We Meant Well Page 8

  At that point, the sheik himself started to explain how he had originally helped the “struggle” against the Americans, meaning planting roadside bombs and the like. Then, in 2007, he decided to participate in the so-called Awakening, a program through which we paid money to Sunni insurgents to stop killing us. The program worked and in many minds was the real key to the drop in violence that accompanied the Surge. The United States recharacterized the Sunni insurgents first as Orwellian “Concerned Local Citizens” and later, more poetically, as “Sons of Iraq” (SOI, sahwa in Arabic) and paid them monthly salaries to stand passively at checkpoints in the areas where they used to commit violence. This also worked, and the sheik pointed out that the skinny teenagers with rifles standing around roadside shacks on our way in were some of the 142 SOI fighters he still was responsible for. Our side never explored the similarity between what we were doing with the SOI and paying protection money to the Mob.

  Iraq’s Shiite government inherited the sahwa program because we got tired of funding it and because “transition” was a theme that month. The thought in Washington was that the faster we could transition our programs to the government of Iraq, the sooner we could go home. The sheik sadly reported that no one had paid his men for their forbearance since March, nor had the government provided them with full-time jobs as promised. He hoped I might pass a note to the Embassy to goose the Iraqi government into starting to pay his guys again, as they were getting solid offers from al Qaeda (nationwide, 50 percent of the SOI had not been paid in April and May 2010, while fewer than half had ever been offered government jobs).22 Nothing personal, he assured me by way of offering a blessing on my family, but a job was a job. These issues seemed much more on his mind than the milk collection center I had come to discuss. The center might employ half a dozen men, maybe a few more to drive trucks if trucks were ever bought. With 142 fighters to look after, these few jobs created at the cost of millions of dollars seemed sadly irrelevant.

  After a lot of tea and with a bit of business now wrapped up, we all stood to exchange scratchy kisses, followed by warm, lingering handshakes, before making our way outside to continue our respective days. We forgot the problems of milk collection, or at least set them aside for now, as it was obvious that we had a long way to go before declaring victory.

  A Torturous Lunch

  In addition to burning up money with our projects, the ePRTs were often used by the Embassy to build relationships on the ground. This was partially because most Embassy big shots were scared to meet with thugs and killers and partially because we often handed project money to those thugs and killers and thus knew them pretty well. While we usually just shared pleasantries over a meal to keep in touch, every once in a while we got more for lunch than expected. A well-known Sons of Iraq (SOI) leader told us over dessert one sticky afternoon that he had been recently released from prison. He explained that the government had wanted him off the streets in the run-up to the election, so that he would not use his political pull to get in the way of a Shia victory. The prison that held him was a secret one, he said, under the control of some shadowy part of the Iraqi security forces.23

  The SOI leader had been tortured. Masked men bound him at the wrists and ankles and hung him upside down. He said they did not ask him any questions or demand any information; they simply wanted to cause him pain. They whipped his testicles with a leather strap, then turned to beat the bottoms of his feet and his kidney area. They slapped and punched him. The bones in his right foot were broken with an iron rod, a rebar used to reinforce concrete. He said it was painful, but he had felt pain before. What hurt was the feeling of utter helplessness. A man like himself, he stated with an echo of pride, had never felt helpless. His strength was his ability to control things, to order men to their own deaths if necessary, to fight, to stand up to enemies. Now he could no longer sleep well at night, was less interested in life and activities, and felt little pleasure. It was possible that the SOI leader exaggerated his story, seeking our sympathy in his struggle against the government. This was likely the only reason he was bothering to tell us what happened to him. Exaggeration was not uncommon in these situations and you had to be cautious about believing everything you heard. Still, when he paused and looked across the room, you could almost see the movie running behind his eyes, replaying scenes he could not forget but did not want to remember. The man also showed us his blackened toenails, and the caved-in portion of his foot still bore a rodlike indentation with faint signs of metal grooves, like on an iron rod, the rebar used to reinforce concrete.

