11/11

My two month anniversary of leaving home. I did some yoga, straightened my room, and now I'm enjoying a cup of tea and listening to a Corelli concerto while doing a crossword puzzle.

Mortar attacks have slowed down to once a week or so. Work is busier than ever with routine urgent care stuff (migraines, stomach flu, sprained ankles, fingers slammed in doors...). It makes the days go by quickly, but the months are dragging along- I feel like I've been here for two years and not just two months.

I'm missing Thanksgiving, a holiday I've always loved. I love it that there are no expectations or cartoon characters bringing presents. You just spend an afternoon with people who you love while eating good food. Two of my favorite things. I have lovely Thanksgiving memories, I am very lucky. I will take the opportunity to remind myself of all the things I am thankful for- my incredibly supportive family and friends, my health, my home. All the things we should be thankful for every day but that we so often forget about. This year I will be thinking of everyone I've ever spent a Thanksgiving with and wishing you all the very best.

Boo

Happy Halloween

Books

I started reading The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, by T.E. Lawrence on my flight to Kuwait. This autobiography by the infamous Lawrence of Arabia was an excellent introduction to the world I was entering. He perfectly captures the dusty dry scenery, the vastness of the land. I was impressed with his insights to the politics of the region (rebellion against Turkey and independence for Arab peoples) and his support for their cause. While he was a British soldier, and his support of independence had ulterior motives (Turkey was a German ally during WWI) ,he also clearly cared about the locals on a personal level. He was not too proud to write about his weakness during initial camel rides, which were often days long with little food or water. On his first major trip, he described explicitly his suffering of dysentery. His appreciation for the culture as a whole and his deep love of his Arab bretheren are clear on every page.

That said. This book is very long. There is a lot of military and political minutia that caused my eyes to glaze over and my brain to turn off as I gave up keeping track of who or what or where the story was taking us. I finished, but only because I had so much free time in Kuwait that I could buckle down and put in the long hours required for this book. I'll have to rent the movie.

Next up was the New York Times war corespondent Dexter Filkin's The Forever War. Filkins book begins with an prologue that takes place during the battle of Falluja, when he was embedded with a marine company. Running across the street amid flying bullets, watching marines die in front of him, you are immediately caugt up. The first chapter of the book takes place on a soccer field in Afghanistan in the 90's. The author and a crowd of locals are watching an exhibition of Sharia law. The Taliban chop the hands off thieves and finally they execute a convicted murderer. The story never really slows down, it takes you through 15 years of middle east correspondance from Afghanistan to Iraq. His writing is excellent- exciting and thought provoking and at times heart-wrenchingly beautiful. Depressing though. When a member of the Taliban laments that they just want to be taken seriously and treated as equals by the world leaders, you realize that we are truly living in different worlds.

Finally, The Great War For Civilisation, by Robert Fisk. While Filkins has been a war reporter in Iraq and Afghanistan for over a decade, Fisk has been living in and reporting from the Middle East for over 30 years, and this book shows it. He covers the first and second Afghan wars, the two Iraq wars, the Algerian civil war, the Iran-Iraq conflict, the Armenian genocide, and of course, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He carefully details the history of each conflict not shying away from politically unpopular views or his own errors of judgement. This author met Osama bin Laden no less than three times.

While Lawrence's book was interesting from an historical perspective, the writing is rather dated, and the picayune details of political squabbling were at times sleep inducing. Fisk's writing is detailed enough to be educational but exciting enough to be a quick read. Not an easy read- unless you think reading about the horror of war first hand is easy- but a quick one. Fisk is the book I should have read first. It has everything I wanted when I came here, looking for a historical yet contemperary perspective on the conflicts of the middle east. Unfortunately, because I left it for last, I burnt out before I was halfway through. I've set it aside for now and am knee deep in The Wilderness Warrior- a wonderful book about my favorite president (T.R) and his campaign to save America's wilderness.

A couple more photos from Al Faw Palace

Pictures taken by a co-worker and forwarded on to me.






Practicing some sort of shoulder adjustment with the physical therapists.






My daily routine of gym-breakfast-work-dinner-read-bed-repeat changes a little on weekends. Saturday afternoon we have training and Sundays we don't have to be in to work until 1 pm. So, I had a leisurely morning, slept in until 6:30 before hitting the gym, walked through the local bazaar (passed up a beautiful, hand made silk rug for $3500), enjoyed a morning to myself before going to the aid station. It was almost pleasant.

