China, in 100 words or less

These are the things I saw in China: An Asian woman shoveling a Dairy Queen blizzard into her mouth in the lobby of the Grand Hyatt Hotel. Kites flying in Tiananmen Square. Bugs on a stick for sale. (To eat.) More people riding a city bus at a single time than go to most American minor league baseball games.

These are the things I did in China: Ate dinner (fried pork dumplings) with some college boys from the UK (who either kept Kosher, were vegetarians, or both). Walked on the Great Wall. Refused to buy postcards from a woman on the street, because I wanted to pay something akin to 40 cents, and she wanted a dollar. Got a manicure in a mall.

Going to Beijing last month made me once again realize how lucky I am to be living in Asia and to be about to take a two-hour flight into a place I never thought I'd visit in my life. It was also nice to be with my friend Mark, a physicist from Syracuse who was in China for a conference. It felt nice to talk to someone about friends and food and everything else with no need for a backstory. It was also great to be in a major city where a five-star hotel cost less than $100 a night and came complete with a water bed and the best masseuse I've ever run across.

I'd go on, but I wrote a travel piece for Stripes, and it finally ran about a week ago. Since I'm feeling lazy, and since my boss said I could write it like a blog entry, I'll just save us all the trouble. Let me know if the link doesn't work.

Unclassifiable, or why I walked two miles to buy a hamhock

It's taken me a long time in the past few days to feel better or even to feel anything close to normal. It's been hard, being halfway around the world. My friends here are sympathetic and have listened to me ramble on about New Orleans and the south, but it's hard to find common ground, to find people who know how to pronounce Biloxi and Landrieu and to care on a personal level about the people and culture that's been blown apart.

But on Wednesday, I finally started to breath normally, if only for a little while. For the first time since Katrina hit, I heard somebody else besides me talk about how mad, mournful and unexplainable the disaster and the response has been. I was in a military court to cover an assault case. The military court system differs somewhat from the criminal courts I covered in New York; in particular, the punishments seem much harsher. One thing, however, is the same: you end up sitting around for a good part of the day waiting for the witnesses, judges and lawyers to get ready to play their parts.

So during one of these lulls, I eavesdropped while a soldier talked about Katrina for 45 minutes while hardly taking a breath. I don't know him and didn't want to make myself known to him for fear his tirade might stop. He seemed to be in his 40s, a black guy who sounded like his parents grew up in the South but he didn't. He had worked in all parts of the Army: with the Army Corps, as a military police, as one of the soldiers that helps guard the president's football, the so-called system that always must be within reach in case he needs to launch missiles. He brought up a lot of things I hadn't thought of yet. Here he is, paraphrased:

*Why is it when something bad happens, it's always the companies like Microsoft that donate money, and never the oil companies. You never see BP or anyone give millions of dollars. They just raise gas prices.

*Those cops, you can't blame them. I heard starting salary for a New Orleans cop is $16,000. Nobody can blame them for leaving.

*You saw the photos. When it's white people, they're gathering food. When it's black people, it's looting. (Much has been written about these two photos. Both photographers, who wrote their own original captions, said they stand behind what they wrote as a description of what they experienced in the context of taking the photo. That explanation, to me, is even more interesting than the captions themselves.)

*You don't know how those people felt. I had lunch today. Those people were sitting on roofs for four days without food and water. If my baby was sitting next to me on the roof for four days without food and I kept seeing helicopters go by, I might shoot at them too.

*Those people didn't have cars. They couldn't leave. They didn't have nothing.

*They've known for decades that New Orleans would just wash away. They can't say now they didn't know.

*Why should we give money. Bush 41 and Clinton will be going around collecting money. We been paying money for years. Why should we have to pay more?

He went on and on, to no one in particular. It was wonderful. The captain sitting next to me, my press escort, said his Korean friends keep asking him how this could happen in America. He said he has no idea what to say in return.

Armed with some empathy, I began dragging out music that I thought would help. I created a new playlist and started dumping in New Orleans and Mississippi artists in the hopes that Irma Thomas' humming and Professor Longhair's piano would take me away from reading every story the Times Picayune writes and feeling awful all over again. The journey proved heartening as I saw for the first time that what makes these songs and their authors so valuable is that they wail about how precarious life can be. They all could have been written in the last two weeks: "Wish someone would care," by Irma Thomas; "Blue Monday" by Fats Domino; "Been 'buked and scorned," by Lightin' Hopkins; "I love the life I live, I live the life I love," by Muddy Waters; and "The Sky is Crying" and "Louisiana 1927" sung by nearly everybody. I've known all these songs for years, but it was like listening for the first time.

As always with iTunes (I can't figure out if I love to hate it or hate to love it), every time I sort my songs I try to update the info for each album. For instance, iTunes believes Alison Krauss is country, when everyone with two ears and no commercial radio knows she's bluegrass. It also believes Professor Longhair is rock, another error I went to fix. But when I looked at the categories, nothing fit. Not R&B, not soul, not reggae, not dance, blues, funk or jazz. I kept looking for New Orleans, cause that's the only proper description. It didn't exist on the list, so I picked the next best thing: unclassifiable. I'm not even sure if it's a word, but if not, it should be.

Now I'm making French bread and soaking Camellia red beans, even though I have no appetite. I had everything I needed except some pork, so I walked to the grocery store on base in search of hamhock. There they were, between the frozen ox tails and frozen duck breast. (How, by the way, can a store sell pork ears and chorizo but not buttermilk? Don't they know their audience?) Six hours later, I was eating red beans over Japanese rice. Comfort comes slowly, it seems.

Second Line

I know I’m overdue on a few blog postings from the second part of the summer. I’ve resettled in Seoul, traveled to Beijing and seen the Great Wall, celebrated with two of my friends here who were married, and gone to a Korean baseball game. But it’s too hard to think about anything fun or normal right now. I can’t tear myself away from the news, photos and stories that are pouring out of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

The images and reports are unfathomable. People wading with dead babies through the water because they don’t know what to do with them. People living on interstate underpasses for days at a time, without food, water or medical care, while empty buses roll past them. People shooting at rescue helicopters. Rapes and fights inside relief centers. Floating casinos cast upon dry land. A piano in a tree, scrawled messages on rooftops, Saks Fifth Avenue on fire. Patients dying in darkened hospitals while waiting for help. Nursing home residents dying before anyone knew they were there. All while government leaders called for patience and calm. It’s become clear that when dying and desperate people are told to be patient, two things happen: death and desperation.

New Orleans is a microcosm of our very best and our very worst, where poverty begets rich cuisine, where tourism feeds a government besot with crime and danger. The aftermath of Katrina has been no exception. As more and more pictures poured out this week, it became so obvious that the story is not just about natural destruction. It's also about how we think, or don’t think, about class, age, and race. More than a quarter of the people in New Orleans live below the poverty line, a fact that shouldn't be a secret to anyone who's walked down Bourbon Street with drunk or sober eyes. The area’s evacuation plan worked amazingly well for those who used it. Of course, to use it people had to have access to a car, an impossibility for so many of the poor and sick. Reporters and government leaders have said repeatedly that the images around the Superdome and the Convention Center looked more like Mogadishu than America. It seems so perfectly awful and accurate -- and so very Southern -- that help and assurance came to some in Louisiana from Wal-mart and Harry Connick Jr. before it came from the federal government.

The rescue, the recovery, and, hopefully, the rebuilding of New Orleans will involve much more than brick and mortar, as this piece about race from Sunday's New York Times points out. In addition to rebuilding a city in modern times, with rising insurance rates, dwindling supplies, ruptured sewers and piles of debris and bodies to manage, there will be deep resentment for decades to come about how everyone reacted in Katrina's wake. The images and stories of Uptown looting by black people while white tourists got early rides out of town won't be forgotten. In many ways, the flood washed ashore those segments of society that normally drift just above the breaking point. Most of the people who suffered through the days and nights at the Superdome and the Convention Center were the Americans often hidden from view: poor, disabled, criminal. As a quarter of the nation's fuel supply shut down and as lines at gas stations grew, many people began to think for the first time in decades about how to stretch a tank of gas further, about which car in their garage gets better gas mileage. More than showing how we react in a crisis, Katrina has showed how America reacts on a daily basis to race, poverty, the environment, elderly people and gang members. Leaving them behind has awful consequences.

The dichotomy of everyone’s response is just as bizarre, from the President down to local residents. Many actions in the first few days have been unforgivable. People turned on each other, shooting at police officers, pilfering and burning the city. Local officials had to beg for attention and assistance, cursing and crying on television while they pleaded for mercy from federal leaders. The world began offering assistance, even as American leaders turned it down. More than 3,000 National Guard members from Louisiana were set to finish their year-long deployment in Iraq in September. Now they are stuck waiting overseas to find out what happened to their homes and families while watching other guard members from other states give help and comfort to their own people.

