Letter from Home

I got several packages from home and ripped into them like a deer on fresh grass. One box, from a friend, contained various books from the greats like Dickey Chappelle, Gloria Emerson, Micheal Herr and Tim O'Brian. If only I could finish Gertrude Bell's biography, but I am savoring every word which makes it difficult to turn the page quickly.


The other box, from my mother and father, included a large tin filled with homemade brownies,, much needed pairs of new socks, gray t-shirts, bags of candy by request, tiger milk bars, a DVD of my brother's recently televised Mixed Martial Arts fight and a hand written note. There is nothing quite like seeing my mother's longhand on a piece of paper. I imagine her sitting in her chair one night and writing to me, folding the paper, sealing it up and sending it off. So unlike the sterile and professional email.

I feel as if I have been gone for years. I hear myself saying to soldiers, "I can't believe you have to be here for ten months," and they reply "Why are you leaving early?" I have no intention of not staying, but its surreal for me, like I am just watching days go by.

Colors

While soldiers wait for missions they lounge in the Ready Up room, which has a large screen TV and shelves stocked with DVDs. Today they were watching A River Runs Through It and I sit down for a moment. Out of the sun, the desert fog and flies, I am captivated by the river, the water running over rocks like tongues running over smooth teeth, the grass in the wind like hair one could let down in a civilian world and the mountains rising in the distance remind me that there are some things humans cannot cover in concrete.

The best scenery here is at night before the sky turns black. If you look straight up you'll see midnight blue, then a bit lower there is deep ocean blue fading into shallow sea blue then robin's egg blue, white-blue, gray-blue, gray-white and finally a bit of pink and orange over the shadowed trailers. These are colors we cannot replace with computer or television screens. Colors that fade so quickly that we can still say,"Isn't that beautiful?"

Our Town

The world is shrinking. I am not in Iraq, I am in the smallest town in America, wondering what sunlight looks like when not reflected in armored cars or shut out by high concrete walls.
There are few new faces in this town except for the rotating guards monitoring the incoming traffic on the airfield.
The familiar town citizens only look different at dusk, in the smokey cigar ember light, when they shed their uniforms for PTs (a gray ARMY shirt and black shorts), but those with a swagger still move their hips and those with a limp still land heavily with one foot and I know their names from a mile away.
The faces only change in the rising dust storms. Hats, sunglasses and scarves cover those recognizable features, but soldiers wear their names on their chest, like scars or trophies and I know their names if I get close enough.

The Airfield

It's a ten minute walk to the airfield from my CHU. I often get stopped by cars slowing down to ask if I need a ride. Once on the compound (area on the airfield with offices and barricades) there is silence, unless a mission has been called in, then boots stomp through the gravel and rotor blades fill the air. Otherwise it is a ghost town. Everyone has a job, everyone is filed away in their own trailers working on paperwork or passing the boredom with cards and movies. Others are carrying or dragging or driving around helicopter parts or other odds and ends. If you stand by the landing pads on a clear day,more often then not other helicopters come in to drop off patients or things unknown at the hospital that is only fifty or so feet away.

Beyond the high concrete walls a few trees peek over and from inside the Blackhawk, when it soars over the base you can see the fields of green just beyond our reach.

Oregon Map

I step out of the shower, get dressed and walk outside, my hair soaking wet, and walk fifty feet to the dumpster. I throw out my trash, walk back to my CHU (Containerized Housing Unit aka trailer) and run my hands through my hair, which is now dry and brittle with dust.
I sit on my bed. I can't tell if it is the air conditioning or aircrafts landing nearby that shake the room.
I just moved into a new place, so that I now share my bathroom with another female. I look at the bags on the floor, wondering what is the purpose of putting books on the shelf and clothes on the hanger. This space is not my home, just a temporary shell and I have no desire to put lipstick on the pig. My one decoration is a worn Oregon map that I hang up on the wall just do I can put my finger on those great green areas and follow the river towards the mountains. "Um get over it," jokes one soldier after spying my map, but I am not hopelessly pining away for home. I am simply paying homage to the places that have brought me true happiness.

