A tribal leader named Hamid Faisal Al-Sadah
complained that the Coalition was not protecting his people, and that a number of young men from his area had been killed when they entered Fallujah. A PSYOP major from the 3
rd
ID was supposed to talk to him, take his complaint, and see if he could establish a liaison. We were going along as backup.
“Security?” I asked.
“They're beginning to respect what we've been doing,” Coles said. “The major will be in charge and we'll just stand around and smile at Al-Sadah's people. Captain Miller will see if they need any medical attention we can supply.”
“And what is that supposed to mean, Captain Coles?” Miller had her Molle vest and her game face on. “We can't give them routine first aid because we're afraid we're going to be flooded with their sick; we can't give them medical supplies unless it's cleared through
thirty-five hundred channels because we don't want them giving those supplies to the insurgents; and we can't refer them to their hospitals because half of them aren't operative. So what do we do? Hold their hands and tell them to take an aspirin?”
“Would you like to shoot me, Captain?” Coles asked. “I mean, if that would make you feel better⦔
“It might,” Miller said.
She was right. Sometimes we could see what was needed but we just weren't allowed to do it. A lot of the guys from the 422
nd
were talking about sending home for more supplies for the Iraqis.
That was really strange to me. Here we were fighting a war, or at least cleaning up after the fighting, and sending home to our families and friends for supplies for the enemy. When I saw an entire truckload of notebooks and school supplies that had come in from Forrest City, Arkansas, I was impressed. Americans did care about the rest of the world. A lot.
Third Squad was going to Fallujah with us. The plan was that we would talk to the sheik and then spend the night guarding a nearby antiquity site. I was just glad it wasn't Second Squad because as much as I liked Darcy and thought that Evans was at least okay, I was still pissed at Sergeant Harris for his messing around with Jonesy.
“I want to remind you guys that my birthday is August twelfth, so start saving your money for presents,” Marla said. She had copped some sandwiches from the unit kitchen and was opening each one to see what they were.
“Yo, that's not sanitary,” Jonesy mentioned.
“Shut up or you won't get one,” Marla answered.
Marla took the sandwich that looked like turkey and cheese, I snatched the ham and cheese, and Jonesy got the pastrami. That left one sandwich that looked like it could have been tuna fish but Marla sniffed it and so did Jonesy and they couldn't tell.
“Smell it, Birdy.”
I sniffed it. It stunk. “It smells like Fancy Feast,” I said. “Cat food.”
Marla closed it carefully, and then wrote “Capt. Coles” on the package.
Sometimes, when the weather was clear and it wasn't so hot that you thought you were baking, Iraq seemed like the most beautiful place in the world. It seemed huge, with wide open spaces that stretched into forever. When you got away from the rivers it was mostly desert, especially as you went north from Baghdad. You could ride for mile after endless mile and then come across three camels and a donkey going about their business as if there wasn't any war, or any occupation. Guys would stop to take photos and the Iraqis would wave or just stop and look at us the way we were stopping to look at them.
The cities were all crowded, huddled together around whatever plumbing and electrical resources they had, but the people seemed to know how to live their lives. They took things easy, spending a lot of time with their tea or coffee or, if they were men, with the hookahs. When they were calm, they were very calm. When they
got excited it was hard to tell if they were angry or just looking that way. One minute an Iraqi would be screaming at the top of his lungs or a woman would be falling down with emotion and the next they would just calm down and continue taking care of their business.
You couldn't really tell who was important in the towns or villages because there wasn't much difference in the way people dressed. In a formal meeting the Iraqis would always wear native dress and I didn't know one unit from the other. Darcy had painted some Iraqi people and scenes using watercolors. They were good and I thought about asking her for one.
We met up with the PSYOP major and six infantrymen, two of whom were black. They were in a truck with a screen around it.
“It's probably a communications vehicle,” Jonesy said as we looked at it from Miss Molly. “They're using the whole thing as an antenna.”