Reporters on the scene have been as frustrated as local leaders and residents. The Times-Picayune on Sunday wrote an open letter to the president, taking him to task for the slow response. The day before, Maureen Dowd gave a scathing review of the country's leadership in the crisis. NPR, which has been indespensible to me halfway around the world, showed how one CNN anchor tried to verbally shake Mary Landrieu by the shoulders to get her to stop issuing thank yous and keep demanding assistance. Worse, the same story points out it took first an interview with NPR, then a subsequent report by public radio, to convince Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on Thurday that, in fact, thousands of people in New Orleans had not had food or water supplies for three days. Landrieu, for her own part, grew so exasperated at the end of the week that she said she'd rather punch the President than listen to his promises of aid and his talk about the fun he's had in Houston, where so many of the homeless were taken.

There's a diaspora pouring out from an American city that, in better times, millions couldn't wait to visit each year. Many residents say they don't plan on going back, that the memories of rising waters and putrid conditions isn't worth going home for. I'm hoping that's fear and exhaustion talking, and that after some normalcy and comfort, most people will want to go back. Perhaps just as worse, it's hard to know at this point whether that will ever be possible.

I suppose I should have more thoughts about my own home state, Mississippi. As awful as things are there -- the Mississippi Coast is virtually gone --people's reactions so far have been more comforting and less horrific. Rescue and recovery crews are having a relatively easier time going door-to-door because the waters have subsided. Looting and violence seems to be at a minimum. Neighbors have set up impromptu watch groups and militias, working together to keep watch and make sure no one takes them by surprise.

The reaction in Mississippi is encouraging, but it doesn't shake away the desperation in New Orleans. It feels like every day is getting worse, not better. By Saturday, I started searching hard for any good news in the hopes that the tales of police officers leaving their jobs and even committing suicide were exaggerated or, at the very least, rare. Those stories turned out to be true, as was the one about a bus full of New Orleanians on its way to Texas that overturned, killing one person and leaving others in critical condition.

But the good is there, if you look for it. The premie babies got out of New Orleans before the storm hit. Staff at the Museum of New Orleans and the Audubon Zoo stayed throughout the week and are refusing to leave to protect the art and animals; both collections survived relatively intact. Fats Domino (“Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?”) was plucked from the rooftops and is now living with about 20 other displaced people in Baton Rouge at the college apartment of LSU’s sophomore quarterback. A couple was married Saturday afternoon in the Mississippi Coliseum in Jackson in front of 1,000 strangers who cheered them on. A homeless woman -- she was homeless before the storm -- became the wedding planner and gathered up donations of a wedding dress, honeymoon accommodations and promises of connections for new jobs and a new life for the newlyweds.

Peyton and Eli took 31,000 pounds of goods to Baton Rouge, and countless other musicians and sports figures are using their celebrity to provide help. In one of my favorite stories from the past few days, Joe Horn was the first celebrity to have the good sense to show up to the Astrodome Saturday afternoon. The Saints’ pro-bowl receiver used his weekend vacation to give hugs, autographs and encouragement to people who desperately need comforting.

Less famous people have provided comfort in their own ways. Workers at Charity sang for themselves and their patients to get through the days and nights. Anita Roach pulled herself and others around her from insanity by belting out gospel standards at the Convention Center, in one case preventing a riot. Less improbably, a six-year-old and a group of nurses, helped reunite six toddlers and babies with their families, and their names, as the rescues continued.

For three days, The Times-Picayune had to rely on its website, www.nola.com, to publish. The staff had stayed in New Orleans for the storm. But as rising waters threatened their building on Tuesday, they got in the back of circulation trucks and headed north. They began publishing paper editions at the end of the week and are now distributing free papers in relief centers in an effort to help families send messages to each other and to reunite. The publisher has also promised to continue to pay each staffer, whether he or she works or not in the coming weeks. It's a promise that's being replicated with other large companies, many of which are trying to set up temporary homes and jobs around the country for their Louisiana workers who have no where to go.

There's no mere liking when it comes to the city of New Orleans. Some who visit are uncomfortable with its pothole-ridden streets, its celebration of boobs and booze, its insistance that eccentricity and extravagence are both necessary means to an end. But in my small world, anyone who's visited or lived in New Orleans falls deeply in love with the city and its music, food, history, drunkeness, and celebration. It's hard to dispute that our country's cultural and financial center rests solidly in New York City, and that effects from the Sept. 11 attacks rippled fast and furiously across our nation. But America's imagination lives in New Orleans, an idea that will slowly creep through the country even as everyone begins to wonder whether it's really possible to move all that water. If you don't think so, just consider: Where else, in a crisis, would the man who sold more records than any other black musician in the 1950s end up sleeping on the couch at the home of a college quarterback, who by many accounts, might prove to be the more popular?

Over the past few days, I trust, people are remembering New Orleans, and those who never visited wished they had. They can imagine the glittering parties on balconies and the tap dancers in the street and the vats of homemade jambalaya that strangers shared with each other before Mardi Gras parades rolled by. They'll remember the accents and the music and the literature the sunken city nurtured and reared. They'll remember how it's not only customary, it's an honor, for grown men to dress up in feathered tapestries once a year and shimmy through the streets, rain or shine. They'll remember all the good things they thought they forgot, about how a love affair developed over time rich with the head-banging frustrations and toe-curling emotions -- all the good and the bad -- that come with all worthwhile romances. They'll remember the gumbo they ate but can't seem to replicate in their own kitchens; the only city in the world where any single bar with open doors serves a mouth-watering Bloody Mary; where it's appreciated, welcome and down-right expected for men to call women "darlin'" or "sugar" without any worry of offense. At least that's what I can imagine, if I really try.

An NPR anchor this weekend spoke about another staffer, one from New Orleans, who is trying to get through the tragedy by imagining a second line. In New Orleans, funeral processions of mourners are followed by a second line of revelers who celebrate the deceased's past life and journey into the next one. Many of the people who keep this tradition are the city's poor and black community, the ones who have historically provided New Orleans with so much of its imagination. Few right now feel like having a second line. It's too hard to imagine how the city can be rebuilt, how its people can recover. It's harder, though, to imagine our country without New Orleans, and I think that's why so many people are transfixed with mourning the losses. I know that's why I am.

Kids and convoys

So I've been working for the past few days to post some of my pictures from Iraq. It's been taxing, to say the least, because Blogger is aptly named: a blog sounds to me much more like a three-toed sloth making its way through a forest than anything that can push its way through fiber optics. Still, I've managed to add a few pictures to a few of my previous postings. There's no way to put in captions, unfortunately, so I've done a half-assed attempt at putting in pictures that might relate to the topics I wrote about.

To make up for that, here's a little primer and a few leftover pictures with better explanations. First I have to say you'll have to forgive some of the quality of many of the pictures. So many were taken from inside a Humvee, through a dirty window with a dirty lens. Sometimes the haziness of the picture is from sand in the air (like in the photo of the multi-level apartments in Baghdad) and some are just blury (like in the photos from Bahriz with the shopkeeper selling his shoes and the vegetable stand). Plus, I still don't know what I'm doing when it comes to photography, so this is the best of what I got.

In the other blog entries, I put in some of my favorite pictures:

A woman crossing the street in Baghdad. She was one of three women I saw in six weeks who didn't have her head covered.

Sheep walking along a boulevard in Baghdad. I love it because one sheep is looking back at the other, and because despite the frame of the photo, they were ambling by an extremely busy road.

A view from a helicopter of what soldiers all the Baghdad Needle and the Grand Mosque. I don't know if these names are accurate, but the picture doesn't capture how huge that mosque is. It's the size of a small mountain, and it hovers over Baghdad. They are both landmarks in Baghdad, and the mosque is still used despite not being completely built.

A picture of an Iraqi farm house, complete with sandy fields and a satelite dish. In some of the aerial shots in Baghdad, you can see how satelite dishes sit on nearly every roof. There's little electricity, but there's some great need for television. Maybe we do have a lot in common with Iraqis.

A shot of Iraqi prisoners inside what once were Uday Hussein's tiger cages. The men were being held by Iraqi soldiers in the outdoor pens.

A photo that shows the mode of transportation for Iraqi and American soldiers: Nissan pickups and armored Humvees.

A woman and child waking up at dawn to find their farm land full of soldiers. Many people move beds into the fields during the summer to sleep easier in the heat.

