ginmar (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} ginmar) wrote,@ 2004-11-16 23:49:00 |
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What you read
When I was a little girl, my dad would talk to me. That was about the time I started keeping a diary, and I was stupid. I didn't want to listen to my dad of all people talk about dead people I had never known and would never know. They had strange names, and people squirmed when he tried to talk about that stuff. That was history. More than that, it was embarrassing history, full of pain and things like poetry. All I cared about was who was mean to me, how I said mean things back, and how stupid boys were. My dad was so old. Who cared about Europe? Who cared about some war? What was war anyway? Was Canada going to invade? And----where was Canada, anyway? Some place north?
Eventually, I came around, but so many things were lost, because even then I didn't write that stuff down. I forgot so much, and I know my da didn't tell the other kids that stuff, just as he didn't read poetry to them and get all red-faced and watery-eyed when he did it. He looked like a bulldog in a tam o'shanter, a squat, frog-faced guy with a Karl Malden nose and a hoarse scratchy voice. When he took off the tam you could see his combover, which fooled nobody---including himself. I think it was habit. He had a big belly and gnarled hands, and extremely emotional eyes. They'd do all sorts of things, express all kinds of emotions, so any conversation with him was a roller coaster. Roller coasters were not popular things in Duluth Minnesota. Minnesota Nice dictated not so much that you were nice, but that you could fake it.
It was shocking realizing that he had a secret identity: He was a guy, too. His name was Charles Rex, and long before I was born, he was a man who'd done things he seldom talked about. As a father he had lapses----he never successfully concealed his pleasure at me being kicked out of Catholic school, for example, and he liked to roll his eyes at anybody who was sanctimonious-----but he stopped being just Dad one day when I came home and found him with his fedora on the dining room table, his forehead in his hands, still in his overcoat, weeping.
He wasn't very good at it. Guys don't get the practice we do, so they don't know to let it out. Keeping it in hurts much, much more and drags it out.
He and Mum had a difficult relationship even then----he needed her in a rather lost way, and she knew it. They fought all the time. Classic case of opposites attracting---and then what? But that day, she pulled me aside. "Gin...be extra nice to your dad, today, okay? He's had a bad day."
That was Mum. There was a nobility to her that seldom got noticed, because she made it seem like an ordinary thing. But when I recieved the best compliment of my life, it was her that should have gotten it: "You see beauty in simple things, don't you, gin?"
What preceded that compliment was a friend planting all sorts of cheap little flowers in a window box. They were a mess of color and texture and size and shape, and they were utterly gorgeous. I went on and on for about five minutes, till the guy looked at me in wonder. I expected sarcasm---I've been accused of being too easily amused. Instead, he said that phrase, and he reminded me of mum. She'd help me deliver papers, then stop me to point out a baby wild bunnie in the grass, or a spider web spangled with dewdrop diamonds. And keep in mind, she didn't want to help me with my bloody paper route, either. But she did it.
That's one of my biggest regrets. But that moment, seeing my dad crying wretchedly into his hands because he didn't know how to do it, and then my mom putting aside all those fights to make her plea, well, then----that's a lesson I'd wished I'd learned earlier, along with writing everything down.
I keep thinking of that here, and it strikes me every day. It's like reading palms: Read the face, then the hand. I could read my dad that day, and it was like reading about Helen Keller realizing that the symbol stood for a concept.
That's my dad. He had done the things in the books, been places that I didn't even know the name of, and he had done things before I was born. Once, he had been my age, and not even had a thought of a kid like me. He had done things that were symbolic. That was the first time I recognized the concept.
And my mum? Who was she? Mum was more of a mystery than dad was, because you tended to know where you stood. With Mum you never knew. She just didn't want to talk about it. Dad you couldn't shut up.
It was like they dual identities, thsse two. And there was no one to decypher them, either.
All the stories they wanted to tell me were mostly gone by the time I was ready to listen. Sometimes they surface here and there in my memory.
Like bodies.
Or ghosts.
Read the face, then the hand.
Coming to this country as someone who really doesn't speak Arabic has forced me back into that habit, that fortune teller's trick. What makes me think about it are my parents. Not that I see any men wearing tams and those big shirts my dad fancied, but somehow there's a certain similarity of expression.
