The blood and gore started the night before my departure to
Baghdad. Slicing a bun for my dinner sandwich comes easy to me now. In fact,
since I have only eaten two dinners in the hotel restaurant, I might be
considered quite an expert at it. When my attention slipped for a moment, my
very sharp bread knife slipped through the bun and into my finger. It was one of
those “boy-I’m-lucky-it-didn’t-go-deep” cuts, where you think you’ve
just nicked yourself until you see the blood start to well out of the neat
slice. I wrapped it well, in a roll of toilet paper. For the next few days
everything I touched broke it open again.
The reason I eat sandwiches in my room for dinner is not
that I am antisocial, even though I might lean that way sometimes. I remember,
all too well, the hotel chicken wing episode from one of those Part 1 epics, and
I just do not trust anything but self-made meals. I have an interesting routine.
Well, it interests me anyway. First night, strawberry jam and peanut butter.
Second night, cheese and spam with mustard. Now I have added a new sandwich. I
found a jar of something that looked like salmon in the store. It was three
bucks for a small jar, but I decided to try it. I’m an adventurer. Now if you
knew me in high school, you might remember that for lunch every single day, I
had my dear departed Mom’s tuna salad sandwiches. Mom used to ask me if I’d
consider something else but I loved those sandwiches. To this day, I love tuna
salad. Heather makes a mean tuna salad too. And salmon is just red tuna, right?
So I bought the small jar and it was quite delicious. The next day, in rather
atypical obsessive fashion (!), I went back to the store and bought many more
jars. My meals are expensed, so who cares if a dollop of salmon salad costs
$3.00? Not me. Now if I could just find celery!
Back to the Baghdad trip. The logistic guy and the driver
picked me up in the taxi at 9 AM. We now use taxis to travel on the highway
rather than Pathfinders. It seems that big 4X4s bristling with armed guards is
not the way to go these days. One thing we are very good at is staying a step
ahead of the fanatics by changing our tactics before they catch onto what we are
doing. We’ve been using taxis for two months. Too bad some of the big
companies in Iraq hadn’t followed our lead. We left Sulaymaniya and headed
toward Kirkuk. It was a hot and sunny day.
We stopped for gas as we turned south from Kirkuk. There are a lot of real gas stations open now. Last time I went this route, you bought gas from guys by the side of the road. Now we could line up at the pumps like back home. Wheee! Progress! South of Kirkuk we noticed US Black Hawk helicopters patrolling the pipeline that leads to Turkey. Later in the day we found out that that pipeline had been bombed again. They had also assassinated Mr. Talabani, the big guy in the Kurdish oil industry. He’s a cousin of the head of the PUK, the Unified Party of Kurdistan. PUK controls the east and PDK (Democratic Party of Kurdistan) controls the west. They used to be at war three or four years ago, but they teamed up immediately when the US invaded and now they are friends, kind of. One hundred liters of gas cost us $1.50. I’d sure like to find a way to bring a million or two liters back with me. Then we could drive the motor home to BC and still have enough left over to top up Heather’s Rav 4. Unless we decide to bring the motor home back, that is.
As we headed south to Baghdad, we were surprised to see the
car in front of us leave the road and plunge into the ditch. We pulled over and
rushed to help. The driver was by himself, thank goodness. I was a bit frantic
when I heard a baby crying but it turned out that it was his silly homemade
alarm system. Sheesh. The man had a nasty cut on his head and there was a lot of
blood. I held him to keep him from tumbling further into the ditch while the
other guys poured water onto the gash and tried to stop the bleeding. Before
long, quite a crowd had assembled and my driver and logistics guy began to get
nervous for me, so they suggested we get going. For the second time in 24 hours,
I had blood on my pants and shirt, but I was still having a better day than that
poor guy. So we left him in good hands and I am sure he will be OK. If you are
reading this, and you are the guy, please E-mail me to let me know you are well,
and I will send you enough money to buy a real car alarm system.
The rest of the trip south was uneventful. I wore my
headset and listened to tunes on my computer. I never do that. I think I was
trying to keep my mind off what might be ticking on the side of the road. It
worked, though. The car was roomy and comfortable, and most important,
air-conditioned. The temperature was near 40 degrees in Baghdad. We wove in and
out of traffic and since the speedometer was not working, I didn’t know how
fast we were going but I know how fast 60-70 mph is and we were going a lot
faster than that. I guess the RPG-avoidance rule of Iraq is “You can’t hit
what you can’t see”.
