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.