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  Pools of brown sludge swirled at our boots with our every step. With seemingly the first drop of snow, the dirt roads and walkways of Saba al-Bor had transformed into a skating rink of earth slime, the landscape of brown contrasting with the falling white all too poetically. Unlike the photos of the Baghdad Green Zone I later saw on the Internet, snow in Saba al-Bor unleashed little curiosity among the local populace. There were no snowball fights or gasps of wonderment. The few families we ran into at the marketplace simply complained that the slush the snow melted into would cause havoc in their neighborhoods; paved roads were the exception in this part of Iraq, and huts made out of dirt were not holding up well in the face of this environmental obscurity. They asked us if we were going to do anything to help them.

  “Yes,” I said, “we’re going to pay a local contractor to pave many of the roads in the area.”

  “No,” they responded, “what are you going to do for us today? We need you to fix the weather.”

  Suge laughed in disbelief when he translated the Iraqis’ hopes and demands.

  “Why do they think we can fix the weather?” I asked him. Suge’s African stereotypes rattled through his response: “Because Arabs are crazy in the head, Lieutenant, that is why.”

  We were now on Route Maples, Saba al-Bor’s main thoroughfare and most prominent marketplace. A series of dead baby trees dotted the trajectory of the street from beginning to end, an ill-timed city project leftover from the unit we replaced—a stillborn symbol if there ever was one. One of the other platoons in Bravo Troop had been struck by an explosively formed penetrator (EFP)—a state-of-the-art IED whose technology supposedly came from Iran—on this very road only the week before, luckily taking no casualties from the blast. Many of my soldiers were convinced a matching EFP would be found in the remnants of the trees and were taking great care in clearing these areas as they walked past.

  “It would definitely suck to die,” PFC Cold-Cuts philosophized ahead of me, presumably to Staff Sergeant Bulldog, who was nearest to him and scanning around the corner of a building. “And it would suck even harder to die in Iraq. But to die from an exploding tree? Please, just lie to my wife if that happens.”

  Groups of locals were huddling around smoldering fires, most of which had been constructed from burning tires. According to the intel (intelligence) fobbits, insurgents often used burning tires—along with black kites and homing pigeons—as a means to relay the whereabouts of Coalition forces. I glanced over at Sergeant Spade, who simply shrugged. The groups consisted mainly of old men and children and couldn’t have cared less that we were in the market. They looked more like homeless people too tired to pander for change than like terrorists. I decided the odds were in our favor that they weren’t planning the next great catastrophic attack with their tires, and we kept moving.

  As we headed out of the market area, Sergeant Axel bought some pieces of flat bread from a local vendor. He gave the guy $5 and told him to keep the change, which caused the Iraqi to lean over the counter and, as is their custom, hug and kiss Sergeant Axel on the cheek. Sergeant Axel backpedaled sheepishly, his face turning crimson as the rest of the Gravediggers laughed at the vendor’s antics. He refused to share the flatbread with anyone who he determined had laughed too hard at his expense.

  “Who’s the fag now,” he said, munching down on a large piece of flatbread, while Specialist Haitian Sensation and Private Smitty sulked, breadless and no longer joking.

  “How come they get some?” Private Smitty asked, pointing to me and SFC Big Country. “I saw them laughing at ’cha, too.”

  Now SFC Big Country laughed openly. “Smitty,” he said, “you got a lot to learn about how the army works.” He took a big bite out of his share. “Hang around Sergeant Axel some more. He has a good handle on it.”

  Once we completed our stated mission—conduct an area reconnaissance of the local schools and assess their needs for future public works projects—we turned around and headed back to the American outpost. The snowflakes had degenerated into flurries over the course of our five-hour jaunt. Only Private Van Wilder still sported any cold-weather gear, a result of his claiming to be some sort of cold-blooded reptile ever since a mild case of pneumonia in Kuwait. The streets were now empty, save us, an old cripple hobbling down an alleyway oozing with raw sewage, and an Iraqi army T-72 tank parked at one of the major intersections.