That seemed on the money and we got into a conversation about all the equipment we had and how cool it would be to steal it and take it home in civilian life. I thought I would like to have the night vision equipment. Jonesy wanted the Kevlar protection gear.
“I just want the squad gun and the Humvee,” Marla said. “If I rode into the Wal-Mart parking lot with that bad boy I could park anywhere I damn well felt like it.”
We got to the village and the Infantry guys took up casual positions around the cluster of buildings we were visiting. They were
supposed to look as if they were just hanging out. That was funny because the Iraqis ran around in long shirts and sandals and we were looking like spacemen with helmets, goggles, vests, and weapons. But the Iraqi kids loved to see us.
Coles was riding with the PSYOP major and they came over. Major Scott was young, maybe thirty, and six-four to six-five. He looked us over and said he was glad to have us aboard.
“You people are doing a wonderful job over here,” he said. “Everybody's talking about it. The more friends you guys make, the fewer people we have to kill, and the fewer who will want to kill us.”
I never remembered smells before. I would recognize a familiar smellâfried onions or morning coffeeâbut in the Humvee I remembered one. It was the smell of blood in the cab when we were trying to get Pendleton out. I tried to think of something else to release the tension. It wasn't a crazy kind of tension but a low-level feeling that I was learning to live with 24/7. I kept my eyes on my side of the road, eyeballing every cart or old pickup that we passed as if it might suddenly turn into something deadly.
When we got to the meeting place it turned out to be a huge tent, twenty some feet across and thirty deep. It was dyed a deep red that looked good against the reddish sand. There were smaller tents, black and brown tents, around the large one. We thought we would have to take up positions the way the Infantry guys did but Captain Coles came out and said that both the First and Third Squad could come inside and have dinner with the sheik.
Corbin, from Third Squad, had to stay with our vehicles, which were parked together. Marla gave him Captain Coles's sandwich.
“We'll bring you something from inside,” I said. “Maybe some camel ribs, or whatever they're having.”
“I'm down with camel ribs,” Corbin said. “And see if they got any potato salad.”
There was a six-foot gate around the tent and the Iraqis had guys standing near it. Casually dressed, they looked to be eighteen or nineteen years old, but with mustaches and AK-47s. We smiled at them as we went in and they smiled back. They weren't wearing uniforms, but the weapons told me all I needed to know.
The table was placed in the middle of the tent. There was a rug on the floor, and from the edges I could see there was matting under the rug. The sheik was in his fifties, a smallish man with neat, graying hair. He wore a traditional Iraqi garmentâthe long flowing djellaba with the embroidered front that richer men woreâbut I could easily imagine him in a carefully tailored suit. He sat at the head of the ornate table and four of his people, two on either side of the table, sat with an empty chair between them. Major Scott and Captain Coles sat at the other end and the guys from our CA unit sat in the open chairs. Major Scott spoke Arabic but Ahmed, who had come along, sat close to him to help translate.
We were given a bowl of fresh fruit and raw vegetables, served by young women. None of the Iraqi men seemed to take notice of Marla, but the women did, and I saw one of them smiling.
At first the talk was all polite and nice with Major Scott and Captain Coles talking about how beautiful Iraq was and the sheik talking about what a wonderful country America was. I was surprised how good his English was.
“I asked myself what did Adam know of paradise?” said the sheik, who told us to call him Hamid. “He woke up one day and found himself in the Holy Garden and he had never known anything else. That's what I think has happened to America. You are a young people. What have you known but the paradise of peace and security and wealth? It makes your thinking different from the thinking of my people.”
“I think most people want the same things from life,” Major Scott said. “We want freedom, we want love, and we want a chance to go to heaven when the time comes.”
He didn't sound sincere.
“So, you like my country?” Al-Sahad continued.
“I'd love to come back and take a vacation here one day,” Scott said. “After things are stabilized, of course. And that's where I think we, you and I, as equals, can make a contribution. Cooperation.”