Dad had laugh lines all over his face. For a guy who was so sarcastic, he was cautious about letting it out, smiling sort of one-sided, so his laugh lines were kind of uneven. Mostly he smiled, sort of grumpily, like it pulled a muscle or something. Most of his expression was in his eyes, and when he smiled with them, they just about disappeared. He sort of looked like an Irish turtle. Mum's face was more complicated. To this day, I can't imagine why anyone would want a face lift. Every line on her face was a story--birth, death, stillbirth, funny kid sayings, good report cards---- and every now and then----when she'd let me---I'd put my hand on her face and be overcome with words. My mom. Neither of them was prone to sentiment much. True love was best demonstrated by sarcasm and occasionally shy gestures.
Mom just hated me dancing. Hated it. She wouldn't contribute a dime to it so I had my own secret identity for a while: geek at school, secret papergirl, and ballet dancer. She also hated stuffed animals. Then one day I opend up a Christmas present from her while I was living in LA: it was an Angelina Ballerina doll. I still have it, fifteen years later. I waited to ask her about it till I finally got home for a visit that year. "Oh, you know," she fidgeted. "I just thought...you'd like it." Truce. I miss you. I miss everything about you, even the stupid things.
And so it's twenty years later, because it was that long ago that both of them were still themselves, and now I find myself surrounded by a whole nation of people like Mum and Dad, people whose faces are the only clues I've got. And I keep thinking that veils and turbans are the least important clues there are to understanding people, just like uniforms and skin colors. But over the months I've been here I've seen plenty of faces. I want to remember every one of them.
I'm probably a pretty bad soldier. Granted, I don't read and sleep on convoys the way one guy I know does, but still----I keep looking at the people we pass. Whose sister are you? Whose mother? Whose father? Looking at them sometimes produces the sudden and sharp feeling for losing my own. Looking at them sometimes makes me feel like even if you have lost your own, if you can aid someone else's, yours won't be totally lost to you.
On convoy days, we get up early, and start getting ready----lining up ammo and vests and helmets, stuff to do while sitting around concluding whatever business it is we have to do where we're going. It's monotonous. The humvees are really loud, so it's not like you can have deep discussions, either. You look out the window first out of desperation, then out of curiosity. And then, maybe, recognition.
There have been IEDS and VBIEDS along here recently, and yesterday morning, we had actually planned to take a different route because the main one was too dangerous. By some mysterious alchemy, the route was cleared, and so instead of going to Karbala, we headed to Najaf.
This is such an ancient country. Parts of it along the rivers seem almost primeieval, with the ten foot rushes and the fan-shaped palm trees. You expect to see a dinosaur, especially at sunset, when the earth is black and the sky is gold. Long stretches of it are lush, and then abruptly it changes to dry sand and dust. Fields of garbage pass by the windows in multi-colored heaps, and there's always a few stray dogs or people picking hopefully through them.
People forget how different parts of this country are. Up north, it's violent. It's impossible to forget how lucky soldiers like me are. Here it's relatively peaceful. We only get the occasional IED and VBIED. It's that quiet that makes us nervous. It gets too quiet for too long, and you start wondering if things are simmering.
But Najaf, too, was subdued six months ago. It used to be Maqtadah Sadr's city. Seeing it was a shock.
Getting there was relatively easy, because Humvees can get over just about any obstacle. We drove over the median, and the traffic obligingly stopped to let us pass. That was when I noticed something different. We were close enough to see faces, and those faces looked interested, relaxed---and friendly. Around the post, we're used to seeing that. In some areas, what we get is tense, tight looks and sternly-averted eyes. Even the kids in those places just look at us as we go by, not waving, just staring.
We passed a gas line a quarter mile long, drivers leaning wearily on dusty car hoods, sitting inside front seats. They all seemed tired and dispirited, and the Iraqi National Guard was waving their hands wearily and seemed to barely notice us as we went by. One of them had an RPG. For a truly frightening moment, the gunner swiveled, and then we registered body language: the guy had it propped on his shoulder the way we do occasionally with our weapons, and he wasn't even looking at us.
