Last weekend, I wrapped up my tour in Habbaniyah, a Euphrates River city between Fallujah and Ramadi. As with all my stops so far, the area is relatively calm, which means nothing terribly big has exploded in the past three to four weeks. That ended yesterday with a sheik’s assassination and car bombing in Fallujah. But by then, I was already on my way back to Baghdad, where I’m typing now.
The short stay proved a bit bizarre. I was spending the weekend with a group of MiTT guys, Marines who are part of a military transition team who are helping to advise a battalion of Iraqi Army soldiers. The Marines live on the Iraqi base, though they still set their own night watches and have their own supplies stocked in their tiny corner. Their life there is small. Nineteen guys live, work and eat in one building and one patio area. They have Internet in their own rooms, a gym, showers, and a grill. They use the bathroom in a closet that has a plastic toilet with no bottom and a box full of wag bags, special garbage bags that stretch across the missing bowl. The Marines are always relieved when I say I don't need a lesson on wagging the bag. Needless to say, I figured it out myself.
Earlier in the day, Saturday, I had already tackled an Iraqi feast. I covered an Iraqi soldier graduation and afterward attended the graduation luncheon, which did not include the graduates but did include a couple of generals and the 500-member class’s trainers. Each diner got two trays of food – rice pilaf, red beans, flat bread, an orange, an apple, juice, soda, water, stewed lamb, a quarter chicken and sliced tomato and onions. Then, during dinner, the men came around and piled more lamb on each person’s plate. I tried to refuse, but it was as pointless as explaining what a woman was doing eating with all those men.
At the lunch, I had eaten next to a doctor, an Iraqi Army colonel who spoke English and is one of two local physicians in town. He is an orthopedist, though these days he practices whatever comes his way. The local residents have turned the Iraqi Army on-base medical facility into their emergency room, and any manner of sicknesses or problems come through the door. They also hold clinics out in town with the Marines. One the week before had attracted 1,000 people. I asked him about supplies. He said the main drug warehouse in Baghdad was bombed recently, so getting medicine has been difficult. The doctor is from Basra, but he has been assigned to Habbaniyah. I asked him why he has not left. If we all leave this country, we can never be a strong country, he said.
The Marines I spent last weekend with also do much of their own cooking. Mostly they reheat frozen pizzas and hot pockets, and occasionally they go to a nearby U.S. base for real chow. They’d rather stay in their own world, with their three adopted dogs whose care has made it into the rotation of chores. The person who cleans the patio each day also changes the water bowl and replenishes the food. In their small kitchen, bags of doggie treats sit next to the creamer. On Saturday, the major, the team commander, bathed the three-month-old puppy who is suffering from a skin disease. They’ve given the dogs worming pills, and the puppy wears a flea collar, but that’s about all they can do as far as preventive care. The baby eats puppy chow, but the two older ones don’t much like dog food. They grew up on trash. A couple of weeks ago, the bitch named Tits had a litter – it was not her first, hence her name – and the Marines had to impose a little after-the-fact birth control. It was sad but necessary in such a small community. Three dogs are plenty. They do their own part, too. Because the Americans feed them, they now have a home they protect. They bark anytime any Iraqi soldier or officer approaches the American building, a comfort even among allies.
The Marines eat with the Iraqi officers daily, usually at supper time, and I got invited on Saturday night.I was still full from lunch, so I was glad to hear to was a light meal. My plate included skewered lamb kebobs, some cardamom flavored meat patties, sliced tomatoes and cucumbers, fried hashed potatoes, fresh cooked bread (not flat bread, but a whiter fluffier version that resembles flat, mini-Nerf footballs) and watermelon for desert. As always, it was good, homecooked food and far too much for me to eat.
On Sunday, the guys take the day off, meaning they do chores around the camp but don’t have to patrol with the Iraqis. They were building an Internet and entertainment room off the back, and one guy was grilling about 20 steaks for dinner. I was looking forward to the party. Then a nearby U.S. commander decided he wanted to take me on a story. I grew irritated; I didn’t know this guy, didn’t like him co-opting me just to get his unit in the paper. But I went along. All I was missing was a barbecue and a self-led prayer service with the MiTT team. I couldn’t really justify pitching a fit when I didn’t know what I was refusing to cover.
