Marriage and Cease Fires

March is soon approaching and will mark my 32nd birthday. I was born on Staten Island, N.Y. and never lived in one place longer than two years my entire life. The first three years I lived with my mother and grandmother on South Avenue in Mariner’s Harbor, with my Aunt Ethel in the Bronx for a while and several months with Mother Hale in Harlem. When I was three I was put into foster care, one year in one home and two in another. In foster care I started Head Start/pre-school by the projects in Park Hill and then attended P.S. 20 in Port Richmond for kindergarten and first grade. When I returned to my mother we lived on Lockman Avenue back in the Harbor started going to school at P.S. 44. That was second grade. Third grade I lived with my Aunt Ethel again for a year. She had since left the Bronx and moved back to Mariner’s Harbor. Between nine and eleven I bounced back and forth between my mother and grandmother on one side of the island, in Mariner’s Harbor, and my Aunt Crystal in South Beach on the other.

At twelve my grandmother moved to Grandview Avenue, not far from where we once lived on South Avenue, and I left South Beach for the Harbor again for another year where I started junior high school at I.S.72. That summer I moved upstate to Schenectady with my mother for five months before returned to Staten Island. I spent half the seventh grade in South Beach attending I.S. 49. I finished the other half in Mariner’s Harbor at I.S. 72. I was thirteen the summer of ’89 and moved to South Beach again expecting to return to 49 for they eight grade, but the night before school started I was asked to move back to Schenectady to be with my mother. I said yes and I never lived on Staten Island again.

In Schenectady, my mother was living in a homeless shelter at the time and we waited two months before she found us an apartment on Howard Street in a part of Schenectady called Hamilton Hill. I was 13 years old and it was cold in Upstate New York. While living on Howard Street I completed junior high school at Steinmetz Middle School and attended all but one month of ninth grade at Mt. Pleasant High School. That last month was at Grout Park Alternative School because I’d been arrested for assaulting a police officer. I was 15 and I can remember the police picking me up from my social studies class at Mt. Pleasant several days after I had originally been arrested and released. I was placed in detention and didn’t return to Schenectady until fifteen months later.

When I returned to Schenectady my mom had moved off The Hill to another part of Schenectady called Mt. Pleasant. I was 16 years old and a year later, after spending six weeks in Rhode Island at a summer pre-college program my mother kicked me out of the house. I lived five months with my girlfriend’s family, during which time my then girlfriend gave birth to my daughter. I moved into my own apartment in February of 1994, finished high school at Schenectady High School, where I had done my junior and senior years, and moved to Providence, R.I. to attend college.

In the four years at RISD I spent the first year in the dorms. The second year my daughter, her mother and me lived together in an apartment off campus before my daughter’s mother left me for someone who was something of a friend at the time. I actually moved into his old apartment my third year as he moved in with my ex-girlfriend and my daughter. In my last year of college I lived on Hope Street across from Moses Brown and the Brown athletic facility. Hope Street was only the third time in my life I lived anywhere at least 18 months and the first time since I lived on Howard Street. I spent a fifth year working in Providence after graduating, moving back to Schenectady for about four months, then moved back to Providence for only 2 months before ultimately moving up to Boston in 1999. I always tell people that in the six years I lived in Boston I moved 8 times. That’s the truth. I lived in North Cambridge, Lynn, the South End, Roxbury, Waltham/Newton, Mission Hill, Somerville and Dorchester. I left Boston and moved to Los Angeles in January of 2006 where I lived in three apartments - my third and current apartment for only seven months before taking this job in Iraq.

Friday during prayers Muqtada Al Sadr announced he is extending the cease-fire of his militia. I’m not a very religious, perhaps not even a very spiritual person anymore, but thank God he extending it. I never would have expected the decisions of Al Sadr would ever have a direct effect on me. Of course that decision didn’t stop someone from launching mortars at us the next morning. I don’t know if they were really close or if I’m just a little sensitive after that rocket attack Monday. I was asleep and after the first hit I was up and dressed within a minute. They stopped and I went back to sleep in my clothes. I can’t imagine the amount of violence that would’ve been unleashed if he canceled the cease-fire. The press reports that the now 6 months long cease-fire is one of three contributing factors to the reduction in deaths here in Iraq. The other two being the US troop surge and Sunni militias turning their guns against Al Qaida.