  The 400,000 Iraq war documents published online in October 2010 included a number of US Army reports of torture and abuse by the government of Iraq against its own Sunni citizens, most of them ignored by the US Army as a consequence of Frago 242. A frago is a “fragmentary order” that summarizes a specific requirement based on a broader, earlier instruction. As published in June 2004, Frago 242 ordered Coalition troops not to investigate any breach of the laws of armed conflict, such as torture, unless it directly involved Coalition troops. Where abuse was Iraqi on Iraqi, “only an initial report will be made.… No further investigation will be required unless directed.”24

  The Iraqis knew of torture. FOB Loyalty, where I spent a week, had once been home to Saddam’s secret police. I had walked around and seen torture cells there. Arabic graffiti covered the walls, most of it scratched directly into the stone. Metal rings were set into the floor and walls for chaining people down. The bunk was just more stone, and there was an open hole in one corner for a latrine. The story was that Saddam hired Chinese workers to build the place, then had them murdered so they would not tell anyone what was inside. Many US soldiers who passed through had their photo taken in one of the cells, sometimes lying on the bunk, but it was too creepy for me, too many shadows. Even the tough guys found reasons to avoid the place after dark. There were voices in those walls.

  The other SOI men in the room chain-smoked awful cigarettes by the fistful and told us the recent murders of four Sunnis in Tarmiyah were probably tribal revenge killings stemming from the murder of a high-level SOI in the area the previous year. Three out of the four murdered were brothers and the fourth was a blood relative. Under tribal law, they explained, when compensation was not received in a timely manner, the other side had the right to kill the person who committed the murder plus three of his blood relatives.

  As for national-level violence, they explained it was all the Iranians’ fault, except for the parts the Americans did (“When will you close the door you opened in our country?”). Kind of hard to disagree with the last bit, but our US military colleague along for lunch tried pretty hard. He started out declaring himself “but a simple solider” and then wound up into a long speech about the American democratic experiment, states’ rights, and the Articles of Confederation. I had no idea what he was saying. Our translator kept right up, however, mumbling something in Arabic, though who knows what was communicated across the space in that room. Our simple soldier hit his stride, raising his voice in volume while he lowered it in timbre, explaining how we all were now brothers fighting a common enemy. This was where I would have given a cornea to understand Arabic, because of course we had invaded Iraq and even our stalwart Iraqi translator was having a hard time figuring out who this common enemy was. After some side conversations, we figured out it was “the terrorists,” and each was left to define “terrorist” for himself. Considering the men in the room controlled militias and could order revenge killings, I guessed their definition and ours were different.

  After what could only be described as a multilingual awkward pause, the search for common ground began. We finally stumbled onto something after an older SOI man discussed his recent trip to Iran. He described his dislike of the Persians, stretching back some three thousand years, but noted Iranian women were, well … sort of hot. He did not say “hot” in so many words, but as our hosts smiled and clicked their teeth and made eye gestures, it was all too obviou
s we had basically started talking about how attractive Iranian women were. I learned that one reason Iraqi men traveled to Iran was to enjoy the pleasures of a temporary marriage. With men free to marry multiple wives and Islam’s handy oral divorce policy and lack of civic records, the prohibition against prostitution was sometimes circumvented through a quick (several hours) marriage and divorce. Iran was known for such things, and discreet as well, so what happened in an Iranian temp marriage stayed in Iran, baby. The mood lightened.

  These meetings were supposed to increase our understanding of one another, give us a chance to resolve problems, make friends, and the like. Maybe we did so on occasion. To me, however, it was more like two sides agreeing to play a game together, but we played cards while they played dominoes, diplomacy by Calvinball rules. Unnamed assassins killed two of the men present in the next six weeks, along with their sons, victims of a string of assassinations of Sons of Iraq leaders. A week later someone murdered the man who had visited Iran. The SOI leader who claimed to have been tortured was left alive, wicked, hard, and doomed.

