Arabic coffee is made instantly from fine powder and water, then boiled.  After tasting an excellent cup you exclaim, "hatha kaleel" (this is mascara).

Here's a steaming pot sitting on a dustbin of coals.

Iraq and Burma

George Packer recently published an article in the New Yorker about Burma.  You can read it here.  Some of their social plight reminds me of Iraq.  Packer talks with a theatre producer named Thar Gyi: 

“American people say that political changes will change the conditions in our country,” Thar Gyi said. “That’s true. But I think we need to develop our own capacities. We are not ready for democracy. We don’t have any good platform, good foundation, to get those changes.” He spoke of the garbage that often blocked the drains, flooding the streets of Rangoon. Residents complained that the city was dirty, he said. “Where does that garbage come from? People throw it recklessly. When there was a flood, people said that is the responsibility of Yangon City Development Committee. It was their fault!” Thar Gyi’s whisper gave his voice a strange urgency. “But you can’t just say, ‘You should take the responsibility!’ That’s why I want to use the arts. I want to teach people critical thinking.”

I encounter similar difficulties in Yusufiya.  Streets are lined with careless trash: candy wrappers, cans, rotting food, animal hides.  The cleanest parts of Iraq are probably American patrol bases.  I saw an Iraqi man throw a cigarette butt in the street one day.  Through an interpreter I asked him, "why not throw that in a trash can?"  He answered that it was the government's job to clean up trash here.  "But the government has no program for this yet," I pointed to the mountains of trash in the street.  He shrugged.

One night, during A'adil's poetry class, we had the students follow the rubric of an "I am..." poem from this website (thanks Mom!).  The hardest lines to finish?  Anything involving the imaginary.  "I pretend..." took almost 10 minutes to explain.

"They don't get it," said Mike, my interpreter.  He graduated college in Texas so I knew his translation was accurate.

"How are you explaining it?"

"I asked them, what do you do when your Mother isn't there--one said 'homework' so I clarified..."

This went on for a while.  Finally the kids settled on "policeman" or "soldier."  One outlier wrote "I pretend I'm sick."  And there were verses that came from a world only Intervention could have created:

"I understand geography

I believe in helping to build Iraq

I help the sick

I dream of the clouds

I hope to become president of the Republic of Iraq

I am a good student and I love my school.

-Abdul Aziz Hashim, 11"

Recruitment

Almost every night I watch satellite television with our Iraqi interpreters.  Some channels are infamous for anti-Western propaganda.  Such as the Al Jazeera Documentary Channel--which has great cinematography and an artistic eye, but has aired two features on White Supremacists in the last week.  One showed footage of skinheads at a death-metal concert in Europe.  A teenager at the bar had SNIPER tattooed on the back of his head.  He used to be in the army.  Later in that feature, the skinheads assembled for a torchlit march through the city.  Their flames were endless, trailing off into the night.

Another channel had an advertisement promoting the Iraqi Insurgency.  A man wearing a dishdasha crawled under concertina wire at the Iraqi border, he was carrying a blue duffle-bag.  I asked the Iraqis if they were ever asked to join Al Qaeda.

"Oh yeah, when I was in Syria," said Ali.  "When I worked in the grocery stand."  His family moved there several years ago and opened a small business.

"How did you know they were Al Qaeda?"

"These four guys, they come to the store and ask, 'how much this' and 'how much that' but I know these guys do not want to buy anything.

So I said, 'what do you want?'

'We're here to tell you good news.  To show you the way.'

They knew my family was Iraqi, see?

'We can help you go back to Iraq to fight,' they said.

'I don't want to fight Coalition Forces.'

'Why? You scared?'

'I'm not scared but I'm not crazy either.'  I asked them, 'where you from?'  Two were from Iraq and two from Syria.  'Okay, man so you're Iraqi, so why you go back to Iraq and kill your brothers?'

'They aren't my brothers, they're bastards.'

One said, 'Americans in the Arab Homeland, man!'

I told them if I ever saw them again, even just in the street somewhere, I would kill them.  So they left.  And my father he say this was dangerous and ask me why I talk that way but I knew how to deal with these guys."

"Did you see them again?"

"No, I left to come here.  I decided to be interpreter with the Coalition Forces."

Ali was impassioned: "and now Iraq become the first country to defeat Al Qaeda!" The channel we were watching showed another cache of enemy weapons discovered by the Iraqi Army.  "See?" Ali pointed.  "I'm going to have grandkids, and I'll say 'let me tell you a story, we were the first country to defeat Al Qaeda: they were a bunch of assholes who did not deserve to live and we kicked them out.'"

Watch the Stars

"Maybe something going to happen," said Mohammed, one of my advisors. He's an Iraqi with citizenship in America and Canada.  He completed an engineering degree in England 30 years ago.

"Why?"

"Because, last night, the earth crush the moon."

"The eclipse?"

"Yes, it's a sign."

I disagreed.

"Because how often does that happen?" Mohammed reasoned.

"Infrequency doesn't make something a sign."

"Everything has a reason."

"Couldn't the reason be: the earth passed between the sun and moon?"

"Yeah, but there's another reason.  Our Prophet, he set all the stars."

"That doesn't mean this is related to a human event though.  Does the Qu'ran say all eclipses mean something?"

"Our Prophet, he give a special prayer for this."

"What does it say?"  Most prayer in Islam is scripted.

"I looked last night but I couldn't find it."

"Have you seen an eclipse before--one that was related to a sign?"

"It happened 1,000 years ago.  Over 1,000 years.  The Egyptians: they could predict the future with the stars."

"What happened to Egypt then?"

"They forgot."

Dark Knight

While Batman makes a zillion dollars in the 'west,' Islam is celebrating their own superhero who died 1300 years ago.  This weekend millions of Shi'as will walk to Karbala to mourn the slaughter of Imam Hussein--a contender for succession to Mohammed's throne.  One of the soldiers who died with Hussein was his brother Abbas.  He's a superhero too.

One Muslim recounted the legend of Abbas' death to me: "...during the battle of Karbala the enemy forces kept Imam Hussein and his men from the river and they began to get thirsty.  Abbas was so strong he killed 4,000 enemy just to get water for Hussein.  But on his way back a guy chopped off his arm, then another guy chopped off his other arm, so he dropped the water.  Then an arrow hit him through the eye."

"Is all this in the Qu'ran?" I asked.

"Oh, no--this is the legend.  This was after the Qu'ran."

"Right in the eye?"

"Yes!" Mohammed pointed a finger at his eye, "they hit his head with a big metal pole too, and smashed it."

When we walked through the Yusufiya market the other day I saw two posters of Abbas.  Like most Islamic art they are comely, surreal depictions: comic book superheroes.  At the bottom of the picture the arabic reads, "Hussein, Peace Be With You."

Bruce Wayne is multi-cultural, suave, athletic, rich, and enigmatic.  He uses technology and determination to defeat the forces of evil.  With every generation Batman is re-invented.  Abbas was devout, strong, simple, and righteous.  His servanthood and sacrifice made him a martyr.  His legend has inspired Muslims for over a millennium.