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  “We’re en route,” I said.

  In the distance, I spotted yet another mob of Iraqi children serving as brush to the redwoods of American soldiers. Staff Sergeant Boondock’s transmission had brought over SFC Big Country as well, but as Suge and I strolled up to their position, they both started to wave us away.

  “My bad, sir,” Staff Sergeant Boondock said. “I think I misunderstood the little fucker. His house got blown up last year, but at first I thought he said they still had bombs there. False alarm.”

  “Well, we got Suge here now,” SFC Big Country said. “We might as well make sure.” My platoon sergeant had his hand on the shoulder of a young boy with squinty eyes, dirty black locks of hair, and a lackadaisical strut, whom he guided up to our terp.

  “You got the condolence funds paperwork in your vehicle?” I asked SFC Big Country. Only Allah knew how this kid’s house had really blown up, but we had learned very painfully that the best way to defuse angry Iraqis was to hand them a stack of confusing paperwork that potentially led to financial reimbursement, if filled out correctly. It was like the Victorian-era British Poor Laws or, in more modern terms, what the lady at the DMV did to keep the line moving.

  “He say that Ali Baba blow up his house ten months ago,” Suge translated. “It kill his whole family except for him and little brother. He ask for mulasim [lieutenant].”

  Corporal Spot, who pulled security away from the Stryker, turned around and shook his head in troubled dismay. Suge continued.

  “He say that his brother is at house now. They still live there, and neighbors watch over them.”

  “What about the bomb, Suge?” I asked. “Get to the bomb.” I wanted to sympathize with the kid, and I would—just as soon as I got back to the combat outpost and didn’t have to worry about snipers turning my head into a passive verb.

  Suge nodded at me and switched back to Arabic. The boy responded, and Suge translated again. “He say that there is still bomb in his front yard. He say that his brother stays there to guard it.”

  “I knew it!” Staff Sergeant Boondock erupted in passion. “I fucking knew the kid said there was something still there.”

  “Where’s his house?” SFC Big Country asked.

  Suge pointed across the street. “He say his house is right there.” It wasn’t near the roasted-dog house, luckily.

  I walked up to the boy, putting out my gloved fist so he could pound it. He proved wary of the plastic lining, though, and instead seized my hand and tugged.

  “What your name?” he demanded in broken English.

  I looked down at the child, amused at his impudence. The cocky Iraqi kids were few and far between, but they tended to be the ones that stuck with you. “Schlonic,” I began, using an Iraqi slang greeting. I pointed at my chest. “My name is Matt.” I pointed back at him. “What is your name?”

  He stuck a thumb into my leg, which caused everyone else to laugh, including Suge.

  “Maaaahhhhhtttt,” he said, struggling with the terseness of the English vowel. “My name Yusef.”

  “Well, Yusef, lead the way,” I told the boy, tousling his hair. As he dashed across his neighborhood, four American soldiers and one terp in tow, his tiny body literally shook with excitement. We followed, wedging out into formation, rifles at the low-ready.

  Yusef’s house—or more accurately, what was left of it—had certainly seen better days. Building rubble and concrete bits of foundation were dispersed around the area the boy led us to, and holes the size of bowling balls perforated the roof. A front stoop led to an entry room that simply wasn’t there anymore, leaving a large hole between the last step and the beginning of the house. A small boy with curly black hair, presumably Yusef’s younger brother, sat on the stoop to nowhere. His shorts on the right side hung inconclusively off of his right leg; he was missing the foot entirely, and the leg itself was permanently twisted around at a 90-degree angle just below the knee. The right side of his face was covered in dark pink scars, starting at his hairline and jutting downward, across his cheeks, to the top of his chin. We waved at him, but he continued to stare vacantly at the ground directly in front of him, indifferent to our mission.

  We had approached from the side, and Yusef stopped ten feet short of his house to point to a noticeable depression underneath a tree to our right. A quick burst of Arabic followed.

  “He say bomb in that hole,” Suge translated.

