I Have Iraq in My Shoe Read online

  After the thumbprinting, and the blood drawing, and the ubiquitous shuffling of papers, and more waiting, we were finished and could go to lunch.

  We ate at the Warren-approved Assos Restaurant. He liked it because it was a Lebanese restaurant and was “safe,” which I assumed meant they did not use cyanide as a cooking ingredient. Warren also had yet to say anything complimentary about the Kurds. Assos was decorated in faux-luxe/understated-Trump with dark wood and gold leaf everywhere. We ordered hummus, baba ghanoush, fatoush (cucumber, tomato, onion, and crouton salad), and chicken kebab. Carey explained that she had a really weak stomach and had already been having some intestinal difficulties. She only ate the chicken. I was starving after my paltry meals of kiwi, yogurt, and honey (and am conversely blessed with a constitution like an InSinkErator garbage disposal), and I ate everything.

  It was fantastic. The chicken kebabs were tender and juicy, the hummus was tangy and smooth, and the bread was fresh and piping hot. I loved Middle Eastern food. In Seattle there was a restaurant called Mediterranean Kitchen, and my friends and I used to go for shawarma and hummus and all that stuff. This came as somewhat of a surprise to Warren, who had really begun to relish his new role of Knowledgeable High Priest of The Iraq. He informed me that I would undoubtedly get sick here, everyone gets sick here, and then grandly attempted to explain baba ghanoush to me.

  Warren: Ger…sorry, Gretch, baba ghanoush is…

  Me: I know, it’s basically pureed eggplant.

  Warren: You’ve had baba ghanoush before?

  Me: Yes.

  He seemed disappointed. And I was not going to get sick.

  The evening before I was to go up to Erbil, Warren hosted an informal dinner, again at Assos. I had a hard time believing this was the only acceptable restaurant in a city of close to a million people. This was now my third visit to Assos. More hummus? More baba ghanoush? More chicken kebab? Fine. It really was good, and my kiwi-yogurt-honey combination had lost its allure after three days.

  The dinner was just for Warren’s department, which was known as CED (the Continuing Education Division). It was sort of a “welcome to the new semester” situation. There were ten of us at the table, and as I looked around at everyone, who seemed to be slightly in awe of Warren, I thought, “Oh, that piece of crap. He really is my boss.” So much for my autonomous experience here. I will have to report to him.

  There was really no getting out of this now. I was thousands of miles away from home and thousands of dollars in debt—even more now, thanks to the stupid hockey bags.

  Warren pushed back his chair, stood up, puffed up his chest, and looked around the table. He seemed nervous when he began his speech, which started out with him saying this was a casual dinner, and then took a slightly awkward turn as Warren made a crass, toilet-related joke at the expense of one of the teachers at the table, and everyone gave polite, awkward laughs (or coughs). Erf, I was uncomfortable.

  I felt like I didn’t know this Warren very well, and I really wasn’t sure if I liked him. Was I just PMS-ing? Was I still jet-lagged? Was there something wrong with the hummus? He was much more aggressive than I had remembered. Earlier, I had seen him get into an argument with Turd Ferguson about the true meaning of a specific Kurdish word. I was thinking since Turd was Kurdish, he was probably right, and watched in mild horror as Warren completely lost his temper. His face burst into a brick-red balloon as his eyes bulged out of their sockets and a temple vein popped out on his forehead. I finally yelled, “Stop arguing with him! Your head is going to explode!”

  He seemed like he was trying too hard to assert himself in the boss role, or maybe he felt like he had to put on some sort of show for me. I had never seen him in a position of authority. In Korea we had been coworkers, and he had been really easygoing and fun. This New Warren was an only slightly more charming combination of Rush Limbaugh and the Great Santini.

  Again, the nagging question surfaced. Was this a mistake? Ohhhhhhhh, laws, I hate mistakes. Especially those of the uprooted-your-entire-life-and-are-now-stuck-in-scary-Middle-Eastern-country variety. Warren was the one and only person I knew here, and I felt like he was a complete stranger.