  One Too Many Mornings

  The smells first: fried something from the FOB chow hall, the sticky tang of chemicals in the latrines, cigarette smoke from the always present knots of soldiers smoking. The damp odor of mud if it rained overnight (like mushrooms, like an old basement) or if a pipe broke. My least favorite smell was rotted tobacco from the butts can, a steel ammunition box half filled with brown water and hundreds of cigarette butts molded into a gelatin. The smells did not mingle, they were layered, and I experienced them sequentially. Smell, the one sense that always seemed like a joke, gave you no rest. I could close my eyes or stuff something into my ears, but with smell I could only move away or put up with it.

  My roommate woke up an arm’s length from me in the small trailer. I was rarely alone. Sometimes he asked how I slept, sometimes he just made morning noises. We lived close. He snored, he talked while dreaming, he sometimes paced at night, he read in bed, he took pills to sleep. He felt freer to chat at night with the lights out, like at camp. I knew he wanted to hit on the sort of hot redheaded female captain in the Ops Center who wouldn’t even give up a friendly glance, tired of being everyone’s go-to fantasy, and I knew he missed his wife. He talked about being afraid. I felt the same way, so we held these conversations in a kind of jailhouse shorthand. He usually ended up talking about some event that happened to him just before I got to Iraq. Everyone was entitled to tell a story and we all were careful to keep our stories distinct. Mine never overlapped in time with his so we were each free to tell the story we wanted to tell. I learned to listen, but with only half an ear at most, because the telling was usually for his benefit, not mine. Just before falling asleep we both had a few minutes with our own thoughts, the worst time of the day.

  Showers were communal, and where you showered was assigned based on where you lived. Evolved primate standards allowed me to grunt hello but not make eye contact. It was partially a way of getting along, maybe a way to create the illusion of privacy, but we weren’t supposed to look at one another. Still, I saw tattoos of wavy patterns or unknown Chinese characters, names of mothers or girls, shadow pictures of lost friends. The soldiers were still kids, with acne on their shoulders. Most had short hair or shaved heads, so the need for toiletries was minimal. Some kids had no hair but the whole kit anyway, bottles of Axe and tubes of lotions for softer skin, less dandruff, better scents, a little like home. Showers were short as the hot water ran out quickly. The worst thing was to come into the shower area and hear “Oh shit,” which meant no more hot water. Shaving was a big deal in the military and many people lathered up their entire skulls to shave clean each morning. They went over and over the same spots with their blue plastic razors. They could never get their heads clean enough, no satisfaction, just enough to get on with the day.

  We knew a lot about one another whether we liked it or not. We cared if a roommate made noise in his sleep or, the worst sin, had poor hygiene and stank. Nobody seemed to care, however, about who was and who wasn’t … you know. The Army had some dumbasses, and they didn’t like queers, blacks, or working chicks. But that was beside the point, as this was not about liking anyone. When it rained we all got wet, and when it was too hot we all sweated together, and everybody knew what we had in common was more important than what we didn’t.

  Breakfast was like everything else, something that used to be shared with a selected few wives, girlfriends, or boyfriends if not eaten alone, transformed here into another communal event. Most people would make the best of it, commenting about the weather. A few would annoy the majority by trying to talk about work, and some would rush to grab the corner tables that faced toward the TV, which, whether it was on or off, showing sports or a cooking show, made a little safe splash zone to eat in in silence. The food was bland, and the Army still insists chipped beef on toast is a breakfast food, but there was always coffee and you could fill up a mug, thermos, canteen, or bucket for free to take out.

  After eating, one by one we slipped away. Even in cavemen times people went off alone, maybe for sanitation, maybe because it was hard-coded in our lizard brains to do this one act privately. The nearest latrines, portable toilets, were lined up in groups of five or seven. You nodded hello to people, male and female, on the way in and out. Like on an airplane, the genders shared the facilities. There was nothing to flush, no running water, no hand washing, only a swipe of gel afterwards. The imported Sri Lankans used a large truck to suck out the tank underneath and then used cleaner water to hose down the interior. If they did it wrong the toilet paper got soaked and devolved into a goopy mess. I learned to check for paper, another new skill for Iraq. Everyone missed once but few people made the mistake twice—the lizard brain at work. People were forced together in such private ways in such public places to do their own thing, rarely acknowledging one another until they were thrown back together at nightfall.