I ended up leaving one Iraqi afternoon party for another. The commander took me to a neighborhood watch meeting, one of the more surreal scenes I’ve seen in my short jaunts here. It actually was a gathering at the headquarters of a self-directed, self-appointed police force that patrols several smaller districts of Habbaniyah. These men walk around with guns and run their own highway check points with no
official authority. The Iraqi battalion commander doesn’t like it. The Marine commander I was with does. Violence in the area has decreased dramatically, and he credits this home guard with the change. He also calls them the “good bad guys,” and it’s hard to argue with the predicament.
The scene was serene. We sat in the yard, a small patch of green grass, in plastic lawn chairs. The men smoked and talked, comparing names for Venus as the planet and crescent moon rose. The birds went to bed and the tea came round. The man who leads the group held his motorala radio all night, listening for action out in town. He described his former career as a security position with the government and left it at that. They were kind and welcoming to me, but I couldn't help wondering about who they are arresting in town.
The next morning my original MiTT picked me up for a tour of their coverage area. Literally, it was a tour, and I didn’t like it. The Iraqis and Marines had geared up to show me their district. They were proud of the safety and relative cleanliness of the city streets, and took me on a short junket to prove it. They were trying to be hospitable. I kept thinking, if something goes boom right now I’ll have a hard time getting over it.
After a tour of the city streets, we drove south on a dirt road to Landor, a lakeside village on Lake Habbaniyah. Yes, there are lakes in Iraq, though I had a hard time discovering their history and whether they were saline or fresh. One woman in the village said yes it was salty, yes it was dirty, yes it was fresh. Safe to say, it’s dirty, and while they skim it for fish they refuse any of its other possible uses. On the way, we passed through an Iraqi police checkpoint that mans the only road to and from Landor. The police were real police, which means they've been through a 10-week training. The commander of the post wore a uniform, though not everyone did. He used a Snow White notebook to record the drivers and car on the road. Each page was a different category – residents, visitors, strangers. He kept detailed notes handwritten between wide, grammar-school lines.
This Landor was a group of about 400 people. There are other Landors that dot the shore line, which means the name must provide some simple description for a community on the lake, but that, too, was beyond our translator’s ability. The houses in Landor are a mix of concrete and homemade concrete, spaced out in a communal arrangement at least a kilometer from the shore. There are no roads, no fences, only each family’s notch in the sand. Many of the husbands here have multiple wives, and their families are enormous. The children are not all healthy. One boy, 17, was shorter than I and has a very developed murmur that swished his heart. A 3-month-old baby in the same family has the same problem, and he lay lethargic in his brother’s arms as the Navy medic checked him out. The major offered to have the family come the next time there’s a medical clinic in Habbaniyah. But everyone knows they both need surgery, and no one knows when that will be. The major I was with has a son with the same problem that has been cured.
The people have not been touched by the violence of war, or of little else in the past few centuries. They have cars and a school and satellites and some electricity, but it more resembled a set of dioramas created for tourists like me rather than a 21st century village. One of the houses we visited looked like those in bigger cities, with actual floors. Another used an outlying kitchen – three worn pieces of concrete leaning together like Pi with an in-ground oven in the middle – to bake bread.
But the war has touched them in other ways. The food and fuel and water rations they received under Saddam have been gone for four years, and nothing has replaced them. I don’t know how they make money. One family I talked with had enough fuel to drive to town every day, a 20-minute ride. Perhaps they bartered fish. Perhaps they barter other things. It seems unlikely, though, that they would be making a living by harboring insurgents. The bad guys tend to drag violence with them where they go, and they believe in punishing their employees who don’t tow the line. None of that has happened in Landor.
One woman offered us a taste of her flat bread, which the younger women in the family had just baked. I’m sure young women in Landor rarely see other men, so they hid in the kitchen cave while the Marines and Iraqi soldiers approached. The bread was on a platter on the ground. It had seared and pulled apart when baking, like pizza dough rolled too thin, so it was crisper than other flatbreads I’d tried. The woman said it was because of the poor quality of the flour they use. But the taste was also richer than other breads, a yeasty sourness of unprocessed grain and a tiny bit of spice, cinnamon maybe, or perhaps just the flavors of the earth seeping out of the sides of the oven.
The tour was done and we headed home. I’m still not sure what to write about the village for the paper. There was no real patrol by Marines or Iraqi soldiers. Another Stripes reporter covered that village, or maybe one of its twins, in the past two months, so I don’t have much to add. It was a great experience, but one too staged for the newspaper. I feel guilty; they showed off their towns with pride but it probably will remain in my notebook.
