The wooden stairs had been worn smooth and rounded by thousands of people tracking abrasive sand up and down them for years. A thin layer of sand made each step dubious; one misplaced foot and the trip down would be quick and bumpy. At first I felt self-conscious dressed in jeans and a black sweater, with a pair of tightly laced, shiny jogging shoes, and a ratty bag by my side. I didn’t match the rest of the beachgoers in their bathing suits, sporting a languid attitude. But then I remembered I’m not here to relax. I gripped the strap crossing over my chest and acted as natural as I could.
As I walked, I marveled that there were still people on the beach. It was January, cloudy, cold, and the playoffs were on. How is it possible that there are still people playing frisbee in the freezing cold? How is it that people still lay placidly on their towels when the sun couldn’t tan an albino? But, this is San Diego—more importantly the beach—and the people must come.
Instead of walking towards the central pier, where surfers flank the decaying and barnacle encrusted trusses, I walked north along the cliffs slowly rising parallel to the ocean, eclipsing my right field of view. Palm trees grew among houses perched just above the shore break. Surfers rode in the meager waves before jumping off to paddle out again. From the corner of my eye, beer cans flashed under blankets just as the Official City of San Diego Beach Patrol truck drove by. Beach-goers took advantage of the slender window of opportunity for a quick sup before the truck turned around and passed again.
The crowds thinned quickly as I walked down the beach, replaced by growing piles of seaweed. Pebbles supplanted the fine sand at first, then stones, and finally boulders. I imagined the patrol truck frantically driving up and down the popular section of the beach at night collecting any detritus that had washed ashore or been exposed by the waves and driving it over to this neglected portion. There the refuse is dumped and the beach maintains its entropy-free allure. Concentrated and noxious whiffs of the familiar decaying scent of the beach permeated the crisp salty air. As I walked by hulking piles of rotting seaweed, a cloud of flies lifted off in fright and I held my breath for a beat. Have the denizens of the houses on the cliff become numb to this scent, or is it reflected in lower property values?
After passing an oddly placed, small unmarked sewage treatment plant—one that I expected to be releasing its own pleasant stench, but graciously did not—placed directly on the beach, the last structure I encountered was a blue bathroom with a sawtooth roof. I considered a quick visit, but then remember that where I was going, no one would see me pee. You see, I don’t care much for this pristine beach with its shiny-black wetsuit clad surfers, and I don’t care for the equally magnificent La Jolla Shores in the direction I’m heading. I care for the beach between. I want to go to the place where no one else goes. Because in a city of over one million people, where there is no one, there is bound to be something interesting.
The sand gave way completely to stones. I struggled to keep my balance as I walked across them. Near me a couple of surfers carried their white surfboards. They walked more delicately than I; their thin wetsuit slippers designed to protect from frigid winter water offered little support or protection from the rocks. My target loomed ahead of me: a bend in the cliffs formed the boundary where most beach-goers would never think of passing. The first signs of what was to come lay camouflaged among the stones. A chunk of rock, granular and geometric, stood out prominently from the naturally smoothed stones. Concrete. It surprised me at first. Concrete on one of the most popular beaches in the county? This must have been a fluke. Another sharp corner jutted from the stones. Perhaps I had passed the official boundary where no worker bothered maintaining.
The sound of a decade old melody played on an acoustic guitar greeted me. Looking at the cliffs I saw a little alcove made from palm fronds draped over some planks. Old boogie-boards snapped in the middle formed seats on top of a delicately stacked wall constructed of flat rocks. Seated was the source of the music. A young man sang the chorus to a familiar pop song. Next to him sat a disinterested-looking woman, and next to her an older man. None of them wore bathing suits, but they weren’t dressed as tightly as I was.
The chorus ended. “Have you heard that one before?” the man asked.
“Yeah I’ve heard it,” the older man replied.
“Not you!” the guitarist snapped. The woman continued to look disinterested.
I considered plopping down on one of the boogie-boards—gently, the perch didn’t look stable—and chat, but I had a long way to walk and the sun encroached the horizon. I had to walk all the way to the Children’s Pool, the first real part of La Jolla Shores, and if I failed to make it, the lack of any way up the cliffs would force me to walk back across the beach, in the dark. Determined, I gripped my bag and rounded the bend.
Lots more concrete. Apparently I had found the official dumping ground for derelict buildings. Despite the beauty of the sun beginning its descent and the low tide exposing dark green pools, these lumps of artificial geology brought me back to the reality of human existence. Most slabs were tame, content in blending in, others shot out rusted rebar like punji sticks. A huge slab of concrete the size of a tiny car rested not far from the bend. Metal bloomed from the concrete like rust-red petals. Had this been a gear is some archaic Grecian machine?
A few surfers in the distance slowly making their way out to the low tide provided me with my only company. Combined with the crumbling architecture, I felt as if I had stumbled into a dystopian future where everyone had fled San Diego and I had resorted to roaming the beaches in search of food. Another monolithic slab of concrete loomed over the beach, five thick metal poles pointing at an angle to the sky. Viewed from a certain angle the slab looked like an antiaircraft gun from a World War II movie. The poles were rusted beyond recognition; if I were to take a picture without context, one might think they were tree branches.
I wondered how this mess got here. Did the upscale neighborhood nested on the cliffs above me care about the pile of rubble below them, or were they too intoxicated by the rotting seaweed to notice? I couldn’t imagine a plain concrete building ever having been built near such desirable real estate. I heard from a friend that Highway 1 ran by here back in the day and they had to move it, so they dumped the refuse off the cliff and hoped no one snooped around. I sifted through the rubble hoping to find a yellow road stripe.
I noticed a sense of dread building up inside of me as I lingered in the area. Beaches are not supposed to be a place of ruination, but a place of mirth, tanned skin, and of course, surfing. I had to move on. After the two slabs of concrete, the smaller bits were mundane and I ignored them. Thankfully, as I walked on, the concrete dwindled to nothing, relieving me of the thought that it would define my trip up the beach. I stopped caring about what was below me and had the opportunity to look at my surroundings.
The beach was narrow. If not for the low tide, I would be pressed against the cliffs. I had planned the perfect time to come, as the receded water exposed a rocky marsh-like strip of green. The stones had sorted themselves out to only being fist sized, but as I walked towards the marsh, the stones did not help the steep slope. At the bottom, I didn’t want to walk any closer to the water. Looking closely at the marsh revealed a microcosm of little creatures: shell-encrusted sea anemones, crabs that skittered away from my thunderous footsteps, a thin sheet of seaweed that makes the marsh almost look like someone’s well-groomed and well designed front yard. I knew that even one step could possibly upset this fragile area for years. However, I shouldn't discount the scrappy critter's resolve, considering how they retook the area stolen from them by the tire I found in the surf. The moss-like seaweed managed to grow in the rim, making for a poignant, life-affirming scene. Scrambling back up the slope gave me a good view of the cliffs transformed.
Instead of the mesmerizing layers of ancient sediment and the rain etched features, a black plastic transparent mesh draped the cliffs. What possible purpose could this unsightly material serve? Erosion prevention? Vestigial construction material? Brutalist tapestries? I doubt the purpose could ever justify nearly the entire cliff being covered. Snaking black drainage tubes emerging from the cliff face accentuated the drapes. The foreign decorations swayed in the wind coming up from the sea. Near the pier I noticed one long tube hanging from the cliffs but wrote it off as a quirk. Little did I know that instead of a quirk, they were a feature.
Lest an adventurer like me think that these would make for a great rope in which to scale the cliffs for easy access into the expensive homes above, the tenants carefully poised alarm company signs—the type most people are content to only jamming in their front lawns or plastering on their windows—on the outside of their fences, pointed towards the ocean. Or perhaps I am mistaken, perhaps commando sea lions and thieving crustaceans really plagued their homes, and they didn’t care that tell-tale signs of opulence besmirched the beautiful cliffs. I noticed a correlation between large house size and excess signage.
Tucked under the black sheeting I found what looked like a small cage clutched precariously to the cliff above my head. I had to scramble up the crumbling rocks to get a good look. Peering close, I saw two compartments separated by mesh. An inward fold of the mesh led to the first compartment, and another fold in the separation led to the second compartment. The cage seemed maze-like until I realized what it was for: lobsters crawl in searching for bait hung in the second room, chow down, and then can't find their way out again, sealing their fate. The bait keeps them fat until pick-up time. This particular model could hold two lobsters, more if they didn't mind fighting to the death. How did the cage find its way up here and manage to get stuck behind the black drapes? Had there been a tsunami I never hear about? To my dismay, I did not find a fresh lobster trapped inside. Nor did I find any in the other traps washed up along the beach. Plenty of shell fragments could be found between the rocks—mostly tails but also a couple skulls, beady white eyes still poking outward, all picked clean first by birds, then little bugs wedging between the plates for the remaining elusive morsel. I periodically found cages pushed up against the cliff, all empty even of bait, each in a unique state of collapse and rust. Just like the concrete and all of the rest of the trash I found, no one ever bothered to come back here and clean up the place. Maybe one day I can go back and collect them, maybe make a buck off of selling them back to the people who lost them at sea.
The stately houses with overhanging decks and obnoxious alarm signs, along with the drapes and drainage pipes became an ever-repeating backdrop as I walked along, the scree sound of rocks rubbing against each other under my feet my musical accompaniment. I moved at a slow pace and the sun reflecting off of the water in the horizon reminded me of the impending darkness. I thought about turning back. I didn’t want to continue if all of the interesting things were behind me. However, something in the distance caught my eye, something stacked near the cliffs, gigantic sand bags of some sort. Had I stumbled upon some secret naval base or weapons cache?
The sand bags turned out to be huge rolls of solid concrete, the diameter of a thick palm tree, layered on each other like huge stairs, perhaps acting as a wave-breaker. Rolls and ripples in the concrete made them look like gray floatation devices, or at least like an artistic rendition. A single layer of fence with a padlocked gate ran across the top of the concrete staircase. Security camera signs replaced the now rather pedestrian alarm signs. Water from rogue waves had rusted the fence and the resulting brownish liquid flowed down the concrete in places, painting the concrete with some much needed—but rather scatological—color.
Past the fence, the cliff had been completely replaced by concrete, which in places looked brittle and sure to collapse in the same fate as the cliffs it wedged between. Two competing sections leading up to separate houses above butted against each other. The left section had a staircase leading halfway up to what looked like a small room behind another locked fence—or as I like to pretend: a holding cell. Built right out of the concrete cliff, a seating area with a few benches supplied the owners of the house a wonderful view of a chain link fence, with an ocean behind it. To the right of the benches another staircase led parallel up the cliffs to the top deck. A variety of floodlights and security cameras festooned the deck. The right section had one single steep staircase leading to a ladder that ascended into what seemed like a bleached white wooden cage. On the wall of the cage a single camera gazed at me as I gawked at it.
I dared get close to the concrete rolls, half expecting a helicopter of trained paramilitary to suddenly appear above me if I so much as touched it. The lowest layer had lost its curvature to the waves and felt coarse. Someone had scrawled some surprisingly legible graffiti in places: kitsch phrases such as “The birds swim around and the fishes fly” and “The sky is the ocean and the ocean” (Signed: V), along with some curlicues that went nowhere. Instead of the leading purveyors of graffiti—the hard urban gangster—only bored upper-class teenagers have made it out this far.
