Tag: Jay Morse blog

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Thank You for Being a Goofy White Guy

Somewhere between Gulu and Jinja, Uganda/March 29, 2007

 I haven’t shaved in two weeks, I’m wearing my underwear inside-out for the third day in a row, and today is, at last, Africa hot. I’m in Uganda on the road from Gulu to Jinja and feeling totally irrelevant. I wish I could sufficiently describe to you the contrasts I’ve experienced since I wrote you last. This place is a cold-water blast of visual, emotional, and tactile sensations unlike anything I imagined. Bats as big as place mats, some charred and crispy, hanging from electrical wires like tangled kites; dirt-poor people always dressed immaculately; stern faces on Rwandan farmers that light up when you wave to them; kids in strikingly bright colored school uniforms, almost exclusively barefoot (especially in the country); and some of the coolest greetings you’ll ever see. Ethiopians shake hands and then touch their right shoulders together. Rwandans wave with two hands, raised up about shoulder level, smiles as big as their faces. Ugandans shake hands like I will when I meet Charles Barkley: first the standard white guy handshake, hold it briefly, then switch to the overhand so only thumbs are interlocked – again, hold it briefly – then back to the standard white guy shake. Eye contact throughout is mandatory.

I came here expecting to have my life changed, but it didn’t take long to realize that expectation was based on naivety and 30-minute clips from the National Geographic Channel. Africa is everything you imagine it might be and nothing like you think. In Rwanda I visited a church where in 1994 over 5,000 civilians – mostly women and children – were massacred by grenades, rifles, machetes, arrows and stones, all victims of a genocide that killed over 800,000 people in about 90 days. They came to the church seeking shelter, and when threatened refused to leave. Now their skulls are stacked neatly in rows in the rear of the church, while most of the remaining bones are thrown together into a giant pile under a dirty tarp. Just a few miles up the road from the church, in a huge grassy open meadow at the foot of an active volcano, we played soccer with about 100 orphans. They slipped in cow shit and laughed like any child should, calling us “barbaro” (it means “buffalo;” they apparently found our aggressive style of play a bit excessive) and even more hilarious, “freak.” A teenager named Fierce who was anything but scored after executing a sweet juke, to the delight of everyone, causing the other 99 to break into song.

I don’t think I’ve ever been anywhere more beautiful than Rwanda, made all the more shocking when you remember this is the environment that produced “short sleeves” – cutting off arms above the elbows – and “long sleeves” – cutting off arms at the wrist. The government is still prosecuting participants in the genocide, using “gacaca” (ga-cha-cha) courts to allow the victims to determine the sentences of those who plead or are found guilty. Remarkably, most are given lengthy community service sentences rather than jail time. Could you look at someone every day, knowing they stole your car? What if instead they hacked off your brother’s limbs? Or killed your parents? Somehow this country seems to be moving on.

In Uganda I visited an IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) Camp where I witnessed first-hand evidence supporting the stat that about 85% of all of Northern Uganda lives in these camps, and that Uganda is the youngest country in the world – they have an average age of 16. Because of a 20-year war between a rebel group (the Lord’s Resistance Army) and the government, hundreds of thousands of farmers have been displaced from their land, living instead in small, circular huts.

Parentless children are the most visible effect of the war. Most of the adults have been either killed or displaced by AIDS and/or the war, and as a result the kids are stacked into schools and orphanages (and the IDP camps) like cordwood. They seem far happier than anything I’ve seen in America. There are many westerners here doing many great things, but if you have time, check out www.invisiblechildren.com – it will sadden, humble, and inspire you. Because the LRA was essentially abducting children from their homes during the night and forcing them to fight and kill in the rebel army, thousands of kids started walking from their homes at dusk to come together to sleep in the city. They arrived at night, thousands of them, some having walked several miles just to avoid being abducted. They slept together, arms and legs intertwined like piles and piles of puppies, and then walked back home the next morning to either work or go to school. Three twenty-somethings from California captured their story on film and started a movement to get the kids back into the regular folds of society. Today they are helping to run a boarding school that houses over 1400 hundred students, about 80% of which are orphans. Until a new dorm is completed, girls live 50 to a room – there are over 400 of them living in two buildings, each about 150’ by 50’. Though they see white people – or “muzungu,” which essentially translates to “running around in circles” – on a daily basis, they rarely see white children, and a six-year old blonde girl on our trip was given minor celebrity status. Goofy white guys, apparently, cause less of a stir. People in Uganda say “thank you” an awful lot – thank you for walking today, thank you for wearing shoes, thank you for cleaning up your part of the sidewalk. I tried a “thank you for doing your homework,” but was met only with giggles and points.

My initial worries about being the sole agnostic amongst a sea of believers were totally unfounded, and I had some amazing conversations about the places we occupy in this world. On top of that, it turns out trying to introduce Jesus to Africa is a lot like trying to introduce soccer to South America – it’s already here, in full form. If anything, it was almost an afterthought. Far more interesting is some of the great t-shirts I’ve seen: “Jesus First, Then Comes Soccer”; “The Man” (arrow pointing upwards), “The Legend” (arrow pointing downwards); “Ann Arbor is a Whore” (couldn’t tell if it was a Michigan State or Ohio State shirt); and my favorite, “Grandma To Be” (on about a 25 year old dude).

So that’s it. No dramatic ending, other than I rafted Class V rapids on the Nile today – no crocs, but lots of spills. Hope to see you sometime soon.

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Coming Home

Savannah, Georgia/June 7, 2005

So I’m coming home. Today is the 2nd of June, and tomorrow I will leave Bahgdad after just 135 days in country. It seems like a long time, but still significantly shorter than the tour of those I leave behind (tour. Such a funny application of the word, though with plenty of company in the Army lexicon: collateral damage, high-value target (if it’s such high value, why are we trying to destroy it?), smart-bomb, low-intensity conflict, knock and search. Sometimes – don’t tell anyone – I feel funny using these words, like I’m the guy who might believe there’s an alien in Area 51, or there was someone on the grassy knoll. The language of conspirators). Some introspection: I have mixed emotions about leaving. Can anyone commiserate? I want to get the hell out of here – fast – yet I have these feelings of not wanting to leave these guys I have trained, lived with, interacted with on a daily basis since the middle of October; of not wanting to leave this significant thing in my life; of wanting to help improve what seems, at times, a dire situation. Don’t be misled; I do not believe this to be my fight. But these are my friends, and it is my uniform, and it is my job, and I do believe, in spite of it all, that the burden borne to the biggest guy on the block is to make life better for everyone else. But it’s also my family I am going home to, and my country, and all of you. I suppose I can take solace, if you’re into self-flagellation, in the fact that I’ll surely be back here in the near future.