We drove on and on, crossing not one but two rivers. Women in bright red dresses with black skirts and veils tugged donkeys behind them, both women and animal laden with cloth-wrapped bundles of straw. We passed forests of sunflowers, and fields of what had to be winter crops. Ducks waddled along the side of the road, and at one point I saw a sight that could have come straight from the bible: a man in a gray dishdashah by the side of the road, a lamb wrapped around his shoulder. In one hand he held an old-fashioned shepherd's crook, complete to the curved hook on the end.
We saw what is normal for this country. I glimpsed one little girl striding up the dirt road from her house, briskly tying her head scarf on as she went, a Girl With a Mission. It was just an ordinary thing for her, that veil, and that was an interesting thought.
Another little girl caught my eye as we got stuck in traffic. She was wearing a pink blouse and a black skirt, trying to turn over a bucket or something, as we stalled there, we gradually noticed her. She had a bright face and vivacious eyes, and as she noticed us she got bashful and turned away. Then she gathered her courage and shyly looked at us again. We exchanged glances until the traffic speeded up, and when we moved, she lifted one hand and waved at us.
Gradually, something else dawned on me, too. We were being waved at. I'm a waving fool. Hey, every little gesture. The kids always wave. But as we got further and further south, it was adults who lifted their hands first, and smiled. And what smiles! They smiled as if they were fond of us, as if we were old friends. Men, women, all the kids---it was like we were neighbors back from a visit that had kept us away too long. Young men, old men, women in full abbayas, women in chic outfits and without veils----they all waved and smiled at us. When we smiled and waved back, it felt a little bit like euphoria.
We got in traffic on the outskirts of the city, and I started looking for someone. I look for guys, really, because women tend to be more shy than men. I know it when I see it, but I'll be damned if I can describe it. I just look for someone with smile lines, especially the sort that seem formed by kindness. Sometimes you can just tell evne if you can't desribe it. I've seen people who were utterly beautiful that weren't half as a attractive as somebody who'd spent his whole life laughing---kindly, mind you--and had the lines to show for it.
I finally settled on the driver of a minibus filled with an assortment of men, women and children. This is public transport. These guys buy these buses and run regular routes or do commission type things. He was an older guy with richly-wrinkled eyes and a patient look, plus a truly enormous white mustache. I caught his eye and waved. There was just a second while it registered. And then he jumped just a little, and gave this huge grin, and then...everyone else in the bus saw him and started waving and smiling too. Everyone pressed up against the windows and smiled and waved just as idiotically as I was doing. A dozen hands appeared here and there and little faces and big ones popped up in the windows. And they were all so friendly, so happy, that it took a while to sink in.
Traffic moved along, and we were no more than three or four feet from the traffic going in the opposite direction. I waved and waved and waved. Single men in cars got all bashful and ducked their heads and then looked up underneath their eyelashes. Women just looked up from the sidewalk, from the passenger seat, from the driver's seat---and then waved. I spotted little kids and waved at them. Then the adults in the cars would horn in and grin at me, and I grinned right back. I kept waving at one person----and then seeing hands pop out of six or seven vehicles around them. I spotted one older gentleman in the cab of a semi. The cab was crowded with people, of all ages and both genders, and festooned with pictures of Iraqi popstars. Tassels swayed everywhere. When I waved at him he bounced in his seat and everyone jostled to crowd the window and get in the action. It's an amazing feeling, having that much good will directed at you.
And that was the whole trip. It was constant and left me shaking my head in awe. Who are these people? Even passing by the mosque, usually the place we face some tension, we found only smiles and grins, and then we were on our way home.
As the sun set, we passed a gathering of cars parked by a turnout on the side of a road, far enough away from Najaf to make me wonder if the city's good will was behind us. I waved automatically, but then too late noticed the characteristic headdress of an imam, typically the most conservative of figures, and ususally not someone who'd appreciate being waved at by an unveiled woman, espeically an American.
The vehicle had to slow down to take the curve and negotiate the traffic, so I got a good long look at him. He and I looked at each other, and then his eyes warmed like there was a candle wick behind them, slowly gathering strength. The smile reached his lips, and he raised his hand and gave me a dignified acknowledgement, not quite a wave, but a salute of sorts. He had the lines around his eyes that signify a man who smiles cautiously and gravely, not because he has no humor but because he contemplates the consequences of everything, and must be an example. He had my father's eyes. The crowd of young men around him shared a similar mien and I wondered if they were his pupils or his children----or grandchildren. They, too, smiled gravely, and each lifted a hand as we passed. It was almost like a benediction.