In contrast to the casually minimalistic decor of a classy beach access it tried to exude, The Compound—as I called it—had the air of a prison, complete with the crumbling, rusting gray exterior, panopticon security measures, and floodlights waiting to be activated in case of a riot. The only thing The Compound lacked was a tower with a mounted machine gun and trigger-happy guard.
The cameras moved. Or, at least I thought they moved. I stepped back from the lumpy concrete staircase and shuffled left, then right. Okay, maybe they weren’t moving, but they could have, so I moved on.
Another bend in the cliffs similar to the one I followed earlier lay ahead. The same palm trees, luxurious homes, and tilted tropical colored umbrellas silhouetted against the ever-darkening blue sky, only something was amiss. The gray concrete came back with a vengeance, this time in the form of an entire cliff. Not just one section, but the entire cliff face clear around the bend. The insatiable desire to live near the coast called for the cliffs to be sliced away and replaced with a new model, only this model existed merely to prop up the houses, a pure unabashed utilitarian hack-job. And they had the gall to not even give it a coat of paint. Excess concrete formed a flat lip at the bottom of the cliff, giving me a stone-free comfortable walkway. I closed my eyes and ran my hand across the coarse concrete, fantasizing that I was back in the city, on a relaxing stroll to the DMV.
I noticed near the water’s edge a single small patch of beach with absolutely no stones, footprints, plastic toy shovels, or even seaweed on it. Two people could sunbathe comfortably, no more. Surely this is the last patch of untouched sandy beach in all of Southern California, accessible only when the tides are low.
The concrete lip sloped upward and ended at a light brown sandstone rock top. A few seagulls stared idly at me questioning if I was really moving in on their turf. The rock trapped water from old waves in unnatural crevices. Competing graffiti dug into the soft rock criss-crossed in and out of each other and formed a tangled web of old worn letters and shapes, all of which had lost their intended meaning, if any ever existed. I could barely make out LW; a triangle; a poorly thought out D. I wanted to scuff it all away and let the rock begin again.
The stones changed to large and angular boulders, reminiscent of the concrete chunks, only pleasantly natural. Although nothing shifted under my feet, I planned my footsteps carefully along the jutting corners. Loose rocks can make for a slow journey, but the amount of arm flailing, near splits, uncertain leaps, and off-balance warbling I had performed while walking across the boulders made me pine for the familiar small egg-shaped stones. I stopped to look at a narrow brick wall with smatterings of tame graffiti. Taking up the lower half in big block letters read “BIRD ROCK” (I learned later that Bird Rock Avenue dead-ended just above the brick wall, and formed the official boundary between Pacific Beach and La Jolla.). The purpose of the wall became clear when I walked past it: a couple hid behind the wall, making out. I panicked a bit—they were the first people I had seen since the surfers—then tried to act like walking across a deserted beach towards nothing was totally natural. I can offer no description of this couple, as even glancing at them would further our shared awkwardness.
I reached another solid sandstone rock, this one narrow and high above waves striking its sheer face. In the distance a hopeful staircase led up from the beach. If it could be reached, I might not need to walk back on the beach at night, provided it didn’t lead up to another house. The irregular cliff shielded the terrain and offered no preview of what I would traverse. I warily stepped over a split in the rocks, arms reaching out for support, careful not to look down at the waves breaking under me.
The beach in its classical form had morphed into a meandering, multi-layered cliff, slick with breakwater and unforgiving sloped rock. Water bubbled in and out of miniature coves below me, the bottom cleverly concealed by dark water. To continue on, I had to scoot along a very narrow ledge, room enough for my toes only. I pressed myself up against the rock, seeking any sort of hold to jam my fingers into. After a few steps and failing to find anything for my left hand, I panicked and inched my way back, then tried again, rapidly groping the side of the cliff for any support. What would happen if I slipped? Rocks jutted from the water's surface, making for a very unreliable landing zone. Even if I were to miss the rocks, I had no idea of the depth of the water, nor if anyone would hear my screams.
In a rush, I shuffled across the ledge and knelt jittery and triumphant on the other side, manually letting out my captured breath. Shortly after the ledge and past a few minor obstacles, all progress halted when the only way forward led over a sheer overhang stretching the length of the path. My first inclination was to jump; then I thought maybe I should get a better look. But then I thought, why not just jump and see what happens? Only when I looked from a different angle did I realize that looking straight down from the overhang betrayed its true height, and disguised the rough, uneven, and stony ground. If I had jumped, I would have slipped and fallen backwards and split my head open, lay dead for a few hours before the high tide carried me out to sea, get a few bites taken out of me by whatever animal bothered, and finally wash ashore at the Children’s Pool, entrails flapping in the waves. For the children’s sake, I did not jump.
That was as far north as I travelled, stopped only by the harsh realities of gravity. In my sullen state, I found the rock just traversed a few minutes ago much more difficult. My feet failed to find the holds I imagined existed on the slick rock, not even the tiniest of jutting lip on which to cling. I played the part of the snake, slithering over the rock using every bit of friction I could muster.
The split in the rock I had casually stepped over before seemed to have widened, or perhaps my dexterity had deflated from defeat. I miscalculated a foot placement and slipped into the split, bashing my shin against the rock. A wet ledge on the other side saved me from certain immersement. I pushed away the pain, as the sun had set, and the pale blue light faded at a dangerous rate. My feet were tired, and the trip only halfway completed. If I didn't get past the sandstone rock and the angular boulder field, I would stumble in the winter dark; a busted shin would be the first of many wounds. Above, seagulls and cormorants settled into invisible nests and squawked at my predatory self. I walked quickly past the couple still making out, past the concrete cliff-face, past The Compound, the old tire aquarium, twisted lobster traps, anti-aircraft guns, the Iron Flower, and finally the field of rotting seaweed.
The first patch of real rock-free sand greeted my feet like a deep tissue massage. I was free to put my feet wherever I wanted, without fear of twisted ankles or bashed shins. Ahead, the floodlights from the top of a hotel complex made night into day. Four beach-goers still walked along the ever chilling coast, their dogs sniffing around at mounds of seaweed and occasionally taking bites.
One of the dogs walked slowly up to me and I extended my hand palm down as is our custom. The black and white dog sniffed warily, twitching backward at every step I took. It skulked away until I was a good distance on, then it barked. Three other dogs followed suit. As I walked on, the dogs emboldened and followed behind me still barking. One of the dogs pranced in front of me, and the others mimicked its behavior. I walked on, thinking the dogs would tire of me. They barked louder and swirled around me. The owners caught wind of this and started to call their names, first softly, then forcefully as the dogs paid no attention.
Perhaps my inattention infuriated the dogs the most. I had to be corralled and controlled. Two dogs reversed direction and picked up speed. They moved so quickly and barked so loudly I could not distinguish one from another as they swirled around. One of the owners screamed at the dogs and tried to grab at their collars. The bag across my chest jerked back. One of the dogs must have bit at it. Things got serious.
The owner breached the ring of dogs and tried to block me from them, but she was simply one, and they were legion. A pang bolted through my left leg. They bit me! The cursed dogs actually bit me! I hopped around, groaning in pain, keeping alert for the next attack. Were they brave enough to attack from the front? Three other people entered the fray, each grabbing at a dog. At the height of the insanity, the dogs calmed down.
The owner, a middle-aged fit woman with short cropped hair, asked breathlessly if the dogs had bit me. I rolled up my left pant leg and revealed a large black welt in the shape of dog teeth right above my calf. No blood trickled down. She was quick to say it looked fine, but still asked if I needed anything. I said no. The litigious affair that would result if I had said otherwise would be much more painful than a little welt. She apologized once more and dragged her now miraculously placid dog away by the collar.
Walking back up the stairs and to my car, I couldn’t help but laugh.
Showing posts with label nonfiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nonfiction. Show all posts
Saturday, June 9, 2012
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
An Identity Born of Fire
I was sitting in the lab one day, messing around with circuits and generally trying to avoid serious work, when a friend of mine said something to me. He was on my right and I couldn't hear him very well. I asked him to repeat. He asked me why I could never hear him. It was then that I decided to let him in on a side of me that rarely ever comes out.
“I was blown up by a suicide bomber in Iraq,” I said. This coming out of the mouth of a mild-mannered physics student was a little strange. He stared for a second, perhaps waiting for me to crack a smile and laugh at my own joke. I stared back.
“Are you serious?” he asked. I smiled inwardly. It happens like this every time. I let out my “secret” and people are dumbfounded.
“Yeah, that's why I can't hear in my right ear.” I responded. “I also have a bunch of scars on my leg. Wanna see?” I pulled up my left pant leg and the stare began again. My left leg, from the tips of my toe to right below the torso, is covered in scars. My right leg has a few, along with two on my left bicep and one behind my right ear. These aren't cool scars like the ones in the movies that are single straight lines; these are jagged, rough, huge patches of off-colored skin. It takes a couple minutes to comprehend that this is a real leg and not some elaborate make-up trick.
He was silent. “I was in the Marines, went to Iraq, was relatively safe until a suicide bomber killed two people and injured myself and another Marine,” I said.
It's a heavy story (you can read more about it here: http://distractedbydoubt.blogspot.com/2011/01/my-suicide-bomber.html), one that most college students hear about only on the news. To me, it is a fact of life. At the time, it had been five years since that fateful day and since then I married a beautiful woman and started attending school. I had learned to cope with my injury and was lucky to escape from serious psychological trauma. We talked some more. I showed him some shrapnel pieces still under my skin and used a magnet to get the full effect. He asked some pretty common questions (“Did you see him coming?” No. “Do you remember everything?” After the blast, yes. “Did you kill anyone?” Thankfully, no. “What's Iraq like?” Hot, sandy.). Then he said something that affected me deeply.
“I just can't look at you the same way anymore.” It wasn't offensive and he certainly didn't mean any harm, but it made me think hard about my whole experience.
Well, why can’t you? I'm still me, Josiah White. I like to run and jump around (when my knees can take it) and crack jokes, and I get frustrated over a hard physics problem. I'm the guy you knew a couple of hours ago who never stood out for any reason. I'm like the tens of thousands of white male twentysomethings who are secretly afraid of the future. I'm like you, only a little older than the average college student, and a lot more beat up. How does seeing my scars and knowing my past change how you see me at this moment?
Our relationship—one built on joking with each other and mutual dislike of excessive math—continued on almost as normal. The quarter ended and we reveled and/or sulked over our final grades. I went on a road trip over the summer with my wife and worked at an internship churning through mountains of data for one of my professors. My fellow students and I met back at the start of Fall quarter ready to begin again.
Still, those words stayed with me. It was the one phrase that defined my last five years of interaction with civilians. Iraq and Afghanistan are thousands of miles away and back in some half-remembered part of the zeitgeist. Someone who has been injured over there is even more uncommon. As I started school and became more comfortable with my new life, I drifted away from my fellow veterans, and away from people who understood me and my injury. All one has to say is “Purple Heart” to a vet and the story is three-quarters told. With civilians though, a whole book opens at just the mention of Iraq, and my injury and scars only add on chapters that I am obligated to tell. Gone is the group that understands me. I am now a stranger in a familiar land.