It’s veggie season in Iraq and there were many trucks
full of watermelons. They drive slowly so we passed hundreds of them. I vowed to
buy a watermelon when I returned to Sulaymaniya although the fridge at the
Palace is much too small. A 10 kilo melon is about 2 bucks. They are called
“Shooti” in Kurdish. There is another real treat that is only in season for
a few weeks, right now. Small reddish-purple berries, similar to strawberries or
blackberries, only sweeter. Much sweeter. In fact, I actually thought that there
was sugar on the ones I had. They are delicious and I sure wish I could bring
some home with me. The Kurdish word for them is “tu”. I am learning a lot of
Kurdish, much to delight of the locals. I’m sure my accent is atrocious but
they love it when I try. “Pynch samoon” is “five buns”, just so you
know. Five buns will cost you 250 Iraqi dinar or about 16 cents.
We arrived at the Hammurabi Palace Hotel. Yes, “Palace” is used quite a lot in Iraq. I asked for a room at the back of the hotel – car bombs usually go off in front, y’know – and was given a room in the front of the hotel. I might have changed rooms, if I were not so beaten down by the whole system. Often I just go along with whatever I am given just because it is easier. Crappy room? Crappy meal? Crappy job of the laundry? No problem. I only fight the battles worth winning right now. In my room in Sulaymaniya, my sink leaks, the chiller unit leaks, the fridge works intermittently and the carpet is filthy. No problem. What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger, right?
So I stayed in the room next to the noisy street and slept like a baby for minutes at a time. Between the cars screeching and the early-morning vendors yelling and banging pots, I managed to survive the night. Now I know why there are laws forbidding engine retarder brakes back home. There are none here! Oddly enough, and in spite of how tired I was, the meetings were very successful the next day. We finished up quite quickly and after a bite to eat, we were headed north to Kurdistan. Although a car bomb exploded at an army recruitment center nearby, killing more than 40 Iraqis, I didn’t hear it. We did drive by the site where, the day before, 5 internationals and another bunch of Iraqis were killed by a mammoth explosion from another suicide car bomber.
We visited an auto wrecking yard on our way out of town and I found out that there were even worse locations in Baghdad than where I had been. The whole area was a mess of stripped vehicles and small shops. It was like every wrecking yard in your city had dumped their parts onto your boulevard. It was a stinky, greasy mess, made worse by the dust and heat of the day. I was not disappointed to see Baghdad disappear in the rear-view mirror. On the way back, I was amazed to see some tornadoes. Well not "exactly" tornadoes, because it was nearly 40 degrees and the sky was clear. In fact they were the biggest dust devils I have ever seen, some stretching over 100 meters into the sky, complete with the typical tornado "bush" where they met the earth. It kept me occupied for some time, but the battery in my camera was dying, we were moving fast and and it was hard to get a decent shot. The best of my pictures are here though. It was quite a sight.
We stopped briefly at a restaurant in Kirkuk so our driver could get the car washed and pick up some meat!?! (Don't ask me!) Then it was back to Sulaymaniya and the Palace Hotel for the night, proving once again that bad (or bloody) things don't really come in threes. The next day it was back to the chaos of work.
If you have a fast connection and you are interested in the view from a car window as we traveled through Kirkuk, here are a couple of short videos. Note the typical Iraqi taxis with their orange fenders. You can even hear a bit of the incessant honking that goes on. Honks can mean:
I got a wonderful E-mail from my loving wife and daughter on Father's Day. I got another one from my other daughter in B.C. Father's Day was invented by Hallmark back in the '30s and my own father has not been a real fan for as long as I have known him. He didn't turn down a free feast of Chinese food though, when Heather invited him over. He's not a Father's Day fan, and he's no fool, either. This is only the second time I REALLY noticed the day. The first time was the first year I was actually a father. Being in Iraq, one tends to feel the absence of what is considered normal at home, a little bit more than usual. There is also a real possibility that I will actually be home for my wife's birthday this year. That has only happened a couple of times since we got married. I haven't changed my mind about leaving Iraq at the end of this contract. It will be interesting to see what happens here at the end of the month when the official handover takes place. I will be here for one of the more interesting parts of Iraq history. Even if things happen with a whimper rather than a bang though, enough is enough.
And that, my friends, is enough for now,
Steve