An aerial shot of dozens of cars waiting in a gas line in Baghdad.

The jewelry for sale at a Baghdad shop.

Another shot from the sky that shows the small lawns in some Baghdad homes.




In this entry, I'll try to make up for the lack of explanation on two things, kids and convoys. First of all, the convoys, or just soldiers in general. Here are some American soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter interviewing a family near the site of roadside bomb. We were parked about half a kilometer away when the explosion happened, and the soldiers I was with went to investigate. This family saw the people plant the bomb, and they gave the soldiers details. The men were terrified of the explosion, and they explained how they hit the ground when it detonated.



This man is the owner of this house, and the American officer I was with wanted to talk with him. The American was curious how this man could have such a nice house in such a poor neighborhood in Baghdad. The man said his family had been merchants before the war and had some money. Since the invasion and the dinar plummeted, the man found himself out of work. He is now a driver for Kia. The U.S. officer asked for a tour of the house out of curiousity, and the man seemed pleased to show off his house. It was three stories, and there wasn't a lick of furniture inside. Some men were working on the third floor, still finishing the walls. The man had enough money to hire people to work on his home, the U.S. officer noted.

In this shot, these kids aren't as intimidating as they look. The boy in the dark blue shirt was giving the U.S. soldier some information about a kidnapping that had happened recently in the neighborhood. They were being helpful, but they were also busy being curious about me, a woman reporter. They were curious, and there's no shame in staring in Iraq. So they took unchoreographed turns staring at me through the lens. This is the shot I got.

The trick with taking pictures of children in Iraq was shooting each frame while the children weren't paying attention. It was incredibly hard to do. The kids clamor around when soldiers come out, to collect candy, banter, shoes, dolls, toys and anything else the Americans may be giving out that day. When I say clamor, I mean demand. The kids look forward to the soldiers rolling down their street, because sometimes it means soccer balls and gatorades. They've learned these gifts come arbitrarily; the soldiers give out what they have, and sometimes their convoys are empty of gifts for one reason or another. The kids don't know this, of course, so they just beg, persistently. If they get one gatorade, they immediately ask for another.

The same is true with picture taking. They love seeing a journalist as must as the soldiers, especially one with a camera. They all want their picture taken, and they hound the camera with intensity. If you take one picture, they want another, and another, and another. They aren't scary or intimidating, just desparate to have their picture taken. It's annoying and it's sad. Every few minutes, the soldiers whisk them away. Every few minutes they come back to beg again. So I felt like I won a perverse victory when I got a few shots of kids just being kids.

These kids, for instance, followed us for an entire morning on a walking patrol near Haifa Street in Baghdad. They brought animal crackers in their dirty hands to offer the Iraqi and American soldiers. A couple of the U.S. guys took the crackers, then later hid them in their pockets rather than eat them. They showed up every half hour or so, trailing us on their bikes. Here was one brief instance when I could catch them not paying attention to the camera.

Of course, sometimes staring at the camera is exactly what you're hoping for. This girl was part of a family who lives on the top floor of an apartment that Iraqi soldiers entered to use as a lookout. While the soldiers sat on the roof with sniper rifles, and soldiers on the ground searched other apartments, the kids kept disobeying their mother and looking out the window at what was going on. In the end, they got a reward: a soccer ball.













And then there's more posing.


















And then there's my favorite.

All I ever wanted

Now comes the bad part, the reason I haven't felt like answering e-mails or calling in the past few days. I've just had the worst vacation of my life. It was so bad, I cut it short by a few days and am flying back to Korea today, Thursday.

I got to Zurich on Saturday afternoon and saw immediately why my sister keeps going back. It's a beautiful city, easy to navigate and has a tempting restaurant or cafe on nearly every corner. The people are extremely friendly and helpful and the city has more advertisements for opera and art than they do for anything else. I spent the first afternoon and the next morning walking all over the old town shopping district and out to Lake Zurich. The weather was clear and I could see the Alps. The weather was perfect: about 75 and sunny during the day and in the low 60s at nice. It was such a relief to breathe clean,cool air.

But that relief didn't last. I'm not sure if I picked up a bug in Iraq or if I got food poisoning in Germany or Zurich, but by Sunday night in Zurich I felt as if I'd eaten glass. I spent the next two days hidden in my hotel, venturing out a couple of times for water and a bit of fresh air. But Monday night (when I was supposed to get on an overnight train headed for Prague), I finally decided that I should just cut my losses and get home.

So I never saw Prague, had a mediocre massage, a pedicure where the woman cut my foot and I still can't really eat more than bread and water without serious consequences. I'm much more tired and irritated than I ever was in Iraq. In fact, in a small way, I wish I was back in Iraq. I could just walk over to the medic tent and they would immediately know what to do with me. Now I'm just holding out to get back to my doctor in Seoul. The only good thing about the past few days, I suppose, is that I was alone and didn't wreck anyone else's vacation. That, and the fact that on one of my sick days it rained. I had the windows open and listened to it patter all afternoon. It was much more relaxing than my massage.

So in light of nothing enlightening to write about Europe, I'll return to blathering on about Iraq and offer a few things that I've been collecting since I left. One is my "Iraq by the numbers," a summary I am stealing from my editor and friend, Joe, based on his last trip to Iraq. But he and countless others have copied it from Harper’s, so I don’t feel so bad. Here’s my time at war, by the numbers:

Number of days in Iraq: 45

Number of stories: 34, plus four reporter's notebooks.

Number of spiral-bound notebooks I brought: 5 reporter’s notebooks, and two, all-weather Army field notebooks.

Number I used: All 5, plus another steno pad I brought. The first one had a dip cup split on it. The second, a coke in an Iraqi general’s office. The others feel like fine sandpaper now.

Number of days off: 0. I did something – wrote, interviewed or patrolled – everyday. But any day that I didn’t have to wear my flak jacket I considered a day off. After I filed my last story, however, I read one book in one day and then watched about six movies waiting for a flight out. I felt like I was on vacation, even though I was living in a tent with a huge generator raging just outside in 120-degree heat.

Number of patrols outside the wire: 9, as of June 10, but after that I stopped counting. Probably more than 20, but I lost track.

Number of helicopter rides: 6, I think.

Number of times I took Dramamine: 1.

Number of times that was a mistake: 1. It made me groggy and sick. Most of my helicopter rides were great, and on one three-hour trip I was brave enough to get out my camera and take about 300 hots. But my last helicopter ride in Iraq was the worst, a windy adventure that made me glad I was on my way home.

Number of days I didn’t shower: Probably about 6. One day the water was off at Liberty. The other days, I was just too tired.

Number of times the soldiers sitting next to me in an Internet café narrowed down the bad odor in the room to me, after ruling out themselves (they had just worked out) and a collection of interpreters (who had just come back from a daylong patrol): 1.

Number of times I slept without air conditioning: 0.

Longest I stayed awake at one stretch: 32 hours. Luckily, I got to take a nap before writing and filing my story.

Number of days with no running water: None.

Number of times the camp I lived at was mortared and someone died: 2

Number of times a public affairs officer threatened to send me off to Taji (where the danger consists of no news): 1, when I included exact details in my story about the mortar that hit the PX and killed one soldier. I never made it to Taji.

Number of times I lost things absolutely vital to living and working here, only to have them come right back to me: 2. I lost my government ID on the night of the first mortar attack. Someone turned it into the Mayor’s Cell, the office that settles housing issues and other living needs on base. The second time I dropped my computer memory stick on the way back from (thank god not inside) the latrine. I retraced my steps, and there it was.

Number of times I ate macaroni and cheese for dinner: 3.

Number of times I ate cereal for dinner: every night in July, as it turns out.

Number of times I got to eat Iraqi food: 3. It was so wonderful, tender lamb stew and sandwiches, kebabs and fresh flat breads with hommus, watermelon.

Number of cigarettes: 2. Well, I stopped counting after two. Let’s just say more than two.

Number of books read: 9. The Elephant Vanishes, A Thousand Acres, Coming into the Country, Cane River, Brazzaville Beach, Killer Angels, The Bean Trees, The DaVinci Code, Lonesome Dove.

Number of times Iraqi women I met offered to pluck my bushing eyebrows for me: 2.

Number of consecutive days I went without looking into a mirror: 3.

Number I wish I had gone: 45.

And here's a small collection of quotes that have stuck with me during the past few weeks. They never made it into stories, either because I didn’t have a pen and pad handy, or because they never quite fit in a story. But I like them for obvious reasons. They are in reverse chronological order, the first being the most recent:

It made me believe in God.
A British journalist I spent a day with while we were both waiting for a flight, on looking through the thousands of free paperbacks at so many military bases and finding a book by Ernest Hemingway. Myself, I found two pulitzer winners among the romance novels, science fiction and Clancy collections: A Thousand Acres and Lonesome Dove. They didn't make me believe in god, but they did come close to saving my sanity.

