4th of July

Last Fourth of July I drank micro-brews on my roof with a few friends. Fire works burst in the distance. We were indifferent to celebration. I went to bed early. Perhaps I had some grand notion that Independence Day in Iraq would be different, that the flags and patriotic streamers would solicit pride or joy or loneliness or sadness. I felt nothing, but the strange effect of another day in a dust storm in the desert, another day of sand and heat. I woke up with an orange glow filtering through my window. Outside the sand blocks out the sun.

It must be a joke. I keep waiting for a soldier to jump out of a cake and yell, “Today is actually Groundhog’s Day.” Wouldn’t that make us all roll in laughter for a little while?
But the only cake to be had was decorated with Lady Liberty and half-eaten by the time I made it to chow. I heard it was delicious. The 115-degree breeze stifles my appetite. Not that I am brave enough to complain, five years ago soldiers were huddled in tents eating MREs that turned their bowels into un-moveable solids.
At the compound, there is little talk about the ghosts of Fourth of July past. Most seem content in pretending the have forgotten the day or even the year because it really doesn’t matter. “Oh is that today?” the soldiers say smiling sheepishly in the sandy fog and looking at their dusty watches as if time could send an alert that people are celebrating back home with beer, bikinis and barbecues.
There is no way for me to reach home, no way to break through that hunk of concrete separating me from lakesides, mountains, the “I’m going to be sick” laughter with friends, the embrace of love, the look in his eyes when I smile and the trees gloriously standing dust-free. These are things I cannot reach and I cannot give those left behind more than a glimpse into life here. Yes, they can see my pictures read my words, but they cannot wipe sand from our faces, they cannot turn dusty doorknobs into cramped, ugly rooms and feel the utter emptiness. Dear ones at home, you cannot put your fingers on this place and those of us here in Iraq, know there is nothing we can do about that. And we are cut off from the wrist down too. The greatest tragedy is that life moves on, even without us.