Back at the MiTT’s home, the Marines can glimpse the lake from their patio. The ground stretches pale and knobby for miles, and the sky, even on clear days, has a white-hot haze. In the middle is a thin wash of blue. One sergeant, an 18-year veteran who played football at Texas, said he’d like to cast a line out there. I hope he gets to.
The short stay proved a bit bizarre. I was spending the weekend with a group of MiTT guys, Marines who are part of a military transition team who are helping to advise a battalion of Iraqi Army soldiers. The Marines live on the Iraqi base, though they still set their own night watches and have their own supplies stocked in their tiny corner. Their life there is small. Nineteen guys live, work and eat in one building and one patio area. They have Internet in their own rooms, a gym, showers, and a grill. They use the bathroom in a closet that has a plastic toilet with no bottom and a box full of wag bags, special garbage bags that stretch across the missing bowl. The Marines are always relieved when I say I don't need a lesson on wagging the bag. Needless to say, I figured it out myself.
Earlier in the day, Saturday, I had already tackled an Iraqi feast. I covered an Iraqi soldier graduation and afterward attended the graduation luncheon, which did not include the graduates but did include a couple of generals and the 500-member class’s trainers. Each diner got two trays of food – rice pilaf, red beans, flat bread, an orange, an apple, juice, soda, water, stewed lamb, a quarter chicken and sliced tomato and onions. Then, during dinner, the men came around and piled more lamb on each person’s plate. I tried to refuse, but it was as pointless as explaining what a woman was doing eating with all those men.
At the lunch, I had eaten next to a doctor, an Iraqi Army colonel who spoke English and is one of two local physicians in town. He is an orthopedist, though these days he practices whatever comes his way. The local residents have turned the Iraqi Army on-base medical facility into their emergency room, and any manner of sicknesses or problems come through the door. They also hold clinics out in town with the Marines. One the week before had attracted 1,000 people. I asked him about supplies. He said the main drug warehouse in Baghdad was bombed recently, so getting medicine has been difficult. The doctor is from Basra, but he has been assigned to Habbaniyah. I asked him why he has not left. If we all leave this country, we can never be a strong country, he said.
The Marines I spent last weekend with also do much of their own cooking. Mostly they reheat frozen pizzas and hot pockets, and occasionally they go to a nearby U.S. base for real chow. They’d rather stay in their own world, with their three adopted dogs whose care has made it into the rotation of chores. The person who cleans the patio each day also changes the water bowl and replenishes the food. In their small kitchen, bags of doggie treats sit next to the creamer. On Saturday, the major, the team commander, bathed the three-month-old puppy who is suffering from a skin disease. They’ve given the dogs worming pills, and the puppy wears a flea collar, but that’s about all they can do as far as preventive care. The baby eats puppy chow, but the two older ones don’t much like dog food. They grew up on trash. A couple of weeks ago, the bitch named Tits had a litter – it was not her first, hence her name – and the Marines had to impose a little after-the-fact birth control. It was sad but necessary in such a small community. Three dogs are plenty. They do their own part, too. Because the Americans feed them, they now have a home they protect. They bark anytime any Iraqi soldier or officer approaches the American building, a comfort even among allies.
The Marines eat with the Iraqi officers daily, usually at supper time, and I got invited on Saturday night.I was still full from lunch, so I was glad to hear to was a light meal. My plate included skewered lamb kebobs, some cardamom flavored meat patties, sliced tomatoes and cucumbers, fried hashed potatoes, fresh cooked bread (not flat bread, but a whiter fluffier version that resembles flat, mini-Nerf footballs) and watermelon for desert. As always, it was good, homecooked food and far too much for me to eat.
On Sunday, the guys take the day off, meaning they do chores around the camp but don’t have to patrol with the Iraqis. They were building an Internet and entertainment room off the back, and one guy was grilling about 20 steaks for dinner. I was looking forward to the party. Then a nearby U.S. commander decided he wanted to take me on a story. I grew irritated; I didn’t know this guy, didn’t like him co-opting me just to get his unit in the paper. But I went along. All I was missing was a barbecue and a self-led prayer service with the MiTT team. I couldn’t really justify pitching a fit when I didn’t know what I was refusing to cover.
