Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Standing Guard

I spoke with a soldier on guard the other day.  It was hot and the day felt old and still.  We stood in the top of a concrete guard tower.  A machine gun in one window.  Binoculars in the other.  One of the questions soldiers eternally ask one another is, "where you from?"

"San Diego, sir."
"You enlist out of high school?"
"No, sir.  I waited a few years."
"Doing what?"
"Ever heard of Bextel, sir?  Flooring?"
I waited.
"They make glue for floors--I worked in the shipping office."
"So why'd you join?"
"Wanted to try something else.  See what it was like."
"that's a good reason," I said.
We drank water.  I asked if he was married.
"Not really, sir."
"What does that mean?"
"Well, I have a girlfriend... she's pregnant now she says."
We watched the city from behind camo netting; each of us looking out a different tower window.
"So you're getting married?"
"I don't know, sir.  I don't want one mistake to cause me to make another."
"What does she want to do?"
He wasn't sure.
"She wants to get married.  I promise."
"We only just started dating, it had only been three weeks..."
"You just met?"
"I knew her from before, but we just started dating on leave.  I went back in May."
"What do her parents think?"
"They liked me I guess.  They're real nice people."
"They probably want to kill you now."
"They're real nice though, sir."
"What about your folks?"
"Well, that's it, sir--they don't know yet."


Saturday, July 26, 2008

Faceless

My new favorite living author is V.S. Naipaul.  Barbara sent me his book, Among the Believers--an account of his travels through various Islamic States in the early 80s.  Naipaul describes his meetings and conversations with poets, civil servants, Imams, and other citizens.  The chaos in Iran just after the revolution is most tragic--and revealing.  Naipaul points out the similarity between the Communist and Islamic propaganda.  Below are some striking posters from the revolution I found online.  See them all here.

Both ideologies seek to erase the individual--through clothes, argot, and art.  In Islam, women wear black to hide their hair and skin.  When I recently travelled through Kuwaiti International Airport, I saw women totally covered in black robes, headscarves, gloves, stockings, and face-masks.  They were waiting in line for expressos at Starbucks.

Here in Yusufiya some men wear western-style clothes: jeans, t-shirts, or slacks.  But most wear dishdashas of neutral color and headscarves.  The restaurants all serve the same 4 dishes (falafel, tikka, roast chicken, or carp).  Everyone is muslim.  Everyone plays soccer.  No one owns a musical instrument.

"Could you imagine wearing the exact same clothes as your dad?  As your granddad?" I asked a friend of mine in Angel Company.
He shrugged.
"They all wear the same clothes!  It's strange, man."
"Yeah, but so do we."
And so it was--both of us standing outside the chow hall in our Army Combat Uniforms.

All citizens are silhouettes.  A mob.  The arabic says "there is no god but god."


This poster proclaims "the march towards a unitary, classless society."  Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of the Islamic Republic, is pictured.  Also notice the sickle and rifle.

On one side is the old, degenerate way of learning.  On the other is Utopia.

Notice how on the right, everyone is identical.

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Independence Day

I arrived in Baghdad on the 4th of July.  My first duty assignment was a urinalysis: a droll reminder of the duality in soldiers...  often heroic yet sometimes debauched.  U.S. Army urinalysis regulations require an "Observationist."  As in "we'll begin as soon as the 'Observationist' arrives."  There were 15 soldiers waiting for testing.  Once it was my turn I signed for my issued cup and the Observationist escorted me to the porta-john.

"I hope no one asks me what I did for the Fourth this year," he said.
I told him he was a great American.

Thursday, July 3, 2008

Greatness

Celina lives several blocks from the Cathedral de Notre Dame so we walked past it daily.  It was glorious.  Apartments and offices in Paris are kept low; around 5 stories high.  So churches and monuments dominate the skyline.  Inside the Cathedral a plaque showed it was built in the 12th century and it was still great--even now.  And at the Louvre--it too was a building far greater than I imagined.  It's columns and curtains and the audience of artistic masters that surrounded the square--I felt diminished before the art.

One sculpture piece was my favorite work in the museum: Captifs.  It was a presentation of four bronze captives representing four nations conquered by France.  Spain, Brandenburg, the Roman Empire, and Holland.  Each represented a different response: revolt, hope, resignation, and grief.  Like the Louvre and Notre Dame they were massive.  And I thought that the French have great things too--just like the Americans--and not everything in Europe is economized or small.  

Axe Historique

During mid-tour leave I saw Paris for the first time.  The sophisticated window frames, the grey stone, and notched spires, and bulbous light, and people wearing skinny jeans, and holding hands, and drinking carafes of wine: all of these impossibilities in Yusufiya.

We walked along the line of the city, Le Axe Historique, where the Arc de Triomphe is framed by the promenade of the Champs.

"Welcome to the West," Celina said.  And we crossed the Place de la Concorde at the base of a gold-capped obelisk.  It was carved with hieroglyphs.  "I bet that's stolen from Egypt," I said.  Celina didn't know.  I learned later that Josephine asked Napoleon for an obelisk before he set out for Egypt in 1798.  Even though Napoleon won many victories then the obelisk wasn't taken until later.

So it seems the West is always conquering the East for something...