I don't mind telling my story. I don't mind showing my scars. Part of my recovery was being open about the experience. (At times, yes, I can be very self conscious about my legs. Living in Southern California, shorts are a requirement. When I wear them, I find myself subconsciously crossing my less-scarred right leg over my left. In the gym I catch people staring at my leg as I stretch.) After a while though, telling my story and showing my scars got boring—at least to me—and I started finding creative ways to truncate it, or avoid telling the story altogether. I wish I had a little book I could pull out of my back pocket and hand to the curious just so I wouldn't have to spend time telling my life story to another stunned face. What’s worse is that the longer I build a relationship with somebody without first telling them about my experience, the harder it is when I eventually have to explain everything.
That was the case with my fellow classmate. He and I got along fine before. For all he knew, I was another twenty-one year old kid going to college straight out of high school. But suddenly, within the span of an hour, I transformed from plucky student to battled-hardened Marine. How does a relationship stay the same with such an apparent character shift in one of its members?
So how do I foster a relationship with someone without first creeping them out? (“Hi, nice to meet you. I have eight pieces of shrapnel in my legs and President Bush awarded me the Purple Heart.”) When does the time come when I reveal the “rest” of who I am? Why do I have to maintain such a fractured personality? Why can't I just be Me, instead of just Mild-Mannered College Student, or just Battled-Hardened Warrior?
I don't want my war experiences to dominate my life, and I don't want them to be forgotten. I have to find a way to politely say “Yes, this is who I am. Now, can we move on to more recent things?” Perhaps it will never be easy. How can it be when less than one percent of the population serves in the military and a small percentage of them have been wounded in war? I want to be normal, but first I must accept that—in some small part—I am not. Instead of forcing people to see me in a way that I desire, I should instead strive to foster a relationship between the wounded and the curious. And not just people wounded in war, but anyone—civilian or military service-member—who has suffered some sort of trauma.
Special thank to my friend Sui Solitaire for helping me get this thing out of the door.
“I was blown up by a suicide bomber in Iraq,” I said. This coming out of the mouth of a mild-mannered physics student was a little strange. He stared for a second, perhaps waiting for me to crack a smile and laugh at my own joke. I stared back.
“Are you serious?” he asked. I smiled inwardly. It happens like this every time. I let out my “secret” and people are dumbfounded.
“Yeah, that's why I can't hear in my right ear.” I responded. “I also have a bunch of scars on my leg. Wanna see?” I pulled up my left pant leg and the stare began again. My left leg, from the tips of my toe to right below the torso, is covered in scars. My right leg has a few, along with two on my left bicep and one behind my right ear. These aren't cool scars like the ones in the movies that are single straight lines; these are jagged, rough, huge patches of off-colored skin. It takes a couple minutes to comprehend that this is a real leg and not some elaborate make-up trick.
He was silent. “I was in the Marines, went to Iraq, was relatively safe until a suicide bomber killed two people and injured myself and another Marine,” I said.
It's a heavy story (you can read more about it here: http://distractedbydoubt.blogspot.com/2011/01/my-suicide-bomber.html), one that most college students hear about only on the news. To me, it is a fact of life. At the time, it had been five years since that fateful day and since then I married a beautiful woman and started attending school. I had learned to cope with my injury and was lucky to escape from serious psychological trauma. We talked some more. I showed him some shrapnel pieces still under my skin and used a magnet to get the full effect. He asked some pretty common questions (“Did you see him coming?” No. “Do you remember everything?” After the blast, yes. “Did you kill anyone?” Thankfully, no. “What's Iraq like?” Hot, sandy.). Then he said something that affected me deeply.
“I just can't look at you the same way anymore.” It wasn't offensive and he certainly didn't mean any harm, but it made me think hard about my whole experience.
Well, why can’t you? I'm still me, Josiah White. I like to run and jump around (when my knees can take it) and crack jokes, and I get frustrated over a hard physics problem. I'm the guy you knew a couple of hours ago who never stood out for any reason. I'm like the tens of thousands of white male twentysomethings who are secretly afraid of the future. I'm like you, only a little older than the average college student, and a lot more beat up. How does seeing my scars and knowing my past change how you see me at this moment?
Our relationship—one built on joking with each other and mutual dislike of excessive math—continued on almost as normal. The quarter ended and we reveled and/or sulked over our final grades. I went on a road trip over the summer with my wife and worked at an internship churning through mountains of data for one of my professors. My fellow students and I met back at the start of Fall quarter ready to begin again.
Still, those words stayed with me. It was the one phrase that defined my last five years of interaction with civilians. Iraq and Afghanistan are thousands of miles away and back in some half-remembered part of the zeitgeist. Someone who has been injured over there is even more uncommon. As I started school and became more comfortable with my new life, I drifted away from my fellow veterans, and away from people who understood me and my injury. All one has to say is “Purple Heart” to a vet and the story is three-quarters told. With civilians though, a whole book opens at just the mention of Iraq, and my injury and scars only add on chapters that I am obligated to tell. Gone is the group that understands me. I am now a stranger in a familiar land.
I don't mind telling my story. I don't mind showing my scars. Part of my recovery was being open about the experience. (At times, yes, I can be very self conscious about my legs. Living in Southern California, shorts are a requirement. When I wear them, I find myself subconsciously crossing my less-scarred right leg over my left. In the gym I catch people staring at my leg as I stretch.) After a while though, telling my story and showing my scars got boring—at least to me—and I started finding creative ways to truncate it, or avoid telling the story altogether. I wish I had a little book I could pull out of my back pocket and hand to the curious just so I wouldn't have to spend time telling my life story to another stunned face. What’s worse is that the longer I build a relationship with somebody without first telling them about my experience, the harder it is when I eventually have to explain everything.
That was the case with my fellow classmate. He and I got along fine before. For all he knew, I was another twenty-one year old kid going to college straight out of high school. But suddenly, within the span of an hour, I transformed from plucky student to battled-hardened Marine. How does a relationship stay the same with such an apparent character shift in one of its members?
So how do I foster a relationship with someone without first creeping them out? (“Hi, nice to meet you. I have eight pieces of shrapnel in my legs and President Bush awarded me the Purple Heart.”) When does the time come when I reveal the “rest” of who I am? Why do I have to maintain such a fractured personality? Why can't I just be Me, instead of just Mild-Mannered College Student, or just Battled-Hardened Warrior?
I don't want my war experiences to dominate my life, and I don't want them to be forgotten. I have to find a way to politely say “Yes, this is who I am. Now, can we move on to more recent things?” Perhaps it will never be easy. How can it be when less than one percent of the population serves in the military and a small percentage of them have been wounded in war? I want to be normal, but first I must accept that—in some small part—I am not. Instead of forcing people to see me in a way that I desire, I should instead strive to foster a relationship between the wounded and the curious. And not just people wounded in war, but anyone—civilian or military service-member—who has suffered some sort of trauma.
Special thank to my friend Sui Solitaire for helping me get this thing out of the door.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Pulling Teeth
Some names changed to protect the accused.
The best thing that can happen to you in boot camp besides being put on double rations, is to be sent to the dentist for a tooth pull. Yes, this sounds counterintuitive, but bear with me. Recruits go to the doctor all the time but mostly for minor complaints, like a nasty cough. If they are lucky the doctor will pity them and give them light duty, while the drill instructors wait patiently to thrash them once again. The dentist is usually for recruits with wisdom teeth poking out which need to be pulled for “combat readiness.” It's not your choice to go, meaning the drill instructors can't call you a malingerer or secretly thrash you later. I spent most waking moments of boot camp hoping to be sent to this magical land. Lo and behold, during roll call one night a few weeks before graduation, I heard the sweet words: “White: OS.”
OS? What is OS? Could it be Oral Surgery? Yes! Yes it could! The drudgery of waking up, being thrashed, yelled at, run around, booted, beaten and blistered would halt for at least half a day, perhaps even—I mustn’t get my hopes up—longer.
The next morning I was lined up and sent out with ten other lucky recruits. Never in my life would I willingly march to the dentist and actually put a spring in my step. I had to slow my pace, in case it was all in error and they sent me back full-mouthed. It was not. The technicians kindly sat me down and explained that my right lower wisdom tooth was impacted and had to be pulled out. I feigned sadness and leisurely lay back in the chair and let them go to work. The worst parts were the shots in the mouth—only a few deep needles—but I would much rather have pricks in my gums than screaming in my face.
The dentists began their work, slicing and sawing and pulling, but all I felt was the jerking of my head. One nurse gasped and said “That doesn’t look good,” but I suspect that was to try and break my cool complexion which I expertly held during the entire procedure.
Afterwards my mouth was jammed with gauze and I could not shout, or speak above a whisper. I was given a prescription (for what I did not know) and sent away. A normal recruit had to lead me back because if an overzealous drill instructor were to confuse my silence for copping an attitude someone could become upset and throw a tantrum. Having returned to my squad bay I gave my prescription to a drill instructor and went on bed rest, donning a shirt and shorts and only moving from the bed for food or the toilet. I was legally obligated to do nothing but “get better.”
The drill instructor returned from the pharmacy with a bag for me containing two rattling bottles. One bottle was Motrin, a paltry pill no better than aspirin found at any drug stone on the outside. The other though, was Vicodin, a sweet opiate which would definitely take away my ache. Granted, the dose was low, but recruits clamber for anything that will either excite or dull their senses. Our mouthwash was nonalcoholic for this very reason (why we had mouthwash when we never saw women is another story).
I am not much of a pill-popper so I mostly stuck to the Motrin, tasting the Vicodin only rarely. After a day observing my platoon go about their business from the great height of my bunk bed, I went on light duty for two days. Sadly, I had to put on my uniform instead of comfortable shorts, swapping tennis shoes for the requisite boots. But I didn't have to march or run or handle my dumb rifle. It was boot camp lite.
All of my pills were stored in my backpack, a big no-no because there was no lock separating them from other hungry recruits. One day I opened my backpack and found the Vicodin bottle was empty! No matter, I still had Motrin and I had avoided the dreaded dry-socket everyone is warned about with wisdom teeth extraction.
A few days later I was put back on full duty. I secretly hoped for them to call me back, slapping themselves for forgetting a compacted tooth. No such call came. I savored my few days of quasi-freedom as perhaps the high (or low) point of boot camp and moved on.
We had just completed marching on the “grinder” (a large slab of flat pavement meant for ceremonies) when an unfamiliar drill instructor walked up and talked to our Staff Sergeant Stahl, a burly Asian with a decided command of psychological torture. They talked quietly and the unfamiliar one took out a piece of paper and showed it to Stahl. He read it and immediately started to freak out.
“Beeman! Beeman! Get the fuck over here!” Beeman came running out of formation and stood at attention in front of Stahl. His face looked as if he knew what was coming next. The unfamiliar drill instructor grinned with recognition.
“Did you write this letter, Beeman?”
“Yes, sir,” Beeman said, his voice quivering.
“Did you write this part right here?”
“Yes, sir,” his voice quivering even more.
“Beeman here got caught writing a letter in dental today,” Stahl announced to the platoon. Writing a letter anywhere other than in your bed at night or on Sunday mornings was not allowed, especially in dental. Any time a recruit is caught the letter is snatched up and read by the drill instructor on the spot. No one ever bothered questioning the legality of such a thing.