  I told Suge to stay back with the child, and I skulked up to the pit in question, moving as circumspectly as a beaten wife, while the other Grave - diggers clover-leafed around. A 40-mm Russian mortar, rusty but still imposing, lay right in the middle of the depression.

  “Well . . . there it is,” SFC Big Country said. “Hey, Suge, ask the kid if this is the only one.”

  Suge exchanged a series of words with Yusef and yelled back. “Yes! Only one bomb!”

  “Can we move it?” Staff Sergeant Boondock asked.

  The answer to this question was obviously no, but no one felt like calling Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) for just one corroded 40-mm mortar, no matter how potentially explosive. The very real possibility of self-removal existed, but honestly, we would have rather blown up and died an embarrassing death than overreact and live as a punch line. We all simultaneously turned to Corporal Spot, remembering that he had received some mortar training before he became an active duty scout. “I’ll check it out,” he said.

  Corporal Spot moved down into the hole and peered at the mortar round. “I don’t see why we can’t move it,” he said matter-of-factly. “It looks like the filling’s all gone.”

  Great. The filling was gone. Unfortunately, at the Scout Leader’s Course, they taught me about screen lines, actions on contact, and how to call for fire. Nothing about mortars or mortar fillings. All I knew about mortars was that, much like dynamite and angry women, they went Boom! when tampered with. SFC Big Country and Staff Sergeant Boondock didn’t seem any more at ease either.

  Corporal Spot seemed relaxed, though, and looked at me. “I can pick it up, sir. It ain’t a big deal.”

  I felt a familiar buzzing at the back of my brain, laced with faint traces of fear. Just in time, I thought. The lieutenant in me kicked back in and stated that you should never have a soldier do something you yourself wouldn’t do. I hopped into the hole and sidled up next to Corporal Spot.

  “I got it, man,” I said.

  “Just move it slowly,” he said. “It’s nothing as long as it ain’t attached to anything.”

  I picked the mortar up, doing so with my nondominant hand, and tried to ignore the impulse to close my eyes. Nothing happened. I smiled in relief, broadly and easily and purely, probably for the first time since we had left Kuwait. Staff Sergeant Boondock took a picture of me clowning around with the mortar. We exchanged some relieved chatter; SFC Big Country was especially thankful that he didn’t have to make the call back to the TOC letting them know he had let his lieutenant blow himself up.

  We began walking back to our Strykers, Suge falling in beside us. I turned to Yusef. “Shakrin,” I stuttered, thanking him for his help. He nodded. There was nothing else to say. The crippled and disfigured boy continued to stare at the ground. I doubted this Oliver Twist would ever find a patron. I just hoped that someday he would see something other than dirt and concrete on that piece of ground.

  SFC Big Country and I sat on the front stoop of the combat outpost that afternoon, watching our soldiers file in, dirty and tired after yet another long mission, eager for a few hours of downtime. As Suge and Sergeant Axel walked by, they debated whether or not the first sergeant would stop Suge from getting two plates of dinner again. Suge maintained that because he had two wives to satisfy, and because Allah forbade him from eating the sausage that smelled oh so good, he needed two dinners, but the first sergeant didn’t buy it.

  “You alright, sir?” my platoon sergeant asked me. “You’ve looked pretty tore up all day. You got the Iraqi ass-piss?” referring to the mysteri
ous sickness we all came down with in the initial months of our deployment, one time or another. No amount of good hygiene, soap, and classes led by the medics totally cleansed the combat outposts of the Iraqi ass-piss.

  I did my best to smile. “No ass-piss, and I’m good,” I said. “I just need a Guinness.” As I finished my sentence, Specialist Haitian Sensation walked up, after clearing his weapon at the clearing barrel.

  “Hey, sir, Sergeant,” he said, “can I ask you guys a question?”

  Our missions through the ghettos always affected him; it didn’t take a very insightful platoon leader to recognize this was due to his own upbringing around poverty in Haiti. Still, the gravity of his follow-up question managed to rattle me out of my own introspection.

