will make when America starts pumping money into here they’ll be able to do anything they want. After meeting Raheed, Mohammed, Ahmed and their friends I know that the deciding factor about how the relationship develops between Iraq and the Arab people, and America is going to lie solely in America’s hands. I hope we can help these people to the standard of living that their kindness demands they should get.