Baghdad is soon to be home to the biggest US embassy in the world. Surely the next time around we’ll have spread our good American cheer far and wide enough that I can get a beer outside the front gate. Already, I’ve had Iraqi school boys sing Snoop Dog lyrics to me and proudly flash me their middle finger (“hey mistah! Fucka you!”). Ah, progress. You cannot stop it, you can only hope to contain it.

Each morning here I awake acutely aware of the paradox of participating in something with which I don’t entirely agree. Usually I contend myself with the belief I’m an integral part of the greater good, or by helping soldiers who made some pretty stupid decisions, or by helping other officers to be better people and attorneys and by trying to be a better one myself. But some mornings I don’t know entirely how to deal with it. Some mornings I wake wanting to be Russell Means, wanting to be Jim Harrison, wanting to be Marla Ruzicka. I want to shake things up a bit, I want to be anti-establishment. Some mornings I simply want some insight along with my coffee, want the information I think I’ve earned and deserve, not only as to what makes one country invade another, but also as to what makes a man strap a bomb to his back and run into a dining facility, or a group of people waiting to worship, or into a school. Surely it’s not as simply as oil; surely it’s not as simple as 72 virgins and eternal bliss. Surely it’s complicated, its pursuit and discovery merited by the loss of lives, national identity, religious upheaval, and billions of dollars. Right? Surely it’s an enviable thing, this quality of not only being willing to die for your cause, but to willingly die for your cause.

For 130 days straight neither the war nor its effects has reached out and touched me. When I’d wanted to see it, I had to go out and touch it myself. But we’ve angered the insurgency, apparently, by encircling Baghdad, and in the evening of day 131, prompted by the sound of gunfire, I stepped outside my trailer to watch tracers ricochet off of who-knows-what and fly into the night sky, framed against the backdrop of a dusty, yellowed Baghdad moon. Then on day 132, while waiting for a helicopter, I watched a VBIED-inspired mushroom cloud rise above the tree-line, the accompanying boom reaching me only seconds later. Day 133 brought a mortar round to my living area, about 200 meters from my own trailer, and today, day 134, I heard and felt – despite a building, a mountain, countless concrete barriers and a distance of about 400 meters between it and I, I felt – the effects of two 122mm rockets, the first landing harmlessly in between the chapel and the finance office, the second landing in the middle of our shopping complex, killing two and injuring seventeen soldiers, civilian contractors, and Iraqi businessmen. Two or three of the injured soldiers, and one of the dead, all members of the Georgia National Guard, had been here less than a week. Your length of time in this country does not dictate your chances of death. Day one equals day 100 equals day 135 equals day 365. It’s like flipping a coin: No matter how many times you come up heads, you’re even money for tails the next time around.

Break. I’m home. I’m home, and I have read my above letter. Such pessimism, Jose! Such despair! Such chagrin! It sounds as if I wrote those words with bombs exploding behind me, on the run, running, leaping to latch onto a departing helicopter, my three duffel bags hanging from one arm as I desperately clung to the helicopter skid with the other (“Keep flying, Copperhead 35, I’m good! Get out of the impact area! Save yourself!). Such (melo)drama in my words, and I wasn’t even loaded when I wrote them! But I’m sending them out anyway, because I’m home now, and have so many good things to tell you – mostly how it’s not as bad as the media (or I) portray it, and that Iraqis and Americans, along with a few Italians, Estonians, Brits, Aussies, and Poles (sorry Michael Moore, I saw no Moroccan monkeys) are doing great things on a daily basis, and that Iraq, the Middle East, and hopefully America, will be the better for it. We hope.

Two stories to end with, one of ambition, one of optimism (sort of): About three weeks ago, I ran into a young soldier sleeping in the sun, sprawled in a folding camping chair while waiting to talk to an attorney. Sergeant Hester, a 23 year-old shoe salesman and member of the Kentucky National Guard, is a Military Police soldier, with a mission to “shadow,” or guard, civilian semi-tractor/trailer convoys while they travel from city to city. At the end of March, SGT Hester and about nine other soldiers were shadowing a convoy of about twenty supply trucks, almost exclusively driven by third-country nationals (Aussies, Sri Lankans, Bangladeshi), when they were ambushed by approximately 75 (mostly Iraqi) insurgents. SGT Hester and the other American soldiers were in their armored vehicles at the back of the convoy when the insurgents initiated the attack with small-arms fire and Rocket Propelled Grenades. The soldiers immediately sped to the front of the convoy, where SGT Hester’s vehicle took a direct hit from one of the RPG’s. After first administering first-aid to the gunner, SGT Hester then left the vehicle and headed for an empty canal where she – yes, she – and one other soldier proceeded to kill or injure 10-20 of the enemy. SGT Hester threw grenades, fired her weapon at close range, went back to her vehicle at least once to get more ammunition, and had to take a break about half-way through the 45-minute gun battle to regain her energy. As she put it, at one point the fighting was “toe to toe.” Though none of the American soldiers were killed, several were injured. An ominous sign of the insurgents’ intent was found at the end of the battle when the U.S. Soldiers confiscated, among other things, several sets of hand-cuffs (for taking prisoners) and a videotape of the early stages of the operation, immediately preceded by a film of the insurgents beheading a third-country national, most likely some truck driver, here to make more money in one year that he might see at home in ten. So is it a good thing that any young American is placed in a position where they must kill or be killed? No way. Do I hope that SGT Leigh Ann Hester, Silver Star pinned upon her busty chest, gets the opportunity to testify before Congress? Or maybe arm-wrestle some charcoal-suited, bespectacled, pomaded gentlemen from (insert red state)? Absolutely.

Second story: About the same time I met SGT Hester, I hadn’t left the base in about a month and was feeling a bit stir crazy. The JAG officer for the Louisiana National Guard (yes, they’re exactly as you would expect them to be) invited me to go with them to deliver some clothes and school supplies to preschool-aged children in a western suburb of Baghdad.

A convoy, in and of itself, is an adventure: The narrow Baghdad streets are absolutely slammed, every traffic circle doubles as an open market, and life zooms by through the small, bullet-proof window of your armored vehicle. Little kids smile and wave, young men glare, women avoid eye contact all together. I have two loaded weapons, but the quarters inside our vehicles are so cramped that I could never hope to use either without getting out of the vehicle, so I’m literally along for the ride. We drive by the school twice before our translator figures out where it is, but we finally stop, announcing our presence with authority (how could we not?). Our five-vehicle convoy parks on the sidewalk; the front, middle, and rear vehicles each manned with .50 cal machine guns pointing in opposite directions. Our presence has reduced traffic to one-lane, but life continues. People are lined up outside an ice-cream parlor, three men in sandals load sodas onto a truck, a man and his daughter sit on the hood of his car, laughing. But for our presence, it seems to be a scene you would see in any major city in the world. We exit the vehicles, about twenty men and one woman, all of us with loaded weapons, armored vests, and dark sunglasses, and meet a few of the teachers at the gate. The school itself, behind a gated entryway, is two nondescript slump block buildings without windows. Outside, trash and rubble are strewn everywhere, faded paintings of Disney characters on the walls. We are escorted to a one-room building, where the remaining teachers await us. All are women; two are dressed fully in black and but for their eyes, completely covered (how ironic, I think – I’m completed covered as well).

