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