The Saudi Arabian government hasn’t ever condemned the attacks. Why don’t we do something about that?
A lieutenant colonel, talking about the Sept. 11 attacks.

Fuck, we’re lost again.
The same lieutenant colonel, trying to navigate the streets of Baqubah on the way to a meeting with the city’s mayor.

Combat is 90 percent boredom and 10 percent sheer terror.
A 22-year-old soldier from New York.

He’s the only man I’ve ever seen eat soup with his fingers.
A young specialist on his friend, a 58-year-old sergeant who’s been with the army for 35 years and, despite not being able to shoot straight, literally, is deployed in Iraq.

Turn the oven on and stick your head in. Have someone stand on one side of you and blow a hair dryer in your face. Have someone else stand on the other side and throw sand in your face. And then you’ll know what it feels like.
A Louisiana Guard specialist, describing what her friend told her to expect during the summer in Iraq. He was right.

It is hotter than seven mother fuckers out there.
A 50-year-old lieutenant colonel (who could play Henry Blake if MASH is ever remade) who barged into the judge advocate general’s office one afternoon, grabbed a bottle of water out of the refrigerator, and stormed out. The Army prosecutor and I laughed so hard we both cried. It's one of my favorite memories in the past six weeks.

I’ve learned what it was like before the war. And that’s made me think it’s a just war.
A major in charge of a team tasked with training Iraqis. I had asked him what he’s learned from his Iraqi officer counterparts, all of whom served under Saddam and some of whom had been tortured and imprisoned during the 1990s.

I don’t care who gets in my way, whether it’s women or children. If they’re between me and getting home safe, I’ll do whatever it takes.
A U.S. sergeant, talking to an Iraqi interpreter over dinner, about fighting in the streets. The Iraqi man didn't say anything in response.

Then, we knew who are enemy was. Now, we don’t know who our enemy is.
A first sergeant of a battalion talking about the difference between the first Gulf War and this one. He fought in the first Gulf War with the 82nd Airborne, and now is a reservist with the Louisiana National Guard.

If you ask me, none of this is going to make any difference. It’s something history hasn’t corrected. These people have been fighting forever, and we’re not going to come in here for a few years and make it better.
A Louisiana National Guard specialist

Two time zones

It seems too cliche to write that my first meal outside of Iraq was an Egg McMuffin, but it's the truth. I landed in Stuttgart, Germany, at daybreak last Friday morning and needed to go another couple of hours by car to get back to the Frankfurt area. I had hitched a ride with a couple of contractors and a retired Army officer who were all headed that way. The officer had been stationed in Germany for years, and he spoke German and rented a car for us all. In the end, he drove me straight to my hotel in Greisheim, just down the road from Stripes' European offices.

On our way to pick up the rental car, the four of us decided McDonald's was as good a place as any to get a snack before getting into the car. It'd been about 14 hours since I'd eaten and probably at least four years since I'd had breakfast at McDonald's, and I ate the entire thing in five bites before anyone else got his food. The three men were too polite to say anything.

The flight from Balad, Iraq, into Stuttgart, Germany, takes less than six hours, just about the same time it takes to get from New York to Los Angeles. The trip crosses only two time zones, so our flight that left Balad at about 2 a.m. last Friday got into Germany just after daybreak. It was freezing in Germany, and the 20 or so people who had flown north shivered in an airport hanger while we waited for someone to take us from the U.S. military section of the airport to the commercial side. I had brought a light fleece jacket, but it wasn't enough. The difference between 110 and 60 is an obvious but staggering 50 degrees, and it was hard to keep my teeth from chattering.

Once my new friends and I got on the road, it really felt like I'd traveled so far it was hard to reconcile. Going to Iraq was an easier transition: I had expected it to be hot, dusty, violent and uncomfortable in every way. But on the return trip, it was harder to grasp how absolutely nothing had changed. Cars sped on the Autobon and sat in traffic just like always. The corn was growing, the world was still capable of being green, McDonald's still made greasy breakfast sandwiches. The continuity of it all was disarming.

Iraq and its atrocities should be further away, or at least a distance that spans further than the borders of my own country. It's probably very American that I feel this way. This is the one thing I've learned about myself, and my country, I suppose, since I've left the states: many Americans grow up independent of any other immediate culture or country. I think this is because of our physical isolation from so many countries and because of our wealth. Anything we need we buy with our money, our political will, or with whoever will loan us money, even China. It doesn't matter that we might need our neighbors' help. We can still go on without it, like right now for instance. The Middle East is on the other side of the world, a long way away, and if we decide to send troops there we will, no matter what anyone else thinks.

For those who grow up or live nearly anywhere else in the world, it's immediately clear how closely tied countries and cultures are. From Western Europe, the Middle East isn't on the other side of the world, it's two time zones away. I've been thinking about proximity a lot since I've moved overseas, and my time in Iraq adds a lot to that. Even before I took a chance and moved away, I'd always thought it it'd be smart to spend some time in another culture, another country. Since I've been away, I've refined that idea to spending time in a country or place where a living generation still remembers what it was like to live through a war. To me, one attack, no matter how awful, isn't a war. I mean war, or a period of time when your own home, family and way of life is seriously threatened or obliterated. For me, the recovery is the interesting part. These people have figured out how to rebuild their societies. I'm seeing one version of that in Korea, where my friends' parents still remember invaders and famines while their children use cell phones and drive cars made in their own country. I saw another version in Iraq.

I keep coming back to two conversations I heard while in Iraq. One was in the first couple of weeks I was there. A young officer was trying to help a neighborhood council organize its needs (sewage pumps, trash collection, water pipes, etc.). The council was supposed to prioritize the list, then the Army would help them apply for the money, get the construction bids and get the work done. A sewage pump station was recently fixed for about $30,000, and the officer had gone out to make sure it was working. A few days later, it stopped. It seems one of the neighborhood councilors took the station's generator to provide power for his home and his neighbors' homes.

The Army officer was appauled. At home, this would be stealing, corruption, graft, a complete government failure, he said. Of course it would be, there's no question this council member's actions hurt many. I never met this Iraqi man, but I keep thinking about the situation from his perspective. To this man, is taking that generator stealing, or does he see it as providing for his family and friends? He's hurting hundreds, maybe thousands, but he's also making the air conditioning run at a few homes within his sight. When his neighbor flipped on the light he could see progress. I keep thinking about whether this man feels like he broke any rule. He lived for decades in a country where the government handed out only so much help, then what you got was what you could take. Maybe he's a thief. And maybe he was doing what he felt was right. If we want to remake Iraq, we're going to have to change that man's values. And that will take at least a generation.

The other conversation I overheard just last week, as I was waiting for a flight out of Iraq. I was in a mess hall and news of the London bombings was about a day old. Fox News was giving the latest update, and one young soldier said to his friends: Well, now they will know, a little, how we felt. To this kid, the world's atrocities culminated with 9/11. I just sat there thinking: this is London for christ's sake, where people lived through World War II bombings and IRA bombings and plenty of other violence. People remember what it's like to be threatened and to be attacked; it's most of America, not the rest of the world, that is experiencing vulnerability at home for the first time in a long, long time.

I'm not sure why these two scenes have stuck with me, except to say that I think the thing I noticed most while in Iraq was the challenge of rebuilding a country with American standards and values among a people who may not share those standards and values. Can the experiment succeed? I certainly don't know. But I know the U.S. is going to spend an unimaginable amount of money to find out and it will be years before anyone can see any real progress or answers. It'll be interesting to see what happens. I hope I get to go back and see it first hand.

Baskin Robbins, or why the Iraqi weight loss plan failed

So I haven’t gained any weight while sweating away in the Iraqi sun, but the pounds haven’t fallen off like I’d hoped either. I credit that to my persistent diet of cereal, salad, fruit and ice cream. Most of the bases I stayed at had an ice cream stand with a variety of Baskin Robbins flavors (cookies and cream was my favorite) and even the bases that had no kitchen and trucked in pre-cooked food in unappetizing thermal containers always had a selection of frozen treats. So after eating a cheese sandwich and apple for dinner, I just couldn’t help myself. It’s frozen crack, and it’s so good.