In stark contrast to the outside, the inside of the building is exceptionally clean, tidy, and orderly. A row of miniature plastic chairs lines the far wall, each occupied by a wide-eyed, dark-haired Iraqi child. They are beautiful, apprehensive, and silent. I wonder what they must think, as we roar inside the class room, carrying boxes and talking loudly. Do they think we have come to kill them? To stuff them inside these big containers, and take them away to teach them rap lyrics and curse words?

Some of the soldiers open the packages, unloading stuffed animals, clothes, school supplies, and finally unrolling a long piece of butcher paper, bearing the Crayola-ed words “Sacred Heart Elementary School, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.” It’s signed by the denizens of that school, surely multiple Thibedeauxs, Simons, Delahousses, Landrys, and Beaudreauxes. My friend wants me to stand with the children so he can take a picture; I politely decline. I feel like an intruder, self-conscious of the M16 slung from my shoulder, and wonder what I would have thought had armed men come to my school when I was in kindergarten (I remember my cousins surprising me once, that was alarming enough).

Many of the children have begun to smile and chatter, and the teachers appear genuinely grateful and thankful for our arrival, and so I also wonder what it was like here three years ago, or five, or ten. The teachers serve us juice boxes and moon pies (universal diplomacy!), and then as quickly as we stormed in, we storm out.

On the way home, we (not me, specifically, I wasn’t really part of the decision making process) decide to make a quick side trip. We are looking for a bad guy. The unit has been looking for a local imam, leader of a mosque that is perhaps behind some unsavory activities in this part of the city, and this is, apparently, as good a time as any to see if he’s at home. We turn down a side street, the lead vehicle speeding to the far intersection, blocking access and pointing the .50 cal down the road. The trail vehicle does the same at the opposite end, and the three remaining vehicles, me in one, stop about three-fourths of the way down the street. Several soldiers move towards the target house, the others pointing their weapons at rooftops, pulling security. I quickly fall in line with the men going towards the house, adrenaline rising, my mother’s face but Johnny Cash’s voice in my head (“don’t take your guns to town, son, leave your guns at home. . .”), my M16 at the ready (before, during, and after, I am disturbed at my eagerness, how quickly my thirst for adventure trumped common sense, politics, safety, care for others. Something to digest; perhaps safer to just ignore). Alas, no one is home, and we return to the street where we have attracted a crowd. A few older gentlemen are talking with our translator and the company commander. They look wise and well-educated, and are wearing clean, white dishdashas, or “man dresses,” and how quickly my sense of adventure gives way to another weakness, my sense of fashion. I eye the thing enviously. “I think I could pull that look off,” I contemplate. “Maybe a nice white linen number. Matching sandals. I could wear it to my cousin’s wedding in July.”

But back to the point of the story, that of optimism. The older men continue to talk with the translator, sometimes in English, sometimes in Arabic, and it is clear that not only is the imam gone, but he won’t be back for a while. Our commander asks to pass a message to the imam, to come in to talk to us when he returns. Suddenly, quickly, the crowd around the translator grows: kids, and lots of them. School has let out, and the word has apparently gone around that some Americans are in for a visit. Some soldiers open the backs of two of the humm-v’s, and start passing out paper, pencils, pens, markers, calendars, paper clocks, and the kids are going crazy. They are clean, kempt, happy. They all wear matching white and blue uniforms. Many come up to me, ask my name, where I am from, show me their English school books. The girls hang out in the back ground, all but one, who points out that one of the boys is named “Saddam,” again and again, and the other kids, including Saddam, laugh uproariously each time. I wish I weren’t wearing a helmet, or carrying a gun, wanting instead a soccer ball, a rugby ball, a skate board, two tin cans, anything. The kids go from vehicle to vehicle, getting supplies, talking to the soldiers, everyone now laughing and smiling, soldier and child alike, white-haired gentlemen in man-dresses. We are interrupted only by two men with beards and long, skinny switches, who start their flock of sheep down our road. I expect a collision, chaos, confused children and frightened sheep. The two men ably divert the sheep back down the road, however, the herd first swallowing up the armored humm-v blocking the road, then spitting it out the other side.

For now, at least, collision avoided.

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The Daily Grind

Camp Liberty, Iraq/March 28, 2005

I think me ma believes I’m in constant danger (other than, of course, the trouble I get myself into), and I realize the news media doesn’t really delve into the daily life of a soldier on a Forward Operating Base (FOB), mostly, I imagine, because it’s pretty boring. So here’s a glimpse:

Life here can be surreal. Not a dreamy, LSD-induced Sgt Pepper’s type of surreal, but a result of the bizarre juxtaposition of modern conveniences, relative civility, Play Station-at-your-fingertips life on the FOB compared with the reality of life “outside the wire.”

I live in one half of a 12’ x 40’ trailer I share with another major, our individual rooms separated by a common bathroom. I’m living about as good as one can live here in Iraq. My trailer is one of about 40 located on Lot 10; many lots are lumped together to compose an “LSA” (Logistical Support Area). There are thousands of these trailers on nothing but gravel and dirt, meticulously laid out in grids. Given the weather and dusty terrain, and but for the absence of cowboys, Mexicans (excepting me, of course), and pink plastic flamingos, it could be a west Texas trailer park. Within walking distance is my office, MWR (Morale, Welfare, and Recreation), a gym, the dining facility, and a laundry facility, ostensibly owned by KBR/Halliburton but run solely, it appears, by Filipino labor. We have a Burger King, a Subway, a Pizza Plus, a post office, a bazaar, and a huge Post Exchange that sells everything from socks and envelopes to bicycles and 64” televisions.

I show up at my office about 7:45 each morning, start coffee, and check my email. The rest of the office trickles in between 0800 and 0900, and we see clients throughout the day, the routine broken up by frequent bullshit sessions. Topics range from current events to Larry’s shrewd decision to shave his head, thus avoiding the impending comb-over, to our client’s misconduct relative to the things they confront off the FOB. I have plenty of time to exercise, and do so almost daily. The gym is about 100 meters away, I run a 5 kilometer loop around a nearby lake, and the only hill on the FOB is behind my office, up which I can do sprints.

The dining facility is better than expected. There is good food at every meal, exceptional desserts, and all the Red Bull my enlisted soldier can fit into his pockets. Televisions line the walls, one side perpetually on ESPN, the other on FOX news (must we always be drinking the Kool Aid?). There is an outdoor patio, floored with Astroturf and roofed with a brown and yellow awning. Lights wrap around tree-trunks in the Dead Palm Tree Garden (a valiant effort by the Army, albeit an unsuccessful one), and music, invariably jazz, blares from speakers mounted on an elevated deck. Though we get the occasional mortar, it is by far the exception rather than the rule. Any “boom” is enough of an event that when we hear one, we leave our offices to see if we can see where it landed. Rarely are we successful. My biggest complaint is the lack of motivation from the contractors tasked to fix the door handle on one of the two port-a-poddies (such a funny word) outside our office. I feel safe every day, and life, but for my location and missing all of you, is pretty good. Life is almost – almost – normal.

