iraqistan

Not just the name of my husband’s battalion anymore… a quick tale…

Today, while I was out at a meeting, a kid showed up at our gate and handed our guards something. Under most circumstances, cause for concern (sure, they look cute, but my team leader has taken to calling most of them little terrorists. She loves this country…). In this case, the thing ended up on my desk. How, not sure.

I come back from the meeting and am directed over to my desk. There, in a box, is a white devil… a little albino bunny rabbit. I promptly named him Infidel, since he was a white devil with red eyes and was at the time pooping on the turban which had been laid in his box (note: the turban was the type typically worn by our resident warlord, so we weren’t too upset. My team sergeant sits on it every day anyway…). We also kicked around Little Terrorist, Roger, and, blast from the past, Bunnicula (courtesy of one of the field artillery guys, which was awesome because I haven’t thought about those books in years…).

Tragically, my team leader hates pets, so she wouldn’t let me keep him. he chilled out on my shoulder while we were in town, but I had to give him to some kid. Despite my instructions (through my interpreter) that it was a pet and to feed him, I have a feeling I shouldn’t eat any kebob for a bit off the local economy… bunny meat tastes remarkably like everything else in this country…

Well, before I go out again to rack up more stories, I suppose I should tell a few from our last mission up north… sit back and relax, kids, it’s story time…

So we are sitting in a meeting with a pretty big name guy, who like half the people in this country have such engaging tales of prison time, torture, and other smurfy things (you like that reference, don’t you… admit it…). Now, one of my teammates seems to have a touch of a delicate stomach, not so much because of the torture tales which are being told in a foreign language, but that he seems to react poorly to the local food, and to MRE’s (that’s the new version of C-Rations, for those archaic folk). So as he sits cross-legged on the floor, he shifts around quite a bit… and in the midst of a torture high-point, he shifts and produces the unmistakable sound of someone with stomach trouble…

He gets the shifty-eye… surely no one heard him. One of our team members tries in vain not to laugh. I begin to sweat… must… not… look… at… anyone… another team member has buried his face in his hands as the perpetrator quietly mumbles “excuse me.” this is apparently too much for some, and I am staring hard at our tortured person and our interpreter to ignore the giggles… children… really… our poor interviewee is completely confused, given the timing, and a bit taken aback, I am sure… at least the room smelled bad enough (think feet, in tennis shoes for three weeks without socks and without taking them off even to sleep, having run ten miles every day, then removed and stuck under your nose. Pleasant) that he didn’t overly offend anyone…

Onward… another day, no shower. We were feeling native by about day three, which is when we wandered into another town. Now, if the provincial capital was a one-horse town (we walked most of the time), this place was a one-donkey town. I likened it to the Old West, only in the Third World. One main street, lots of shops that aren’t so much storefronts as they are caves in a mud block. Each shop sells the same thing. One thing I noticed every shop had plenty of: lightbulbs. One thing I saw absolutely no where in that town: Sockets, or any other form of electricity. Why, you ask, would a town with no electricity sell lightbulbs in every store? Why indeed… That is one mystery I will have to leave up to people much more qualified than I.

I did, however, discover juice packets while on this journey. They look just like Capri-Suns, only Iranian. Nothing adds flavor like persecution and Anti-American fervor, I always say. Very tasty… cherry isn’t so good, but apple and pear are grand. The oranges taste like oranges… the shnozberries taste like shnozberries…

Anyway, there are more stories, like one of our force protection guys riding a donkey (you can just wander up and ask people), our attempt to buy dinner on the local economy that turned into a crusade (we ended up not with “food for ten” as we had asked for, but indeed ten of everything the place made… good thing we brought one of the pick-up trucks when we went out…), and my interpreter teaching me how to call myself an ass (I may have told that story. He, and the guard who helped him in the adventure, are both on my bad list now… all I wanted to do was learn how to say “thank you very much” and I learned instead “I am a donkey,” later abbreviated to simply “I am an ass.” I hate this country…). But as time goes on, more stories will accumulate. All the more for later, kids… another chapter next time…

Ah, second birthday in the Army… last year today was my first full day in the Army. How cute, eh? I woke up and I was a year older and my first day in Basic Training. My birthday presents that year were an HIV test, a pregnancy test, and a few push-ups… How could I ever hope to top it?

My team sergeant did give me the day off today, though, which was nice of him. Since we live in relative paradise compared to most of the people in my unit, life actually isn’t awful. One of my friends is cooking dinner tonite for me and my other buddy who’s birthday is this coming Tuesday. So we live it up and sit and talk about Bon Jovi (rock on New Jersey) and Aerosmith and consider going up to the roof to lay in the sun for an hour or two.

It helps that I am rested up from the mission last week. Took a few hot showers with soap that smells like vanilla so now I have this problem with attracting the bugs that like sweet stuff… Malaria sends you to Germany! My gangrene attempts are falling through, unfortunately… the infection has cleared up for the most part, so now I need another way to get to Europe.

