Authors: Claude Schmid
The convoy exited FOB Apache.
“Clear!”
“Roger.”
“Loaded .50. Dukes on. Run.”
“LNs ahead,” Turnbeck reported.
“Kid in a ditch on the right.”
Kale remembered the bloody, dead boy. And he remembered Wilson.
“Don’t know what he’s doing. Fishing or something,” Turnbeck added.
“Passing LNs on left.”
“Lady with a bunch of sticks.”
Kale saw the woman. She was dressed from head to toe in a brown burka and carrying a bushel of sticks on her head as she walked. She looked as if she’d been carrying the load a long way.
The convoy continued their routine.
Minutes later, Turnbeck was on the radio. “Donkey cart with green foliage in the back.”
A boy pulled the donkey by a rope. The foliage was stacked so high that it nearly fell off the sides of the cart, and Kale didn’t see the boy until he passed.
“Approaching car,” Turnbeck reported. The car, with three occupants, passed them going in the other direction.
“Were they waving or flipping us off?”
“Flipping us off? Makes me want to go home.”
The convoy continued moving, but soon the traffic slowed. The first Iraqi check-point consisted of a small office made out of a metal shipping container. The road side of the container was covered with a layer of sandbags. Two IP manned the checkpoint. One of them slowed the civilian traffic by waving the cars down with his hand, and the other man walked up to the car window and checked the driver and his identification. As the first Humvee neared, one of the IP removed two orange street cones and a welded triangle of steel that blocked the road.
The policeman, wearing a black ski mask over his face to hide his identity, waved the platoon through. If his identity were known, he and his family—even his extended family—might be threatened or even killed. War had forced the man to hide in his own country.
Passing through the checkpoint, each vehicle sounded off on the radio.
“Two’s out.”
“Three’s out.”
“Four’s out.”
Out on the open road, they picked up speed again, maintaining intervals of about 50 meters.
Moments later they arrived at the location Wynn had chosen.
By the time the census teams had finished a dozen houses, a burning, orange sun stood stark and indomitable in the sky. Though it was still early, heat already swathed the land and the men in what felt like hot, sticky syrup. The soldiers continued from house to house, slogging through the heavy air, uncomfortable in the clamminess of wet, salty, sweat-filled uniforms, the itch of soil, sand and debris coating all exposed skin, burdened by the relentless stress of the tedious work.
A two-man security team of Kale and Tyson was on a rooftop, overwatching the census area. A three-foot-high wall bordered the edge of the roof.
Kale looked south at the people in a small makeshift market below. Shoppers walked the street, mingling with vendors at small stalls. Just below his position, a tall man sold fish and vegetables and flat bread. Other vendors sold electronics. Some offered assorted beverages. Many of the vendor stalls were nothing more than a cart or oversized wheelbarrow. Few had overhead cover. Kale watched people’s behavior. Most shoppers were women. Some had small children in tow. Most vendors were males—a few were kids, not much older than the boys yesterday, or Wilson. People moved about purposefully, taking care of their daily tasks. For a moment he imagined himself down in the market, moving through it, mingling with Iraqis. He would be lost in their world. He knew nothing about their lives. What made them happy? What were their worries? No, he didn’t fit. The past is a selfish thing, and nothing in his past prepared him to be one of them.
In their pre-deployment briefings this phenomenon was called
culture
. To understand the place they had to understand something of Iraqi culture. The Army called this cultural awareness. Why did it matter? Did culture really have something to do with killing that boy yesterday?
He tried to remember those culture briefings. How did you get a culture? Where did it come from? They’d been told it had to do with long-established characteristics of a society. Things like language, customs, history, and beliefs—a blend of tangible and intangible stuff like that. You didn’t get the option of buying in or rejecting it. Life’s inevitable baggage. You got born into it—almost like genetics, but not quite. A lot of culture was psychological. To change it took years. The textbooks said that culture was intertwined in everything, that you could not separate it out. Just as you couldn’t build a house without a frame, you couldn’t have a society without a culture.
Kale heard Tyson mutter something and glanced over at him.
