Now Playing: Frank Sinatra (again)
Topic: Gin&Tonics on the Tigris
Sorry if these posts aren't quite daily. I am trying to go back and organize my notes and thoughts into a more comprehensive fashion. That, sadly, might take some time.
I had been in Iraq for perhaps a week. While taking my daily morning shower, I hear a thump off in the distance. I couldn’t be certain that I had heard anything. It was so soft, and I was still slowly easing out of my morning grogginess. I stopped, tried to focus, and determine if something had in fact made a noise. A few seconds later I had my answer. The second explosion instantly sapped the last hint of grogginess from my body. It shook my concrete house so hard that I could hear the glass windows reverberating and nearly cracking from the deafening sound waves. The explosion was perhaps 1/4 mile away from my house, which was petty far away but still a little too close for comfort.
Shortly my compound’s security officers realized what had happened and the slight shock of hearing explosion so early in the morning began to wear off, the compound’s emergency siren wailed and my government-issued CB repeatedly warned me to "duck and cover. Duck and cover. Duck and cover." A few second later, the compound’s public announcement system, which we called the Voice of God because no one knew exactly where the speakers were in the compound, warned us to find shelter.
Because I was a newbie and had only been in Iraq for a few days, I religiously followed every safety instructions given by my compound’s security officer, but this time I didn’t know what to do. The explosion happened while I was in the middle of taking a shower. I stood there naked, with the hot water beating down on my back, trying to decide what to do. The idea of running through my house looking for my body armor seemed preposterous, especially since the government has built my house so it could survive mortar and rocket attacks. Although I didn’t like the idea of dying in a mortar attack, I was more worried that I would slip on the wet tiles in my bathroom and crack my head open. The idea of lying dead in my hard house for a day before someone came to find my naked body didn’t seem appealing.
Eventually, the fear of dying in a mortar attack eventually outweighed my other concerns. I remembered the story of the State Department employee who recently died in a shower near the airport. A mortar had landed right on top of him. I didn’t want to end up like that dead diplomat just because I was worried that I would look silly running naked through my house. Thus, I jumped out of the shower and raced into my bedroom. I quickly go on my hands and knees and pulled out my battle rattle, which every night I place under my night stand so I could quickly find it in an emergency. I threw on my armor and then raced back to the bathroom because my security officer told me it was the safest room in the house.
Once I made it to the bathroom, I stopped and looked at myself. I looked very silly. Water was still dripping off my body, and I was only wearing two things - my helmet and my body armor. Out of shame, I quickly grabbed and jumped into my my boxers. To make maters worse, once I finally got all geared up for action, minus my clothes, the all "all clear" message came over the radio. The booms weren’t mortars or rockets. Apparently the insurgents, a term that I've never really liked, attacked the nearby Australian Embassy using vehicle born improvised explosive devices (VEBIED), which was the military’s fancy name for a suicide car bomb. The insurgent launched five more major car bomb attacks that day. The attackers never even got close to their intended targets, but they still killed about 20 Iraqi.
Standing in my boxers and battle rattle, I found it a little hard to believe that the bad guys were attacking Americans and killing innocent Iraq right outside the wall of the Green Zone, less than a few miles from where I stood. I heard the explosions, and I even felt the shockwaves from explosions. Because my house sat on the edge of the Zone, most large car bomb and nearby mortar attacks made my house and office shake, and the car bombs that morning were no different. Still, unless an attack could happen right in front of me, I would never see it. Everything happens on the other side of the concrete walls surrounding my compound and the Green Zone. The explosions were "background noises" to my life.
After living in the Green Zone for roughly two weeks, I had already found a new sense of normalcy. The idea of throwing on body armor at every explosion no longer made sense. My fears were tempered by the decision to respond only when the threat was near and real. When I explained this to people back in States who never lived in the Green Zone, they found it hard to imagine how anyone could tune out the war and ignore the sound of VBIEDs, gunfire, mortars, and rockets. To those of us living in the Green Zone, it was the only thing that made sense. Occasionally, while drinking a beer or sipping a late night gin and tonic, somebody would mention how messed up the war had become and acknowledge the violence surrounding our small pocket of America in downtown Baghdad, yet most of the time, we simply reacted when the attacks were close enough to demand a response and then went on our way right after the attack. We had to tune it out or we would lose it.
One a mild evening in late March, I was sitting outside with my friends Kirk, Aaron, and Tamara when we heard a mortar attack in the distance. We barely heard the thud over the sound of our music, so we knew the mortar landed far away. Thus, we tuned it out. We were hanging out on the porch of a hardened house in my compound trying to have a laid-back evening, and we didn’t let the war take that from us. We continued to sit outside enjoying the mild weather, drinking red wine, and listing to music. Tamara and Kirk had just finished playing a game of chess. Aaron and I were debating how the U.S. could have ever believed that it would bring about the societal-level changes in Iraq that the neo-cons had indented. The confining walls of the Green Zone had seemed to melt away for a few moments.
We heard another boom in the distance. The insurgents fired another mortar rounds at the Green Zone. They landed perhaps a mile away from us. Aaron calmly got up and went inside the hardened house, but the rest of us didn't move. The explosions continued as we sat on Kirk’s porch. Boom, boom . . . boom! The rounds still weren't very close. They were almost a mile away. They hit somewhere near the convention center. We also noticed that the explosions were getting softer. Whenever the subsequent booms got softer with each hit, they generally would continue to move in that direction. Thus, in this case, we knew that we were safe because the shots were continuing to move away from us.