  “What do you think I’d need to do to adopt one of those kids? One of the orphans? For when we go home, I mean.”

  SFC Big Country took a drag from his cigarette. “I have no clue,” he said. “But we’ll look into it, if you’re serious about it.”

  I scratched my head, searching for a light-hearted witticism to mellow out the immensity of the situation. I couldn’t think of one, so I told Specialist Haitian Sensation it would be a lengthy process, but hell, all we had was time in Iraq, after all. He smiled contently and walked into the combat outpost. We followed shortly thereafter.

  PAYDAY

  As I walked down the north hallway of the combat outpost, fresh from a long discussion with Suge about the British missionaries who originally taught him English, I heard a faint humming from the main foyer of the building. When I rounded the corner into the foyer, that faint hum became a low roar. What the fuck is going on? I thought. A quick glance down the stairs provided an answer.

  It looked like every Son of Iraq in Saba al-Bor and its surrounding villages was crammed into our ground-floor room. Dozens upon dozens of young military-aged Iraqis snaked around the room, resembling a coiling line, which extended all the way out of the front door, where dozens more young men awaited. The Iraqis were separated by clothing and grouped accordingly; some wore khaki brown shirts with matching baseball caps, others sported navy-blue armbands emblazoned with Iraqi flags, and still others wore nondescript black vests and blue jeans. All were chattering excitedly. Most of the sheiks had rounded up their men into various gaggles, but that hadn’t stopped a few outliers from cutting the line, leading to continuous, animated protesting from the other Sahwa. Our troop’s artillery officer, Skerk, who doubled as the contracts officer, sat at a table at the far end of the room, handing out stacks of crisp American dollars. Even from afar, I saw the stress on his face and the veins in his thick Slovakian neck throbbing. He and the terp Snoop Dogg kept trying to get the sheiks to organize their men better, but any improved arrangement only lasted through the next payment. It was a never-ending cycle of chaos.

  I didn’t have another mission for a few hours, so I decided to wander downstairs and see if my fellow lieutenant needed some help. As I reached the ground floor and became immersed in the sea of Sahwa, I saw that two soldiers from Headquarters platoon were posted behind the payment table as armed guards, and one of them was Specialist Fuego. I nodded at him and smirked; he responded by cocking a fake pistol with his hand, aiming it toward his mouth, and pulling the trigger. Sweat and body heat saturated the room, despite all of the wide-open doors and windows. As the Sahwa members were not allowed to carry their AK-47s into the combat outpost, the presence of the armed guards provided me some peace of mind.

  “Salaam, Haydar,” I said, patting the sheik on the back. I exchanged a quick handshake with him, then kept moving to the front table. After grabbing an exuberant teenage Sahwa by the shoulders and putting him back in line, I finally got there.

  “I thought this shit wasn’t happening until Friday,” I said to Skerk, taking a seat to his left.

  “We had to push it up,” he replied, still counting out fifteen twenty-dollar bills per man. “Fridays are their holy day.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said, a bit embarrassed to have forgotten such a basic bit of cultural information.

  “These cocksuckers,” he continued, taking a quick break from his count to spit a big wad of dip into an empty bottle, “I staggered the groups timewise to avoid this clusterfuck. And what do they do? They all show up at nine in the morning, all together, all claiming that this was the time their group was supposed to fucking be here.”

  “Who’s manning their checkpoints right now?”

  “Good fucking question. I told Captain Whiteback I wasn’t going to pay any of them, except for Haydar’s guys, who were slated for this timeslot. He told me I still had to do this, and we’d fix it next month. Probably the right call—we don’t need a riot breaking out here—but still . . . fucking Christ!” He went back to counting out twenty-dollar bills and verifying names on his checklist, while Snoop Dogg, who stood on Skerk’s other side, yelled at the Son of Iraq at the front of the line to keep his hands at his sides.