Saturday afternoon was very quiet. Mohamed and I went to play soccer but there was no one there except a young Iraqi guy. We all started talking and again, this has happened before, I was mistaken for Iraqi. Mohamed explained I was American and the look on the guy’s face said it all. He asked me if I was married and I said no. “Why?” I shrugged my shoulders. “No money?” he asked while making that rubbing your fingers “money” gesture. His English wasn’t that good and my Iraqi is worse so I just shook my head and went along with that. He said he was 20 and answered no when I asked him if he was married. My answer had seemed so unfortunate to him and I thought hard about why it should matter to me if I were married or not.

At night we left the office and drove to our trailers. Mohamed laughed, amused because people often think I am Iraqi. On the other hand he said, due to his fair skin his American friends in the states suggested he change his name to something like Steve or Mike. – For what, because he could “pass” and didn’t have to seem so foreign or so Arab? – He mentioned the young guy we met earlier had a hard time making sense of my name and was trying to give it some sort of Arab equivalent, which you can’t. You can’t even do it in Italian. Brian is Irish or Celtic. It’s not like my middle name, which could be translated to Paulo. Maybe the closest you can get in Arabic is Brahim or Ibrahim. Mohamed also explained that most Iraqi men, given I guess that they have money, are usually married by the time they are 21. Maybe if I had more money I would have gotten married already. I think there’s more likelihood that having had more access to money in the past would have had more impact on the person I am today versus having been a different person would have increased the amount of money I’d have access to now. Regardless, I’m still not sure why I’m not married or why it should even matter. I’ll also note that Iraqi men on average marry at age 21 but also have a life expectancy of 48 years. That’s what I heard. I don’t think you can go by the CIA’s internet fact book for that one.

Not Your Typical Groundhog Day

It’s strange when you have dreams, you can clearly recognize things while you are asleep but the moment you wake their memory fades and becomes as elusive as your distant past. Last night I dreamt of seeing Kim dressed in a blue silk dress with a red flower pattern, her hair was down and teased a bit on the sides, she had a large, yellow sheer fabric, somewhere between a scarf and a Sari, and was wrapping it around her body and over her head. She was working on a small low budget film with a group of her friends and I was waiting, for Kim I suppose. I decided to walk through the building alone, out the back door, onto the street and wound up at on of my favorite places, a diner. It had an interesting multi-floor layout with a bar and a rustic feel like a lot of places in Boston. I remember meeting a waitress, we connected and I had to leave.

When I returned to the set it seemed Kim was upset because her friends from the production had abandoned her but they were still there. It was an emotional abandonment I guess. I held out a $20 bill and offered her a hug. She accepted my hug, not the money. It felt good to give her that hug and support. She was reassured and I held out another $10 bill but she walked away. I stood there with $30 in my hand puzzled, that’s when I saw her in that dress.

Next I remember the producers expecting me to light the next scene. It was a room with a large door opening on either side, it was white and had two large sheets of sheer, white material hung from the ceiling along the walls with no door. I guess I was supposed to set up for the next shot; here I am asleep and I’m gaffing a shoot. I didn’t want to but I accepted my duty, really because they were supposedly Kim’s friends. – I might lose some work in the future over what I’m about to say but I’m not much of an electrician. I don’t know the difference between a volt and a watt. – I think I just told some guys what to do and walked away. I tried to return to the diner, because I felt I owed the waitress a tip, when I woke up. What stayed in my mind the most was seeing Kim in that dress wrapping her head. It was a very beautiful site.