On that day, we were lucky. They insurgent didn’t hit anything near us. The closest I ever came to being hit by a mortar happened on another simple evening when my friends and I were trying to forget the war. Pennell and I slipped over Kirk’s house after working out in the compound gym. We decided to watch High Fidelity with John Cusak. All of us had seen the movie before, but in Iraq, we always seemed to watch movies that we had seen before. For some reason, when we watched them together it was like we were sharing some happy piece of our old lives from before Iraq that we wanted to relive with our new friends inside the Green Zone.
The mortar attack began just as we reached a really funny scene in the film, which was would be followed by a quick assuming sex scene. All of us where in good spirits and were almost giddy as we watched the film because each of us knew the best parts. We say on the edges of our seat waiting for the jokes we loved. When we heard the first soft boom in the distance, we all looked as each other with uncertain look.
Pennell finally asked the question that all of us had on our minds. “Was that a mortar?”
“Nah, I don’t think so,” I said dismissively.
Then, we heard a second boom. It closer, perhaps a mile away.
“Shit,” Kirk said calmly, “Should we get up?”
The third boom was very loud and very close. It sounded like a dumpster hitting concrete after tumbling from the edge of a high cliff. The explosion shook the house. The thin glass windows rattled like how my childhood bedroom windows in Michigan rattled whenever lighting struck too close to the house, but this time I expected the windows to crack. Without missing a heartbeat, all three of us leap up and dashed for the bathroom, the hard house’s tornado-like storm shelter. It didn’t have any glass windows, which could shatter if a mortar hit the house. It also supposedly had thicker walls, though I never believed that story. After I left, my concerns were vindicated when I saw a picture of a mortar that cut through a hard house roof like a hot knife through butter.
On the way to the bathroom, the safest spot in the whole house, Pennell swung buy the DVD player and hit the pause button. He didn’t want to rewind the film to get back to the sex scene when we would come back out to watch the rest of the movie.
When all three of us were finally safely inside the bathroom, we tried to control and breathing and let our hearts settle down. We laughed slightly at how hard each one of us had run. We also snickered wildly at Pennell’s determination to pause the movie rather than focus solely on getting to the relative safety of bathroom. However, the evening’s surreal funny moments were only about to begin. Kirk had grabbed his security radio on the way to the bathroom. A few minutes after the explosion, it slowly began to squawk.
“That was close. Perhaps 500 meters,” said one of the compound’s contracted security officers.
“That was much closer. Perhaps 50 meters. Probably closer,” corrected another contracted security officer.
By my estimate, it was perhaps 25 meters from Kirk’s house, yet I didn’t correct the security officers. We had always been told to never mention distances on the radio. If the insurgents listened to the conversations, in theory they could adjust their weapons to hit my compound. I was dumbfounded that my compound’s security officers would break this basic rule, a rule they had taught to me.
The radio chatter got even more surreal as the security team tried to determine what to do. USAID’s top security officer was in the compound on a short visit, and he was using the radio to call the State Department Regional Security Officer (RSO) in charge of protecting the compound.
“Snake, Snake, this is Rabbit, over.”
Silence.
“Snake, Snake, this is Rabbit, over.”
More silence.
“Snake, Snake, this is Rabbit, over.” This time Rabbit didn’t sound very happy.
“Rabbit, Rabbit, this is Snake, over,” the RSO finally responded.
“Perhaps you should tell everyone to stay under cover.”
After a long pause, Snake responded by making an announcement over the radio. “Attention USAID compound, attention USAID compound stay under cover. I repeat. Stay under cover until the all clear is given.” Everyone on the compound had already heard the interchange between Snake and Rabbit, so I didn’t understand why Snake had wasted his time repeating what Rabbit had said.
“Perhaps you should make that announcement over the loud speaker,” advised Rabbit.
After a brief pause, the compound’s Voice of God gave its warning, “Attention, attention USAID compound. Duck and cover. I say again, duck and cover.”
“Snake, Snake, this is Rabbit. What’s your location, over?”
Silence.
“Snake, Snake, this is Rabbit. What’s your location, over?” Snake didn’t sound happy.
As this Laurel and Hardy routine continued on the radio, Kirk took a look at himself in the bathroom mirror. His stubble had grown a little too pronounced. He slowly ran his hand across his cheeks before reaching for his shaving cream.
“Gents, I think I need a shave.”
“I wish I could tape all of this,” I said while laughing gently. “No one back home would ever believe that this is what happens in Iraq.”
After a few weeks of arriving in the Zone, I, like almost everyone else in Iraq, had grown slightly caviler about indirect fire attacks. If it wasn't close, generally it was not a real threat, thought the security office clearly didn't agree with the carefree attitude that most people have developed. Still, Most westerners ignored the security office because many RSOs seemed clueless, and perhaps more importantly, we all knew that unlike a direct firefight, we couldn’t do much about mortar or rocket attacks. Either they hit you or they didn’t. Mortar and rocket attacks were simply background noise to everything that was happening in Iraq. .