So in retrospect, what have I learned in the past year. Let’s see. There’s that motivational jibber-jabber like “you can do it if you put your mind to it” and mumbo jumbo like that, but there are other important life points: bottom shelf burbon whiskey makes any one-horse town the best place in the world (and kept doc holiday alive for two weeks, according to our bartender), if you stand in the back and say something funny enough for someone in the front to repeat it, you get off scott-free, there is a movie quote or an 80’s song quote for any occasion (though I did experience that in college as well), when life gives you lemons, throw them at people to make them miserable too… really… I learned a lot. That isn’t even half of it… made a bunch of good friends, did some neat things, and saw some scenic things like Iranian water towers and German food served in a bowling alley in Rein Mein… not a bad year, really…

Next year, in Baghdad! (doesn’t quite have the same ring as the ol’ Passover rhetoric of Next year in Jeruselem, does it… ah well…)

And around the woods… a little backwards, but nonetheless what we did. I went on a few journeys in the past week, both west and north. Some stories may not be for sensitive ears, of course… but all I have is a little budding gangreen and a broken sinus cavity, and that was from before I left, so it was overall successful…

Just to clarify, the gangreen is still a work in progress. If i nurture it just a little more, I can go to Germany for a week! Sure, I would lose the tip of my thumb, but still… The medic doesn’t think I can do it, says the infection isn’t bad enough. Sounds like a dare to me…

The broken nose makes time number six. I don’t know how I got so awesome…

Now there are a few things I should mention about missions. First thing is driving. Let’s put this into perspective. Take a wooden roller coaster built in maybe nineteen aught-six. Lots of hills and bumps and none too smooth. Then put square wheels on the cars. Then put obstacles on the tracks like donkeys, jingle trucks (to be explained further), and really really stupid people. Then make it all last about nine hours at a shot. Really, all SUV companies should look into sending prototypes to Afghanistan, because if we can’t break their car within three missions, it’s good enough to call a true sport utility. We go over rocks, through rivers, around turns, up and down embankments… a blast for oh, about an hour. Then, you kind of want to die. Or throw up. I actually tried to do some reading on the way back (a no-no, but I wanted to see if I could accomplish such a task). You wouldn’t believe how fun that was…

The roads wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the dust and the jingle trucks. To explain jingle trucks, combine a large dump truck and a clown car. Size of a dump truck, fits a small city. They put chains and fuzzy colored things on the mirrors and along the bottom so it jingles and looks pretty. They come in the shape of dump trucks, buses, cars, bikes… rarely do you see a bike with one. Four max, I think, before it gets wobbly… Buses are double-decker, only with one inside seating area and whoever else on the roof. Donkeys cost double because they take up two seats.

Then, you have the fact that you are in a third world country, and that outside of the main cities, there is no plumbing system. Oh, wait. We did have a bathroom two nights, with a working sink. The toilet, though, was fun. This is the part where the faint of heart and stomach may want to bypass. We had what you call an Afghan toilet. An Afghan toilet is a glorified indoor hole in the ground with some porcelain. No flushing mechanism, essentially a urinal installed (recessed) into the floor that you hover over. You want to have exceptionally good balance, and good quad muscles. Flushing? Ah. There is a water jug that you fill from the tap and you pour it in until you can’t see anything anymore. That is, unless there was already too much so it just kind of floods. That’s when you go outside.

But we stayed at a fancy house. There were outside toilets! Mud huts, no door, hole in the ground that were cut conveniently shaped like the recessed urinal that we found inside. All the conveniences of home…

You want a shower? Why be so picky. There is a water pump out back.

Now this place wasn’t really too bad, though. There are, however, wild dogs around, so pulling guard shift was interesting. One came onto the compound while I was on guard. I mentioned that if the thing came closer (they are, approximately, the size and shape of a medium-sized, mean, ugly-looking bear), I was going to put my rifle on burst and have some hot breakfast. My guard buddy said he’d back me up. I’ve seen him shoot… I’d have to take my chances. We had good campfires going from wood we bought in town. I picked up an interesting habit from our local nationals: burning water bottles is not only bad for the environment and your lungs, but it makes a neat green color and the coating it leaves on the wood will help it to catch and make a better fire! These things have it all! We burned just about anything we got our hands on as shifts got later and later… I think they are sending me to detox over the weekend…

I could go on… I didn’t even get into the actual fun times we had… More entries for this weekend, I suppose! Time for some much-needed sleep… after a nasty prank, I have been up for 16 hours already at 7:00pm (1900 hours for those of you keeping track in the military), and I will probably be up awhile still… story for another day…

Well, I suppose it should be said that if you are accident-prone, handling weapons is inadvisable at best. But who am I to listen to such things, really?