“This is what Beeman wrote: 'I took the Vicodins I bought the day before and woke up in the morning all groggy and chink-eyed.'” emphasis Stahl’s. It was hard to decide what was the worst part: that he bought drugs or that he used a racial slur belonging to the drill instructor reading the letter. Many of the drill instructors in my company were minorities. Two of my drill instructors were black, one Latino, and Stahl was Korean. The days of racist slurs being thrown around were gone, and racism was not tolerated by recruit or instructor.
Every drill instructor in the area surrounded Beeman, the bills of their Smoky Bear hats blotting the sun, making his already beet-red face even darker.
“Who'd you buy the Vicodin from, Beeman? Who?!” Stahl screamed. Other unintelligible screams emanated from the circle of drill instructors.
Stahl was screaming in his face with an intensity much stronger than his normally subdued but strangely menacing style. Beeman started to shake and the entire platoon felt the tension build.
“W-w-w-” Beeman stuttered.
What? No! Not me! I didn't sell him anything! He stole it from me! I felt sick. This was a serious offense; I could be sent to jail, never graduate, be a felon for the rest of my life. My parents would be so disappointed. “Our son, the strong Marine, turns to selling drugs to miscreant recruits!”
“W-wiley, sir!” I sighed in relief. Wiley was a good guy, a chef-in-training back home. Our bunks were adjacent and he often tried to explain to me the science behind cooking, but I was unable to progress beyond the five basic sauces. Frankly though, I was glad it was him and not me. He wasn't present at the time, which was good for us because the tension slowly died down.
“Good...” That dreaded word was spoken whenever things were not good. Beeman was whisked away by another drill instructor, and we were all left wondering about his fate.
Wiley and Beeman seemed to have vanished; rumors flew around about their torture by the hands of other drill instructors.
The next day Beeman came into our squad bay in a run. His face was covered with sweat and dirt, so thick it seemed like he was covered with mud. His beet-red face still shone through, his eyes crying out in distress. I saw him only for a moment doing pushups, side-straddle hops (a fancy term for jumping jacks), and yelling before he ran off to another squad bay.
Some recruits said they knew what had happened. They said he was sent room-to-room to every minority drill instructor and was worked mercilessly. One popular story was spread about a particularly fiery drill instruct named Gunnery Sergeant Gonzales, someone I was blessed to not be acquainted with. He had the requisite frog voice (a by-product of near nonstop screaming), but there was something else, a demon in his throat. As Beeman was nearing his millionth pushup for the day, he let slip something in his delirium: “Oh God...” Gonzales perked up at this and bent over to Beeman's ear.
“There is no God,” whispered Gonzales, “only Satan…” Then Gonzales summoned the demon is his throat, and threw up at will right onto Beeman's back. We heard Gonzales had this unique ability and it jived with the demon motif. Anyone who was told this piece of hearsay stared into nothing and was thankful they had only heard this story.
Wiley and Beeman were gone, their things packed up and their beds empty. I saw Wiley later. He was dropped back a few weeks in training, and he declined to say anything else. Things couldn't have gone that badly. He stayed in boot camp and graduated, even after being caught for dealing drugs, which I thought would be a felony offense. During the affair I briefly considered telling my drill instructors that my Vicodin was stolen (by Wiley? Beeman? I don’t care to know) and I may have contributed to this whole mess, but then I returned to reality when I concluded it would only result in more screaming, at me in particular, and I just wasn’t willing to go through with that, especially coming off such a nice vacation.
The best thing that can happen to you in boot camp besides being put on double rations, is to be sent to the dentist for a tooth pull. Yes, this sounds counterintuitive, but bear with me. Recruits go to the doctor all the time but mostly for minor complaints, like a nasty cough. If they are lucky the doctor will pity them and give them light duty, while the drill instructors wait patiently to thrash them once again. The dentist is usually for recruits with wisdom teeth poking out which need to be pulled for “combat readiness.” It's not your choice to go, meaning the drill instructors can't call you a malingerer or secretly thrash you later. I spent most waking moments of boot camp hoping to be sent to this magical land. Lo and behold, during roll call one night a few weeks before graduation, I heard the sweet words: “White: OS.”
OS? What is OS? Could it be Oral Surgery? Yes! Yes it could! The drudgery of waking up, being thrashed, yelled at, run around, booted, beaten and blistered would halt for at least half a day, perhaps even—I mustn’t get my hopes up—longer.
The next morning I was lined up and sent out with ten other lucky recruits. Never in my life would I willingly march to the dentist and actually put a spring in my step. I had to slow my pace, in case it was all in error and they sent me back full-mouthed. It was not. The technicians kindly sat me down and explained that my right lower wisdom tooth was impacted and had to be pulled out. I feigned sadness and leisurely lay back in the chair and let them go to work. The worst parts were the shots in the mouth—only a few deep needles—but I would much rather have pricks in my gums than screaming in my face.
The dentists began their work, slicing and sawing and pulling, but all I felt was the jerking of my head. One nurse gasped and said “That doesn’t look good,” but I suspect that was to try and break my cool complexion which I expertly held during the entire procedure.
Afterwards my mouth was jammed with gauze and I could not shout, or speak above a whisper. I was given a prescription (for what I did not know) and sent away. A normal recruit had to lead me back because if an overzealous drill instructor were to confuse my silence for copping an attitude someone could become upset and throw a tantrum. Having returned to my squad bay I gave my prescription to a drill instructor and went on bed rest, donning a shirt and shorts and only moving from the bed for food or the toilet. I was legally obligated to do nothing but “get better.”
The drill instructor returned from the pharmacy with a bag for me containing two rattling bottles. One bottle was Motrin, a paltry pill no better than aspirin found at any drug stone on the outside. The other though, was Vicodin, a sweet opiate which would definitely take away my ache. Granted, the dose was low, but recruits clamber for anything that will either excite or dull their senses. Our mouthwash was nonalcoholic for this very reason (why we had mouthwash when we never saw women is another story).
I am not much of a pill-popper so I mostly stuck to the Motrin, tasting the Vicodin only rarely. After a day observing my platoon go about their business from the great height of my bunk bed, I went on light duty for two days. Sadly, I had to put on my uniform instead of comfortable shorts, swapping tennis shoes for the requisite boots. But I didn't have to march or run or handle my dumb rifle. It was boot camp lite.
All of my pills were stored in my backpack, a big no-no because there was no lock separating them from other hungry recruits. One day I opened my backpack and found the Vicodin bottle was empty! No matter, I still had Motrin and I had avoided the dreaded dry-socket everyone is warned about with wisdom teeth extraction.
A few days later I was put back on full duty. I secretly hoped for them to call me back, slapping themselves for forgetting a compacted tooth. No such call came. I savored my few days of quasi-freedom as perhaps the high (or low) point of boot camp and moved on.
We had just completed marching on the “grinder” (a large slab of flat pavement meant for ceremonies) when an unfamiliar drill instructor walked up and talked to our Staff Sergeant Stahl, a burly Asian with a decided command of psychological torture. They talked quietly and the unfamiliar one took out a piece of paper and showed it to Stahl. He read it and immediately started to freak out.
“Beeman! Beeman! Get the fuck over here!” Beeman came running out of formation and stood at attention in front of Stahl. His face looked as if he knew what was coming next. The unfamiliar drill instructor grinned with recognition.
“Did you write this letter, Beeman?”
“Yes, sir,” Beeman said, his voice quivering.
“Did you write this part right here?”
“Yes, sir,” his voice quivering even more.
“Beeman here got caught writing a letter in dental today,” Stahl announced to the platoon. Writing a letter anywhere other than in your bed at night or on Sunday mornings was not allowed, especially in dental. Any time a recruit is caught the letter is snatched up and read by the drill instructor on the spot. No one ever bothered questioning the legality of such a thing.
“This is what Beeman wrote: 'I took the Vicodins I bought the day before and woke up in the morning all groggy and chink-eyed.'” emphasis Stahl’s. It was hard to decide what was the worst part: that he bought drugs or that he used a racial slur belonging to the drill instructor reading the letter. Many of the drill instructors in my company were minorities. Two of my drill instructors were black, one Latino, and Stahl was Korean. The days of racist slurs being thrown around were gone, and racism was not tolerated by recruit or instructor.
Every drill instructor in the area surrounded Beeman, the bills of their Smoky Bear hats blotting the sun, making his already beet-red face even darker.
“Who'd you buy the Vicodin from, Beeman? Who?!” Stahl screamed. Other unintelligible screams emanated from the circle of drill instructors.
Stahl was screaming in his face with an intensity much stronger than his normally subdued but strangely menacing style. Beeman started to shake and the entire platoon felt the tension build.
“W-w-w-” Beeman stuttered.
What? No! Not me! I didn't sell him anything! He stole it from me! I felt sick. This was a serious offense; I could be sent to jail, never graduate, be a felon for the rest of my life. My parents would be so disappointed. “Our son, the strong Marine, turns to selling drugs to miscreant recruits!”
“W-wiley, sir!” I sighed in relief. Wiley was a good guy, a chef-in-training back home. Our bunks were adjacent and he often tried to explain to me the science behind cooking, but I was unable to progress beyond the five basic sauces. Frankly though, I was glad it was him and not me. He wasn't present at the time, which was good for us because the tension slowly died down.
“Good...” That dreaded word was spoken whenever things were not good. Beeman was whisked away by another drill instructor, and we were all left wondering about his fate.
Wiley and Beeman seemed to have vanished; rumors flew around about their torture by the hands of other drill instructors.
The next day Beeman came into our squad bay in a run. His face was covered with sweat and dirt, so thick it seemed like he was covered with mud. His beet-red face still shone through, his eyes crying out in distress. I saw him only for a moment doing pushups, side-straddle hops (a fancy term for jumping jacks), and yelling before he ran off to another squad bay.
Some recruits said they knew what had happened. They said he was sent room-to-room to every minority drill instructor and was worked mercilessly. One popular story was spread about a particularly fiery drill instruct named Gunnery Sergeant Gonzales, someone I was blessed to not be acquainted with. He had the requisite frog voice (a by-product of near nonstop screaming), but there was something else, a demon in his throat. As Beeman was nearing his millionth pushup for the day, he let slip something in his delirium: “Oh God...” Gonzales perked up at this and bent over to Beeman's ear.
“There is no God,” whispered Gonzales, “only Satan…” Then Gonzales summoned the demon is his throat, and threw up at will right onto Beeman's back. We heard Gonzales had this unique ability and it jived with the demon motif. Anyone who was told this piece of hearsay stared into nothing and was thankful they had only heard this story.
Wiley and Beeman were gone, their things packed up and their beds empty. I saw Wiley later. He was dropped back a few weeks in training, and he declined to say anything else. Things couldn't have gone that badly. He stayed in boot camp and graduated, even after being caught for dealing drugs, which I thought would be a felony offense. During the affair I briefly considered telling my drill instructors that my Vicodin was stolen (by Wiley? Beeman? I don’t care to know) and I may have contributed to this whole mess, but then I returned to reality when I concluded it would only result in more screaming, at me in particular, and I just wasn’t willing to go through with that, especially coming off such a nice vacation.