It was a long day and yet it seemed much less tiring than usual. Of course, it wasn't all public relations; we almost caused an accident. I waved at a donkey cart driver, and he gawped at me for so long the donkey absconded, leaving the poor guy to chase after it. At a stoplight, I played pattycake with the baby in the window of the car next to me; when we pulled off, the kid howled and I caught just a glimpse of the father's rueful shrug.
We spent all day driving and got back at sunset just as the palm trees were turning to black before us. Of course the smoke from the VBIED was long since disippated. I staggered to my room to sit in the dark, thinking about all the people I'd seen, hoping they had seen me---and us----as clearly as I saw them.
Every time I see a soldier here, I feel a brief burst of...what do you call it? Brotherhood? They're a reminder of home, of shared struggle. Doesn't matter if they're Polish, Bulgarian, what have you. The Poles have taken some hits for us, and when I think of the Bulgarians, I think of their prime minister, a man who was so overcome by being inducted into NATO that he had tears streaming down his face. I won't quote from Henvy V, but every time I see some soldier, I think, "Ah, somebody who understands what there is to bitch about."
Yesterday I felt that pretty much for everyone. I can't say how long it will last---probably as long as I meet the next fool who whines at me here----but it's like a drug now. All those people, all those kids. Those adults are raising their kids that way. I keep thinking of the little girl straightening her scarf like she was tying a shoe, and all the men I saw, casually toting kids around, far more than you see in Western cities. It seems like one guy out of maybe seven has a kid by the hand or in his arms, half of them girls.
I didn't come away from yesterday with any coherent motto, any crystalized sentiment. But to recognize my father's eyes in that man's face, in this foreign country, in the midst of this war---I was suddenly comforted--and suddenly determined. Someone out there has a father like mine, a man who lived long enough to see grandchildren. What other likenesses and similarities are there to discover?
Read the face, then the hand.
But first, make sure you read your own.
I'm going to bed before I simper.
When I was a little girl, my dad would talk to me. That was about the time I started keeping a diary, and I was stupid. I didn't want to listen to my dad of all people talk about dead people I had never known and would never know. They had strange names, and people squirmed when he tried to talk about that stuff. That was history. More than that, it was embarrassing history, full of pain and things like poetry. All I cared about was who was mean to me, how I said mean things back, and how stupid boys were. My dad was so old. Who cared about Europe? Who cared about some war? What was war anyway? Was Canada going to invade? And----where was Canada, anyway? Some place north?
Eventually, I came around, but so many things were lost, because even then I didn't write that stuff down. I forgot so much, and I know my da didn't tell the other kids that stuff, just as he didn't read poetry to them and get all red-faced and watery-eyed when he did it. He looked like a bulldog in a tam o'shanter, a squat, frog-faced guy with a Karl Malden nose and a hoarse scratchy voice. When he took off the tam you could see his combover, which fooled nobody---including himself. I think it was habit. He had a big belly and gnarled hands, and extremely emotional eyes. They'd do all sorts of things, express all kinds of emotions, so any conversation with him was a roller coaster. Roller coasters were not popular things in Duluth Minnesota. Minnesota Nice dictated not so much that you were nice, but that you could fake it.
It was shocking realizing that he had a secret identity: He was a guy, too. His name was Charles Rex, and long before I was born, he was a man who'd done things he seldom talked about. As a father he had lapses----he never successfully concealed his pleasure at me being kicked out of Catholic school, for example, and he liked to roll his eyes at anybody who was sanctimonious-----but he stopped being just Dad one day when I came home and found him with his fedora on the dining room table, his forehead in his hands, still in his overcoat, weeping.
He wasn't very good at it. Guys don't get the practice we do, so they don't know to let it out. Keeping it in hurts much, much more and drags it out.
He and Mum had a difficult relationship even then----he needed her in a rather lost way, and she knew it. They fought all the time. Classic case of opposites attracting---and then what? But that day, she pulled me aside. "Gin...be extra nice to your dad, today, okay? He's had a bad day."