But now the surreal:

My trailer is ringed with 6’ high concrete barriers, which given the fact my trailer is elevated about 3’, is good coverage if I’m lying down, not so good when I’m standing up. My 5 km loop goes around a lake where Uday supposedly dumped bodies. The gym is filled with soldiers working out, still in their uniforms, their weapons either leaned up against the wall or strapped to their legs. The top of the hill up which I sprint is peppered with radio antennas, camouflage tents, and special radars that detect incoming mortars and rockets and then track them back to their point of origin. Within sight of my office are three aerostat balloons, all tethered to the ground and equipped with cameras that maintain constant observation of the surrounding town. One of my attorneys, while attending a morning Battle Update Brief, watched – live via video feed – a VBIED drive into a US Army HWWMV, killing two soldiers and injuring another. Wherever I go, there is an M9 pistol on my right hip and a round-filled magazine on my left.

To enter our dining facility, you have to show your identification to two armed guards, then walk around 10′ barriers protecting the building. Inside the DFAC, M16 rifles and helmets clog the aisles. The patronage consists of American Soldiers, Airmen, and Marines, but also soldiers from Australia, Britain, Japan, South Korea, El Salvador, Poland, and Estonia, among others. There’s a bizarre mix of civilians: muscular ex-Special Forces types working as security contractors; OGA (“Other Governmental Agencies” – read CIA, DIA, etc) personnel with compact automatic weapons; overweight hairy guys sporting Ted Nugent t-shirts and mullets and too-tight jeans and working for Kellog, Brown & Root as mechanics, truck-drivers, and whatever else (Lord knows what those guys are running from); and masses of third-world nationals, who basically run the infrastructure. They work as barbers, cleaners, carpenters, food-servers, sanitation workers, check-out clerks. They come predominantly from Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, and the Philippines, all countries so poor that $20 a day is apparently enough of a windfall for them and their families at home that they’re willing to travel to Iraq and work in a dangerous and borderline oppressive environment.

These workers, like many of the military personnel, never leave the FOB. Soldiers for whom leaving the base is a daily undertaking derisively refer to us stay-behind types as “fobbits.” Hilarious. There’s an incredible amount of disparity in the soldier’s experience in Iraq. The Air Force is here for just four months, the Marines for six, and the Army for twelve. Some members of the National Guard will go 18 months before they see their homes again. Some soldiers live a solitary existence helping to train the Iraqi Army, some live on isolated FOBs and experience combat on a daily basis, some live on huge FOBs with all the conveniences of home (like me), some rub elbows with the state department & CIA spooks in the Green Zone, surreptitiously drinking beer and lounging pool side, and some live in Kuwait where they can wear civilian clothes, don’t have to carry their weapons, and neither hear nor see the bad guys, ever. One would think the disproportionate amount of danger faced between a soldier who lives on a FOB and a soldier who lives on the road would contribute to a tense situation, but the reality is that it just doesn’t matter. I read about a Marine who’s been hit by IED’s nine times, and is going home not only alive, but with all his digits and limbs as well. Last month, two soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division died when a VBIED crashed into their HMMWV – they’d been here two weeks, and were doing their “left seat/right seat” ride, where the outgoing soldier shows the incoming soldier the ropes. To the insurgency, a Joe is a Joe, whether he (or she) has been on the road two times or two hundred. The insurgency, it seems, is a fickle mistress.

But enough of that. One cool thing to end on – the CCCI. The Central Criminal Court of Iraq is a partially bombed building in Baghdad where most of the insurgents are eventually tried. The process works like this: US Army unit goes out on patrol, gathers up Bad Guys plus evidence against Bad Guys (US dollars, prohibited weapons, cell phone parts for setting of IEDs, water color portrait of Saddam and Osama in angelic embrace). US soldiers put Bad Guys in a BIF (Brigade Interrogation Facility), where they are, of course, interrogated. Some Bad Guys aren’t so bad, and they’re let go. Some Bad Guys say they aren’t really Bad Guys, but we don’t believe them, so they hang out a little bit. Some Bad Guys are the real deal (Q: “What were you doing with the wires and the cell phone?” A: “I want to kill Americans.”), and they get sent to Abu Ghraib or Bucca until they have their day in court at the CCCI.

One of my friends, an Operations Law attorney responsible for gathering the evidence against insurgents, sent me an email asking to meet him in the Green Zone so I could witness the court in action. He brought two soldiers with him (one, it turned out, was a Samoan kid with whom I used to play rugby) who were involved in a firefight with an insurgent sometime in November. The Iraqi had fired on these two soldiers, and they returned fire, one shooting him in the leg, the other then administering first aid. The unit then transported him to a field hospital for medical attention (if it weren’t so serious, it would be comical, no?), and he was eventually transferred first to Abu and then to the CCCI for his trial.

The court itself is located a few hundred yards outside the Green Zone, technically in an unsecured area. To get there, you drive from the Green Zone to an enormous metal gate cut into a huge concrete barrier. Prior to the drive, we were given a movement brief from the Air Force Security Team that was to guide us the few hundred meters from the gate to the actual court house. In the middle of the brief, upon taking in the battle-savvy appearance of the two soldiers with my friend, and giving a nod to my Ranger tab, our escort stopped – I kid you not – and said, “well, you guys look like shooters. We’ll just follow your lead.” Are you kidding me?

We opened the metal gate, with a suspense-building slow creak, and walked in. I fully expected to see Augustus Galoop gobbling down sweets and drinking from the Chocolate River. Immediately we spread out into a V formation, looking in all directions, maintaining vigilance – very Oliver Stone/Platoon type of stuff. This is bad guy land, right? As we approach the courthouse, I see nothing but Iraqi men and women in business attire, walking around like it’s a Tuesday morning at any courthouse in America.

Don’t we look silly.