On the Banks of the Euphrates
Our patrol was supposed to be a normal one: circle around north of the city and return back, looking out for any suspicious individuals. In June, the heat of Iraq is oppressive. Everyone tried to wear the least amount of clothes possible and tried to open up avenues for a breeze to squeeze between our clothes and cool our overheated bodies. Our bulky flak jackets and helmets did not help much.
I was stationed in the rear of the patrol after screwing up too many times at the front on other patrols. My job was to periodically turn around and make sure nothing weird was happening behind us. I had already perfected the art of walking backwards without stumbling, no easy task when laden with sixty plus extra pounds.
Nothing particularly interesting happened until we reached the apex of our circular loop. A few stray dogs were wandering around and were causing trouble, threatening to bite me and others if we didn’t keep our eyes on them for too long. One dog was especially daring and slowly inched his way towards me every time I turned to face the rest of the patrol. I grew tired of the dog and tried to shoo it away by throwing rocks at him, but he never left.
Iraq had a serious dog problem. The local culture despised dogs, thinking them unclean, and thus they did not have them as pets. Perhaps they had an animal control system in place before the start of the war, but now there was none to speak of. Wild packs of dogs would roam the streets at night, barking and howling, ripping apart piles of trash haphazardly thrown in the street. There would always be a pack lounging around our base’s burn pit, hoping to catch a scrap before the whole mess went up in flames. These dogs were especially wretched; many were crippled and old, too feeble to move or attack. Some would growl at us as we threw out our refuse, but their bark was equal to their bite: nonexistent.
The sergeant leading the patrol came back and asked why I was holding up the patrol. It didn’t take him long to see the feral dog snarling only a few paces away. I asked if I could shoot the dog and put him out of his misery. The sergeant said no. Any weapon discharge could be seen as an act of aggression and start a real firefight between us and anyone ennobled by the shot. I didn’t really want to shoot the dog. My western sensibilities still had a hold on me and all I really wanted to do was scratch the poor thing’s belly.
The sergeant and I assaulted the dog with any rock we could find. He eventually took the hint and hobbled off, finally leaving me in peace. We continued on until someone near the front halted us again. I took my regular position: crouched on one knee angled slightly to the rear, so that I could observe what was happening up front and behind. I stayed in that position for a long time. The Marines in the front of the patrol were doing something, but I didn’t know what. Then it trickled back: the point-man had found an IED.
Improvised Explosive Device, a pedantic name for the most lethal thing a lone patrol could encounter on the streets of Iraq. This wasn’t my first time I had been on a patrol when we discovered something like this. Up to this point, they had all turned out to be a box of wires or some other misplaced tool. This one seemed legit, though. The suspected IED looked like someone took a mortar round and cut off the top half of the dome, leaving the guiding fins in place, then welded a piece of metal where the half-dome had been. If anyone wanted to design a decent IED, this was it.
There were no wires leading to it or antennas sticking out. We felt fairly confident that it would not go off unexpectedly. The question was: what to do with it? We certainly couldn’t put it back where we found it, and we didn’t want to take it back to base. We called the explosive experts and they told us they were too busy to deal with such a small thing. If we really wanted them to come it would take a couple of hours. We had already stayed in the same spot too long and didn’t want to wait any more. Our navigator suggested we hike out to the Euphrates River and throw it in. The sergeant agreed.
I didn’t have a map and didn’t know how far it was to the river. I assumed it was only a few minutes away. We turned down a dirt road leading between a fenced grove of trees and a lush green open field, a very rare sight in Iraq. I checked my water and saw I was running a little low. The sweat on my forehead continued to rain down unabated.
The natural pace of a patrol is very slow. Our job was to show the residents of the city that we were here and had guns, but not present ourselves as easy targets for snipers or anyone else. I was fired as pointman because I didn’t know how to walk slow. No one wants to stay out late on a patrol, especially when there is a nice flea-ridden cot to get back to. When I saw the open road ahead of me, my legs took control and I sped ahead too quickly for my sergeant to handle. I was sent to the back where all I had to do was keep a good distance between myself and the Marine in front of me. This natural slow pace is aggravating to someone with low water and no idea why a lengthy detour is taken.
No one tells the guy in the back what is happening. His is an easy job compared to those who have to make decisions. I didn’t know someone held in his hand a possible explosive device, or that the river was our goal. Most of this information I learned second-hand. All I knew was that when I turned around, no one was there holding a gun to my face, and that is how I liked it. We came up on the river, surprising some local fishermen in their boats. The sergeant took the IED and threw it directly in to the current, sinking it forever. Some of the Iraq army soldiers we were training in our patrol wanted to take a break and buy some fish. I wanted to take off all of my clothes and jump into the river. No one got what they wanted.
As we laboriously hiked back to our regular route I wondered about what we had thrown into the river. Suppose it was an explosive device. The water would slowly erode the casing, exposing the chemicals inside. With time they would dissolve into the water and float downstream. I had patrolled by the Euphrates many times and was constantly struck by the magnificent beauty of the natural oasis on its shores. Farmers grew crops using sophisticated irrigation techniques and modern equipment. Ranchers relied on the water to raise their cows and goats. For thousands of years, perhaps longer, this ancient river sustained generations of people. Now here we were throwing explosives into it.
This was in 2006, three years into the war and an infinity before it ended. How many explosives were thrown into the river, either by troops on the ground, the bombers in the air, or the newly established insurgency? It is hard to tell. The effect of all this pollution wouldn’t be noticed right away, maybe no one would connect the dots. That explosive material will find its way to the shore and into the crops. A thirsty donkey will gulp it down regardless of the strange metallic taste. Decades down the road, a young man like myself will jump in the cool river to escape the heat and a little bit of it will be absorbed into his skin. The casualties of this war are destined to increase through the ages.
We finally made it back to our regular route. By this time I was completely out of water and felt a little dizzy. The symptoms of heat exhaustion had been drilled into my brain and were now emerging from my dark conscious to flood my thoughts. Heavy sweating—this was less of a symptom than a daily fact of life—tiredness, cramps, a tingling feeling in the extremities. Was I feeling these or just imagining them? I looked at my fellow Marines to see if they felt the same way. Everyone had the same sweat-soaked grim face.
We patrolled a little more until other Marines spoke up; they were out of water, too. On average we carried one hundred ounces of water, slightly less than a gallon per person. I drank every last drop within an hour and still felt thirsty. One of the Iraqi soldiers suggested we knock on doors of the houses near us and demand they give us water. We didn’t have many options. We were still an hour out of base and no one was coming to pick us up. The first house we visited had a family inside. The Iraqi soldier spoke in a very quick and demanding Arabic and soon someone came with a cool two-liter bottle of water. Some houses were lucky enough to have a refrigerator, and sometimes the neighborhood was lucky enough to have electricity. We gathered the family together near the entrance of the house so none of them could try anything funny. The sergeant singled me out as the most exhausted of us all and told me to go inside and drink. Once in the house I reflexively sat down and took off my helmet to let my head cool. The family stared at me with wide eyes.
The sergeant yelled at me to get up and put my helmet back on. We weren’t supposed to show weakness in front of the townsfolk. Trying to stay cool is a weakness. Outside, the bottle of water was passed around and was soon gone. We gave the empty bottle back and patrolled on. With one less bottle of water, would the family be forced to drink from the Euphrates, or was what we just drank from there in the first place? The water helped a bit, enough that everyone was able to make it back to base without collapsing on the roadside.
After the debriefing I took off all of my gear and sat down with just shorts on. My buddy handed me a sealed bottle of water from a crate. We had a whole crate filled to the brim with bottles of water shipped from who-knows-where, and near it a pyramid of boxes holding weeks’ worth of food. Despite being in the shade the water was still around 90 degrees, but the temperature did little to dissuade me; I drank it quickly and mechanically. I didn’t think of how clean it was. I didn’t think of the pile of good food we had. I didn’t think back to my home and how it wasn’t in the middle of a war zone. I didn’t think about how safe I was going to be once I made it back, about the long life I am going to live. Instead I drank ignorantly as the sweat flowed down my chest like a mighty ancient river, collecting all of the dust and salt and whisking it away forever.
I was stationed in the rear of the patrol after screwing up too many times at the front on other patrols. My job was to periodically turn around and make sure nothing weird was happening behind us. I had already perfected the art of walking backwards without stumbling, no easy task when laden with sixty plus extra pounds.
Nothing particularly interesting happened until we reached the apex of our circular loop. A few stray dogs were wandering around and were causing trouble, threatening to bite me and others if we didn’t keep our eyes on them for too long. One dog was especially daring and slowly inched his way towards me every time I turned to face the rest of the patrol. I grew tired of the dog and tried to shoo it away by throwing rocks at him, but he never left.
Iraq had a serious dog problem. The local culture despised dogs, thinking them unclean, and thus they did not have them as pets. Perhaps they had an animal control system in place before the start of the war, but now there was none to speak of. Wild packs of dogs would roam the streets at night, barking and howling, ripping apart piles of trash haphazardly thrown in the street. There would always be a pack lounging around our base’s burn pit, hoping to catch a scrap before the whole mess went up in flames. These dogs were especially wretched; many were crippled and old, too feeble to move or attack. Some would growl at us as we threw out our refuse, but their bark was equal to their bite: nonexistent.
The sergeant leading the patrol came back and asked why I was holding up the patrol. It didn’t take him long to see the feral dog snarling only a few paces away. I asked if I could shoot the dog and put him out of his misery. The sergeant said no. Any weapon discharge could be seen as an act of aggression and start a real firefight between us and anyone ennobled by the shot. I didn’t really want to shoot the dog. My western sensibilities still had a hold on me and all I really wanted to do was scratch the poor thing’s belly.
The sergeant and I assaulted the dog with any rock we could find. He eventually took the hint and hobbled off, finally leaving me in peace. We continued on until someone near the front halted us again. I took my regular position: crouched on one knee angled slightly to the rear, so that I could observe what was happening up front and behind. I stayed in that position for a long time. The Marines in the front of the patrol were doing something, but I didn’t know what. Then it trickled back: the point-man had found an IED.
Improvised Explosive Device, a pedantic name for the most lethal thing a lone patrol could encounter on the streets of Iraq. This wasn’t my first time I had been on a patrol when we discovered something like this. Up to this point, they had all turned out to be a box of wires or some other misplaced tool. This one seemed legit, though. The suspected IED looked like someone took a mortar round and cut off the top half of the dome, leaving the guiding fins in place, then welded a piece of metal where the half-dome had been. If anyone wanted to design a decent IED, this was it.
There were no wires leading to it or antennas sticking out. We felt fairly confident that it would not go off unexpectedly. The question was: what to do with it? We certainly couldn’t put it back where we found it, and we didn’t want to take it back to base. We called the explosive experts and they told us they were too busy to deal with such a small thing. If we really wanted them to come it would take a couple of hours. We had already stayed in the same spot too long and didn’t want to wait any more. Our navigator suggested we hike out to the Euphrates River and throw it in. The sergeant agreed.
I didn’t have a map and didn’t know how far it was to the river. I assumed it was only a few minutes away. We turned down a dirt road leading between a fenced grove of trees and a lush green open field, a very rare sight in Iraq. I checked my water and saw I was running a little low. The sweat on my forehead continued to rain down unabated.