That was Mum. There was a nobility to her that seldom got noticed, because she made it seem like an ordinary thing. But when I recieved the best compliment of my life, it was her that should have gotten it: "You see beauty in simple things, don't you, gin?"
What preceded that compliment was a friend planting all sorts of cheap little flowers in a window box. They were a mess of color and texture and size and shape, and they were utterly gorgeous. I went on and on for about five minutes, till the guy looked at me in wonder. I expected sarcasm---I've been accused of being too easily amused. Instead, he said that phrase, and he reminded me of mum. She'd help me deliver papers, then stop me to point out a baby wild bunnie in the grass, or a spider web spangled with dewdrop diamonds. And keep in mind, she didn't want to help me with my bloody paper route, either. But she did it.
That's one of my biggest regrets. But that moment, seeing my dad crying wretchedly into his hands because he didn't know how to do it, and then my mom putting aside all those fights to make her plea, well, then----that's a lesson I'd wished I'd learned earlier, along with writing everything down.
I keep thinking of that here, and it strikes me every day. It's like reading palms: Read the face, then the hand. I could read my dad that day, and it was like reading about Helen Keller realizing that the symbol stood for a concept.
That's my dad. He had done the things in the books, been places that I didn't even know the name of, and he had done things before I was born. Once, he had been my age, and not even had a thought of a kid like me. He had done things that were symbolic. That was the first time I recognized the concept.
And my mum? Who was she? Mum was more of a mystery than dad was, because you tended to know where you stood. With Mum you never knew. She just didn't want to talk about it. Dad you couldn't shut up.
It was like they dual identities, thsse two. And there was no one to decypher them, either.
All the stories they wanted to tell me were mostly gone by the time I was ready to listen. Sometimes they surface here and there in my memory.
Like bodies.
Or ghosts.
Read the face, then the hand.
Coming to this country as someone who really doesn't speak Arabic has forced me back into that habit, that fortune teller's trick. What makes me think about it are my parents. Not that I see any men wearing tams and those big shirts my dad fancied, but somehow there's a certain similarity of expression.
Dad had laugh lines all over his face. For a guy who was so sarcastic, he was cautious about letting it out, smiling sort of one-sided, so his laugh lines were kind of uneven. Mostly he smiled, sort of grumpily, like it pulled a muscle or something. Most of his expression was in his eyes, and when he smiled with them, they just about disappeared. He sort of looked like an Irish turtle. Mum's face was more complicated. To this day, I can't imagine why anyone would want a face lift. Every line on her face was a story--birth, death, stillbirth, funny kid sayings, good report cards---- and every now and then----when she'd let me---I'd put my hand on her face and be overcome with words. My mom. Neither of them was prone to sentiment much. True love was best demonstrated by sarcasm and occasionally shy gestures.
Mom just hated me dancing. Hated it. She wouldn't contribute a dime to it so I had my own secret identity for a while: geek at school, secret papergirl, and ballet dancer. She also hated stuffed animals. Then one day I opend up a Christmas present from her while I was living in LA: it was an Angelina Ballerina doll. I still have it, fifteen years later. I waited to ask her about it till I finally got home for a visit that year. "Oh, you know," she fidgeted. "I just thought...you'd like it." Truce. I miss you. I miss everything about you, even the stupid things.
And so it's twenty years later, because it was that long ago that both of them were still themselves, and now I find myself surrounded by a whole nation of people like Mum and Dad, people whose faces are the only clues I've got. And I keep thinking that veils and turbans are the least important clues there are to understanding people, just like uniforms and skin colors. But over the months I've been here I've seen plenty of faces. I want to remember every one of them.
I'm probably a pretty bad soldier. Granted, I don't read and sleep on convoys the way one guy I know does, but still----I keep looking at the people we pass. Whose sister are you? Whose mother? Whose father? Looking at them sometimes produces the sudden and sharp feeling for losing my own. Looking at them sometimes makes me feel like even if you have lost your own, if you can aid someone else's, yours won't be totally lost to you.
On convoy days, we get up early, and start getting ready----lining up ammo and vests and helmets, stuff to do while sitting around concluding whatever business it is we have to do where we're going. It's monotonous. The humvees are really loud, so it's not like you can have deep discussions, either. You look out the window first out of desperation, then out of curiosity. And then, maybe, recognition.
