Schedule

0830: Wake up
0900: Brief for the day on some couches shaded from the sun. Sometimes a kitten, domesticated by the soldiers, plays at our feet during the meeting.
0930: The soldiers make sure their aircraft is ready to fly.
1000: Back to the compound (living area). Soldier do paperwork, hit he gym, or retreat to their rooms to cool off. I go tap, tap on my computer.
Afternoon: Since I've been here, we've had missions during the heat of the day.
NIght: Movies projected on a big screen TV outside, cigar night (that's pretty much every night), Guitar Hero (that's pretty much every night), sitting around in a circle just telling stories, laughter and sleep.

A Smaller Base

Several days ago I arrived at a smaller base 60 miles NE of Baghdad. I'm staying out here for a few days to check out a more rustic lifestyle. There is no pool, no movie theater, no large stores or grand dining halls. I do have my own room, but its quite bare with two sagging mattresses as my only furniture. I sat in my bed last night, dangling my dog tags and room key in my fingers, pondering my situation. I find so much peace in new places. I grow so restless and anxious living in the same space day after day.

Last night the soldiers had a bonfire. They poked fun at each other will glee and complimented each other with sincere smiles. With so much laughter, so much camaraderie, so much appreciation for one another I discovered the brotherhood that these deployments create. These men live in an area the size of a football field and they have found a way to make the best of the long days of intense and horrifying missions. They have also found a way to deal with long days waiting for missions, but even then there is always maintenance work for the Blackhawks. When the work is done the enduring force keeping these soldiers together is teamwork and friendship.

It just goes to show its not what you have, its who you have.
So I guess its okay that I own nothing.

Movie Theater

Because of popular demand I will write about the movie theater. It is a beautiful place with a grand staircase accented with chandeliers with strings of light like jelly fish tentacles. The movie of the night is Fighting starring Channing Tatum and Terrence Howard. The plot is unremarkable; the experience of watching the movie in a theater bursting with military dudes is, well different. In one scene, Tatum starts kissing his love interest, but the actual sex scene is clipped out leaving the audience booing and screaming as if they have been denied viewing the winning point at the Super Bowl. I thought we were going to have an Apocalypse Now moment when the audience rushes the strippers on stage, but these soldiers managed to stay in their seats.

At first I thought the movie was made without that scene, but according to movie trailers the PG-13 rating is due to a sex scene. So perhaps the scene was erased due to the fact that we are in a Muslim country. Who knows?

I really shouldn't complain because stepping into the dark theater was like going back home for a night. I enjoyed the smell of popcorn, the sound of laughter and the luxury of the big screen, but then the lights turn on and the hundreds of men in uniform bring me back to the present. We are still in Iraq and no amount of Hollywood blockbusters can change that. 

ID

It appears I have been over zealous, yapping about my freedom and plastic and the cultural enlightment of my 15 minutes in Baghdad.

Today I went to chow by myself.

I smiled cheerfully to myself, relishing in the moment as I confidently pull the plastic ID from my pocket after greeting the Ugandan guard, an attractive and intimidating female who has in the past regarded me with a weary eye. She looks at my ID and back to me. "I thought you were getting your ID," she says her eyes narrowed. My smile has vanished, "This is the ID I have been telling you about." No, is her response as about a dozen soldiers line up behind me eager to eat breakfast. Another guard approaches and asks if I may step out of line. He is as serious as a police officer can get when you say, looks like I left my license and registration at home, but I am not apologetic, I am hungry and I have done nothing wrong.

"This is the ID issued to me, I don't work for the government. I’m not a contractor or a soldier, this is the only ID I can get," I say trying to keep my voice from carrying into the chow hall so that my many fans will not have to chuckle and then choke on their morning grits. Twenty minutes later I am still explaining myself.

"Whom do you work for?" the other guard asks.

"I'm a freelancer, but I work for a broadcast station, but I work for the internet so I don't get paid, but I can work for other companies," I say.

"So how do you eat?" he asks innocently.

Is this guy kidding?

"Well I eat at the chow hall, well I am supposed to be allowed to eat at the chow hall," I say.

"Yes, but you need to get the right ID," says the guard who lives in the black and white world.

For the next forty-eight hours I visit six different offices meet with dozens of personnel, captains, majors, colonels who either send me elsewhere or flat out admit they have no idea how to help.