Bagdad

I have been in Iraq for 2 weeks and I definitely prefer it to Kuwait. There's trees here and a variety of birds. The temperature is cooler than Kuwait by a good 10 degrees.

We went to Al Faw palace for a medical conference. Al Faw was one of Saddam's 99 palaces, and it was not exactly what I imagined a palace would look like, but it was nicer than the trailer that I live in. It's got a man made lake around it, stocked with specially bred bass.




myself and a fellow PA, CPT Reba Schmidt in a throne that was a gift from Yassar Arafat to Saddam




The conference was good. It was nice to get away for a little while and associate with other medical providers; to talk about tennis elbows and frozen shoulders; to eat typical conference fare (fruit plates and donuts and coffee) and make connections. It almost felt like any conference I've ever been to. Except everyone was dressed the same and carried a weapon.

Kuwait

It took about 20 hours to get from Washington to Kuwait, and I totally lost a day in the process. After arriving at Camp Buehring, KWT at 10:30 at night, we woke up at 3am for an early morning range, the idea being that we’d be done before it got too hot. In actuality, we didn’t finish zeroing our weapons until noon.





I ended up spending over 2 weeks in Kuwait, which is about 2 weeks too long. We had some trainings scheduled and I did sick call every morning, but mainly the days were pretty dull. We got acclimatized to the heat, caught up on some sleep, went to the gym and drove eachother crazy in our 30 person tents.


So, all units pass through Kuwait on their way in or out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Many units take the time and effort to decorate the concrete barriers that are up everywhere. Some of the art is pretty bad, but some is rather interesting:
Pictures















It took another 12 hours to travel from Kuwait to Iraq, but I arrived this morning at 4am. I get to skip morning sickcall, but will start work at 1pm this afternoon.



The internet in Kuwait was expensive and unreliable, I would go every morning after sickcall to the USO tent, where you could wait in line for 2 hours in order to use internet for 20minutes. I checked my email and that was about it. Here in Iraq, the wireless is much better and I hope to be able to update this on a semi-regular basis as well as stay in touch with folks via email. Please email me if you want my snail mail address as well.
More later
Peace

Driving

Don't Do That
Stephen Dunn
Published in the New Yorker Jun 8 2009

It was bring-your-own if you wanted anything
hard, so I brought Johnnie Walker Red
along with some resentment I’d held in
for a few weeks, which was not helped
by the sight of little nameless things
pierced with toothpicks on the tables,
or by talk that promised to be nothing
if not small. But I’d consented to come,
and I knew what part of the house
their animals would be sequestered,
whose company I loved. What else can I say,

except that old retainer of slights and wrongs,
that bad boy I hadn’t quite outgrown—
I’d brought him along, too. I was out
to cultivate a mood. My hosts greeted me,
but did not ask about my soul, which was when
I was invited by Johnnie Walker Red
to find the right kind of glass, and pour.
I toasted the air. I said hello to the wall,
then walked past a group of women
dressed to be seen, undressing them
one by one, and went up the stairs to where

the Rottweilers were, Rosie and Tom,
and got down with them on all fours.
They licked the face I offered them,
and I proceeded to slick back my hair
with their saliva, and before long
I felt like a wild thing, ready to mess up
the party, scarf the hors d’oeuvres.
But the dogs said, No, don’t do that,
calm down, after a while they open the door
and let you out, they pet your head, and everything
you might have held against them is gone,
and you’re good friends again. Stay, they said.




Sherman Alexie
Survivorman
New Yorker June 8 2009

Here’s a fact: Some people want to live more
Than others do. Some can withstand any horror

While others will easily surrender
To thirst, hunger, and extremes of weather.

In Utah, one man carried another
Man on his back like a conjoined brother

And crossed twenty-five miles of desert
To safety. Can you imagine the hurt?

Do you think you could be that good and strong?
Yes, yes, you think, but you’re probably wrong.

The bikes in our garage. You can't seen the 8 bikes that are still in boxes. Is it just me, or does this seem excessive?

June

Summer is here, with asperagus, rhubarb and the annuals in the garden fighting the eternal battle with the slugs. Goldfinches are at the feeder and the canoe is in the lake. It's all good.

Spring

Finally, Spring appears to have arrived.






This asperagus is like 3 feet tall