The sheik spoke to his people in Arabic and they all nodded politely.
“Sometimes,” the sheik said, “it's better to abandon modern words. When a word falls out of the mouth today it can mean anything. It takes years and sometimes generations for words to be chiseled in history. So, when you talk to me about cooperation
between our countries I have to ask myselfâHamid, what does a man who has a thousand jet planes mean when he says âcooperation'?”
The conversation was getting interesting and going faster than I thought it would.
“It means I will do as much for you, to make your life better, as I can, and in return, you will do the same for me,” Major Scott said. “In America we say âone hand washes the other.' ”
“Have you eaten food from the Middle East before?” the sheik asked, changing the subject.
“No, I can't say that I have,” Scott said.
“Any of your people have eaten food from the Middle East?”
Scott looked at us and we all shook our heads no.
“Well, then I'm pleased that I've introduced you to the world's best food.” Hamid smiled broadly.
“Where have you been in the United States, sir?” Marla asked.
“Washington. New York. California. Once I was in Scottsdale, Arizona. You have a beautiful country. And beautiful people.”
“Birdy here is from New York,” Marla said.
Hamid spoke to the others in Arabic and they turned and looked at me. One reached out and said something in Arabic as he shook my hand. I felt stupid just smiling and nodding. He could have been calling me a jerk.
“The thing I love most about America is the weather. Here it is either hot or it is raining. My cousin went to live in Chicago for six months,” Hamid said. “In six weeks he wanted to come back
because it was so cold. He said he watched people standing in the cold looking at the holiday lights and he could see their breath freezing.”
“Well, that's Chicago for you,” Major Scott said. “But let me ask you, sirâand I don't mean to be rudeâbut are you still making up your mind about cooperating with the Coalition Forces?”
“Making up my mind?” The sheik turned and spoke in Arabic to nobody in particular and a girl came in, from the next room. Hamid spoke to her briefly and she left quickly. I got the impression that she was just outside the door waiting for him to speak to her.
“When you speak of cooperating,” the sheik spoke slowly, weighing his words, “I think you mean helping each other in a common cause. Two strong men can lift a heavy rock.”
“Exactly.” Major Scott hadn't been eating much, and now put down his fork.
The rest of us had been scarfing down the food big-time and it was great. I was concentrating on eating slower than Jonesy because the Iraqis had hardly touched their plates.
“In thisâ¦operation, and you know we call it Operation Iraqi Freedom,” Major Scott said, “we are in what we call the Security and Stabilization Phase. And there are people out there who don't want that stabilization to work. I'm sure you know that as well, sir, as I do. We can provide additional security for your people, and with that security comes stabilization as we turn over all the operations
to the people of Iraq, but to do that we need to free up some of our men from searching for the major weapons systems that we are pretty sure exist. And what I'm sayingâ”
The sheik had held up his hand for Major Scott to stop. “You mean the weapons of mass destruction?”
“I do,” Major Scott replied.
“Go on, sir.”
“If you help us find these weapons, we will be able to divert men away from that operation to providing security for your people.”
“Major, may I tell you a little secret?” the sheik asked.
“Of course.”
“Sir, the war you began is over,” the sheik said. “That war you won. It was not beautiful in the endâthere were no violins, no birds singing in the skyâbut it is over. What is going on now is a completely different war. In this war you merely stand on the side and hold the coats. This war is not about you or America.
“You are trying to stabilize a government in Baghdad. But there are others who are creatingâhow do the English put it? A
shadow
government?âand which government in the end will rule the Middle East is the new war. Look around you; it is my people who are being killed in the streets of Baghdad and Fallujah. Yes, yes, I know. They kill one or two Americans to make it look good, is all.”
“When the insurgents shoot at us we think they're meaning
to kill us,” Major Scott said. “But I can appreciate your concerns about your own people and we're certainly trying to stabilize things here.”