The natural pace of a patrol is very slow. Our job was to show the residents of the city that we were here and had guns, but not present ourselves as easy targets for snipers or anyone else. I was fired as pointman because I didn’t know how to walk slow. No one wants to stay out late on a patrol, especially when there is a nice flea-ridden cot to get back to. When I saw the open road ahead of me, my legs took control and I sped ahead too quickly for my sergeant to handle. I was sent to the back where all I had to do was keep a good distance between myself and the Marine in front of me. This natural slow pace is aggravating to someone with low water and no idea why a lengthy detour is taken.
No one tells the guy in the back what is happening. His is an easy job compared to those who have to make decisions. I didn’t know someone held in his hand a possible explosive device, or that the river was our goal. Most of this information I learned second-hand. All I knew was that when I turned around, no one was there holding a gun to my face, and that is how I liked it. We came up on the river, surprising some local fishermen in their boats. The sergeant took the IED and threw it directly in to the current, sinking it forever. Some of the Iraq army soldiers we were training in our patrol wanted to take a break and buy some fish. I wanted to take off all of my clothes and jump into the river. No one got what they wanted.
As we laboriously hiked back to our regular route I wondered about what we had thrown into the river. Suppose it was an explosive device. The water would slowly erode the casing, exposing the chemicals inside. With time they would dissolve into the water and float downstream. I had patrolled by the Euphrates many times and was constantly struck by the magnificent beauty of the natural oasis on its shores. Farmers grew crops using sophisticated irrigation techniques and modern equipment. Ranchers relied on the water to raise their cows and goats. For thousands of years, perhaps longer, this ancient river sustained generations of people. Now here we were throwing explosives into it.
This was in 2006, three years into the war and an infinity before it ended. How many explosives were thrown into the river, either by troops on the ground, the bombers in the air, or the newly established insurgency? It is hard to tell. The effect of all this pollution wouldn’t be noticed right away, maybe no one would connect the dots. That explosive material will find its way to the shore and into the crops. A thirsty donkey will gulp it down regardless of the strange metallic taste. Decades down the road, a young man like myself will jump in the cool river to escape the heat and a little bit of it will be absorbed into his skin. The casualties of this war are destined to increase through the ages.
We finally made it back to our regular route. By this time I was completely out of water and felt a little dizzy. The symptoms of heat exhaustion had been drilled into my brain and were now emerging from my dark conscious to flood my thoughts. Heavy sweating—this was less of a symptom than a daily fact of life—tiredness, cramps, a tingling feeling in the extremities. Was I feeling these or just imagining them? I looked at my fellow Marines to see if they felt the same way. Everyone had the same sweat-soaked grim face.
We patrolled a little more until other Marines spoke up; they were out of water, too. On average we carried one hundred ounces of water, slightly less than a gallon per person. I drank every last drop within an hour and still felt thirsty. One of the Iraqi soldiers suggested we knock on doors of the houses near us and demand they give us water. We didn’t have many options. We were still an hour out of base and no one was coming to pick us up. The first house we visited had a family inside. The Iraqi soldier spoke in a very quick and demanding Arabic and soon someone came with a cool two-liter bottle of water. Some houses were lucky enough to have a refrigerator, and sometimes the neighborhood was lucky enough to have electricity. We gathered the family together near the entrance of the house so none of them could try anything funny. The sergeant singled me out as the most exhausted of us all and told me to go inside and drink. Once in the house I reflexively sat down and took off my helmet to let my head cool. The family stared at me with wide eyes.
The sergeant yelled at me to get up and put my helmet back on. We weren’t supposed to show weakness in front of the townsfolk. Trying to stay cool is a weakness. Outside, the bottle of water was passed around and was soon gone. We gave the empty bottle back and patrolled on. With one less bottle of water, would the family be forced to drink from the Euphrates, or was what we just drank from there in the first place? The water helped a bit, enough that everyone was able to make it back to base without collapsing on the roadside.
After the debriefing I took off all of my gear and sat down with just shorts on. My buddy handed me a sealed bottle of water from a crate. We had a whole crate filled to the brim with bottles of water shipped from who-knows-where, and near it a pyramid of boxes holding weeks’ worth of food. Despite being in the shade the water was still around 90 degrees, but the temperature did little to dissuade me; I drank it quickly and mechanically. I didn’t think of how clean it was. I didn’t think of the pile of good food we had. I didn’t think back to my home and how it wasn’t in the middle of a war zone. I didn’t think about how safe I was going to be once I made it back, about the long life I am going to live. Instead I drank ignorantly as the sweat flowed down my chest like a mighty ancient river, collecting all of the dust and salt and whisking it away forever.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
فلافل
My dreams of a decent dinner tonight are dissolving before my eyes. Little bits flake off the patties and float away, bubbling and convulsing in the hot oil. Only a few patties in, a layer of these charred flakes have descended to the bottom of the pan and formed a crusty layer, easily disturbed by any slight movement. Some of the patties are salvageable and we scoop them out and plop them down on the paper towel. A translucent splotch of grease slowly seeps radially outward and the deep red of the plate underneath struggles to shine through. Using the ladle I scoop up this sedimentary layer and throw it on the towel too, hovering a bit over the pan allowing excess grease to filter through the tiny holes of the ladle. It doesn't matter though; entropy reigns and the grease is just as much a part of the food as the main ingredient, perhaps in equal weight, too. We look down into the boiling morass, the same thoughts running through our heads. Any enlightened soul would see this slop and reject it utterly, but we delude ourselves and eat a little bit of it. What little flavor there was has been burned away, only the dry crunch and disguised grimace remain as our cognitive dissonance works overtime to make the night better.
The patties that escape the cauldron relatively intact are put in pitas and covered with a viscous light brown smattering of tahini and a couple slices of fresh-cut tomato. We take our seats and munch contently. All said, the ensemble is quite delicious, and is accented by a strange Japanese powdered green tea, with hints of salt and seaweed--really more of a soup than a tea. She stands up and walks to the kitchen to fetch something, and my eyes cannot look away. She moves slowly, her body sluggish after a weekend of hiking and rock climbing. She still has on a blue tank-top and shorts, her hair is done up in a simple pony-tail, tousled by wind and sweat. Everything about the way she looks and moves is honest, no move out of place, no unnecessary flourishes or embellishments, her face is free to shine radiantly without the need of a chemical filter. She turns around and her face droops with contented exhaustion. At this moment I have never seen someone more innocent or beautiful.
We don’t talk much as we eat. The charged crooning of Morissey permeates the room and I am overwhelmed with something beyond happiness. The half-finished pita is inches away from my mouth but I can’t raise it any further. Something has happened in my head, a valve releases some chemical which has laid patiently dormant my entire life. A wave passes over me, my skin tingles, my eyes look forward and go out of focus, and I enter true enrapturement, the like only heard of in obscure Eastern texts. My demeanor has changed so much she notices and asks what is the matter. I can’t explain. Maybe I didn’t have the words in the first place, maybe my entire being is now focused on her and can’t diagnose itself. I look deep into her eyes, dark bottomless pits hovering in the purest milk. I feel...good, I try to say. A bit of smile creeps to my face and she understands. We drop our food and fall into a deep embrace and for the moment we are fused. She kisses me, then I her. The same valve, as if taking an ethereal cue from my own, opens in her head and we are lost irrevocably.
Something is happening though, and the lips I’m kissing lose their pucker, the body I’m holding tight in my arms grows heavy. I pull back and look into her eyes, but they are barely open. The tell-tale head-bob and eyelid sag are evident: she’s desperately fighting sleepiness and losing. I smile and laugh, and lower her body to the couch. Almost instantly she is asleep. I come out of the worst of my emotional rapture and can once again summon my hands to finish eating. Once I’m full I gather the dishes together and hear a soft snoring coming from the couch. She’s even more beautiful asleep, sprawled out lackadaisical. My hands glide idly over the dishes as she dances in my head.
Thus begins my love affair with falafel, a traditional middle eastern food made primarily of garbanzo or fava beans. Really, the food is a canvas in which any cook can put in a variety of ingredients. That night I cooked a basic dish: beans, onion, garlic, cilantro, flour, and spices. Although the night ended in disaster this time, I would go on to make variations of it, each time improving the recipe. The second time I made them I found a different recipe, this one spicier than the last. The recipe called for “three or four” green chili peppers. I wanted to double the recipe so I bought eight peppers, having never tried them before or having any experience with them. I also found a recipe for a yogurt based sauce to help balance out the spiciness. Turning up the heat and adding more oil in the pan, along with adding more flour as a caking agent, the patties were less prone to falling apart. However as soon as I bit in I realized the power of these unassuming green peppers and my mouth began to burn. Relax, I told myself, that’s why I made the sauce. Next bite I made sure to cover the morsel with a good amount of the reddish-tinted yogurt. For the sauce, though, I used another ingredient I was less-than-familiar with: paprika. During the preparation I may have added a bit too much, and the sauce did nothing to help quell the fire in my mouth, in fact it may have accentuated it. I struggled to eat my fill and had to force myself to finish the batch over the course of a few days. I had made so much sauce that when the falafels were finished, over half the btach remained. I had to find alternative uses for it. She found out it was actually very tasty with cheerios. Eventually the harsh peppery, unique flavor became unbearable and the sauce languished in my refrigerator for a long time, until I finally scooped out the questionable material into the sink and washed it down the drain in a beautiful sunset-red spiral.
Despite my failures, I was enthralled with falafel, to its simple goodness and nutritional qualities. There are no unnecessary sugars, preservatives, cholesterol, or any of the common food vices. The originators probably did not have this in mind, they simply took what was around them and mashed it together and found it was quite sustainable, and tasty. That is how I like them, pure and simple. The joy of taking raw ingredients and fashioning them into a compact, elegant little brown ball is in some strange way thrilling. I am producing, creating, preserving. I am participating in the most basic life sustaining activity.
Over one Christmas break I wanted my parents to participate in my joy. On a particularly snowy winter day I gathered the ingredients for a basic dish, one that I had tasted before and figured they could tolerate. At that time I prepared the ingredients manually, without the use of any appliances. Mashing the wet garbanzo beans could be taxing at times, and the occasional stray projectile would shoot out and naturally roll under the refrigerator or some other hard-to-reach area. I made only a single batch, because I knew I was only cooking for two people, my mom and myself. My hope was that my father would get over his life-long revulsion to vegetables and anything besides meat and potatoes, finally taking a big bite out of healthiness. I made the mistake of not cutting the onions small enough to disguise the unmistakable smooth skin. Cooking onions removes the harsh raw flavor and instead leaves only sweetness which can accentuate any dish. Despite this, after the first bite, his eyes opened wide and his jaw stopped moving, and he asked if there were onions inside. I made the mistake of telling the truth and he immediately spit out the small bite he took. I don’t know what I was expecting, maybe that the magic the falafels give to me was hereditary and all it would take was that tiny catalyst to set him on the “right track” and at last we would clasp hands in taste solidarity. My mom and I finished the falafels that day, alone.