  Haircuts and Prostitution

  There was only one thing you had to pay for on the FOB, and everybody needed it: a haircut. Housing was free, food was free, laundry was free, but haircuts cost three bucks. As with any other capitalist venture, you had competition. There were two places on any FOB to get your haircut.

  The AAFES barbershop run by the Army followed a franchise model from base to base, so every one of them was decorated with the same freakishly weird posters showing suggested haircuts, something like posters of sixties Brylcreemed masterpieces I remembered from childhood barbershops. Here, there were only two. The poster with the white guy showed a “high and tight” (hair on top, clean-shaven sides) and the poster with the black guy showed a “high and tight fade” (hair on top, shaved sides that tapered up into the hair on top). Most of us had our heads shaved clean for the heat, the fashion, and the ease of upkeep, and for that you didn’t need a poster.

  The AAFES barbers were all from Sri Lanka or Bangladesh, imported into Iraq by yet another unnamed subcontractor to work for cheap. They spoke little to no English, other than barber words like short or shave. A sign of a newbie soldier was his trying to have a conversation with the barber: “You see the Yankees game on AFN?” “Short, mister?” Filling up the silence in the shop were Bollywood movies blasting at near paint-peeling volume and featuring an endless parade of chubby Indian women and male actors with, ironically, elaborately styled thick black hair. I say movies, plural, mostly as an act of faith, as it was possible that the same movie played over and over again. The American customers knew no better and the endless loop of the same film would have hammered home the feeling of life in purgatory the Third World barbers no doubt knew well.

  The special thing about the AAFES barbers was that they offered a sort of massage at the end of the haircut. It did not cost extra and it lasted only a moment but, if you liked, the barber would rub his hands on your head, pound his fists on your shoulders, and vigorously scrub up and down your neck with his palms. There was a barber who’d crack your neck for you, grasp
ing your head in his skinny arms and twisting it. Once I felt vertebrae move halfway down my spine, with pain like an angry alarm clock. Some soldiers didn’t like the man-touching massage part and stood up with their hands out, palms up in the universal gesture of “hell no,” while most just went with it.

  Competing with the Bollywood barbershop was a small Iraqi-run place, an artifact of a 2005 campaign to revive the Iraqi economy by creating lots of small businesses, starting with ones right on the bases. Episodes of spectacular food poisoning shut down most of the falafel and kebab stands, while the market for Iraqi trinkets proved to be shallow, leaving by the time I arrived in Iraq just the hajji shops and the barbers.

  The Iraqi barber on Falcon, like his brothers from Sri Lanka, had a vocabulary of about six English words, all synonyms for short. He favored the phrase too easy, meaning something you requested would be easy to deliver. “Can you cut my hair short?” “Too easy.” “Can you cut my hair quickly?” “Too easy.” Haircuts with this guy were indeed too easy because he seemed to deliver a shorter version of whatever your hair looked like, no matter what you asked for. It took only a few minutes given this efficient system, so this was the place to go when you were in a hurry. He also gave the closest shaves, scraping away with a single-edged razor blade he pinched between two fingers. Let a guy whose language you did not speak shave around your lips and up your neck with a single-edged piece of steel and you need never again prove your courage in any way.

  At FOB Hammer the Iraqi-run barbershop was endlessly rumored to be a front for prostitution. The deal was that you waited until the other customers were not listening, then asked the barber for a “special massage.” Having spoken the code, you were led to a back room for paid sexytime fun. The barbershop operated out of a steel shipping container and so even the stupidest person knew there was no back room, or any room, absent the one you were sitting in. That time after time the barber would answer “no special massage here” just made the rumor more compelling, as not just anyone could order up a girl. The rumor would shift: sometimes it was only officers who could get a girl, or the girls would not service tall soldiers, or they would go only with civilians. But in fact no one could name a single person who ever got anything more than a mediocre haircut. I have no doubt that out there in the desert horny soldiers even today are convinced that sex is available for sale through that barber. You just want to believe.