"What I'm the only journalist in Iraq?" I ask as they shrug helplessly.

Finally with the help of a major, who I met by chance, we find a solution. A captain at the ID office sends a copy of my ID to every checkpoint in this base with the words approved stamped on top.

Has this solved the problem? Not quite.

The other day a guard informed me that he was confiscating my ID because of its expiration.

"Oh yeah," I say. "It expires the fourth of June 2010 not the tenth of June 2004." This is the third of fourth time someone has misread these numbers. "This is how the military writes their dates," I say snatching it out of his hands. For a month I've been nice and that has gotten me nowhere and now I'm just tired. The soldiers in my unit just laugh and for the hundredth time say, "Welcome to the Army."

Baghdad

Baghdad, giant crossed swords glinting in the scorching sun, the Fourth of July Bridge is ahead of us and beside us is the Monument to the Unknown Soldier. The unfinished mosque, further right, looks like a remnant of the war, but apparently Saddam stopped building it when pressure from the Arab world protested that it could not be larger than Mecca.


Three soldiers and I are headed to an office so that I can get my official ID as a member of the press.

For the last month, I've grown weary of carrying around a piece of paper that is supposed to get me unescorted access to the chow hall, but most of the Ugandan guards look at it and then look at me as if I am a crazed lunatic. They peer deep into my eyes asking, why, why am I giving them just a piece of paper? I practically go everywhere with another soldier escort fearing I will not be let inside the PX or the pool or the airfield or worse that I'll be detained for my flimsy piece of paper, which a few days ago ripped in two because of its home in my sweaty pocket.

To abttain an ID one has to visit the Combined Press Information Center (CPIC), but I must cross a checkpoint first. The guard looks at my passport and says, no I can't get through. "She needs to get through to get her official ID," says our driver, a journalist in the military. The guards just give us a blank stare and we pull over and wait for a guard that knows our driver.

Twenty minutes later I'm sitting on a wood bench in the CPIC office, waiting for my independence, handed to me in the form of a little plastic badge. What's new? Plastic makes the world go round. The process is easy enough... I hand a nice woman in the office my paperwork and she responds, "Okay, okay, sign this shit okay?" she says smiling, shivering and fussing with papers on her desk. I sign the rules for the press, promising I won't take identifiable pictures of wounded soldiers or detainees.

Next I give my fingerprints and have my picture taken and I smile and they smile and then they put the plastic badge in my hand and I'm out the door. Back in car, we drive in Baghdad, which feels as natural and as bizarre as being born. I watch the green grass, trees, check points, highways, high concrete walls and barbwire around the new embassy pass outside my window.

At the airfield, we wait for our helicopter ride to Balad. The guards blow their whistles whenever a new vehicle approaches. After an hour of whistle blowing I feel like someone is shoving the sounds down my throat, the ringing crawls inside my skull and I want to get out.

I don't miss Balad, it could make someone crazy the to and fro from one barricaded area to another.

Okay, okay, no one likes a whiner, I fly around Iraq in a UH-60 Blackhawk. I am amazed and yes sometimes I feel quite amazing. I can look down onto the fields and the little sand colored homes and the cows herded next to the river. Who sees what I see? I am one of few and my view of Iraq is stored in a velvet drawing room in my brain, as precious as love and death and I will never forget flying over this flat, desolate, green, crowded, vast, small, peaceful and hazy with dust war zone.

On the way back to Balad, I open my eyes wide against the gusts of the open window and my eyes sting and eventually I close them and let whatever goes on down there pass unseen.

Sammy's

There is a Turkish restaurant, called Sammy's, it is the only restaurant in Balad. As one Army Major told me, "We go there because it's different because it's not the chow hall." After several months on base, different buildings and different people are quite the luxury. Ironically Sammy's menu mainly features pizza, which is quite similar to the Pizza Hut at the food court. The thing about Sammy's is that it is a trailer with tables chairs, rugs on the wall and air-conditioning, where the food court offers picnic tables in the heat and meals that must be shared with many flies and birds. The Turkish restaurant is not like anything at home, but at least soldiers can lean back for a moment, waiting for the food to be served by a smiling face and pretend that they are somewhere else, anywhere but the desert.