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Letter from Baghdad

Baghdad, Iraq/ February 24, 2005

I’m on my first convoy today, where riding shotgun once again means exactly that. I wear a ballistic helmet, ballistic eye-protection, fire-proof gloves, and a flak vest designed to defeat the exact size round the enemy fires. The vest comes with a snap on groin-protector, but I’ve already decided I’m going to sit on that thing; it seems to me that I should be more concerned about a blast coming from the bottom than one from the top. I carry a Baretta 9mm pistol, with one magazine in the well and two hooked to my vest. I also carry an M16 rifle, with one magazine in the well, but with six extra magazines. In total, I have 255 rounds of ammunition. I feel equally empowered and apprehensive at the prospect of possessing so much ability to destroy. I have a client at an outlying Forward Operating Base, or FOB, and I’ve asked the unit to come pick me up at my base, about a 40-minute round trip in light traffic. It will take them three vehicles, and they’ll have to be on the road four times, but I need to see where my guy lives, and what he does, and where his misconduct supposedly took place. Each of the three vehicles coming to get me has a three-man crew: A driver, a vehicle commander, and a gunner. I don’t like them having to take extra risks just for one man, but the alternative is to bring all the witnesses to me, which would turn it into about 10-vehicle convoy. I meet the First Sergeant and his men outside my building. I’ve been in Iraq for about a week, and all my equipment is new and clean, my glasses unscratched, my weapons unfired, all in stark contrast to the men I now look upon. To most, I suspect, they would look dirty and used. To me they do look worn, but also intense, experienced, professional. They look like guys I’d want strapped to roof-top guns when I take my first ride into a hostile city. Another obvious difference between them and me is our age. Aside from the First Sergeant, a career soldier, they all appear to be in their early twenties or late teens. The young man sticking out of the turret of my ride and manning the .50 cal machine gun – as intimidating a weapon as any in our inventory – is surely outweighed by the gun he operates. I decide he must rarely need to shave. The First Sergeant salutes me, hands me another magazine of 5.56 mm, and asks if I’m ready to go. I say I am, get into the vehicle, and we’re on our way. Using his radio, he calls his home base to let them know we’re leaving through Emerald Gate, and then says to me, over his shoulder, “sir, go red.” I lock and load around into the chambers of both my rifle and my pistol, and we’re onto the streets of Baghdad.I’m on the road today because I need to interview my client and several witnesses, all of whom are located at an outlying FOB, named Camp Headhunter, or Camp Independence, or Al Istiqlal, depending on how politically correct we’re being, or whom you’re talking to.Independence (I’m going with the most optimistic) is near the volatile Al Khark district, home of Saddam’s youth and a significant number of incredibly poor Sunni Muslims, who comprise the brunt of the Insurgency. It’s also home to Haifa Street, the most dangerous road in Baghdad, and one of the most dangerous places in all of Iraq (I find out later the soldiers have taken to calling it Grenade Alley).

 

Camp Independence is home to two companies of 1-9 Cavalry, a mechanized infantry unit from Ft. Hood, Texas. Their greater mission is to attain stability in the area by defeating the Insurgency. They act on intelligence from sympathetic locals, intelligence gathered on previous missions or from higher headquarters, or intelligence given to them from other units. Once they get information, which usually identifies locations of a weapons stash or a particular person the unit might be looking for – also called a High Value Target, or “HVT” – the unit commander gives an operations order to one of his subordinate units to go out and conduct a patrol of the area. It could be a show of force, a recon, a raid, or a movement to contact. In its execution, it involves anywhere from 10 – 200 men loaded for bear, getting into up-armored HMMWVs and Bradley Fighting Vehicles, driving to a pre-designated area, getting out of their vehicles, and conducting their mission on foot. In a nutshell, these men walk down the streets of a dangerous and densely populated neighborhood and try to get people to shoot at them.

I’m visiting Charlie Company, or “Crazywolf,” and they’ve had a particularly rough go of the Haifa Street area. Of the 130 men in the company, more than 80 have received Purple Hearts. All but 16 returned to duty after receiving their injuries. Of those, 13 had injuries too serious to stay in country, and 3 were killed in action. My client saw one of the thirteen lose his legs when an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) went off next to him; he saw one of the 3, a soldier who was also his roommate, take a Rocket Propelled Grenade first through the front windshield of his HMMWV, then through his head. He tells me that in the past year he’s been shot at, has had grenades thrown at him, has gone door-to-door, at night, in a huge city apartment building in search of armed men meaning to hurt him, has been near IEDs and car bombs as they exploded, and felt the collapse of air around his head that follows an RPG as it flies by. He talks the language of a soldier, acronyms in abundance – RPG, IED, VBED, CO, PL, ATL, ING, FISTER – the form so familiar and easy to me, even if some of the words are new. It’s also peppered with so many variances of “fuck” that I can’t help but smile.

We sit outside, about 150 yards from the front gate, the Bad Guys purportedly just on the other side of the wall. As I ask questions, and he answers, I hear the familiar “pop pop” of rifles, though with a rhythm and cadence I’m not used to.

“So it was about midnight when this happened?,” I ask.

“I think so,” he answers. Pop, pa-pop, I hear. The sounds are close.

“Uh hum. And you were supposed to be on guard duty?” “Roger,” he says, “me and Smith were up in the nest, when we heard the argument.” Pop pop pop pop pop.

I say, as coolly as I can muster, “Is that a gunfight?” “Roger, sir,” he says. Brrp. Pa-pop pop. Yelling. “Um hum.” I continue.

“So what did you and Smith do after you heard the arguing?” Pop pop. Brrrrrpp. Lots of yelling.

“I sent Smith down the stairs to the SOG, to see if he could find out what the fuck was going on.” Pop pa-pop. Pop pop pop. I too would like to find out what the fuck is going on. “Is that right outside the front gate?” I ask.

“Roger sir,” he says. Another soldier walks by, my client knows him, and he calls out to him. “Hey Gonzalez, you slut!” Gonzalez smiles, they exchange a touch of their closed fists, and Gonzalez continues on his way. Neither Gonzalez nor my client seem particularly concerned by the potentiality of men dying yards from where we sit, and I learn that this is, in fact, perfectly normal for the men of 1-9 Cav. Also normal are stray rounds (the camp doc was hit in the calf by a stray AK 47 round), mortars, and rockets. Less common is the occasional gate crasher-cum-suicide bomber in the form of a “VBIED”, or “Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Device.” This, I realize, is a way of life for these men, and has been for the past year. They deal with it individually, but clearly share something through the commonality of their constant danger.

I spend the day conducting interviews, visiting the scene, learning what life is like for my client and his fellow soldiers. I eat in his dining facility, where lunch is a self-serve buffet of white bread, mayonnaise and mustard packets, roast beef or turkey, cheese, fruit, and bags of potato chips. I ask a soldier sitting next to me if this is what he eats everyday. “No sir,” he answers, “we get hamburgers on Tuesday and Thursday.” Shortly after lunch I’m told that a platoon of soldiers, acting on a tip that an insurgent has moved into a neighborhood friendly to American soldiers, will conduct a recon to check the veracity of the information. I want to see them when they come back, so I wait outside their living quarters. Around 1500 they return, dismounting from their vehicles once they enter the gate. I meet the NCO in charge of the patrol – the same one who told me they were going out on the mission – and I ask him about the tip.

“Roger,” he says, “the guy wasn’t there, but we talked to some neighbors. They said that there was a terrorist living there, that he wasn’t home right now, but that they were going to kill him when he got back.”