  What happened to him? Maybe my expectations were unreasonable. This was, after all, someone who idolized Vin Diesel. God, maybe I was just old. I felt a tiny wave of relief that I would be leaving Suli to move up to Erbil. I wouldn’t have to be around New Warren, with his obnoxious nicknames and his Terminator sunglasses and his swaggering and insane need to exaggerate everything. I was ready for some much-needed me-time and me-space and also ready to see all there was to see in Erbil.

  * The Turkish government made it illegal to speak Kurdish in Turkey. The region that borders Turkey and Iraq was said to be quite dangerous and very unfriendly for the Kurds, so it was no wonder they were trying to immigrate to Iraq.

  Chapter Nine

  “E” is for “Erbil” and “Embellishment”

  The morning after the Assos dinner, my new coworker Adam (who strangely did not have a nickname from Warren) and I loaded my hockey bags and suitcases and Adam’s lone backpack into one SUV, then climbed into a second car to be driven three hours north to Erbil, the alleged wonderland: home of a real German restaurant (with real German beer) and five-star hotels! The two of us would be the lone employees of the CED satellite campus. Again, no tanks and no Hummers, not even the H3. Warren’s idea of a convoy was apparently the trusty Nissan Pathfinder, and something called a Prado. This was not exciting. According to Warren’s definition of the word, I had taken a convoy to go skiing in Canada, visit the wineries in eastern Oregon, and camp out at a Dave Matthews concert at the Gorge in the late 1990s.

  While uneventful, the drive was visually stunning. Northern Iraq had some surprisingly beautiful mountain scenery, which reminded me of eastern Oregon, with its broad expanse of green, rolling up into the craggy, brown mountain range. We passed the odd goat shepherd with his flock, and several donkeys pulling large wooden carts of various things, and a handful of small farm villages that were seemingly crafted out of brown Play-Doh and straw.

  We also passed a vast compound, set a few miles back from the road, which, our gleeful driver Karwan informed us, was an infamous prison. Chemical Ali* was held there. It was creepy. Less creepy when Karwan pointed at the prison and laughingly crowed, “Hotel five star! For terrorists! Ha ha ha! Eat, sleeping, hotel!” The five-star terrorist hotel passed quickly, as we were going 150 kph. In American, that’s around 93 miles per hour. My photos of the scenery were blurry.

  Between Suli and Erbil there were five military checkpoints, complete with gun-toting Iraqi soldiers. The soldiers appeared mostly bored and young, many of them joking with one another, with guns casually slung over their shoulders. Karwan would roll his window down and greet the checkpoint guard with “Choni, bash, bash, choni” (which was sort of “hello, how are you, good”) and a few other Kurdish greetings thrown in, which all sounded like the same two words over and over again. Depending on the mood of the guard, we would either be waved through, or asked for our Iraqi residency cards, at which they would squint and look from Adam to me to the cards and back again. I had no idea what the card said. It was my smiling photo and a lot of indistinguishable squiggles. I sat in the backseat, watching each exchange, and curiously wondered what would happen if they wouldn’t let us pass. Would we have to sit there at the remote outpost until someone from the university called one of the politician-overlords and demanded our release? Warren had said we (university employees) were “treated like royalty” in and around the region. But he said a lot of stuff that wasn’t necessarily true.

  I really wanted to take tourist pictures at one of these checkpoints, but Adam said, “Nooo, no. You don’t want to do that. One of the other teachers took a picture once, and a guard came and yanked his camera out of the car.” But I needed photographic evidence for my friends. I just didn’t feel like it was real. It was like being in some Disneyland or Universal Studios sim
ulation: It’s a Small Iraq after All.

  As we drew closer to Erbil, the roads improved visibly. There were finally painted lines marking separate driving lanes (although no one paid much attention to them), and one stretch of road was dotted with solar-powered streetlights, which I found impressive. The Erbil compound was called English Village, and when we approached it from the main road, I saw that it was flanked by two similar-looking construction sites, complete with two comparable tall concrete skeletons of buildings. There was a sign in front of the nearest one, which had a sophisticated computer-generated image of a grand, impressive-looking hotel with “Kempinski” splashed across the lower left-hand corner. When Warren had said there were two five-star hotels next to the compound, I had sort of assumed they were finished. If I planned to have brunch at the Kempinski, I would need to bring my picnic basket.