In the grand scheme of things, I suppose that’s not too much to regret. I’m at the beginning of the end of my tour, and I have mixed feelings about leaving. I’m bone-tired of packing up and moving every three to four days, which has been my lot for nearly three weeks. When you move that often, you can’t really turn in your clothes for laundry, so that’s become an issue. No one has refused to sit next to me yet, but I still have a few days left. Another drawback of moving are those extra minutes it takes at each new dining hall to search out the ice cream. I really get irritated when all I find are mango-flavored popsicles.

But I also feel like I’m getting better at reporting and watching what’s going on here. I’ve made some good sources and am more confident about picking and choosing stories. It’s disappointing to give that up. There were a few days when I was outright bored, either with the assignment I had chosen for myself or with the people around me, and those were probably the hardest to get through. Most days I didn’t have time to be bored. I’d work about 12 to 14 hours and still manage to read, watch part of a movie, or even follow a couple of innings of baseball. One glorious day I actually took a nap. Almost every night I’ve been able to shower and crawl into my sleeping bag relatively clean. I looked forward to that even more than ice cream.

I’ve been intrigued by most of the soldiers and officers I’ve met. One guy I’m working with now is white and from Massachusetts and speaks fluent Chinese. Another guy I was with last week is retiring next summer and plans to start an organic farm in Tennessee. Even the younger guys, the ones who were obnoxious because they take being American so seriously, were tolerable and enjoyable. I think I gave them the benefit of the doubt because they work so hard. That’s been the biggest surprise for me while living and working inside the military. Nearly everyone works incredibly hard, every day, with few hours off and almost no days off. A few people have lazy jobs, like monitoring the Internet cafes, and people certainly take breaks during the day to play on the internet or rest in the shade.

At the same time, everyone works their ass off every day. Soldiers who patrol are on for six to nine days straight, then usually get one day off. A typical patrol, from packing up to locking up the vehicle at base, takes 10 to 12 hours, and often longer. They get tired and irritable, but then they get home and go work out. The officers spend more time in air conditioning, but they work all day and night. Most start out by 7 in the morning and finish up around 11 or midnight. It’s rare to meet someone who takes enough time to eat three meals a day.

Of course, I’ve been ridiculously lucky in every way possible. I haven’t seen any horrors and have only been scared, really scared, a handful of times. And in every one of those situations, nothing happened. In many ways, the worse thing that I had to deal with routinely was dehydration, particularly on patrols. I never got sick or needed help, but I had to be very careful to balance how little I could drink without getting ill with how much I could drink without needing to use the bathroom for 10 to 12 hours. When you’re the only woman with dozens of male soldiers in the middle of Baghdad, there are no pit stops.

I asked if I could stay longer, but Stripes is pretty strict about the six-week timeframe and told me to begin making my way home next week. I got the chance to talk to another reporter last week who has spent the last three years getting odd reporting jobs so he can come back to Iraq. He’s working for Gulf News now, a paper that circulates in Middle Eastern countries. The last time he reported in Iraq without being embedded was in December. He hates being with the military all the time. Every time he passes by a village, he feels likes he’s passed by the story, too. I felt that way everyday. Part of me wants to come back so I can learn more about what life is really like here. And part of me wants to go home, crank the air conditioner to 60 degrees, crawl into bed and watch movies for a solid month.

I’m spending the last few days in Tikrit, in another palace complex no less. For the first time I have roommates, four female officers who have pampered themselves with things like sheets, dust ruffles, pillows, a drug store’s worth of soap and lotion and a stocked pantry. They also have a bathroom with a shower right inside their room, a real sign of luxury if ever there was one. It’s refreshing to spend time with women and to hear their version of the military. It’s imperfect at best and incredibly hard for them most days. Two officers are planning on quitting; they other two will finish out their 20 years. The ones who are staying in know they’ll come back to Iraq twice, if not three times, in the next eight to 10 years.

I’m trying to do some reporting here on the Sunnis who are trying to work within the system. This Sunni-controlled province is actually having elections right now to pick local city councils. There’s been no violence, as little involvement by the Americans as possible, and voter turnout is estimated at near 50 percent. Who knew the Sunnis were having successful elections in the midst of the Sunni triangle? It’s finding that kind of story that makes me glad I came and makes me wish I didn’t have to leave quite so soon. Of course, if I stayed another couple of weeks, the ice cream diet would probably catch up with me and I’d outgrow the three pair of pants I brought with me, a very untenable situation for war.

Independence Day

A year ago, America and its allies turned over sovereignty of Iraq to the Iraqi people. The leaders were picked by U.S.-led coalition forces, and it was the beginning of the effort to transform the country into a place with elected leaders and a transparent justice system. I’ll leave it to everyone else to have his or her say about how, or whether, this is working. I personally have no clue. To me, it seems just as likely to work as to come tumbling down. The best I can do is call the odds even, and that’s only because the rules of the universe allow that every time you flip a coin only one side will land face up.

Some Iraqis have leapt on the democratic bandwagon for the chance to have their say, shape their government, get a steady paycheck, get rich off of government contracts or befriend the folks who happen to be in charge right now. Some decidedly have not. A sheik and his son were assassinated today. A week ago, a man strapped explosives to his body and walked into an Iraqi Army mess hall, killing 25 and injuring dozens more. Two days ago, four Marines were killed and 13 more wounded in an attack. The fact that the majority of them were women doesn’t mean much to me. The reality is there will be four funerals, 13 Purple Hearts, and, in Iraq, four dining halls, gyms, headquarter buildings or even bases with new memorial names.

I haven’t written in a while because not that much has happened to me that seems new. I’ve been moving around smaller bases in north central Iraq, up and down a main highway that runs south to Baghdad. The stories have slowed down a little, mostly because I’ve ended up in many government meetings and military planning sessions where the efficacy of this U.S.-trained Iraqi Army is playing out. It’s painful and long, and both sides get frustrated. Imagine a local school board meeting where the school board has no budget except an open checkbook that needs signatures from the leaders of the next town over. Add two languages, military bureaucracy, bombs and guns, faulty electricity and weak air conditioners, and you’d be half way there.

I’m working on a story about how the Iraqis react when things go wrong. A small town here called Bahriz was locked down by insurgents. Now it’s locked down by Iraqi soldiers. The city council and the mayor were no help, so the governor fired them. The city government building now is surrounded by wire. The soldiers found mounds and mounds of weapons and bomb-making material in a palm grove that runs along the town’s western borders. They arrested 28 people the first night, and they think that they broke up at least one cell of terrorists. They’ve begun providing people in the town gas power for their homes at a steady rate and price, rather than the inflated amounts under the former city leadership.

It’s been a week, and the army is still trying to control the town’s borders. We went to one checkpoint where the soldiers were checking cars and paperwork. We went to another where Iraqi police were just waving people through. The U.S. commander here discovered today that the palm grove is no longer being guarded. While the U.S. gives advice on military strategy and improvement projects, they also repeatedly ask the Iraqi commanders to ensure that their soldiers are wearing their uniforms and wearing them properly. The commanders, for the most part, understand the theory that a disciplined army starts with a uniform one. But it’s an impossible sell to the soldiers. This is their land, and they’ve learned long ago that it makes no sense to be outside in the direct sun in the middle of the day, and it certainly makes no sense to do it in an undershirt, a long-sleeved shirt, pants, body armor and a Kevlar helmet. They must think the American soldiers, who walk around with 40 to 50 pounds of gear in 110-plus weather, have lost their minds.

After a marathon meeting today, a U.S. commander and I visited the Iraqi commander who is overseeing the siege of Bahriz. The Iraqi colonel is 36, and his own army won’t promote him to general because they think he’s not ready. Still, for two months, he’s been directing 3,500 soldiers here and the Americans think he’s doing a good job. We stopped by about 4 p.m., when many Iraqis take a rest. He was wearing a matching jogging suit and shower shoes and watching music videos with his officers. We talked for about an hour about Bahriz and the army. The American colonel also talked with the Iraqi commander about meetings and plans for the rest of the week.

Then about 5 p.m. something happened. Iraqi soldiers found a car loaded with explosives less than half a kilometer from the entrance to an American base. They called it into their headquarters, cordoned off the area and waited for the U.S. bomb squad to come detonate it. The Iraqi commander, in his flip flops, talked on the radio to his troops, gave them orders about how to station themselves in and around the bomb. Finding a bomb before it explodes is a victory, but it’s also a risk because the bomb might be bait for a larger attack. Anytime any troops stand in one place in a street for more than 15 or 20 minutes they become a much easier target, and the Iraqi commander was moving between his maps and the radio to try and keep them safe. When he told the American colonel, in English, what he was doing, the colonel just laughed. “I’m going home,” he said.