  My patrol brief would essentially read as it had for the past two weeks: There had been no contact with the enemy; there was dissatisfaction among the local populace with all kinds of political, social, and civil issues; and the schools still needed more supplies and more renovations. My latest arbitrary snapshot of Iraq could wait a few more minutes though, so I stopped caring about the details of the report I would write and began to count my paces. We traipsed along the mud paths of Saba al-Bor, anxious to shed our heavy gear and take our boots off for a few hours until the next patrol started. The snow flurries continued.

  SHEIKAPALOOZA

  Checkered headdresses of red and white and black and white dotted the gathering below, colors flamboyantly marking allegiances in the same manner they did for streets gangs back home. The Gravediggers and I were overwatching nearly one hundred local civic leaders and sheiks from the roof of the Taji Provincial Community Center, working next to and with the local security already provided—roving bands of mean-mugging teenage boys armed with AK-47s, all inevitably blood relatives to one of the power brokers yelling and gesticulating below. I looked over at SFC Big Country, who shook his head and took another drag from his cigarette, while his other hand cradled the underside of his rifle. Despite our black sunglasses, which tended to give even the most personable of soldiers a look of omniscient stoicism, I could tell he thought the same thing I did. What. The. Fuck. Question mark.

  The short answer was that we were providing security for Coalition forces at Sheikapalooza—an unofficial, though fitting, term coined by Captain Whiteback. The meeting had been called to have an election for a sheik council that was to supervise the various Sons of Iraq groups, but it had digressed into a shouting match the British parliament would envy. All of the terps were down on the ground level with the commanders, so we weren’t privy to the details of the various disagreements. That didn’t stop some of my soldiers from filling in the gaps, though. Corporal Spot and Private Van Wilder had each selected a sheik he would translate for, and they were reliving their counterparts’ arguments up on the roof while scanning the surrounding countryside in the prone position for dangerous knowns and unknowns.

  The view of Sheikapalooza, at the Taji Provincial Community Center in January 2008, from a rooftop security position.

  “You ate all me Lucky Charms!” Private Van Wilder cracked, while his sheik shook his finger in anger. “You are fat enough already, Sheik Marshmallow, and you did not even leave me the rainbows! You know how much I love the rainbows!”

  “I have daughters who are more intimidating than you are,” Corporal Spot responded, just as his sheik rose to defend himself against the wagging finger. “I stole your Lucky Charms because I could and you couldn’t stop me. Just wait until you find out what I did to your Pop-Tarts!”

  Private Van Wilder grinned at the softball tossed his way. “I am familiar with your daughters,” he said, pausing just long enough on the word “familiar” to cause Corporal Spot to break character and laugh. “I friended them on MySpace and later blessed them with my super sheik sperm.”

  I looked down again while my soldiers continued to banter. Whatever keeps them alert, I thought. Below, Captain Whiteback looked frazzled, as his hair rose wildly out of place and dark circles sagged underneath his eyes. I thought about asking him over the radio if he wanted his posse to escort him out of this clusterfuck, Death Row-style, but thought better of it. He was surrounded by colonels, and colonels did not generally appreciate my sarcasm or ill-timed quips. Especially ones based on 1990s gangta’ rap.

  I walked over to a group of the Iraqis on
the roof with us. They numbered six in total. Nearly all of them were younger than me, and even at a very average 5 feet 10 inches I stood four to five inches above the tallest of them. I nodded and smiled, which spurred a reaction in turn by the paramilitary security guards.

  “Salaam aleichem,” I said, doing my best not to butcher the most basic of Arabic statements.

  “Hello, mistah,” they said together, and then one of them continued, “Hello, Lieutenant.” One of the others pointed at my gloves. I smiled again, took them off, and handed them over. Young Iraqis were always fascinated by the hard plastic that lined the knuckles of our combat gloves, and the inevitable occurred when the teenager put them on.