There have been IEDS and VBIEDS along here recently, and yesterday morning, we had actually planned to take a different route because the main one was too dangerous. By some mysterious alchemy, the route was cleared, and so instead of going to Karbala, we headed to Najaf.
This is such an ancient country. Parts of it along the rivers seem almost primeieval, with the ten foot rushes and the fan-shaped palm trees. You expect to see a dinosaur, especially at sunset, when the earth is black and the sky is gold. Long stretches of it are lush, and then abruptly it changes to dry sand and dust. Fields of garbage pass by the windows in multi-colored heaps, and there's always a few stray dogs or people picking hopefully through them.
People forget how different parts of this country are. Up north, it's violent. It's impossible to forget how lucky soldiers like me are. Here it's relatively peaceful. We only get the occasional IED and VBIED. It's that quiet that makes us nervous. It gets too quiet for too long, and you start wondering if things are simmering.
But Najaf, too, was subdued six months ago. It used to be Maqtadah Sadr's city. Seeing it was a shock.
Getting there was relatively easy, because Humvees can get over just about any obstacle. We drove over the median, and the traffic obligingly stopped to let us pass. That was when I noticed something different. We were close enough to see faces, and those faces looked interested, relaxed---and friendly. Around the post, we're used to seeing that. In some areas, what we get is tense, tight looks and sternly-averted eyes. Even the kids in those places just look at us as we go by, not waving, just staring.
We passed a gas line a quarter mile long, drivers leaning wearily on dusty car hoods, sitting inside front seats. They all seemed tired and dispirited, and the Iraqi National Guard was waving their hands wearily and seemed to barely notice us as we went by. One of them had an RPG. For a truly frightening moment, the gunner swiveled, and then we registered body language: the guy had it propped on his shoulder the way we do occasionally with our weapons, and he wasn't even looking at us.
We drove on and on, crossing not one but two rivers. Women in bright red dresses with black skirts and veils tugged donkeys behind them, both women and animal laden with cloth-wrapped bundles of straw. We passed forests of sunflowers, and fields of what had to be winter crops. Ducks waddled along the side of the road, and at one point I saw a sight that could have come straight from the bible: a man in a gray dishdashah by the side of the road, a lamb wrapped around his shoulder. In one hand he held an old-fashioned shepherd's crook, complete to the curved hook on the end.
We saw what is normal for this country. I glimpsed one little girl striding up the dirt road from her house, briskly tying her head scarf on as she went, a Girl With a Mission. It was just an ordinary thing for her, that veil, and that was an interesting thought.
Another little girl caught my eye as we got stuck in traffic. She was wearing a pink blouse and a black skirt, trying to turn over a bucket or something, as we stalled there, we gradually noticed her. She had a bright face and vivacious eyes, and as she noticed us she got bashful and turned away. Then she gathered her courage and shyly looked at us again. We exchanged glances until the traffic speeded up, and when we moved, she lifted one hand and waved at us.
Gradually, something else dawned on me, too. We were being waved at. I'm a waving fool. Hey, every little gesture. The kids always wave. But as we got further and further south, it was adults who lifted their hands first, and smiled. And what smiles! They smiled as if they were fond of us, as if we were old friends. Men, women, all the kids---it was like we were neighbors back from a visit that had kept us away too long. Young men, old men, women in full abbayas, women in chic outfits and without veils----they all waved and smiled at us. When we smiled and waved back, it felt a little bit like euphoria.
We got in traffic on the outskirts of the city, and I started looking for someone. I look for guys, really, because women tend to be more shy than men. I know it when I see it, but I'll be damned if I can describe it. I just look for someone with smile lines, especially the sort that seem formed by kindness. Sometimes you can just tell evne if you can't desribe it. I've seen people who were utterly beautiful that weren't half as a attractive as somebody who'd spent his whole life laughing---kindly, mind you--and had the lines to show for it.