The Iraqi colonel was sitting alone, hunched over his radio, and I went to take a picture. The U.S. colonel stopped me. He said it would embarrass the Iraqi leader to be shown out of uniform. That’s true, but I can’t help what he was wearing. It made it more endearing, more about Iraq. His soldiers would probably love to see their leader working in pajamas. The Americans would have a heart attack. I didn’t take the picture. We left the headquarters before the drama ended, so I’m not sure yet what happened. Once a bomb is found, it’s almost always safely detonated, so I’m not worried.

At 3 a.m. Wednesday I’m going on a raid with Iraqi and American soldiers. It’s my first patrol in ages and I’m excited to get out and spend more time with soldiers and less with officers who worry about the length of sleeves. The U.S. colonel who didn’t let me take my picture is also the only single American I’ve met here who has a copy of the Koran in his office and has read it. He called in one of his interpreters for me to talk about the differences between Sunni and Shiia Muslims. The colonel told me, “There’s nothing in the Koran that calls for suicide or chopping off someone’s head,” as if I needed convincing. I let him give his lesson. I didn’t want to dissuade him one bit from repeating this over and over. I can only hope he tells his officers and soldiers the same thing. It’s a refrain that’s lacking, at least among most of the military I’ve spent time with here. He’s also got a copy of Thomas Friedman’s newest book, and he named off a couple of others he thought I should read. I like him, in spite of how angry I was at him about the picture.

He also was glad President Bush was speaking to the country about the successes in Iraq. I saw a small one first-hand on Tuesday, I suppose. How you weigh that against everything else that goes on here, and how much money we’re pouring into this country, I still have no idea. We’re flipping millions of coins over here. The only certainty is that none of that money is going to end up back at the local American school board meeting.

Flying into danger

Sunday I took my first helicopter ride. I ate a little breakfast, drank some coffee and water, and tracked down my neighbor to give me a ride to the landing pad. He's a nice guy, a contractor who has offered me alcohol and rides around base when I'm not with the soldiers. I declined the alcohol (it really is that hot) but I accepted several rides. It always pays to be friendly.

He checked me in, gave me earplugs and said good-bye. An hour later I was strapped into a UH-60, better known as a Blackhawk. I had already downed one Dramamine, but the drugs might have been a mistake. I was groggy and thirsty for most of the ride and had a hard time trying to focus on all the landscape underneath us. And the wind beats on you like a hurricane, so you just get exhausted after a while. Still, all in all, I'd have to say it was pretty cool.

Once we were out of Baghdad, the landscape began alternating every few minutes between desert farmland and lush palm-tree forests. One minute the horizon was a brown haze. Five minutes later, a sea of palm trees filled the view. The river beds were always green, and even flooded. Natural water canals shot through some of the packed sand into valleys, so that you could imagine how the country is filled with flash floods during the rainy season.

This side Iraq has two main rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates. Both have huge canal systems growing out of them that carry water to other parts of the country and all along farmland. So, from the air, it looks as if farmers can coax their crops to grow out of chalk. I suppose that's what they are doing. They partition off their fields in small rectangles, one after the other, so that from above it looks like a quilt. Maybe the small plots have something to do with the pipes underneath. Most line their borders with sunflowers. It's the oddest thing to look down and see a green blanket growing in land so white it hurts to look at it. I also spotted a few camels, shepherds and their flocks of sheep, and a few cattle here and there. It's also odd to look down and see crooked, handmade rows, instead of the perfect right angles that surround most of the fields in America.

We landed, finally, at Forward Operating Base Danger. The base is in Tikrit, the birthplace of Saddam Hussein. He apparently set up quite a shop there in his heyday. He built a compound of palaces, a mosque and a handful of lakes, ponds and waterfalls there, complete with triumph-type gates and a statue of himself dressed as a soldier. Needless to say, guess who's moved in. The 42nd Infantry Division has its headquarters there now. The 42nd is a New York National Guard unit that controls land in north central Iraq equal to the size of West Virginia. It covers part of the Kurdish north, much of the Sunni triangle and a few Shiite towns closer to Baghdad.

So, Sunday night, I slept in a palace. Well, it probably wasn't a palace, just a three-story building (with 50-foot ceilings on each level) that probably once housed the kitchen staff. Either way, when I walked into the atrium with a guy who was from Albany, I felt a little like I had walked into the state capital. Except this was nicer. Everything, I mean everything, was made of marble. White, gray, brown -- it was all used for trim and paneling up and down those giant walls. My room was at the top of two 32-step spiral staircases (I counted cause it was the most exercise I've had in weeks), marble of course. In addition to housing its public affairs office there, the military has opened a Green Beans coffee on the first floor.

This base was also where the incident happened a couple of weeks ago that now involves one soldier in the murder of two of his officers. The soldiers call it "fragging," some version of fraternicide, I guess. I got a couple of people to talk about it, but I'm sure they are all just raging. A captain everyone loved died, and another guy many looked to as a friend is accused. It must be awful for them. We drove by the building where it happened, another palace now being used as offices and barracks.

Today, I took another helicopter ride to Camp McKenzie, which, as best I can tell, is somewhere between Baghdad and Tikrit. The army base here flies smaller helicopters out over the whole "west virginia" territory, helping ground units looks for terrorists, mortar launchings, potential attacks on U.S. forces. Let's just say my salad bar days are over for a while.

We are in the middle of absolutely nowhere. There's nothing on the horizon in any direction, once you look past the fleet of helicopters. Everyone lives in tin can trailers, usually three to a box that really does look like a huge sardine can. The mess hall is a tent, and cooked food is trucked in (I'm afraid to ask from where). So far today I've had a cheese sandwich, two apples, canned spaghetti sauce over mushy pasta and two chocolate cookies. These men and women (nine women on base, I'm told, not including me) have been here since February, and they just got a weight room/movie room/internet room in the past month. They had to build it themselves and they are so proud. I've had three tours already.

But most of these soldiers seem pretty content. They are bored, certainly. The pilots fly, of course, but the rest of the group is all about supporting that. So most of them fix the helos or man the radios and rarely leave base. They find other stuff to occupy their time. A furious ping-pong game is going on right outside the Internet cafe. Five of them have and play ukelelees, and if I can't get that in the paper, then I'm quitting. One captain is trying to grow a garden and has a two-inch tall basil plant that is struggling in the sand. They don't have the benefit of underground irrigation here, I take it.

So I probably won't go on any missions for the next couple of days, because the helicopters they fly seat only two people. But I'll be here, watching the pingpong tournament and wading through a lingering sandstorm that took visibility down to less than a quarter of a mile this afternoon. I have to stay at least until my laundry comes back. Yes, I do still have laundry service, hot food, showers and air conditioning, so I can't complain.

In the middle

I've finally seen Baghdad's middle class, or at least what looks halfway between poverty and palace to me. I've spent a few days touring the Mansour district of Baghdad, a collection of neighborhoods just west of the Tigris. Some homes were surrounded by garbage dumps that doubled as horse paddocks. Some houses were mammouth, with driveways, nice cars and blooming flowers.

And some houses, finally, just looked like they were built for one family, one right after the other. They were a little shabby, more Rosanne than Cosby, certainly, but then Rosanne is our middle, whether anyone on either side of that line wants to admit it or not. These Baghdad neighborhoods had yards, running water, furniture in their homes, run-down Chevys and Kias in their driveways, and satelite dishes on their roofs. Some had old appliances in their yards. One washing machine we peered into had half an unexploded mortar in it, thanks to an insurgent attack on U.S. soldiers a few weeks earlier. The officer I was with keeps reporting it so that a special team of soldiers will come get it. It's been there for more than a month. He told the kids in the house to keep away from it. They nodded that they would.

Perhaps it's little surprise the people in these neighborhoods weren't as friendly to the U.S. soldiers. Some waved, but most didn't, as we patrolled the neighborhoods. In some ways, they were too busy living: going to the bank, the market, the dry cleaner, wherever. Yes, I saw a dry cleaners and much more. Two main commercial strips cut through the district, and they are filled with shops, restaurants and businesses. Wedding dress shops selling sleeveless dresses, clothes shops with short skirts and short sleeves for women, travel agencies next to money exchange stores, jewelry stores with hundreds of gold bracelets and necklaces for sale. The kitchen store sold thermal-carafe coffee makers. Nurseries stretched on for acres, and florists stocked live, not silk, flowers. The furniture stores sold elaborate couches and chairs. The ice cream store looked tempting.

It must run on a miracle, or a generator the size of a blimp. All these businesses were open on Sunday, most running without electricity. The same cycle of brownouts that affects the homes in Baghdad affects the businesses, so that even a grocery store I was in was selling yogurt and cheese out of a refrigerated case that had not had refrigeration in a few hours. A few of the richer merchants set their generators out on the sidewalk and run the cord inside. Most, though, just wait for the few hours when the power comes back on.