Good Evening Iraq!

A kevlar vest on my chest and a kevlar helmet on my head I push plastic into my ear cavities. The plane like a prehistoric shark opens its mouth and I walk inside the belly, no windows, no view from above to below.

After landing we walk into the hot darkness and climb aboard a bus headed for somewhere else, just so we can wait for another bus.

The landscape reveals sickly trees struggling to grow straight, a few stars, the tired eyes of soldiers, the hefting of duffels, neon Taco Bell sign, street lights, round abouts and armored cars. Gasoline fumes and dust burrows into my hair, sweaty synthetic clothing, mildew and burning plastic waifs through the air.

The wet CHU (referring to my trailor with a bathroom) is a luxurious space with plastic panels, a bed with a mattress, a night table with a lamp, two closets, a window, air-conditioning and sand.

While other soldiers share cramped quarters, I sit alone in my room wondering what everyone else is doing.

GREEN

Dear Dexter Filkins (famous journalist, who lived in Baghdad during the beginning of the Iraq war and went on daily runs through the city),

How did you manage to run in the streets of Baghdad? This morning I finally worked up the nerve to jog outdoors in Balad.

I hit the chow hall at 0630 hoping that I could get my running shoes on the ground by 0800, therefore missing the scorching heat that could burn the rubber off my soles. Unfortunately I drank too much coffee and couldn't move for thirty minutes. I also stopped by the internet cafe because I knew I could miss the crowds and get a reasonable connection. After my allotted thirty minutes I rushed home only to run into the soldier who had my computer charger, so I waited in my room until he finished breakfast so I could charge me computer during my run. So by the time my ponytail got flopping in the wind it was 0900.

In the words of America, "The heat was hot." Had it not been for the claustrophobia of living inside concrete walls I would have turned back into my air-conditioned hooch (military trailer).

So here I am jogging leisurely by semi-trucks pumping out clouds of black, diesel smoke floating towards me like malicious ghosts.

I ignore the soldiers staring at me as I leave my neighborhood (two hooches on the same block) and I don't even waste the energy to wonder if they are staring because it is crazy to run in this heat. I also ignore the truck driver who asks if I want a ride and the several other "Hey Baby," calls, which come from shadowed faces inside white trucks. Instead of staring at the vehicles charging by, the concrete and dirt I focus my attention on my feet, listening to the sound of my dog tags clinking on my chest.

I turn left onto a street I have never visited. At the end of the road a sign says, "Stop, No Running, No walking, No Biking." Beyond the sign is a wide roadway and beyond that a barb-wired fence and beyond that GREEN. A forest of palm trees sway in the breeze, towering over rich grasses and bushes. Sweat runs into my eyes and blur the oasis into a mirage.

I turn back overwhelmed by the color of vegetation.

I run on the other side of the street and I am again confronted by another foreign sight. A patch of dark green grass lays before me adorned with a sign, "Do not walk on the grass."

Walk on the grass! I would never even think of it, I want to lay down between the blades, bury my face in the familiar smell, but instead I run on without looking back.

Anyways Mr. Filkins, I have read your book, but still, how did you manage running through Baghdad?

Iraq Bike

I borrowed a bike today and went tearing down the street pretending I was not afraid of the semi-trucks and armored vehicles behind me. The ride lasted ten minutes, but I felt free like I was biking home or getting lost in the green forest behind Spencer's Butte in Eugene, Oregon. Then I stopped at the covered dining area, my only access to wireless internet. My excitement evaporated when I leaned the bike against one of the buildings. The flies landed on my eyes lids, cheeks and fingers. Pigeons and other littel birds flittered in and out of my view like trash blowing in the wind. I was wearing my last clean shirt and pants that I refused to wash because the turn around at the laundry service is seventy-two hours and I cant go that long without my blue jeans. Even though the cotton material and small pockets are most impractical they remind me of the world I used to live in.

Several hours later I rode the bike back to the airfield and walked home.

Have Fun at the Pool

"Have fun at the pool," the pilot says with a rueful smile after I inform him I am headed to Balad.