The day after school ended for the year I left for a two week camping/road trip in Joshua Tree and Sequoia National Parks. I didn’t want the burden of having to cook every night so I had the great idea of making two weeks worth of falafel I could munch on while out on trails and around the camp fire. She and I spent an entire day making falafels. We switched to a high-powered food processor to help grind up everything. What once was a process of endlessly smashing beans with a mallet turned into a simple press of a button. The garbanzo beans came out pureed, much finer than before, giving the falafels a nice smooth texture while still retaining that hearty crunchiness. Combined with pureed onions (the mixture of onions and cilantro makes a very appealing, albeit eye-watering, green tinted pudding), these falafels cooked much quicker, almost never broke apart in the oil, and came out crisp on the outside and delightfully moist on the inside. We took turns deep-frying them, collapsing on the couch after standing over the hot pan as waves of atomized grease saturated our faces. We had started our relationship with the joys of making falafels, and now having grown together the process became more utilitarian, but that magic of our first passionate night is awakened with every savory bite. We tripled our regular recipe, and when we finally exhausted our seemingly infinite supply, we had two and a half large ziplock bags of falafel balls.
Our first stop was the hot desert of Joshua Tree (named after the location’s massive abundance of its namesake) in Southeastern California. The summer was only just starting but Joshua Tree was already breaking 100 degrees. The heat proved too much for hiking and our days were spent mostly trying to find shade wherever we could. My car had no shade and the temperature inside was perhaps ten degrees higher than outside. We had no other place to store our food except in the back seat. On the second day a strange deathly smell permeated the car. We hunted everywhere and found it came from pancakes we had made a few days before. The smell had a tangy citrus quality, in no way appealing. We threw away the pancakes and hoped the rest of our foods would not go that fast. The falafels were still fine; onion and garlic are supposedly two natural preservatives.
We conceded to the heat after only two days and continued our trip to Sequoia National Park in Central California. The weather was much cooler high in the Sierra Nevadas, 4000 feet higher in elevation than Joshua Tree. Our campsite was right on the edge of a river and small patches of snow still survived under the perpetual shade. In only a few hours the temperature dropped 40 or more degrees for us. As we bedded down for the night, we moved all our food into “bear boxes” so that the bears wouldn’t come hunting for the easy-to-acquire fatty human food. The ziplock bags had condensation lining the inside, and a new smell appeared in the car and mixed with the lingering rotten pancake smell, this one soap-like and understandably unpleasant. Was our shampoo rotting? Is that even possible? Each of us ate a few falafel balls and fell asleep to the soothing sound of the river rushing only a few feet away.
The falafels came with us everywhere on the trails. They were our breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, our main food source. I was afraid they wouldn’t last the whole trip we were devouring them that fast, but I never anticipated the future. Our second night at the campsite I grabbed a ball and took a bite. Thin tendrils stretched from my mouth to the ball and I sensed a strange taste. She tasted it too: the same soapy flavor as the new smell in the car. Oh great, somehow we spilled shampoo in the falafel bags! How was that possible? There were no signs of leakage, we didn’t even keep the two things close together. We opened other bags and tasted other balls: same thing. They had rotten. I finished my one ball through sheer willpower, she couldn’t get halfway. A momentary crisis gripped us. We can’t possibly eat all these, they’ll just get worse and we’ll starve in this beautiful forest! We brought other food, some chips, candy bars, a loaf of bread and some almond butter, but nothing that could sustain us. That night though we had to rely on the junk food. Out bellies were somewhat full and we didn’t fret too much about the future. We decided to toss the entire batch: two bags remaining of the two and a half we made. Only a fifth of our effort was rewarded, the rest tossed into a giant dumpster and left to rot in peace.
We survived though, our neighbors recognized our foolhardiness and slyly donated some food, which we gladly accepted. In the middle of the park an unsightly tourist trap had grown, complete with a rudimentary grocery store within walking distance. We bought overpriced packages of veggie burgers along with more junk food and other impulse buys, as is required with any tourist destination. Still the painful memory of that heavy bear-proof lid sliding over our creation--cut down so early in life—lingered on.
We recovered. We cooked more, improved the recipe, added carrots, tried out different types of flour, hosted parties, sold them at a food co-op. Life went on and that bitter soapy taste was overpowered by natural goodness. Falafel is perhaps my favorite food. If I’m at a food court, I hunt out the ubiquitous Greek place and buy a falafel gyro. If I'm going to have a party, the guests better be ready to cram them down their throats. Falafel brings me closer to one of the very essences of life, the three things we must do to survive as a species: eat, sleep, and procreate. The latter two are already loved by all, but my culture has grown disconnected with food. For many, the first contact they have with food is when their fork brings it to their mouths. To me, my connection with food is sharing it with the people I love, it’s mixing the onion mixture with the ground garbanzo beans and feeling it squeeze between my naked fingers, it’s the feeling of loss and hopelessness when food is wasted by antiquated tastes and the ravages of time. I don’t have the same connection of those who planted the beans and watched them sprout and grow tall, not everyone can have that. Everyone can cook though. Everyone can strengthen that last leg of life. It’s thrilling to finally indulge in them all (most of the time in succession) and to feel how good they complement each other. To eat, to make love, to sleep, and to do it all over again day after day is a pleasure and a right to us all, and to deny oneself even one of these things is to cut out what makes life possible.
My Suicide Bomber
On July 17th, 2006, sometime before noon, someone decided to take their life in defense of an unknown ideal. Five people's lives were changed forever with the pull of a pin. The suicide bomber, accomplishing his mission of martyrdom, would not survive to see the result of his actions. Two Iraqi Soldiers, serving their country as valiantly as any other Soldier across the globe, were killed instantly without so much as a warning. Two American Marines, one of whom was days away from returning to the States to see his newborn daughter for the first time, were severely injured and moments away from death before their counterparts saved their lives. The other Marine was me, a fresh faced boy of twenty-one, four-and-a-half months of that short life spent in Iraq and one year and one month in the United States Marine Corps. All five of our lives changed in ways the suicide bomber might never have considered.
My job, along with another Marine named Donny, a bald, tattooed, muscular, sarcastic man whose job in life was to annoy you to the point of laughter, was to train two Iraq Soldiers (jundies) how to safeguard the entrance to a hospital next to our base by patting down people walking in. Our main purpose was to stop weapons and explosives from somehow finding their way into the hospital, and also to check IDs for suspected insurgents. We also had to report any gunshot or explosive injuries, anything that could have been caused by the war. Plenty of people came to the hospital with common injuries--children with skinned knees, accidental knife cuts, etc. We didn't care about them. There were two entrances, one for the males and another for the females. The locals did not take kindly to foreigners patting down women for any reason, so they passed through the entrance unchecked. A logical person might ask, what's to stop someone from dressing as a woman, considering most women are clothed head to toe in concealing burqas, and walking in through that point? There were many other problems with the whole setup, but in cases like those the people in charge conveniently look away until something bad happens (usually at the cost of a life), then they decide to change it. A long walkway connected a road covered liberally with concertina wire to the checkpoint where we all sat.
It was a Sunday, and in the local culture, the first work day of the week. People were hustling around about their daily chores, and plenty of people were entering the hospital so we were busy. The heat of the day was stifling, an average 120 degrees Fahrenheit, so hot that even the breeze was no relief. Imagine a blow-dryer as tall as a human turned on full blast directed right at your face, then throw some fine dust into the current and that is the breeze of Iraq. As a result one of the jundies, Hamis, decided to sit under the shade instead of near the road where he should have been, giving people a preliminary pat-down before they came near us. We knew this was not okay (he was the first line of defense and an early-warning in the case someone decided to rush us) but it was hot and we could relate to him wanting to sit in the shade. The sight of two Americans dressed to the hilt with body armor and covered with every conceivable piece of ammunition sitting lazily by as if waiting for a car wash must have been rather humorous to the independent observer. There were no signs of trouble, no rumors of anything crazy, just a typical lazy day in a war zone. Then, an explosion.
The damage has been done. Moments after the blast I regained consciousness and tried to assess the situation. Along with the heat I felt as if my hands and face were burnt, and hot liquid was trickling down various parts of my body. I stood up slowly and walked around and gazed utterly bewildered at the scene. The archway welcoming patients into the hospital seemed to have been smashed by a sledgehammer from below and had cracked, exposing raw concrete and the rebar supporting it. The hard metal bench the jundies were sitting on was moved a few feet away. A dark black burn mark scarred the ground and there seemed to be some black mass shoved up against a tree. Don't look at it. It's not good. Don't look. An ambulance parked nearby was peppered with what looked like bullet holes near the red crescent moon. Four bodies lay strewn about in various levels of completeness. One of these bodies was moving slightly--Donny was bleeding from somewhere and his hands were moving, but he wasn't responding to my calls. Maybe I wasn't even calling at all. I couldn't even hear my own voice. There was a loud buzzing noise overpowering everything, mostly from my right ear. I stumbled about, trying to find help but my mental faculties were not in full swing. My body armor, the main reason why I was still alive, weighed me down and caused me to drag my feet. The human body does not respond well to an extra sixty pounds. The injuries I would soon find on me also did not help. I knew only a few feet away I could walk into view of another guardhouse on the base. It seemed so far though, so out of reach, despite being only a few seconds walk. My body just would not let me expend the little bit of extra energy that would bring me into view of the base to let them know there were still people alive. I finally sat down on the bench and looked down. My chest was covered in a dark red-black film with the consistency of molasses. Did this come from me? Something was coming out of my ears. I stuck my fingers in them and inspected the fluid and saw it was clear. At least it isn't blood. Later I would find out that this fluid surrounds the brain. My camouflage uniform was rapidly taking on a foreign tinge of red. Both of my legs and my left arm were bleeding, my left leg nearly gushing blood.
All around were pieces that used to be Maluk and Hamis, the two jundies. It was impossible to distinguish the body parts, which part belongs to whom. In death, all creatures look alike. Although I did not know them very well, plenty of people did, and they had built up reputations of being the nicest Iraqis in our group. Hamis' nickname was “Uncle,” because he had the face and demeanor of everyone's jolly older uncle. For a reason we could never figure out he always wore a black beanie cap on his head, despite the heat. A thick paternal mustache rounded out the cold weather accessories. Maluk was famous among us. He was about my age, with an unruly childish cowlick in his hair. Take off his uniform and give him swim shorts and a surf board and he would blend in to the too-tanned beach bums back home. He was always smiling, making jokes and transcending the language barrier, building up the rapport between our two forces better than any other jundie. If anyone had ever stood watch at the hospital they came back with fond memories of him. Now the final memory of them would be cleaning up their detritus--no famous last words, no insights, just a mess.
Someone ran by and picked up a pistol lying on the ground. I recognized the gun; Maluk had it on him at all times. He kept it strapped to his leg and let me play with it just hours before. Fearing that he was going to point the pistol at me and finish the job, I screamed at him to give it to me. Jib le! Jib le! Give me! Give me! My rudimentary Arabic came back. He stared at me with a strange look of surprise mixed with a nervous smile, then handed me the gun and ran away. At least my voice still worked. Something was wrong with the clip, and I knew it wouldn't work. Donny's machine gun and my rifle were gone; the radio I kept in my top left pouch on my chest was missing, presumably blown to bits; everyone except me guarding the hospital was incapacitated. I had no way to defend myself, no way of sending for backup, and no friendly face to guide me. Everything I had relied on so much up to then was swept away like straw.