Our story begins at the range, a quaint, former Soviet establishment with the occasional mine, old bumker, some bombed-out buildings, and enough nothing to shoot weapons and have a generally good time. So we go out there to pop off a few rounds (so we can say we shot in a combat zone, of course), and it is a good place for me to finally learn to drive a standard. I won’t leave you in suspense, I now know how to drive a standard. I am so awesome, it is almost painful sometimes. But I digress…

So I drive around, stall a few times, get the hang of it, everything is lovely. One day, I will remember to take off the parking break so I don’t stall three or four times before taking it off and being able to drive… I park and get out to play around with the ol’ pistol. Shoot a round or two, feel something hit my thumb, shoot another few, weapon jam. Go to clear the weapon, realize that my hand is covered in blood. Interesting phenomenon. Apparently, the person firing next to me was a little close and a piece of brass from her round had hit my thumb in some odd fashion as to leave a huge gash in the tip, wandering down into the nail. A wonderful feeling, really. Our interpreter, a man of many talents, washes it off with some bottled water and proceeds to poke at it for a bit to find out where it is actually cut. It took a few comments of “ow. quit it.” to get him to realize he found it. Can’t blame a guy for trying, I suppose.

So i bandage it up, finish out my magazine, and we start doing some reaction drills. Now here, for all of you not in the military, is something interesting. We have done these before, where you vault yourself from one side of the vehicle to the other while someone is yelling “bang bang.” Very threatening. I decide it is time to dust off some old tricks and see how doing a dive roll works out. First go around, it is successful. Second time around, not nearly so. My gymnastics career, regretably, did not include me wearing a bullet-proof vest with rather heavy plates. I may have staved off some of my injuries if it had… as it were, though, on my second trip out the passenger side of the truck my vest decided it had no business staying where it belonged and that it would be much happier over my head and on the ground. Too bad about my nose getting in the way, really. It cleared my chin, but the plate caught me right in the nose… very amusing for all involved, I assure you. Oh wait… maybe not me so much… but my team leader said I had therefore had enough for the day and let me be the one yelling bang bang after that. I got to even point a powerbar at the vehicles… I am such a menace…

So now I sit, painfully typing away, breathing through my mouth. Horrible memories of my drill sergeant at basic training yelling “slack-jawed mouth-breather” at various members of my platoon running through my mind… Overall, a productive day. At least on the way home I only stalled twice. Current score– Universe: 2 Me: 0. Let the games continue…

Ah, I see the fashion connoseiurs (how on earth is that spelled? Eh, whatever…) are all out today… a little education is in order, then! The weather is warming up and the people are coming out of their caves and mud huts, and the streets are bustling with activity.

Ah, but what are they WEARING, you ask, and a justified question it is! So we go to the streets and see what’s in this spring, and what is SO last season…

Man Pajamas. Known to the local populace (well, to the infidel foreigners, anyway) as Man-Jams. Extremely comfortable, baggy, pretty much a sweatsuit with absolutely no elastic. Upon buying a set, you have to also purchase a belt to go with them. The belt, mind you, is a piece of rope, perhaps a piece of fabric with beads on the end, whatever you can tie. You need a belt. You need a belt because the pants, unfolded, can fit a family of seven inside with room for the donkey (for those concerned about the donkey, I believe I already wrote an entry touching on that subject…). They come in one size, even if you have measurements taken and have them made for you. This is particularly amazing for the infidels, because we have some taller people in our group who can’t seem to get man-jams with sleeves long enough to touch the middle of their forearms, though both of them can fit in the pants (refer to next paragraph).

Then you have the variety and color. Okay, no variety, only color and maybe some pattern. Anyway… moving on… Red man-jams. If you like the color red, go right ahead and get a set, but have it noted that a man in red jams is targeting himself for unwanted attention from the locals. By unwanted, think American Construction Union scaffolding site with about forty cat-calling guys shouting from fifteen stories up. Red is apparently the color the “fancier” gentlemen wear… our resident lieutenant got himself a set anyway (and no one can ask, since this is today’s Army), stating that he won’t wear them but he does like the color red. He recently went on an R&R out to Uzbekistan… I think it might have something to do with the relentless teasing he has received since his order came in.

Now you are saying, “But if they are called Man-Jams, what about the ladies?” Well, girls, this year’s fashion is called the “Blue Ghost.” You see them travelling usually in twos and threes in light blue, face covering, flowing outfits that will complement any pair of shoes, since that is all that can be seen. The bhurka is simply the must-have for spring… you can get the flowing scarf or simply wrap your bedsheet over your head and around your shoulders, but if you want to be popular, you want to be in blue…

They do have female versions of Man-Jams, to be worn under the bhurka, I believe, since I have yet to see any ladies wearing them otherwise. They are pretty much the same exact thing as the man version, only with a vest-type thing with more sequins and ties. They like things that glitter and sparkle…

So that’s it, folks, on the fashion runways this spring. Keep an eye out for the hot colors like Dusty Brown, Rocky Gray, and Suicide-Bomber White. Backup colors are Near-Harvest-Poppy-Field Green and Minefield-Warning Yellow… I expect GQ will be picking this up, if not Vanity Fair, so make sure you know what’s hot…

Slow news day… can you tell?