“Cleric,” Tyson repeated, and pointed. A tall man with a black turban talked animatedly to a vendor. A small crowd had gathered. Kale had no idea what the conversation was about. Might be everyday talk. Clerics wearing black turbans claimed to be descendants of the prophet Mohammed. Clerics wearing white turbans did not. Was it a scolding for improper behavior?
The man getting the talking-to had a round placid face. If he was receiving a lecture, he absorbed it with suitable humility.
Several other men with cloaks and turbans surrounded the cleric, probably his escort. Some might be bodyguards.
On the far side of the roof, Kale saw flat and sunburnt ground in the distance. They were near the edge of the city—a few more streets of houses separated them from open fields. Further off, several miles away, he saw the tall smoke stacks of the idle brick factory, jabbing up into the sky like angry fingers from the underworld. The platoon had not been out there. He doubted if any units had. Too much space to worry about and too few men. The factory was out of action anyway. It had surely been stripped of anything valuable. Whatever jobs and income it had provided was gone.
Wynn, partly to get his mind off the dead boy and the boy’s killer, decided to watch Turnbeck’s team conduct a census. Minutes earlier, Turnbeck had reported entering a residence behind a lone eucalyptus tree. Wynn walked the 20 meters to the house.
Moose, now on Wynn’s security detail, moved ahead of him and knocked on the door. In less than a minute, a chubby Iraqi boy of nine or ten opened the door. The little fucker would probably grow up to be a terrorist.
The boy’s eyes flickered uncertainly and Wynn assumed he was still intimidated by the other soldiers who had entered his home a few minutes earlier. Wynn and Cengo went inside, passing the boy as he stepped out of the way. Wynn didn’t wait for an adult escort, since Turnbeck’s team was already inside. The hallway was narrow and poorly lit. Wynn smelt bitter Iraqi coffee. Sunlight cascaded brightly through a hall window into the room ahead. He could see people sitting in that room.
Moving forward, he recognized Turnbeck’s leg and boot through the doorway ahead, one of two men in the platoon with a red dog tag laced to his boot. Turnbeck was allergic to penicillin. Across from this boot was a giant sandal-clad foot, perhaps twelve inches long. Must be a big man. The worn-out sandal had seen better days. Sometimes little things told the most. A $75 high-top Army boot of tan suede leather, composite parts, custom-designed soles, and nylon laces, confronted a cheap, thin plastic sandal. What must an Iraqi think when a heavily armed and armored man arrives wearing a kit of equipment worth probably more than the contents of his house, sits down across from him and starts speaking to him in a strange foreign language?
Entering the room, Wynn was stunned by the appearance of the sandal-wearer. He looked like a massive scared blowfish: beady small silver eyes, grossly engorged body. Fiftyish, he wore thick rimless glasses, a stained
dishdasha
the size of a tent, and sweated profusely. Turnbeck introduced him as Banah Kassam. Kassam struggled to get up as Cengo translated formal introductions. The effort to rise proved so difficult that Wynn signaled for him to remain seated. Compromising, the fat man nevertheless reached up to shake hands from a seated position. His handshake was soft and unstable, like touching Jello.
The room had no extra chairs. Turnbeck offered to get up so Wynn could sit. Wynn waved him off.
“Continue,” Wynn told Turnbeck. “You’re doing fine.”
“Mr. Kassam completed the questionnaire a minute ago, Sir. Zanac has it, and is reviewing the answers with me,” Turnbeck said.
Zanac, the extra terp assigned to the platoon today to help with the census, knelt next to Kassam and held the questionnaire in his hands.
“Thank you for completing the questionnaire. Anything else you would like to add?” Turnbeck asked Kassam.
From where he stood, Wynn could see the Arabic writing, neat and measured, in each section of the questionnaire. He looked at Kassam again, still amazed at the bulk of the man. A man this huge was nearly immobile and surely unhealthy. He appeared perpetually out of breath, heaving like a bellows with air intake. His teeth were yellowish with thick plaque, and he had a large black mole on his ample upper lip that rolled like a bean whenever he moved his mouth. Kassam smiled broadly at Wynn, but was clearly nervous and insecure.
Kassam hadn’t answered Turnbeck’s last question. He looked hesitant. Wynn suspected he might be unwilling to share more than the bare minimum necessary to get the soldiers out of his home.