I haven’t been feeling well. I think my immune system is down. Maybe I need to slow down with the cigarettes but with so much time on my hands with not a whole lot to do I’ve been smoking a lot; still at a pack a day. I’ve made an effort to hit the gym regularly and started playing soccer with my Iraqi co-workers. The first game of soccer I ever played was just last week and I scored my first two goals three days ago. I am still faster than most and Mohamed said he was impressed that I played so well for my first time, he said especially for an American. But I hurt my knee that day and aggravated it more yesterday. My left knee was swollen and became a little painful to walk on last night. I want to keep going, I don’t have much to entertain me here, so I’ll rest a couple days before getting back into the gym and onto the soccer court.

Boredom has set in. Everyday seems the same: Groundhog Days. Today I layered up. Subconsciously I must have felt the weather coming in, the wind was kicking up. I watched a perfect sun rising over Strawberry Hill, defused by the dust in the air. I didn’t have to squint to look. I thought about Fourth of July on the Esplanade in Boston, after seeing 28 Days Later with Cybelle in the theater, we waited for the fireworks and I stared at the sun setting with my eyes wide open. By midday I was swamped with work. There’ve been some whispers about the monotony getting to a couple of my coworkers. Charles asked me today, “is everything alright?” Of course I’m alright. – You’ll know when I’m not. – Stressing about my health, and my daughter I haven’t spoken to since July, trying to compress, transfer, upload, copy, burn and organize media files, I went to Subway to pick up a sandwich before making a mandatory meeting.

An hour later we had a rocket attack. Not a mortar attack. First we heard an explosion, like many before, a little distant, but the next one was close. My desk faces the wall at one end of our office trailer so I turned around and saw all five guys standing. Time to get out of here and find a bunker. This attack was serious. I huddled with Mohamed and Mohammed and Firas and Paul next to a barrier wall around the trailers, and listened as the explosions went off with the sound of incoming overhead. It's got this whirling, crackeling sound that when you hear it you know only a deadly explosion is coming, but you don't know where. There’s this recorded announcement that repeats over the speakers, “INCOMING, INCOMING, INCOMING.” I look up, the sky is grey, but then I think what's there to see. Instead I looked at the ground hoping everytime I heard an explosion that would be the last, and if not hopefully the next would miss. It was certainly one of those moments when I ask myself what am I doing here? I bummed a cigarette off Mohammed and we waited things out.

Eventually it all stopped. Afterward a lot of us from the different trailers gathered outside like the end of a fire drill. I could here sirens in the distance and Shane pointed out, “somebody was killed.” We don’t really know that but we’re safe now, relatively speaking. I saw my boss John and said, “good to see ya again,” shook Mohammed’s father’s hand and he gave me a hug, like a brother. He has an acute awareness. That was all just two and a half hours ago. Now it’s back to work. I've gotten five emails since, nothing has really changed. Sometimes the truth is always there, it just takes its time before it spits itself out at ya.

What's The Mob Got To Do With It?

The days are starting to slow down now that I’ve begun to get used to things. I stepped outside to smoke a cigarette and noticed that there are two tubes draining water into the ditch outside the office trailer. The ditch is lined with reeds and I started thinking about what use we have in creating good things in this life. Many people believe in an after life. What is the use of creating a paradise in this life when you are promised paradise in the afterlife? Is it because your rewards in the after life are warranted on your deeds in this life? What about murder? – Presuppose if it is justified in the defense of your faith, your religion, than of course you have done good in killing. – What of those you killed? Will they be saved or are they doomed to… what hell? Do you believe in such a place? Or are they truly dead? Soulless… only the righteous will be rewarded. The rest will have their souls destroyed, devoured, nullified. It doesn’t make much sense to me.

If I were to burn in hell wouldn’t I have to be self-righteous in order to suffer from what I would believe to be an unjust reward in the after life? And if that reward were in fact warranted wouldn’t I be in essence the same evil that is meant to inflict eternal pain and damnation? If that were true than wouldn’t I welcome, and be welcomed by such evil? It would be pleasure. Makes me think of the movie Hellraiser.