Not everyone was happy to see us. The grocer asked the soldiers not to come back. They had been there three times in three weeks and he was growing fearful of an attack. The florist shop we walked by locked its doors to the soldiers.

In the same area of the city, I went to two council meetings, a neighborhood-level, and a district-level. The first had six members, and we met in a recreation center that looked as if someone had used grenades during a game of dodge ball. The electricity was off, and it was in a closed room with one door. I can honestly say I've never sweated so much as I did during that 90 minutes. Sweat just poured from all our heads, and we all just kept wiping it away. The councilors were complaining to the American and Iraqi officers about killings in the neighborhood. The officers asked for any clues about how the muders happpened. No one said anything. That conversation, that kept going round and round, lasted 45 minutes.

The U.S. officer there was trying to get the board to prioritize its problems (leaking sewage on one street, an illegal trash dump on another) with absolutely no success. The Iraqis were trying to get the American to do something about the Iraqi police, who they say are corrupt. The officer said it was out of his hands. That lasted another 30 minutes or so. Finally, the officer asked the members if they could invite some local imans to the next meeting to try and build some trust on all sides. The group nodded, and one councilor said he'd try.

These councils were formed during the coalition provisional authority, the U.S.-run government that made decisions before last January's election. As Iraq continues to form its new government, under a U.S.- suggested timeline, it's unclear whether these small councils will continue to exist. They have no budget, and they have no power to make anything happen. Their role, as far as I can tell, is to help the Americans know what is wrong in each neighborhood, whether it be insurgents, leaking water pipes or crumbling schools. The soldiers also hope, as with any mission, to make a few friends and build a little trust. It's hard to see whether that's happening. At the neighborhood meeting I went to, a 31-year-old lieutenant who at home is a CPA is trying to tell Iraqi men in their 40s and 50s how to make their neighborhoods better. It didn't look convincing to me either.

At the larger district meeting on Wednesday, the crowd of 20 councilors was more forceful and more realistic in their complaints, but they were just as powerless. The head of the traffic cops came to complain that his men have to stand in the sun all day. Couldn't they have umbrellas? An Iraqi police general came and listened to complaints about how corrupt his officers are. When they arrest someone, shouldn't they have a warrant? The Iraqis all talked. The American officers sat on the sidelines and, with the help of their interpreters, took notes. If anyone gets any umbrellas, trash clean-up, improved sewage system or anything else, it will be because of those officers. They are the ones with the budget.

Then came the drama that I was there to cover. An Iraqi woman had been killed in the crossfire a few months earlier, and the Army was there to pay the family $4,000 in consolation payments. The military has limits on how much you can pay in these circumstances. Generally, I think, it's $2,500 for a child, up to $2,500 for an adult, and up to $500 for property damage. In this case, a special arrangement was made to pay $2,500 for the woman and $1,500 for the family's car, which the insurgents had used as shelter during the shooting.

None of the Americans, however, knew that the woman's fifth-grade girl would be there to take the money and to try to tell off the Americans. She got about two minutes into her speech before she broke down. It was so awful, I couldn't take pictures of it. The district council chairman held her, and her father took over. He refused the money, said Americans spend more on show dogs and probably said a lot more things that the translator left out. The soldier trying to give the money, a 44-year-old paralegal who has a grown daughter of her own, convinced him to take the money for the little girl. He signed the paper, and then in the most horrible momemt, the paralegal counted out the sum in $100 bills. The sound of those crisp dollars being counted is the worse thing I've heard here, by far.

This little girl and her father, though, also struck me as being far from improvished or rich. The man wore trousers with a belt and leather shoes. The girl wore a clean yellow T-shirt with rhinestones hanging off it, blue jeans and sandals. They could walk into Northpark, or the Carousel, or any mall in America and look right at home. At least, that's how I saw them and that's how most of the U.S. soldiers might see them. And because they look so familiar, I think many soldiers and officers here -- who are working under orders to make this Democracy work -- are confused and even hurt when the Iraqis don't always go along.

Certainly many Iraqi people support the elections, the new government, the new military. But I wonder who doesn't, besides the guys who are too busy killing anyone to stop and articulate what exactly they want. It strikes me that this girl and her father, and their lost mother and wife, might represent those people caught in the middle, those who might not want either American values or terriorist militants. They just want their life to be better. I wonder if that will happen.

Going to and from the airport

One commercial carrier currently flies in and out of Baghdad International Airport: Iraqi Airlines, aptly enough. The majority of the flights, however, are military and carry government officials, contract workers and even press associated with various countries from around the world. The airport itself is part of a U.S. military base. If, when you land at the airport, you need to go somewhere outside that base -- say to a meeting with an Iraqi government official or to get your room at the Palestine Hotel -- then you submit yourself and your luggage to several searches, drive through a serpentine of roadblocks, show yourself and your appropriate paperwork to a U.S. contractor providing security, and make your way onto Airport Road.

When I arrived at Baghdad Airport more than two weeks ago, I called Joe to tell him I made it, and I asked him if I needed to unpack my flak jacket for the ride to Camp Liberty. He said no, it was all attached and we wouldn’t have to go outside the wire. It turns out I just needed my helmet to make the ride to my new pad. Literally. The grids of trailers here are separated by numbered pads. There are probably more than 100 trailers, each housing two to six people, in each pad. There are at least seven pads where I’m living now. I’m in a trailer in pad four.

So it wasn’t until the past two days that I spent any time on Airport Road, a stretch of highway that many westerners refer to as Baghdad’s most dangerous road. I requested the patrols. Starting this month, Iraqi forces are helping to patrol the road for the first time, and like most other media here, I wanted to write about it. Personally, I wanted a first-hand look at this road that is so often called the single most dangerous in the city. I doubted the infamous nickname. The way I look at it, whatever road you are on when a bomb explodes is the most dangerous.

So I joined up with a convoy that left Friday morning. Most convoys I’ve been in have four Humvees. This one had eight, with a number of Bradleys (tracked vehicles that look like small tanks with a big canon attached) along for the ride as well. They headed out for at least eight hours without any plan to rest or return for lunch, something many other patrols get to do during their shift. The airport road convoy goes out and stays out, and, I bet, doesn’t even take bathroom breaks unless they have a female reporter along.

The line of trucks and guns heaved down the portion of this highway that connects the airport with the Green Zone, the home of the Palestine, the U.S. Embassy and the newly reigning Iraqi government. The guns spaced themselves out in the brush along either side of the split highway. The trucks split up into patrols: one did the eastern three kilometers, the other the western. The command patrol, the one I was with, monitored all six kilometers. The patrols crawl down the highway and create a bubble for themselves. They hold all the traffic ahead of or behind them, so from the limited view from inside a Humvee, it looks like we’re the only ones on the road. The only cars allowed through are those from other governments, and they must have at least two cars in a convoy and they must some sort of placard that indicates who they are.

As one commander told me, at times, Airport Road is the most secure road in Iraq. It certainly seems like the most patrolled.

Security and safety are based on point of view, and from inside an armored Humvee, I felt as safe as I have on the eight other patrols I’ve been on so far. And like my other trips outside the wire, nothing happened. We heard gunfire twice in the distance, but both times it turned out to be warning shots from Iraqi army soldiers to cars that were getting too close for comfort. A roadside bomb had exploded at 5:42 a.m., just before our patrol started. No Americans were hurt, but two Iraqis, a father and son, suffered injuries and went to a local hospital. Later, we went by their house, a collection of rooms formed by corrugated metal leaning together like a house of cards. No one knew how the two injured were because they were still at the hospital. Another group of soldiers will go by in a couple of days to offer money and more medical care to the family, I was told.

Because so many important and international visitors travel the road, it certainly gets constant attention from the insurgents. Three U.S. companies – more than two hundred soldiers – are assigned to the road. One of those companies has lost more than any other in the brigade I’m with right now, nine guys in nine months. Six of those are the men from Houma, La., who died in January. As of June first, 260 specially trained Iraqi police are now assigned to the road as well. The U.S. military says the road has calmed down since the Iraqis joined the patrols. That is, after the Iraqis lost one soldier and had seven wounded during their first two days on the job. In reality, it’s only been 10 days and it’s probably too soon to tell.

It’s the traffic that lugged ahead of and behind our patrol that must be more concerned about possible danger. A New York Times reporter recently took a ride on the road without military escort, and he unarguably took more risk and faced more danger than I did on Friday, as does everyone who rides around in a car anywhere in Baghdad. I suppose it’s that thought that makes me come away from Airport Road with the same judgment I had going in. The most dangerous place in Baghdad is the place that the insurgents choose to target at that specific moment. For the people who live here, that’s every street in their city.