  English Village, on the other hand, was thankfully completed, although it was nothing like a charming hamlet in Britain. It was more like a gated community you’d see in Orange County, California. Maybe just a little less opulent, but the villas looked very nice. Limestone maybe? Cement, probably. I wasn’t a builder, I didn’t know. I thought those farmhouses were made of Play-Doh.

  The “village” part was not an exaggeration. English Village was indeed a village. There were 420 villas connected by winding streets, and all of them, save the entrance and exit, ended in cul-de-sacs. As we drove in I counted the passing of seven blocks before we reached the university’s “campus,” which consisted of two identical side-by-side villas, #69 and #70, connected by a wooden deck. I was in #70, and Adam was in #69. Sixty-nine, har har har, Warren thought that was hilarious..

  My villa was an open floor-plan spacious five-bedroom manse. Sort of. Downstairs there was one small bedroom, two bathrooms, two classrooms, and a large kitchen. Upstairs there were four bedrooms, one bathroom, and a living room. It was really too much for just me, and after we had unloaded all my bags, I learned it wouldn’t be just me. Apparently the downstairs bedroom was set up for the Suli drivers to stay overnight. They wouldn’t have enough time to turn around and drive back to Suli that same day, so the gleeful Karwan and the disrespectful, beady-eyed Sabah would be sleeping in my house that night.

  My sense of wonder at the new accommodations quickly melted into a combination of astonishment and prickly defensiveness. I was tired of picking things out of my suitcase and exhausted from the tornado of activity from the past few days. I had been so looking forward to finally arriving in Erbil so I could fully unpack, regroup, and let my brain unwind and process everything, and I thought I would be able to do that in peaceful solitude. “The drivers sleep in my villa?” I asked Adam, my voice heavy with trepidation. He just shrugged and said, “Yeah, I didn’t think that was logical, but that’s how Warren set it up.”

  I have no idea why Warren thought this was an acceptable situation. It was as if he were creating his own exploitative reality show: We take a single American female, drop her into a house in an extremely conservative Muslim region, and then allow Kurdish Muslim men to sleep over. Watch what happens! Sure! Why not have random Kurdish men sleeping in the same villa? Furthermore, Adam then explained that Warren kept one room in the upstairs of “my” villa for himself, when he came up for weekly visits. I liked Adam. He had a mellow, easygoing presence and a wicked sense of humor. But he kept telling me things I did not want to hear and casually shrugging at my bewilderment.

  Back in November Warren had said, in one of his enticing emails, “four-bedroom villa, no roommates.” You all saw the email! I couldn’t have cared less about the four bedrooms; it was the “no roommates” part that I wanted. I was an occasionally reclusive Hobbit who craved privacy and had been living by myself in a one-bedroom apartment for the past eight years. For me to make a profound life change, like moving to Iraq, I really needed to be sure I would at least have my own little private living space. My astrological sign was Cancer, and according to horoscope and astrology information everywhere, “a secure home base is important to all Cancers, where they can crawl into their dens and find welcome and comfort as a respite from the workaday cares of the world.” Hobbit, hermit crab, same-same.

  I had a very specific conversation with Warren about the living situation and what my expectations were. The conversation went like this:

  Me: Tell me about the living situation.

  Warren: Your villa is attached to the classroom and conference room—those are downstairs. Your living quarters are upstairs.

  Me: The classroom is in the villa?

  Warren: Yeah, but it’s totally separate. There’s a door that locks that part off.

  Me: Is the kitchen upstairs?

  Warren: Uhhh, no.

  Me: So the students have access to my kitchen?

  Warren: Well, technically yes. We need to have it available for them to have tea and coffee during the class breaks.

  Me: But how do I keep my food separate? I don’t want the students getting into all my stuff and eating my food.

  (I may have been imagining them as naughty, hungry squirrels.)

  Warren: Oh, they won’t do that!

  Me: Um, okay. And the other person who will be up there—they have their own villa, right? I don’t want a roommate.

  Warren: No, no, they have their own villa. Gerts, it’s totally up to you, whatever you want. If you want a roommate, you can have a roommate. If you don’t want a roommate, you don’t have to have one.

  Me: I don’t want a roommate.