Memories of training flashed back quickly in a jumbled mess. I was bleeding pretty badly and I needed to stop it. There was a pouch strapped to the back right side of my flak jacket containing items that could help me but I couldn't remember their names, only how to use them. My left arm wasn't working very well--something was stopping me from bending my elbow. The weight of gravity combined with a rapid heartbeat, fueled by gallons of adrenaline gushing into my system rapidly pulled my blood downward and through several jagged slits in my skin. My body movements slowed by the second. I was content to only look forward, periodically yelling “Donny!” in an attempt to get my friend to respond. He could only lie there, moving only slightly, his face frozen in a horrid grimace.
After seeing my injuries I knew something was wrong, but I couldn't feel anything. People always talk about being in shock, but then I guess I was feeling it. I felt like I should feel pain but I just couldn't. Something in my brain disconnected and I started crying out in pain even though I had no reason to. I remember thinking at the time: why am I doing this? Looking left I saw people arguing and pushing each other. Were these the doctors and nurses coming out of the hospital to see the devastation? I can only imagine the mind-bending horror of being a doctor in a war-torn country and then coming out of your own clinic only to see more bloodshed literally at the front door.
The tourniquet (that's what it's called) found its way out from under a bottle of iodine and various comically undersized bandages, much too small to cover the wounds that war creates,. I knew how to use a tourniquet, but unfortunately the engineers who designed this particular model had in mind a person with two functioning arms, and I was only able to wrap it around my leg right above the heaviest bleeding before coming to a reluctant halt.
Seeing Donny on the ground brought back memories of when I first met him only a few weeks before. He had a condition where almost no hair grows on his body, except for a few jet-back threads on his chin. His body was liberally covered with tattoos and he was in excellent shape. Shirtless, his smooth, pale skin stretched over taught muscles offered an imposing figure, but that was not Donny. He never shouted and only raised his voice to make a joke. Donny was serving his third tour in Iraq and wasn't very surprised by daily life. People who go on so many tours usually hate talking to people who haven't. They've seen and experienced things that will forever separate them from those who have spent their life in naïveté. What made Donny special was that someone who was surprised by the crazy daily life (me) could talk to him and he would answer all questions honestly and quickly, without being pretentious or aggressive, as is the norm amongst more seasoned vets. He had formed an unofficial group that would get together periodically and cook food we happened to scrounge up. Only the night before we cooked up a massive bowl of chili (much different and tastier than the usual slop) in a pot we stole from the cooks. He was a friend to all and an enemy to none. Now, seeing him sprawled on the pavement, hands in the air permanently clawed, fighting the inner demons raging in his head, I felt guilty. It's the new guy that's supposed to die, not the seasoned vet! He has a wife and a newborn girl, so much more to lose and he is the unconscious one--while I, with only my family and distant friends to care about me, sit here enjoying copious amount of consciousness, only able to stare at him in wonder and disgust.
My brain allowed me to reflect and digest some information as it slowly grew dim. Some bomb had exploded, that much was obvious. Was it a mortar shot from afar, a grenade, missile, accidental? For the last couple weeks our base had been fired on by mortars but there hadn't been any injuries. There was a very low chance, not impossible, that a gunner fired a perfect shot hitting right between the buildings flanking us. I looked on the ground to my right and saw a leg, detached below the knee without a stitch of clothing, not even a sock. Empirical evidence told me this was not my leg. A noxious smell permeated the area impossible to describe fully and impossible to forget, a mixture of exhaust or cordite and a generous portion of an unidentifiable smell, all strengthened by the latent heat and the sweat soaking my clothes accumulated over the day. Empirical evidence told me this unidentifiable smell came from the ruptured entrails of a once-living human. I thought quickly of the medals I would receive if I lived, the covetous Purple Heart, one of the most secretly sought after but most ill-earned award that military service has ever produced. I was relieved to know that even near death vanity is still a strong human characteristic, perhaps the most overpowering. I wondered if any moment tunnel vision would kick in and I would take the short trek towards inevitability...
Around the corner came relief. My fellow Marines heard the explosion and ran to my rescue. The rest of the story is quite boring, filled with strange medical terms such as perineal nerve, chest tube, wound vacuum, orthopedic--blah blah. Sufficed to say I survived. Donny also survived. The silly nurses at the hospital made the mistake of placing us in the same room. For the next month I had to endure constant pranks and streams of salt water shot out of syringes pointed at my face. Now many years later I walk around relatively fine. The final tally of my injuries: permanent total hearing loss in my right ear; the inability to lift my left foot or move it side-to-side; eight bits of shrapnel hanging out near the surface of the skin (the ever-present vanity will not allow me to remove these, considering how much fun they are at parties); a bone missing in my left foot; parts of my left bicep missing; partial loss of taste; and other strange side effects. The old joke “you should see the other guy!” is wildly grim but a sure-fire hit. Donny has many of the same injuries, making for a very comical scene: the two of us walking down a street side-by-side, exaggerating our limps and screaming at each other to be heard.
After the dust proverbially settled, the official story was that the suicide bomber walked up, was patted down by Hamis, and once he felt the explosives (which must have been very obvious considering the large amount he was packing around his mid-section) he hugged the suicide bomber, who then pulled the pin. We all thought fondly of Hamis and his sacrifice. His body absorbed much of the blast and no doubt saved his two Marine friends--but was that all he earned, just some fond passing memories? If he had been a Marine or an American in any branch, some high-up General would have written a glowing account of his story peppered with that brassy shine and he would be awarded a very large and prestigious medal, maybe even the Medal of Honor. As far as I know, Hamis wasn't awarded anything, neither was Maluk. I don't even know if they award medals in the Iraqi Army.
Sometimes I think I got the better end of the deal. My friends who stayed behind saw a helicopter fly away with two of their friends in it who they didn't know were going to survive. The mess I left behind wasn't going to be easy to clean up. Three minced bodies were sitting under a hot sun, along with the pints of blood Donny and I bled out. There is no janitorial service in Iraq: if there is a mess, the Marines clean it up. Imagine waking up in the morning and going about your daily routine, then only hours later having to scoop parts of people who you knew personally and had developed a relationship into a body bag. The stereotypical tough Marine breaks down and vomits on the pavement and adds more stink.
I can see my wounds. They are now landmarks on my skin along with the moles, hair, birthmarks, etc. Some wounds form in the mind after a seriously traumatic event. These wounds are often unnoticed and untreated, and will only grow in the brain until they become so large it's impossible to remove them despite centuries of psychological knowledge and years of personal therapy. Somehow, despite my brief exposure to this mess, I avoided most of these wounds, but I was lucky. My friends who stayed behind will forever remember that time, and as much as they pity me, I pity them even more. Periodically I will look down and see my longest scar stretching from above the knee down to the ankle and think back to cause of the event: my suicide bomber.
Who was he? I know nearly nothing about him. Sifting through the various pieces he left behind my fellow Marines determined that he was male. His age, name, home of record, occupation, were all erased. Only those who knew him before knew who he was, but I will never meet his friends or relatives, so to me he is but an event.
Why did he do this? He didn't stop just before detonation and enter into a speech so that those who were about to die would understand his motives. No note was left behind, and no organization bothered to phone the local news network to claim his victory as their own. Perhaps he was a member of a terrorist organization, and after months of indoctrination he was chosen to be the glorious martyr who would strike at the imperialist pigs and drive them from their home country. Perhaps he was a foreigner and had nothing to live for, and out of boredom enlisted in the first radical group he could find. Perhaps he was a law-abiding citizen working in the nearby cement plant, but after witnessing the death of a friend or family, struck out blindly at the nearest enemy he could see. His motives are forever sealed.
What then can we say about this person? These things we know: he had at least one mother and one father; he had lived long enough to see adulthood; and someone must have cared for him to some small extent as a child. What can be drawn from this information? He was a human being just like me, just like the person reading this, just like the billions alive today and the billions who have died and the billions who will be born.
My suicide bomber probably loved his country. He had grown up under propaganda, in a country still reeling from colonists, embargoes and wars. When the invaders came, the same people he was taught to revile, a strong wave of patriotism must have arisen in him. Pressured from all sides by religious figures, pseudo-friends, many people trying to find someone who would fight their battles for them, he must have been overwhelmed until finally he decided to do something about it. He must have been willing to lay down his life for a cause he fervently, but perhaps naïvely, believed in. Thinking honestly, we followed a very similar life-line. Decades of conflicts and near-misses left us on a hair trigger, ready to fight at any provocation. Terrorists had attacked my country and killed thousands of innocent civilians, my fellow citizens. Since high school I witnessed the initial invasion of Iraq, the Mission Accomplished banner, the first appearance of something called an Improvised Explosive Device, and a massive resurgence of violence with an enemy who didn't wear a uniform and could blend into the populace. Politicians, church leaders, relatives, all spoke of a sacred duty to defend our country because freedom wasn't free, and other catchphrases. Finally I decided to do something about it, and just like my suicide bomber, I was willing to lay down my life for a cause I fervently, but as I learned later, naïvely believed in. When I enlisted I asked for the hardest job, the infantry, knowing full well that I would be shipped out to Iraq or Afghanistan and I might not come back home. This made me proud, strong, separate from my peers. A rifle in my hand changed me from a regular joe to a Blood-Thirsty Killer. My suicide bomber must have felt the same feelings the first time he tried on his suicide vest.
I often think about him. His event is permanently imprinted in my psyche. I think about what could have happened. Suppose he had gotten cold feet the day of, deciding rather to hide from the heat indoors. Perhaps this leisure time would be spent in meditation and he would rethink his plans. What if the military decided to not occupy that particular city? Would he have traveled the extra distance to accomplish his task, or maybe run out of gas half way there and hitchhiked back home? If the proper materials, explosives, wires, detonation cap, all of the destructive and illegal devices had not been procured, would he have fretted and complained or would he have taken it as a sign that he was destined to live? What if America had never invaded his country? Would he be sitting at home right now with his family? What if thousands of years ago we as a species realized the folly of war and abolished it completely? These are the questions I ask almost daily.
I forgive you. I never knew you and you never knew me, but I forgive you. I am sorry for whatever drove you to your end. I am sorry for the history between our countries. I am sorry for the hateful indoctrination that must have influenced you. I am sorry I was there and the terror I must have represented. I am sorry that you saw me as a target, and not the peace-keeping force we were supposed to represent. If we ever met again, if I was transported back to that time and place of our first and only meeting, I would not lash out in anger. I would calmly ask you to sit down and I would talk to you, human to human. I would ask why you were doing this and if there was anything I could do to make it better. We would both undoubtedly have misconceptions about each other, but I am confident that in our discourse we would understand each other better. Perhaps we might even become friends. At the end of our talk, I would sit quietly back where I was before and allow you to do your business. But I know, after talking with each other, we could come to some common ground and you would not be forced to sacrifice your life for your cause.
But it's all over now, and I sit here and ponder how to make situations like mine a thing of the past. Some say it's not possible. Perhaps so, perhaps we are a species doomed to fight ourselves until the end of time. Until I have incontrovertible proof that all human beings cannot live without murder, I will struggle to end it all. The first step is to look into myself and see the pain and the latent hate, the same reptilian genetic material that brought my suicide bomber and me together, and to cut it out, forcefully, against all illogical notions of survival or fight-or-flight responses. To emulate the famous Chief Joseph, I will fight no more forever.
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