  “Eeeehhhhh!” Plastic had met skull. The guard punched in the head by his friend exclaimed in pain, while the rest of them roared in delight. This process went on for a couple minutes until I asked for the gloves back. They were returned, and then one of the Sahwa pointed at my M4, and then pointed at his AK-47. He wanted to make a trade.

  I shook my head and said, “Sorry. No trade.” I was no gun connoisseur, but I knew enough to understand that an M4 armed to the teeth with sights and accessories outclassed a bare AK-47—not to mention the bureaucratic uproar such a deal would cause. As this teenager lifted up his AK, attempting to display its killing prowess, his uniform—really just a plain long-sleeve brown shirt—raised up, revealing the dull pink shade of dead scar tissue. I grabbed his arm and pulled up the sleeve, causing him to bring his weapon back down. The dull pink encircled his entire arm and extended to the elbow; it was smooth like a layer of cream cheese. A faint scar ran up the arm, parallel to the bone.

  “Big bomb,” said another Son of Iraq, pointing to his peer’s arm. He said something in Arabic to the boy with the scarred arm, who responded in kind.

  “He say American sky bomb do this when war start. It kill abu [father].”

  Per Iraqi tradition, I lifted my hand to my heart and began to express my sympathies, both for his father’s death and the permanent shrapnel wound, when both teens broke out into wide grins. “No, no, very good,” the makeshift interpreter said. “He and family get lots of fuluus after!”

  I smirked. Fuluus meant money. Our condolence funds program was well known in this country and had incurred many a recipient since 2003. Despite the morbid nature of the program, at least these Sons of Iraq appeared to be happy and satisfied customers. We had that going for us—which was nice, especially when the alternative tended to take the form of deep-buried IEDs or rocket propelled grenades (RPGs).

  I shook the hands of the Sahwa members—two of them insisted on a fist-pound instead—and strolled back over to my soldiers. Sergeants Axel and Spade were kneeling together in the corner. I heard Sergeant Axel say, “The sir might know,” and they waved me over.

  “What’s up?”

  “What the fuck are these guys arguing about? I thought they already voted.” Security for the election had been the only task and purpose about which I had briefed the platoon, as these fire-team leaders were subtly pointing out. I made a mental note to include “and maintain security for subsequent bitching session” the next time we drew this mission set.

  “Do you know who any of these guys are?”

  I nodded. “A couple of ’em. That fat guy in the white man-dress? The one who looks like Jabba the Hut?” I pointed at a rotund man with a thick black moustache sitting at the head table, dead center, between our brigade commander and a civilian from the State Department. He yawned openly and pawed at his nutsack while one of the lesser sheiks ranted in front of him. Our brigade commander blinked his eyes in surprise and leaned away while this Iraqi scratched, focusing intently on the other Arab who spoke. “That’s Sheik Nour, head of the Tamimi tribe in this area.” The Tamimis, in addition to being the richest and most powerful of the local tribes, also, apparently, bred like jackrabbits. They were everywhere and seemed to control everything.

  The two NCOs shook their heads in disbelief. “That fat fuck is the one we have to guard?” Sergeant Spade asked incredulously. The line platoons in our squadron rotated security duties daily and nightly at Sheik Nour’s house because he was petrified that everyone but Americans wanted him dead—everyone, according to him, included the not-to-be-trusted Iraqi army, the even-more-not-to-be-trusted IP, foreign Sunni extremist groups like al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), local Sunni extremist groups like Jaish al-Rashiden (JAR), the 1920s Revolutionary Brigade, local Shia extremist groups like al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army and the Badr Corps, al-Sadr himself, foreign Shia extremist groups like the Iranian-influenced Asaib Ahl Haq, and the local retarded bum who slept at the underpass down the road and masturbated constantly. Because Nour was a rising political star in Iraqi nationalist circles, our squadron commander had complied with his request for American support, despite the fact that the sheik employed his own 150-man personal militia. Of course, our squadron commander and his security detail wouldn’t be the ones staying up for twenty-four plus hours guarding pavement, eyes dripping like stale glue. Funny how that worked.