“Would he like to add something?” Turnbeck tried again. Kassam remained quiet.
Sensing indecision, Wynn intervened.
“Tell him we are sorry to have come into his home,” Wynn said in as non-threatening a manner as he could muster, wanting to reduce any additional tension caused by his arrival on the scene.
“Our purpose here, as he knows from the questionnaire we asked him to fill out, is to collect this information so that we and the Iraqi government better understand the people living here.”
Cengo translated. The fat man did not reply, but kept smiling, making no indication he wanted to volunteer anything, nodding his head every few seconds, looking back and forth from Wynn to whoever translated.
“We thank you for your cooperation. We would like to know how you think we can help.”
Finally Kassam started to speak, but immediately hesitated again, breathing deeply.
“Can he talk?” Wynn asked Turnbeck.
“Yes Sir, he spoke a few times to us already.”
“Ask him if he feels security in the neighborhood is better now or six months ago,” Wynn told Cengo, putting a slightly different twist on one of the preprinted questions.
The man finally answered, in a raspy voice, that he felt security conditions were unchanged and still dangerous, but that he was pleased to see growth in the Iraqi Security Forces.
This answer pleased Wynn. It suggested the population was aware of the increased efforts to build up the Iraqi Security Forces. Confidence in those forces would be critical for the new Iraq.
“What did he put down on the questionnaire for profession?” Wynn asked.
“Taxi Driver,” Zanac answered, after looking for that answer on the paper.
Wynn was surprised by that answer. The size of the man made it hard to envision him driving a taxi, or even getting into a car without great effort.
“Does he still own a taxi?”
Zanac asked the Iraqi.
“No.”
“When did he last drive a taxi?”
“This Friday, going to Mosque,” Zanac translated Kassam’s answer.
“Whose taxi was it?” Wynn persisted, doubting the taxi story.
Did this man really drive taxis?
A shadow passed the hall window. Wynn glanced in that direction, but saw nothing.
“He say he not know. He say he just get in taxi to go to mosque,” Zanac said.
“How long was he a taxi driver?”
When this question was translated, the fat man shuffled his feet, and rubbed his wrinkled forehead. Zanac repeated the question.
The fat man answered. “It maybe ten minutes to the mosque.”
“No, I mean if he was or is a taxi driver, how long did he drive a taxi? For how many years?” Wynn tried again, putting emphasis in his words in a way to make his question clearer.
Wynn continued to project the warmest smile he could, conscious that the image he represented might be what this man remembered about Americans.
“He say he never drove taxi. He say he ride taxi.” Cengo translated.
“Then why did he say he was a taxi driver? I don’t understand,” Wynn said, unsure.
Cengo spoke with Kassam for maybe a minute. Kassam listened patiently, then responded, his tone of voice unchanged.
“Oh,” Cengo said, looking at Wynn, “that mistake. Kassam say that his brother drive taxi. He himself not work. I think he little embarrassed by that. So he mean his brother, when he say that on the paper.” Cengo pointed to the census form.
Wynn nodded, understanding.
“Please tell him that we want to be sure all the information is accurate. Only with accurate information can it be helpful to us. Does the brother live in this house?” Wynn turned to Turnbeck. “How many names did he put down as living in this house?”
“He say ‘no,’” Cengo reported.
Zanac answered, “Six.”
Kassam spoke again, looking at Cengo. He probably sensed now that Cengo was the more important translator.
Cengo grunted and said, “The brother is in Maiarad, he say. The brother is only one in family with paying job right now. That why he put this down on census paper.”
Wynn considered the response. He smiled again at Kassam, and nodded his head. Was Kassam’s answer suspicious? Probably not. It was plausible. The man, if not entirely candid, might well be correct that the census question—
w
hat kind of work does the head of household do for income?—left room for interpretation. That’s why his soldiers had to review answers with the home occupants. Americans, too, got confused by legalistic questions. Wynn thought about telling Kassam that he didn’t like paperwork either, to put him at greater ease, but decided against it.
“Ask Mr. Kassam if he himself worked in recent years, and if so, what his profession is.”