I ended up leaving one Iraqi afternoon party for another. The commander took me to a neighborhood watch meeting, one of the more surreal scenes I’ve seen in my short jaunts here. It actually was a gathering at the headquarters of a self-directed, self-appointed police force that patrols several smaller districts of Habbaniyah. These men walk around with guns and run their own highway check points with no
official authority. The Iraqi battalion commander doesn’t like it. The Marine commander I was with does. Violence in the area has decreased dramatically, and he credits this home guard with the change. He also calls them the “good bad guys,” and it’s hard to argue with the predicament.The scene was serene. We sat in the yard, a small patch of green grass, in plastic lawn chairs. The men smoked and talked, comparing names for Venus as the planet and crescent moon rose. The birds went to bed and the tea came round. The man who leads the group held his motorala radio all night, listening for action out in town. He described his former career as a security position with the government and left it at that. They were kind and welcoming to me, but I couldn't help wondering about who they are arresting in town.
The next morning my original MiTT picked me up for a tour of their coverage area. Literally, it was a tour, and I didn’t like it. The Iraqis and Marines had geared up to show me their district. They were proud of the safety and relative cleanliness of the city streets, and took me on a short junket to prove it. They were trying to be hospitable. I kept thinking, if something goes boom right now I’ll have a hard time getting over it.
After a tour of the city streets, we drove south on a dirt road to Landor, a lakeside village on Lake Habbaniyah. Yes, there are lakes in Iraq, though I had a hard time discovering their history and whether they were saline or fresh. One woman in the village said yes it was salty, yes it was dirty, yes it was fresh. Safe to say, it’s dirty, and while they skim it for fish they refuse any of its other possible uses. On the way, we passed through an Iraqi police checkpoint that mans the only road to and from Landor. The police were real police, which means they've been through a 10-week training. The commander of the post wore a uniform, though not everyone did. He used a Snow White notebook to record the drivers and car on the road. Each page was a different category – residents, visitors, strangers. He kept detailed notes handwritten between wide, grammar-school lines.
This Landor was a group of about 400 people. There are other Landors that dot the shore line, which means the name must provide some simple description for a community on the lake, but that, too, was beyond our translator’s ability. The houses in Landor are a mix of concrete and homemade concrete, spaced out in a communal arrangement at least a kilometer from the shore. There are no roads, no fences, only each family’s notch in the sand. Many of the husbands here have multiple wives, and their families are enormous. The children are not all healthy. One boy, 17, was shorter than I and has a very developed murmur that swished his heart. A 3-month-old baby in the same family has the same problem, and he lay lethargic in his brother’s arms as the Navy medic checked him out. The major offered to have the family come the next time there’s a medical clinic in Habbaniyah. But everyone knows they both need surgery, and no one knows when that will be. The major I was with has a son with the same problem that has been cured.
The people have not been touched by the violence of war, or of little else in the past few centuries. They have cars and a school and satellites and some electricity, but it more resembled a set of dioramas created for tourists like me rather than a 21st century village. One of the houses we visited looked like those in bigger cities, with actual floors. Another used an outlying kitchen – three worn pieces of concrete leaning together like Pi with an in-ground oven in the middle – to bake bread.
But the war has touched them in other ways. The food and fuel and water rations they received under Saddam have been gone for four years, and nothing has replaced them. I don’t know how they make money. One family I talked with had enough fuel to drive to town every day, a 20-minute ride. Perhaps they bartered fish. Perhaps they barter other things. It seems unlikely, though, that they would be making a living by harboring insurgents. The bad guys tend to drag violence with them where they go, and they believe in punishing their employees who don’t tow the line. None of that has happened in Landor.
One woman offered us a taste of her flat bread, which the younger women in the family had just baked. I’m sure young women in Landor rarely see other men, so they hid in the kitchen cave while the Marines and Iraqi soldiers approached. The bread was on a platter on the ground. It had seared and pulled apart when baking, like pizza dough rolled too thin, so it was crisper than other flatbreads I’d tried. The woman said it was because of the poor quality of the flour they use. But the taste was also richer than other breads, a yeasty sourness of unprocessed grain and a tiny bit of spice, cinnamon maybe, or perhaps just the flavors of the earth seeping out of the sides of the oven.
The tour was done and we headed home. I’m still not sure what to write about the village for the paper. There was no real patrol by Marines or Iraqi soldiers. Another Stripes reporter covered that village, or maybe one of its twins, in the past two months, so I don’t have much to add. It was a great experience, but one too staged for the newspaper. I feel guilty; they showed off their towns with pride but it probably will remain in my notebook.
Back at the MiTT’s home, the Marines can glimpse the lake from their patio. The ground stretches pale and knobby for miles, and the sky, even on clear days, has a white-hot haze. In the middle is a thin wash of blue. One sergeant, an 18-year veteran who played football at Texas, said he’d like to cast a line out there. I hope he gets to.
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