Victory is Theirs
Well it has been a good few days for the Iraqi insurgency. A few days in a row, the man who knew the names of all of the bad men with beards and sandals has failed to show. And so they remain safe in their obscurity for a bit longer. These guys kill me. They all know where all the bad men are, and can’t understand why the Americans haven’t figured it out too, because I mean really, EVERYONE knows this guy is a bad guy, right?
Well the man who knew all didn’t show up. Well, yes he did, to be fair, two hours late (after I waited for him for half an hour in the sun, which in the recent week has gotten to the temperature that would make Dante cringe). I got a phone call that he was there to be met, and rousted an interpreter and went over there, and by the time I got there the guards said, “We told him to wait over there…” but I guess ten minutes was enough for the guy to get bored and leave… So the insurgents scored another victory and another day in anonymity, because only Americans are dumb enough to wait in the sun for half an hour, whereas a two-hours late Iraqi gives 10 minutes because hey, it’s hot out there.
Also in the past week I have been adventuring enough to see some more of the countryside. I have noticed that there are interesting similarities and differences between here and The Stan. Difference: fewer mud huts here, some houses are even stone or concrete and a lot are more than one story. Same: Chickens run around the yard, the walls around the houses are still mud, and there are an excessively large number of small donkey-pulled carts with excessively large numbers of sticks piled on the back. There are also stick bundles for sale in markets. I don’t know what these people do with all of these sticks… or where they get them from, because they don’t look like they come from the trees around here…
Also, there’s the tires. Both countries have an unnatural obsession with tires. They are piles of tires everywhere, and scattered groupings of tires. Big tires, small tires, tires out the back door, tires near the front door. I never see them fix a single tire, just pile them up. The same with large bags of thick plastic. Piles and bundles of them all over the countryside and on the back of donkey carts and in the trunks of cars. I’ve never seen them used, just piled. Something about the Middle East and bundles and piles…
Maybe these crafty little insurgents have something up their sleeves…
And maybe they just sit around laughing at us as we give suspicious looks to the stick-bearing donkey…