  So. It seemed that the American efficiency in schedule making hadn’t rubbed off on our Mesopotamian comrades quite yet. In Saba al-Bor, where jobs were as scarce as a happy Hemingway ending and stable, legal finances were even rarer, the promise of a monthly stipend at the American castle meant one showed up early and eager, timelines be damned.

  “Hey, man, I’m gonna go try and get these guys to calm down for you,” I said, realizing that I contributed nothing staying seated.

  “Thanks.” He spat into the bottle again. “And good luck. It’s a war out there!”

  I stood up and bumped back into Sheik Haydar, whose men were just now beginning to cycle through the payment station. Dressed in his standard camel-skin coat, blue jeans, and red-and-white headdress, Haydar waited in line with his men behind Sheik Banana-Hands’s Sahwa. Behind them were Colonel Mohammed and his Sons of Iraq, and behind them waited Boss Johnson II’s group. Other than the already occupied Snoop Dogg, I didn’t see any terps, so, with the grace of a donkey, I attempted a conversation with Haydar.

  “Shakrin,” I started. “Shakrin for keeping your men in line.” I then clarified my statement by pointing at his men and using the hand-and-arm signal for a file.

  Haydar laughed deeply and opened his eyes wide. “Crazy, this place! I tell that we all get the money, we just . . .” He began to gesture with his hands, searching for a way to describe patience.

  “Daheftihim, daheftihim” (I understand, I understand). “It looks like your men all have their armbands now, yes?” I grabbed a piece of cloth on my uniform at the shoulder, then pointed at his men lined up behind him, who all wore navy-blue armbands with Iraqi flags.

  “Yes,” Haydar said, nodding. “We got last ones six days ago.”

  Impulsively, I flashed an obnoxiously American thumbs-up and smiled openly, both of which were met in kind by the sheik. I then heard some louder-than-normal yelling from behind us and, after shaking Haydar’s hand one more time, walked that way to check it out.

  I soon found the source of the clamor: Boss Johnson II stood between two men, both of whom were still shouting at each other. One of them wore the khaki brown shirt of Sheik Banana-Hands’s group, while the other was decked out in the black vest and blue jeans that signified Boss Johnson II’s men.

  Boss Johnson II had assumed his brother’s leadership role post-car bombing and with the exception of spotting the dead Johnson a few inches and having a thicker beard, he was the spitting image of his sibling. If he mourned his predecessor’s demise, he did so in the private confines of his own home. The day after locals scooped his brother’s remains into a kitchen pot, he had shown up at the combat outpost, contracts in hand, eager to talk to Captain Whiteback about finances.

  I eventually got the two rival Sahwa to stop yelling by repeatedly shouting, “Shut the fuck up. Just shut the fuck up!” over them, but I was unable to figure out how the argument had started, as neither of these Sons of Iraq nor Boss Johnson II spoke even the basic English that Haydar did. My rudimentary Arabic certainly wasn’t an
y help, either. Boss Johnson II just kept shaking his head and mumbling, “Ali Baba! Ali Baba!” which did not ease the palpable tension of the moment.

  Luckily, I saw Specialist Haitian Sensation and an IP known as the Bulldozer outside of the front door, near a broom closet Mojo had recently turned into a shop. I waved both over, knowing that the Bulldozer’s English and Specialist Haitian Sensation’s Arabic would improve our current station.

  “This place is wild’n’ out!” Specialist Haitian Sensation grinned ear to ear, as usual, flashing his pearly white teeth. “It’s worse than the Superdome during Hurricane Katrina.” I froze, unsure how to respond, while my soldier continued, giggling. “It’s okay, sir. I’m black—I can say that!”

  I blinked my eyes now, even more unsure of how to respond, and changed the subject. “Think you and Bulldozer could help me out here? These guys are arguing, and I have no idea why.”

  The Bulldozer, suitably named for his dense build and even denser approach to searching houses, and Specialist Haitian Sensation quickly went to work, coaching one another through words and phrases in the different languages. My soldier, who already spoke fluent Spanish, French, English, and Haitian Creole, had proven a quick study, and his grasp of the Arabic language expanded daily.