  Warren: No problem. But if you decide later that you want one, you can have one.

  Me: I DO NOT WANT A ROOMMATE.

  Warren: No problem!

  In the ten years between his Korea teaching stint and his job in Dubai, Warren had lived in a bucolic eastern Canadian province town and dabbled in several different careers, one of which was selling used cars. I desperately wished I had remembered that when adding details to my contract. I didn’t want the pony anymore. I wanted my privacy. No roommate. No room for random Kurdish men, regardless of their employ with the university, sleeping in my villa. Honestly. I said no god damned roommate! I don’t know how I could have been any clearer with Warren. A neck tattoo? “I Don’t Want a Roommate” in Broadway bold font?

  Upon inspection of the upstairs of #70, I discovered that Warren had taken the larger, brighter room for himself. Surprise, surprise. Several of his jackets hung in the closet, his shoes were on the floor, keys were on the dresser, and next to the bed was a huge full-length mirror. Definitely Warren’s room. The other available bedroom, opposite his, was darker, smaller, and just sadder. I wondered if someone had died in there. There was a tiny balcony outside the room that was a mere five feet from the next-door neighbor’s balcony. I did not know the next-door neighbors and wasn’t in a commune-with-the-neighbors kind of place just yet. I was still getting used to the idea that I was in Iraq and needed as much of a figurative security blanket as I could get.

  I called Warren on my new, university-issued cell phone and asked, “Can I have the room that your stuff is in?” He paused for a second, but then responded with the usual, “No problem!” I didn’t even care if he didn’t mean it. That fucker owed me. I quickly moved all of his stuff to the sad, dark, foreign-neighbor–balcony room. Why didn’t he just have his room in Adam’s villa? Adam was a boy! I wasn’t! I didn’t understand this. Adam didn’t understand it either and, again, just shrugged when I asked him about it.

  My mood brightened a little when I pulled my bags into my new, bigger, brightly lit room. Adequate lighting, hooray! And a full-length mirror! I dug around in the hockey bag to find my fancy Bose iPod docking station, plugged in my iPod, and began the Herculean task of unpacking. The combination of my music and the sight and feel of my clothes, magazines, toiletries, and general crap bumped my mood from brightened to brilliant, and I was truly happy for the first time since arriving in Iraq. As Janet Jackson sang, “Everywhere I go, every smile I see…” I lined up all my shoes in
a little parade in front of the closet, so they were all there, smiling back at me.

  I went to sleep that night having unpacked enough to make me feel much more at home, but the villa was still very foreign. Knowing the two drivers were downstairs, I made sure not to drink any water before going to bed, so I wouldn’t have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. To reach the bathroom I had to walk out of my room and down the L-shaped hallway, which was nakedly visible from the downstairs entryway. I double-locked my bedroom door with the key and stuffed a dirty shirt along the crack at the base of the door.

  In the moments before drifting off to sleep, I had massive pangs of homesickness, and I missed my kitty cat, Herb. He was a seventeen-pound black Maine Coon mix, a very affectionate breed, and he would always press his fat, furry little body up against my torso, sigh deeply, and settle in for the night. I didn’t have anything other than a small, squishy pillow to snuggle up with, and the pillow didn’t purr.

  Herb had managed to express his vehement displeasure at my leaving. He was a smart little guy and any time I pulled out the suitcases, he knew I was going away. The second I turned away to pull something from the closet, Herb would jump into the middle of the suitcase, or bag, and park himself there, in a fuming manner. I could tell he was angry because his eyes were slightly narrowed. Herb couldn’t talk, but he was a master of communicating in bodily elimination.

  As I had unzipped one of the hockey bags while unpacking, a faint waft of urine passed under my nostrils. Dammit, Herb! Bending closer to the top part of the hockey bag, I confirmed that Herb had indeed peed on top of the bag. I panicked, thinking that the urine may have soaked through to the clothing that was packed on top. I didn’t want to be the new English teacher who smelled like cat pee. The hockey bag material was pretty industrial, though. Sure, they needed to be sturdy to carry all that hockey crap, but I’ll bet a few of those hockey players had vengeful kitty cats at their houses too, and no one wanted to be the pro hockey star who smelled like cat pee.