  “That’s him,” I said. We looked down again. Another man had stood up to speak, and even Sheik Nour now paid attention. I recognized this man immediately as well—it was Sheik Haydar from one of Saba al-Bor’s eastern villages and of a rival tribe to the Tamimis. Although his village was small, poor, and comparatively rural, Haydar commanded an audience here with presence; a good fifteen years younger than most of the other sheiks, he was stocky and compact with a back as straight as an ironing board, and his voice carried throughout the courtyard.

  I had already met Haydar five days before. Upon our introduction, I distinctly remembered thinking, This man has killed before. There was a dark hardness about him that men cannot replicate, no matter how talented they are at feigning to be something they are not. Shortly thereafter, Haydar told me he intended to feed me a whole goat, just to see if any weight would stick to my bones. Although we both laughed, his eyes never left mine, and I could feel him probing my face, testing me for something unseen. Resisting the impulse to pull my eyes away, I responded that I’d love to share a meal with him, but that I didn’t mind being lean and hungry, as it kept me from growing too comfortable. I could tell that my answer had pleased him.

  Sheik Nour attempted to interrupt Haydar in Arabic, but Haydar pressed on. The past and future of Iraq was symbolized rather starkly, if a bit rudimentarily, by these two men. Nour was the by-product of a large petroleum inheritance and looked the part; his white dishdasha hid the rolls of fat underneath as well as a bathtub would hold an ocean. Haydar, meanwhile, sported a modern camel-skin coat, designer collared shirt, blue jeans, and a well-trimmed goatee. This chic ensemble, however, could not hide his obvious military posture and mannerisms, as he had previously served with the army for many years—both in Saddam’s Baathist military and then in the initial free Iraqi army—only returning home to take control of his people after his father fell gravely ill. Even their headdresses conflicted, Haydar with the Sunni’s red-and-white pattern, Nour with a black-and-white headdress to signify Shia. If the various power struggles currently being waged in this country and the Middle East as a whole could ever be simplified into one lucid microcosm, this was it.

  “That’s Haydar, right?” Staff Sergeant Axel asked. “We were just at his house the other day.”

  I nodded again. “Yep.” I paused. “His tribe hates the Tamimis.”

  “Right. I remember. He said that the Tamimis get all of the contracts from the Americans because they own the gas stations on Route Tampa.”

  “Think that’s true?” Sergeant Spade asked.

  I shrugged my shoulders. I had no clue, and whether it was true or not probably wouldn’t change anything in the greater Taji area. What mattered was that Haydar and his people—and pretty much every other sheik and tribe who wasn’t a Tamimi—believed it to be true.

  I felt a large shadow behind me. I looked up, finding that SFC Big Country had joined us. Men that big shouldn’t be so good at
sneaking up on people, I thought, no matter how many years they’ve been a scout.

  “Think this will ever end?” he asked.

  “Inshallah,” I replied, using an Arabic term Suge had taught us. It translated as “God willing,” and Iraqis utilized it early and often in conversations, especially when making plans for the future—even if that future was only a few hours away. As a result, we had quickly picked up on the secondary meaning of this term, which translated roughly to “Probably MaybeUhhIAmNotSureQuiteYetProbablyNotYeahDefinitelyNotCanWeTalk AboutThisLaterQuestionMark.”

  As if on cue, though, the gathering below started to dissipate, and the stream for the exits marked the conclusion to Sheikapalooza. We moved out of our security positions, loaded back up on our Strykers, and returned to Saba al-Bor.

  Once we got back, I walked to the terp room and found Phoenix, Captain Whiteback’s interpreter for the meeting. He was playing a World Cup soccer video game with our other young terp, Super Mario, and paused the game when I came into the room. I asked him what the sheiks had been discussing after the election for so long.

  “Nothing,” he said. “They have election, and then they just argue to argue about election. Then they ask about the Sahwa moneys. Always about the moneys. Then they argue some more about contracts and projects until they are tired and then they go home.”