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.