As I talk to the NCO, I watch the other soldiers as they file by. They all wear protective helmets and vests adorned with ammo pouches, flash lights, snap-links, first-aid packs – collectively known as “full battle rattle” – and dark sunglasses. Despite the relatively cool day, I can see most are sweaty as they walk by me, on their way to unwind however it is they unwind when they come back from a combat mission. Almost all are quiet, some patting my client on the shoulder as they walk by, some softly saying his name, some touching knuckles with him. Many have told me that my client, in some way or another, has saved their lives in the past year.

Time slips by quickly, and dusk is on the way. The unit is supposed to drive me back home, but they still have to turn around and come back to their own base. I remember being briefed that the roads are most dangerous early in the morning and late in the day, when insurgents have had the opportunity to emplace IEDs. I tell the First Sergeant that I’m ready to head back; he quickly and concisely gives orders to get the convoy ready. I get back into my gear and climb in the back seat of the HMMWV, but we’re momentarily held up while the First Sergeant and Platoon Leader check for a new route – two suicide bombers, both within the past 2 hours, have temporarily closed our primary and alternate routes back to my base. I get out, take off my helmet, and lean against the front hood of my HMMWV, listening to the remaining four soldiers talk as we all wait for the route check. All four of them have been here 11 months, three are from Texas, and three have had their twenty-frist birthday since they’ve been here in Iraq. The fourth is nineteen.

“Dude, I’m lead vehicle on the way back!” the rear gunner calls out to the front. “Fine,” says the front gunner, “but I get your Play Station if you die on the way home.” They all laugh. The front gunner asks me if BIAP (Baghdad International Airport) is “that way;” I say no and point the correct direction. The rear gunner, now out of his turret and sitting cross-legged on the hood of the HMMWV, asks me if I have a Leatherman. I do, and pull the utility tool from my belt and hand it to him. He proceeds to dig a piece of shrapnel out of the grill. The front gunner watches, still asking about BIAP. I live at a base near there, with a Burger King and a pizza shop, a big Post Exchange, and many other amenities in relative comfort and safety in comparison to these kids’ surroundings.

As the sun falls behind a grove of date palms, the First Sergeant returns from the Operations Center with a third route planned. He seems to be a bit more nervous than when he went in the building. I want to offer to stay the night, so they can bring me back in the morning, but the soldiers seem excited to go to the Burger King, and I don’t want to seem like I’m questioning the First Sergeant’s judgment. I remain silent and tentative.

We leave the base, going through the same ritual of “going red,” the soldiers now wearing clear-lens ballistic eyeglasses. All cars make an extra effort to give us the right of way. I ask the First Sergeant about this, and he says most of the people are used to us being here, and have learned to always give us the right of way. I suspect it’s also partly due to the placard attached to the back of the rear vehicle, proclaiming, in Iraqi-Arabic, “STAY BACK. I HAVE AUTHORITY TO KILL YOU.” From the backseat, I strain my eyes around each corner, down each alley, on each overpass, and into every vehicle we pass, looking for anything suspicious, whatever that may be.

We make it to my base without incident, though the rear gunner tells me that someone took a pot-shot at him about ten minutes after we left his FOB. For my part, I am internally frantic the entire ride home, and remain so after the convoy drops me off at my own operations center. I scramble to find them phone numbers to check the original routes, a better map, water – anything to somehow make up for getting them home so late. Despite my twelve years in the Army, I’ve made a rookie move, and I feel sick for doing so. These young men have put their lives in danger – twice – simply to get me from one base to another. I have contributed nothing except to place them at greater risk. I resolve to never do so again, and when I get back to my office I practically yell at my own attorneys to ensure they never make the same mistake.

The next morning I will email the First Sergeant and Platoon Leader my sincerest apologies, and ensure them that though it is unlikely they will need to drive me again, I will never make the same mistake with other units. I get an immediate response from both. They tell me not to worry about it, that they made it home safely, and that they are happy to do anything they can to make it easier for me to do my job, to help one of their soldiers, one of their men, one of their brothers. Despite their circumstances – away from their family and loved ones, austere living conditions, Spartan lunches, and the constant possibility of killing or being killed – despite this, it boils down to this one thing for these men: I will do my job.

For many of them, especially the young soldiers far closer to my little sister’s age than mine – kids, really – they know no politics, or global strategy, or hyper-power, or at least pretend they don’t know and don’t care. Inconsequential is the difference between Sunni and Shiite, Allawi and al Sistani, contemporary Rumsfeld and Rumsfeld circa-1983. All they know is I will do my job, and then I will go home back to Texas and so will my buddy on the .50 cal on the rear vehicle and then he can keep his own Play Station. They will do their job, and so, I promise myself, I will do mine.

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Putting Things in Perspective

Tongduchon, South Korea/November 26, 2002

I went to visit one of the victim’s fathers last night – me, CPT Kim, a translator, and two people from Civil/Military Affairs (one an overweight U.S. Army Major, the other a Korean civilian employee). It’s about a thirty minute drive, down dark and narrow roads, both highway and backwoods. There are no sidewalks the entire way, no guard rails, no streetlights, and people walking all over the place. I imagine making the same trip in a 12′ wide, 60-ton tank.

We arrive at Mr. Shin’s house. He is a rice farmer, but also has cows and pigs. CPT Kim says it stinks; to me it reeks only of nostalgia – the place smells like my house in my youth on a downwind-from-the-dairy day. We’re all wearing jackets and ties, and we take off our shoes as we enter the house. I notice, with restrained horror, that CPT Kim is wearing white tube socks under her business suit. Mr. Shin’s small house is sparsely furnished and I see no closets – only clothes hanging on a wheeled-rack. The floor and ceiling alike covered with a thin layer of yellowed vinyl, and there are, I notice, no pictures of his daughter. A Korean Army Sergeant Major shows up, and we all sit in a cross-legged circle on the floor. The fat major asks B-movie questions (“I trust you have put in a hard day’s work Mr. Shin,“); the translator relays in Hangul, and Mr. Shin answers with a wave of his hand and a series of grunts. I’m in a modern-day tepee negotiation.

Mr. Shin’s son makes an appearance. I guess him to be about eight years old, obviously curious about this delegation planted on his living room floor. He pulls up a soccer ball and sits right next to me, and I can feel his eyes bearing in on my nose (the little bastard). He has a monumental cowlick eerily similar to the one I looked at on a daily basis from the age of six until my recent discovery of hair products. Mr. Shin tells his son to go study, waving his hand for emphasis, and the youth disappears. I notice the father’s hands – he’s a small man, probably 5’5″, about 150 pounds – but his hands are enormous, giving him a stick-figure look. They’re all knuckles and muscle, and I have no doubt the answer to the fat-Major’s original question was a resounding yes.