No, it gets windier every day

It's Wednesday, and I'm back at Liberty and back in my old Internet cafe. I'm staying on base today, finishing a couple of stories and resting a little. I'll probably be on several patrols in the next few days, so I'm glad for the down time. It's a good time to rest, too, because the wind is just awful. It stirs up so much dust and sand it's hard to breathe, to the point where I almost skipped lunch because it's too nasty to walk. In the end, I decided to brave it. After three days at Independence, I was too hungry to skip another meal. Now I feel like there's enough sand in my lungs to build half a pyramid.

When I said it gets hotter every day, that's not exactly true, I suppose. Mentally, it feels that way, and it's going to be much hotter a month from now when my tour here is winding down. Some days actually feel better than others, especially when there's less humidity and a gentle breeze. I know it sounds crazy, but on those days, 105 doesn't feel so bad. Today isn't one of those days.

Staying at Independence was a nice break, in its own way. Because it's so small, I got to know the soldiers I ate and shared a barracks with pretty well. We watched arena football and women's softball together, and shared the belief that the relief pitcher for the University of Michigan looked like Paris Hilton's twin. The guys came to find me to offer their story ideas (and complaints, of course) for Stripes, and it was easy for me to roam the base and do interviews with anyone I needed.

I also got to spend more time with the Iraqi interpreters. As best I can tell so far, the interpreters work for Titan, a contractor with the military. I'm told they make a little over $1,000 a month, nearly three times the amount the Iraqi soldiers make. At Independence, the interpreters practically live on base and eat in the U.S. dining hall, both huge no-no's at Liberty. They are, however, kept from the inside of the U.S. offices, and they aren't told the purpose or place of American missions until they get into the convoy.

Some of the soldiers treat them really well, sharing cigarettes and movies and stories about girlfriends. Some treat them like shit, and practically tell that to their faces. It's actually pretty startling to see, especially in a community that's so small. I asked a U.S. officer last week about racism, about getting along with the Iraqi people. He said he felt his soldiers acted the same way they would at home. If they were prejudiced at home, they pretty much could be expected to behave the same way here. If they had a little more tolerance, or at least better manners to keep their thoughts to themselves, then they'd behave the same in Iraq. I suppose it's true, but the intolerance is more raw here, I think, because the U.S. soldiers hate being here and, whether they'll admit it or not, are afraid of dying here.

The interpreters were as polite as they could be to me, calling me "Miss Teri" and offering to help even before I asked. The U.S. soldiers say most of the interpreters they've met have never left Iraq; they learned English at school. One interpreter I met, a young guy named A.K. who looks like Ralph Machio from the Karate Kid, said he learned his English for movies. I told him I didn't believe him. He had no accent and was the best interpreter I've worked with since I've been here. He said it was true. "It's a gift from the gods," he said. He's never left Iraq and has an unusually small family. His dad went missing in action in 1988, and he has no brothers and sisters, just his mother and her five cats. He wants to learn French next.

A.K. went with me Tuesday morning to the Haifa Street neighborhood, my second walking patrol with Iraqi soldiers. That's right, walking. We all parked our trucks at a military headquarters in "predator's palace," the Americans' nickname for what once was a home to one of Saddam's daughters. Then we started walking, in full gear, to a neighborhood that has transformed from a war zone into a peaceful sanctuary in just a few weeks. It was my second walking patrol in two days, and I never saw or heard anything frightening.

Instead, the streets were stuffed with chaotic traffic. Buses, donkeys, cars, even a clean, white Mercedes. Where do you get a clean Mercedes, I kept saying out loud. The streets are incredibly dirty, as are the people. There are two smells on the street: baking bread, and sewage. When I stopped to talk to a couple of local men about the violence, they brushed that aside. They wanted to complain about the utilities. I couldn't blame them and let them rattle on.

The constant filth is hard to bear. It's everywhere: dirty clothes, faces, hands and feet. The kids run and splash through puddles in the alleys, puddles that serve as drains for each home's chamber pot. Some of the kid's teeth have holes in them. They wear clothes that haven't been washed for a long time. Many of the U.S. soldiers wear gloves, so that they can touch the kids without worrying about washing their hands. It's awfully impersonal, and incredibly necessary. I'd wear them too, as horrible as that is, except then I wouldn't be able to write. I just try not to gvie high fives or shake hands, something that hurts the kids' feelings.

The kids themselves are both entertaining and annoying. It's a huge thrill for them to see soldiers. It's even more unique to see reporters, especially ones with cameras. They've learned the routine: ask for candy and toys from the soldiers, ask for pictures from the reporters. They all want their picture taken, over and over again, and clicking a few frames only inspires them to beg for more. They're not dangerous in any way, just pushy. And they can't be blamed. They've learned to beg for such treats in the last two years, and now they expect them. Plus, when the Americans aren't around, life must be pretty dull.

As for Haifa Street, for the few hours I was there, it was safe. Both armies say it's because the Iraqi soldiers that patrol the streets live in the area, and because they made some key arrests that dealt the insurgents a blow. Maybe, but there should be more explanation. If more patrols and more arrests are the answer, then why aren't there other peacful havens scattered throughout the city. U.S. and Iraqi forces are patrolling and arresting nearly everywhere, as far as I can tell.

No one could really answer this. Some of the U.S. soldiers brave enough to speak their suspicions outloud and off-the-record wonder the same thing I do: either the insurgents were paid to leave, or, worse, the insurgents also have a safe haven to live and work in by promising to avoid violence as long as the patrols avoid them. They're just theories, and who knows what is true. Living and working in a place where the next car that passes might explode makes everyone, including me, sadly enough, suspicious.

I'm not sure exactly what my next assignment entails, but it will probably be more house raids and more Iraqi patrols, perhaps on what western journalists call "Airport Road." I hear the Americans are trying to turn over the patrols on the route to the Iraqis. Maybe they'll have the same luck as the Haifa Street soldiers, but somehow, I doubt it.

Every day is hotter

A sand storm hit sometime after midnight today (Monday), stirring up sand so thick you couldn't see your hand in front of your face, I'm told. When I got up a little after 7 a.m., it still hung in the air like fog. The wind has pushed most of it away by lunchtime, but the remnents are everywhere. I thought the sand was awful on a normal day. It creeps in everywhere: on windows, generals' desks, even on top of my bed. But now it's so much worse.

I've moved to another base in Baghdad for a few days to write about the Iraqi Army. The officers I've met so far are friendly and generous. The rule among the Americans is that you should be both thirsty and hungry when you drop in on an Iraqi officer, because they offer you both food and drink no matter what time of day it is. The Iraqis talk a lot about their homeland, about how they want independence. Every officer I've met once served under Saddam. They say they like life much better now.

But they are frustrated by the lack of equipment for their troops and the dedication of the insurgents. The group of Iraqis I'm with now supposedly cleaned up Haifa Street, a former hangout for insurgents. I'm going this afternoon to have a look for myself. But it's a small strip in a huge country, and the officers are getting impatient, it seems to me. They have worn flak jackets for their soldiers, and one group of officers had to buy fuel last week just to keep their patrols going.

The Americans help where they can, but their main mission is to oversee the training and the paperwork the Iraqis are supposed to do on their own. The attention paid to the paperwork baffles me, and I wonder if the Iraqis feel the same way. Most of the Iraqi commanders I've seen use hand-written letters and post-its to send messages, even orders. They keep files and papers folded or rolled up like a fly-swatter. I can't imagine that written daily memos and training plans are going to be that important to them when the Americans leave.

Camp Independence is a much smaller place, with no PX store and not much choice in the dining hall. Today's lunch was hamburgers and hot dogs. I had a cheese and mustard sandwich and some canned pears. For fun, most of the soldiers have laptops or portable DVD players, and there's a kiosk on base that sells movies for $3 each. A few soldiers have a nightly poker game in the only common space, a covered area lined with trailers that house the barbershop, a small store, a couple of offices and an Internet cafe. There's a dusty pool table, too, but only the Iraqi interpreters use that.

I spent most of my free time on the Internet, which costs $2 an hour (but is free at Camp Liberty, for some reason). I tried last night to get some pictures out on the web, but it takes too long. (I did have entertainment while I waited. Three Iraqi men were sharing one set of headphones to help them sing along to "Shake that thing, miss.") The nanny program here won't let me post them on this blog, either. So you'll have to wait a while for pictures.

I'll finish this entry later, after I've seen Haifa Street. I've got to go get ready for my walking patrol through Baghdad.