A'adil is a short, leather-brown Iraqi man with ashen hair and deep set eyes. He smokes "5 Star" cigarettes and always wears trim khakis. "My life was school, the army, the wars, all of it was controlled, it was as though I lived in a tunnel," he explained. "I don't want this generation to have the same experience."
Though he has a Chemical Engineering degree and Newspaper editing experience, A'adil fixes televisions. Even plasma screens. He repaired one on the patrol base. When I heard he was a writer I asked him to teach a class at the renovated Community Center (a project completed by the Infantry company here). A'adil agreed to teach poetry.
Last night was his first class. 15 teenage boys attended: sitting in two rows, taking notes, and standing up to ask questions. "What is poetry," A'adil rhetorically asked, "An expression of the human soul with special words--to reach a certain aim or goal." Ali translated all this for me on the fly. "There are two types of poetry: classical or 'vertical poetry' and modern," continued A'adil. "Any questions?" A boy raised his hand, "sir, will there be an exam?" "No," laughed A'adil, "I want to give you this class to teach you the way of literature instead of killing." Another boy asked, "are there long poems?" It was a good class.