But we’re here for a reason, unpleasant as it may be, and we have to get down to business. We need Mr. Shin to testify at a court-martial. If a soldier is found guilty of driving his armored bridge-laying tank – a tracked vehicle with a giant metal ten-foot by four-foot bar blocking his field of vision from all but straight ahead at eye-level and directly to his left – in a manner that demonstrates a lack of care for the safety of others which a reasonably careful person would have used under the same or similar circumstances, if that soldier is found guilty, then we need Mr. Shin to tell the world about his 13-year old daughter. We need him to talk about her hopes, her dreams, her friends, her hobbies, how she helped out her mother around the house, how she helped out her dad on the farm, her little brother with his homework. We need him to tell the panel – the jury – about her desires to be a doctor, or a teacher, or whatever it was that she wanted to be. We need him to tell the panel about how she used to wave to the American soldiers whenever they drove by her on these narrow roads, and how they would wave back, or blow their horns, or smile and nod whenever they saw her, right up to the day when one of them didn’t see her. Right up to the day when she was walking on the right side of one of those sidewalk-less, guardrail-less roads, head down, hands over ears, on the way to a birthday party; right up to the day when she didn’t wave, didn’t even look back at the 60-ton behemoth rumbling up the road towards her; right up to the moment when that poor, cursed soldier drove his tank up and over her back, first crushing her and then crushing her friend in front of her, squeezing them like a tube of toothpaste, all of their blood and guts literally causing their 13-year old heads to explode, spilling their brains on to the pavement in front of them. Mr. Shin saw his daughter in that condition, he had to identify her distorted and disfigured body, relying not on his memory of her face, or hair, or particular birthmark on her cheek; but on the fact that she was wearing a red shirt when she left the house that morning, and yes, I’m certain those are her tennis shoes.

This is how I prepare myself for my meeting with the dead girl’s father, this is what I am thinking as I am asking him to testify about his daughter, asking him to tell a jury of American soldiers about his first child, destroyed by a tank not of his country and not of his army, driven by a man that didn’t look like him, or talk like him, or eat like him; driven by a foreigner in a country whose purpose for him ran out with the fall of the Iron Curtain and the surreptitious socialization of China.

Mr. Shin speaks to the translator in a language I do not understand and for which I will never get a feel. His words are blunt and pointed; Hangul is a staccato blast of starts and stops, accented with flying spittle and dramatic hand and arm gestures. The room is quiet as Mr. Shin speaks, four knowing exactly what he is saying, two having a general idea, and only I not having a clue.

Mr. Shin’s answer, I find, is irreconcilable with the events since this horrible accident occurred; the riots, assaults, and terrible, terrible press coverage of American soldiers in Korea; the student protests outside Army camp gates, Molotov cocktails, and dramatic measures US Army officers and politicos – both Korean and American – have taken to appease the seismic shift in Korean-American relations, all in the name of the families of the two girls. All in the name of Mr. Shin, whom I realize has never been asked, up to this point, this eleventh hour for two American soldiers, how he feels.

“Mr. Shin,” the translator begins, “thanks you for coming to his home and talking with him. He wants you to know he is grateful and amazed for all the hard work that you and all the other American soldiers do here. He sympathizes with you for having to leave your families and your country for such a long time, and he is thankful you are here helping to defend his country. Mr. Shin says that the two men in the tank did not intend to hurt his daughter or his family, and he will not have any part of punishing the two soldiers.”

How simple this all could have been; how careless we – and every Korean who beat the nationalist drum in the name of this man’s dead daughter – have been with the lives of this man and his family, and with the career and well-being of an unfortunate American soldier, far from home, defending his own country in a land not his own, where people don’t talk like him, or look like him, or eat like him.

My co-counsel begins to explain to Mr. Shin that this isn’t about intent, this is about simple negligence, about the responsibility to act in a manner that demonstrates an amount of care for the safety of others which a reasonably careful person would have used under the same or similar circumstances. I wonder if she is as equally abrasive and inappropriate in the Korean culture as she is in the American. I wonder why there are no professional requirements for common sense.

We sit for another thirty minutes with Mr. Shin and his Alfalfa-esque son. His wife serves coffee, and apple and persimmon slices on a tray. We talk about his rice harvest, and how helpful the Korean Sergeant Major and the American liaison officer have been throughout the ordeal. We extend to him the opportunity to watch the trial, in a secluded room with an interpreter and an American JAG officer to explain the trial. He says thank you, I will consider it, and we unfold ourselves from his vinyl floor, shake hands, and bow to one another.

Tomorrow, as part of my own job, as part of my own sense of duty and obligation to the defense of my own country, I will prosecute the soldier that was driving that vehicle. As we are driving away, as my co-counsel is on her cell phone complaining to her equally un-impressive fiancé that she has no sentencing case, I wonder why it can’t be more simple.

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The Little Sister Interlude

Chicago, Illinois/August 9, 2001

My fourteen year-old sister occupies the passenger seat next to me. My traveling companion for the next nine days, she is five feet eight inches of legs and eyeballs, one hundred per cent self-assuredness. My plan is to mold her, to show her parts of the country she has never seen, to show her the things she can have if she continues to do the things she is doing. I will show her cities, art, monuments, untamed wilderness. I will show her baseball. I will show her things that come with an education, with sophistication, with worldliness. I will impress her with my knowledge of all things not small-town Nevada. I will prepare her for life.

We drive out of Denver, and I am already a little cautious. A college friend has spoken of strippers and Amsterdam hash bars. I want her to be worldly, but this is too much! Does she know what a stripper is? Does she know they are all “working their way through college,” but that none have actually ever graduated? Does she know many have suffered abuse of some sort during their childhood, and that their own children are also likely to be affected? I want to tell her these things, but then I wonder if she’ll ask me how much money they make. She has been asking me this question with regards to my friends and their professions. If she asks, I must answer honestly. She is mature, going into high school, and she deserves the truth.

“A good Las Vegas stripper,” I would answer, “can make six figures, and working just half the year. However, benefits are pretty much non-existent. Unless, of course, you’re looking for good coke.” Six figures for a half year’s work, and free drugs? This sounds pretty good to me. I opt not to broach the stripper and Amsterdam issue. I instead worry about her becoming a stripper. I worry about her going to college and having a bad sexual experience. I worry about her getting accidentally pregnant and ruining her young life. This is a valid concern. My family breeds like it’s free sex at a polygamy festival. I want to ensure my little sister is aware of the breeding process. I want her to know that contraception is spelled with a “tra” in the middle of it. I want her to be prepared.“So Erin,” I ask, “whadda ya hear about the fallopian tube?” She shrieks. She brings her legs up to her chest, leans away from me, curls into a fetal position. Her hands cover her ears. “LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA” she says. I suspect she doesn’t want to talk about this. “I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT THIS,” she says. She is fourteen. We drive on.