I met him in Oklahoma, on my first Blackhawk flight. It is like that in the military, people constantly run into old friends from flight school and old acquaintances from past deployments and so on. As a civilian I never run into familiar faces so I was excited when the pilot walked into the chow hall.

He is headed to a snaller base without the luxury of two Olympic sized pools.

"See you later," I say as he walks away because you really never know.


After breakfast , I haul my armored vest and helmet from under my cot, drag my bags outside and wait for the bus. "Hurry and wait," is the motto around here. After sunning my red cheeks in the morning light, a group of soldiers and I file into a bus destined for another compound in Kuwait. We wait there for a few hours, eating melted ice cream. Then we take another bus to the airfield. The desert, outside the window, is littered with barbwire and scraps of metal laid out like carcasses. Plastic and paper trash drift in the breeze. A few gray-green bushes stand heroically amidst the remnants of an older war.

Perhaps I should feel some grand emotions as I board the fixed-wing destined for Iraq, but after spending two weeks in Kuwait I only expect more concrete, more sand, maybe a few mortars and a room to myself. Perhaps emotions are contagious and since I am surrounded by soldier popping chewing gum or chatting or sleeping I feel like this is just another day. So I fold my hands over my lap, lean back against my seat and close my eyes.

More Thoughts on the Nature of the Desert

The gray sky carries in a bit of rain landing sideways on my arms. The timid wind combs my hair, cars roll by slowly and soldiers sleepily trudge to the bathrooms and brush their dusty teeth. During these rare, cool hours, the desert doesn't seem so formidable or impassible, but rather reigned in and tamed by a few drops of water. Escaping the concrete walls of the base for the open desert, just to see vacant land stretch into the distance, seems perfectly sane and senseless at the same time.

Tim

I recieved the news via email and tried to think of other things. I tried to keep my eyes on the computer screen, pretending I was alone instead of the crowded coffee shop in Kuwait surrounded by strangers.

And all the while I sat there typing about things like the color of sand instead of imagining my brother with the casket pressing heavily on his shoulder, his eyes blurring from tears and his head pressed against a wooden pew in reverance for his lost friend. "It is tragic going from being in his wedding to being a pallbearer in his funeral," my brother wrote to me about his friend, Tim.

Tim, killed in a traffic accident, left behind a six month old daughter and a fiance.

No matter how I tried to look at it, there was nothing, but devastation. I felt cruel trying to make sense of it because there are so many things this young man will miss and so on.

Here I am in the desert, thinking all through the day, how easily time can simply fail to exist and how living and dying and war and peace are what makes life fragile and exciting and honest and horrible. For many journalists it is death that provides the big break, or a sense of purpose or depression. For myself, I believe that when tragedy strikes, as if inevitably does, there should be someone there to document it and not let people pass on like dreams one cannot remember.

Luke Murphy has created a Trust for Tim's daughter, Adeline ensuring she will have resources for education in the future. Direct deposits can be made at Washington Mutual in the account "To the Daughter of Tim Cunningham" or you can contact lumurphy@microsoft.com for more information.

The Airfield at Night

Green-blue and amber lights glimmer in the airfield. Chinooks and Blackhawks roam the concrete airway like modern dinosaurs, tough-skinned and terrible and beautiful and magnificent all at once. Rotor blades slice through the hot, night sky and soldiers walk briskly in and out of the shadows.

When the helicopters take off into they air they are transformed into falcons, seeming light, and delicate, but still ferocious. One Chinook just hovers over the airfield, like the air produced some kind of ledge for it to gently rest on.

"Everything seems more exciting at night, while most people are sleeping everyone here is working," I tell the soldier walking beside me.

"Its because its too hot to work during the day," he says the wind blowing his voice into the distance.

Half-faces glow from headlamps on mechanic's foreheads as they work on the aircraft.

"Bored yet?" asks one of the mechanics as I stand by just looking up at the sky.

"No," I reply because I can't imagine anything more exciting then to watch the aircrafts hover, land and take off again.