This morning
This morning on the way to work someone asked me if I knew about the Spanish guys and I said sure, they work here and in another town. They said no, didn’t you hear about the ambush? Seven or eight Spanish guys got whacked going south out of Baghdad. I turned around and half-ran up to where the Spanish guys work. No one was there, so I asked the secretary for a piece of paper, and sat down at my friend’s desk and wrote a sympathy note in Spanish. As I wrote I invented all sorts of ways for them to drive backwards from the ambush site and not die. I kept writing anyway. I left the note on my friend’s desk and went out of the building, through the Gurkhas, the Marines and triple-strand concertina wire, and made my way out to the parking lot where my humvee was parked.
It hasn’t hit me; I won’t let it hit me. I can’t let it happen. I drove to work past the green zone café and went down to the office. Mr. Tom, Mr. Tom, Mr. Tom. Fifteen Iraqi’s asking me questions about little details of the work we do. I sit down here at my desk after meeting a blurred series of important men and go over my list of things to do that I worked on till midnight yesterday.
My translator comes over to the desk with two more Iraqi’s; one of them is a truck driver whose rig was stolen last week. “Can you help him?” I listen to the story and take him with me back to the humvee, through the green zone, and back to the palace. Past the green zone café again, past the street vendor guys with their surplus Iraqi army jackets, Ishtar cigarettes and pirated DVD’s. We park and walk past the place where the rocket hit two weeks ago and took out a bunch of vehicles. Through the triple-strand, and past the Marines (“Eindek howiah?”) and Gurkhas, into the building and to the right office. We met a very understanding CI (intelligence) officer who used me as a translator. Spanish just isn’t Arabic but we all try. We figured out enough for the CI guy to make a future appointment. On the way out of the palace the Iraqi driver stopped me and said “God-you-thank you-one thousand”. I tell him Al-afu, it’s nothing, it’s my job. We walk back out through the Marines, the Gurkhas, through the barriers between us and them, back to the office. It’s only eleven in the morning and I haven’t done anything about my to-do list.
The Spanish guys are still dead; I’m back in the office, the Iraqi’s ask me a million little questions. I think in English (or whatever) about the Spanish guys while the Iraqi’s talk to me with and without an interpreter; the Iraqi faces morph right in front of me to whiter and deader and I can’t stop it and I just went out in the hall for my tenth cigarette of the morning and wonder if St. Augustine was right; can I change myself, or set the example for them so they take all of this over and we can all go home. It doesn’t seem possible.
Lina and Quaise invite me to lunch across the street at the Al-Rasheed. We walk out together into the sunlight and coolness of November and away from chaos into the familiarity of a cheeseburger. Not bad for noon. We’ll get better; we have to.
It hasn’t hit me; I won’t let it hit me. I can’t let it happen. I drove to work past the green zone café and went down to the office. Mr. Tom, Mr. Tom, Mr. Tom. Fifteen Iraqi’s asking me questions about little details of the work we do. I sit down here at my desk after meeting a blurred series of important men and go over my list of things to do that I worked on till midnight yesterday.
My translator comes over to the desk with two more Iraqi’s; one of them is a truck driver whose rig was stolen last week. “Can you help him?” I listen to the story and take him with me back to the humvee, through the green zone, and back to the palace. Past the green zone café again, past the street vendor guys with their surplus Iraqi army jackets, Ishtar cigarettes and pirated DVD’s. We park and walk past the place where the rocket hit two weeks ago and took out a bunch of vehicles. Through the triple-strand, and past the Marines (“Eindek howiah?”) and Gurkhas, into the building and to the right office. We met a very understanding CI (intelligence) officer who used me as a translator. Spanish just isn’t Arabic but we all try. We figured out enough for the CI guy to make a future appointment. On the way out of the palace the Iraqi driver stopped me and said “God-you-thank you-one thousand”. I tell him Al-afu, it’s nothing, it’s my job. We walk back out through the Marines, the Gurkhas, through the barriers between us and them, back to the office. It’s only eleven in the morning and I haven’t done anything about my to-do list.
The Spanish guys are still dead; I’m back in the office, the Iraqi’s ask me a million little questions. I think in English (or whatever) about the Spanish guys while the Iraqi’s talk to me with and without an interpreter; the Iraqi faces morph right in front of me to whiter and deader and I can’t stop it and I just went out in the hall for my tenth cigarette of the morning and wonder if St. Augustine was right; can I change myself, or set the example for them so they take all of this over and we can all go home. It doesn’t seem possible.
Lina and Quaise invite me to lunch across the street at the Al-Rasheed. We walk out together into the sunlight and coolness of November and away from chaos into the familiarity of a cheeseburger. Not bad for noon. We’ll get better; we have to.
-30-
Copyright, 2003. Tom Kinton, Baghdad, Iraq.
posted by tomk at 8:22 AM
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