At Mt. Rushmore, we take a gondola ride to an elevated view of the monument. From our perspective, only three presidents are visible. “I thought there were four,” she says. I tell her they take one down every other month to give it a good cleaning. She eyes me suspiciously. At the foot of the monument itself, she sees that there actually are four. “Ha!” She says. “I told you. What are their names?” I can see she doesn’t know. “The left one,” I say, “is Samuel L. Jackson. Then John Elway, Will Ferrell, and George W. Bush.” She does not believe me. “You’re such a liar!” she says. “The one with the beard is Abraham Lincoln.” She is fourteen.

We drive through the great expanse that is South Dakota. I want her to look around, to absorb the Great Plains and all of its history. I want her to know the misfortune of the millions of Native Americans at the hands of white settlers and the United States Army. I want her to know about the great bison herds. I continue to point things out to her. Laura Ingall Wilder’s childhood home. The Badlands. The acres and acres of wheat and corn. At each of my observations, she gives me a token “uh-huh,” barely looking up from her Nintendo Game-boy. I am exasperated. “Erin,” I finally say. “I want to know what you think about all of this. Look around you! This is America! What do you say?” She stares at me, inquisitively. Reflectively. “I think,” she says, “you pick your nose almost as much as Kimberley.” She is, I remind myself, fourteen.

In a restaurant in South Dakota, a young male takes our order. After he leaves, Erin states that she believes he is gay. “Erin!” I furrow my brow and drop my voice an octave. “Why do you think that?” “Because,” she says, “he has a lisp. And his finger nails are long and polished.” I begin: “Do you know anyone who is gay? Have you ever met a gay man?” She admits she has not. “Then you are basing your opinion on stereotypes acquired from television and movies,” I state. “You are basing your opinion on misperception, and your generalization perpetuates the incorrect and unfair portrayal of gay men. Until you have solid knowledge based on first-hand experiences acquired over time, you are only showing your ignorance by making such a statement.” She is sufficiently embarrassed. I have shown her the path to open-mindedness.

In Chicago, we go to a party given for a friend and her peers, graduates of a PhD program for clinical psychology. The host of the party is also my friend’s mentor and supervisor. My friend tells us her mentor is sort of peculiar, but very nice and entertaining. He is also, she says, gay. He greets us at the door. Erin stands behind me, obviously curious to meet her first gay man. Bernie is slender, with slightly balding hair slicked down on top of his head. He has a pencil-thin mustache, and wears a gray polo tucked into his belted black slacks. His shoes are highly polished. His partner is an Austrian named Hans. Bernie’s fingernails are long and polished, and Bernie has, of course, a lisp. It is all Erin can do to contain herself. She is throwing me kidney shots, each one a connecting “I told you so!” She does not punch like a fourteen year-old.

Our trip together is over. Erin begins high school on Monday. She is on the dance team, she is in Honors English Composition, she is her freshman class president. Still, I find myself worrying about her. We drive together to the airport, silently. I hope that she has had a good time, that she has learned something new, that she has seen what can be hers if she keeps doing the things she is doing. In the end, however, it is I that am taught. It is I that am impressed. It is I that worry that I annoyed her too much, that I embarrassed her. I think she is a superstar, and I tell her so. She looks me in the eye, pauses, and says “thank you.” Clearly, confidently, appreciatively.

I miss her already.

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Smells Like Home

 

The Great Basin/July 10, 2001

     It starts when you cross over Hoover Dam. The stars seem to get brighter, the night sky darker. You can smell hints of it: sagebrush and afternoon thunderstorms, freshly-cut alfalfa, the dairy if the wind is blowing the right way. You can picture the vast, comforting emptiness of the Great Basin, despite the darkness of the night and the interruption of Las Vegas. It doesn’t really hit you – that you’re home – until you’re well north of Las Vegas and its neon dreams. Vegas is merely a facade of Nevada. Ask someone from Las Vegas where they’re from, and they’ll tell you Las Vegas. Ask someone from Reno where they’re from, they’ll tell you Nevada. Someone from Carson City? Nevada will be their answer. Jackpot, Ely, Wendover, Austin, Gabbs, Dayton. All crappy little Nevada towns that you don’t care about, that no one really cares about, and if you’re from one of those places, you know it’s a place no one really cares about. So you tell them you’re from Nevada. If you press them, you will get the real answer (“small ranching community approximately 80 miles south of Reno“). Same if you disparage their crappy little town, or any other crappy little town in Nevada. Outside of Las Vegas, Nevada is a tie that binds. Wide-open spaces; hours, not minutes, between towns; half the town your relation.

 

 

     And so it begins, 100 miles north of Las Vegas. Lights and tourists and artificial everything behind you, nothing but space and eye-blink towns in front. Human form in the Great Basin is a hiccup; it appears without warning, and is a memory before you know it. Towns so small your mind can’t grasp that they are anything but transient, desert gypsies. Cinder blocks under their mobile homes give them away, however; they are here for good. No one out here really travels. There is too much distance between you and what is next, and it’s too damn hot to do anything about it anyway. Nothing moves when it is this hot. A herd of wild burros so still I momentarily mistake them for iron sculptures. But they are real. Anything here not sculpted by the elements is an invasion, an optical distraction that steals from the overwhelming desolation of it all and focuses your eye on one particular object, and that’s not how this desert should be viewed. The Great Basin and its literally hundreds of mountain ranges are best spied from the valley floors. The closest ranges blended pinks, oranges, and whites, barren and scarred by hundred-year old switchbacks leading to some long-forgotten mineral deposit; the furthest ranges sparsely covered with pinon pine and shaded the same gray as the patched concrete roads stretching through the desert. Nothing is here that doesn’t belong. The things that are here fit, and the things that don’t fit are driving like hell to get out. The roads escort invaders to the exit: long stretches of open highway that present oncoming traffic from miles and miles away. Anyone can pass here, it’s just a matter of gauging the distance through the heat waves rising from the pavement. Telephone lines announce any confluence of dirt road with the highway; the poles, with their mid-slung cross beams and upright insulators, reminders of the giant Saguaros I just left behind. Or lonely grave markers for all those who came long before me, but failed to make it through this tired beauty. The roads, too, are lonely. So empty that if you’re not from here, you constantly question the map, straining to remember if you took a wrong turn somewhere despite the fact that the road hasn’t given you that option in a hundred miles.

I come upon a beat up old Ford, four shades of primer gray with knobbed-hands gripping the bus-sized steering wheel. He is from here, I can tell; he drives too slowly to be going anywhere else. There is an oxygen tank standing in the bed of the truck, and a small tube runs over the bed railing and into the open driver’s side window. As I pass, I see the opposite end of the tube wrapped around the driver’s head and inserted up each nostril. He turns and makes eye contact with me; wrinkled face and mouth toothless and open. He is a dead-ringer for Munch’s The Scream. He belongs here, as does his truck. So too the hundreds of species of sagebrush, the turkey-vultures, wild burros, rocks, ghost towns, and ten-thousand foot snow capped peaks.

I am home. I am going home, and I find myself driving like hell to get there.