I finally settled on the driver of a minibus filled with an assortment of men, women and children. This is public transport. These guys buy these buses and run regular routes or do commission type things. He was an older guy with richly-wrinkled eyes and a patient look, plus a truly enormous white mustache. I caught his eye and waved. There was just a second while it registered. And then he jumped just a little, and gave this huge grin, and then...everyone else in the bus saw him and started waving and smiling too. Everyone pressed up against the windows and smiled and waved just as idiotically as I was doing. A dozen hands appeared here and there and little faces and big ones popped up in the windows. And they were all so friendly, so happy, that it took a while to sink in.
Traffic moved along, and we were no more than three or four feet from the traffic going in the opposite direction. I waved and waved and waved. Single men in cars got all bashful and ducked their heads and then looked up underneath their eyelashes. Women just looked up from the sidewalk, from the passenger seat, from the driver's seat---and then waved. I spotted little kids and waved at them. Then the adults in the cars would horn in and grin at me, and I grinned right back. I kept waving at one person----and then seeing hands pop out of six or seven vehicles around them. I spotted one older gentleman in the cab of a semi. The cab was crowded with people, of all ages and both genders, and festooned with pictures of Iraqi popstars. Tassels swayed everywhere. When I waved at him he bounced in his seat and everyone jostled to crowd the window and get in the action. It's an amazing feeling, having that much good will directed at you.
And that was the whole trip. It was constant and left me shaking my head in awe. Who are these people? Even passing by the mosque, usually the place we face some tension, we found only smiles and grins, and then we were on our way home.
As the sun set, we passed a gathering of cars parked by a turnout on the side of a road, far enough away from Najaf to make me wonder if the city's good will was behind us. I waved automatically, but then too late noticed the characteristic headdress of an imam, typically the most conservative of figures, and ususally not someone who'd appreciate being waved at by an unveiled woman, espeically an American.
The vehicle had to slow down to take the curve and negotiate the traffic, so I got a good long look at him. He and I looked at each other, and then his eyes warmed like there was a candle wick behind them, slowly gathering strength. The smile reached his lips, and he raised his hand and gave me a dignified acknowledgement, not quite a wave, but a salute of sorts. He had the lines around his eyes that signify a man who smiles cautiously and gravely, not because he has no humor but because he contemplates the consequences of everything, and must be an example. He had my father's eyes. The crowd of young men around him shared a similar mien and I wondered if they were his pupils or his children----or grandchildren. They, too, smiled gravely, and each lifted a hand as we passed. It was almost like a benediction.
It was a long day and yet it seemed much less tiring than usual. Of course, it wasn't all public relations; we almost caused an accident. I waved at a donkey cart driver, and he gawped at me for so long the donkey absconded, leaving the poor guy to chase after it. At a stoplight, I played pattycake with the baby in the window of the car next to me; when we pulled off, the kid howled and I caught just a glimpse of the father's rueful shrug.
We spent all day driving and got back at sunset just as the palm trees were turning to black before us. Of course the smoke from the VBIED was long since disippated. I staggered to my room to sit in the dark, thinking about all the people I'd seen, hoping they had seen me---and us----as clearly as I saw them.
Every time I see a soldier here, I feel a brief burst of...what do you call it? Brotherhood? They're a reminder of home, of shared struggle. Doesn't matter if they're Polish, Bulgarian, what have you. The Poles have taken some hits for us, and when I think of the Bulgarians, I think of their prime minister, a man who was so overcome by being inducted into NATO that he had tears streaming down his face. I won't quote from Henvy V, but every time I see some soldier, I think, "Ah, somebody who understands what there is to bitch about."
Yesterday I felt that pretty much for everyone. I can't say how long it will last---probably as long as I meet the next fool who whines at me here----but it's like a drug now. All those people, all those kids. Those adults are raising their kids that way. I keep thinking of the little girl straightening her scarf like she was tying a shoe, and all the men I saw, casually toting kids around, far more than you see in Western cities. It seems like one guy out of maybe seven has a kid by the hand or in his arms, half of them girls.
I didn't come away from yesterday with any coherent motto, any crystalized sentiment. But to recognize my father's eyes in that man's face, in this foreign country, in the midst of this war---I was suddenly comforted--and suddenly determined. Someone out there has a father like mine, a man who lived long enough to see grandchildren. What other likenesses and similarities are there to discover?
Read the face, then the hand.
But first, make sure you read your own.
I'm going to bed before I simper.