In the tradition of ancient empires the greatest assault is genocide, as it very much is today, but accompanied by the intent to erase an entire culture, society from history. Wouldn’t that be the most damnable act upon our enemies: the soulless ones? Their entirety extinguished from our consciousness, and their own, to create the oneness of blessed self-awareness. – I just can’t help wondering to myself as all that water fills that ditch, why are they dumping that water? For what purpose are we digging ditches, filling ditches, spending money, time, and confronting the cultural straits? What truly is the reward?

I got back to my trailer a little early and went to get dinner at the DFAC close by. I usually go to the DFAC closer to the office and didn’t know the one near my trailer closed at 8pm. It was 8:30 so I decided to walk to Burger King and hope they were still open rather than wait another two and a half hours before the DFAC opened again for the late meal. I came to find out Burger King was open until midnight so I got myself a burger, fries and a coke. A couple soldiers sat at the bench where I was eating and we got into a conversation.

I haven’t had much interaction with the soldiers here. These two so far have been the only two I’ve really had an open conversation with. One was from Wysconsin and the other was from Florida but went to college at Boston College. They were both well educated. I guess that’s what allowed me to break the ice a bit with them when I asked what schools they went to. Wysconsin went to school for marketing and Florida had his masters from Iowa and was accepted there for Radiology Biology to get his PhD. They were drinking coffee while I ate my burger and sipped my coke, and were waiting for a 1am flight south to Camp Falcon.

They started talking about their experience here in Iraq. They mentioned how they’ve seen people, Iraqis found dead execution style; one guy buried up to his neck with a bullet in his forehead, people strung by the feet of legs and hacked. But they didn’t see these killings so much about sectarian violence. They described it more in terms of a mafia mentality. In there opinion Iraqi problems are about money and power right now and not strictly religious or Islamic Fundamentalist. It's like this: if you do'nt pay off Al Qaeda, like the Gambino’s, someone’s gonna get hurt because you didn’t pay for protection. Capisce?

They also talked about the electrical power situation. One guy told them, “We’re going to blow up my neighbor’s power because I don’t have power.” they said his power would be fixed by the end of the week, "just wait." But the guy wouldn’t budge. “NO. I don’t have power, why should he have power.” He’s had to do guard duty on power transformers because people throw bricks at the transformers, either as sabotage or out of spite, I don’t know.

I had a good time talking to them for an hour. I know Iraq has problems and I know the US military is trying to help but I really don’t think the social climate is conducive to making any big advances in the short term. Iraqis still live with only an hour of electricity a day. The society has collapsed under Shock and Awe and I don’t know if average Iraqis can justify there current social conditions with the removal of Saddam.

Thankfully my job here allows me to think about real issues regarding the lives of Iraqis and understanding those issues first and foremost, as best we can from the perspective of Iraqis. Suicide bombings recently become a subject we were charged with discussing. It was mentioned 90% of all suicide bombers in Iraq are foreigners; North Africans and other Arab nationals. What brings these people to be willing to blow themselves up? It isn’t simply ideology because these same people have had to become indoctrinated into this ideology. To me it’s the same inside out situation when educated people on college campuses go on a shooting rampage in the US. These are people disaffected by their societies, either by poverty in Tunisia or New Orleans, or by affluence and apathy in the case of the Columbine shootings. Every situation is unique but in order to thwart the rise in Jihadists and militants you have to address the root of the problem; the point from which it stems.

So what drives these young people to entertain such a future as martyrdom? When you don’t have an education, or do and you still don’t have a job, no money, no girlfriend, no wife, kids, may not even have parents because of war what does “this world” have left for you? There is no dream here like the frontiers of the Brooklyn Bridge or the Mississipi River. That was a European-American mythos and they don’t wear bootstraps. So you can see how the promise of an after life seven or a thousand virgins waiting for you (shit give me one!) can be so acceptable. Of course when you have nothing left where do look? God. And he’s promising you what? Sex and your lost relatives to be reunited with; happiness is their reward for martyrdom. If these young people, within and outside Iraq, are not given a future in this world they will find it very hard to reject the ideology of Jihad; it’s the economy stupid.