I Lost My Love in Baghdad (5 page)

NEW YORK CITY

We were in love before we said it; we said it only after we were far apart, when I was six thousand miles away and eight hours ahead. Later, she would ask me, “When was the moment, when was the moment
you knew
?” I'd say, “When I saw your face at the Jerry Springer party I knew.” Or, “When we went out to dinner at Shelley's on 57th, when I convinced you to try an oyster, which you had refused to try in the previous twenty-six years of your life, that face you made, I knew then.” On a night in July in my bed, near climax, I told her I loved her. I whispered it. I don't know if she heard. I was worried she might have heard. It just slipped out, in passion, and then I rolled over on the futon, the bed she made me get rid of, and wondered if she heard and if she loved me back.

Andi would say she hugged me at her birthday party for a reason. She would say she really knew, yes, at Shelley's, when we looked at each other across the table. When she went to London for the Live 8 concert, she did not stop thinking about me, she said. She lost interest in the guy she was supposed to visit, standing in a crowd of two hundred thousand at Hyde Park, when Snow Patrol came onstage; she thought of me. They told the crowd they were from Ireland. I'd won the bet and she wanted to call me up right then and tell me, but she didn't. She told me she was certain when we went to the double feature of
Wedding Crashers
and
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,
and I bought her popcorn and peanut M&M's, and kept feeding them to her until she started slightly choking, then spit up a piece in my hand. She knew when she was supposed to fly home to Ohio, and her plane kept getting delayed because of the weather, so instead she came to my apartment, and we made a weekend out of it, getting left field seats that Saturday at a Mets game. She knew from the moment she refused to give me her business card.

Neither of us let on, though. All our friends were advising us to stay away—it doesn't make any sense, so went the counsel. He's going to Baghdad in two months. How is that going to work?

It didn't make sense to us, either, really. Why would she choose to get involved with a man who, by the nature of his profession, was always leaving? But my deployment to Baghdad gave urgency to our relationship. Every night, every dinner, was one day closer to the day I was leaving.

On the night we first made love, we ate dinner at a Greek restaurant in midtown. It was a Saturday evening. I was coming from work. We sat down at the table, and she told me my apartment was making her sick.

“I have a fever. I'm in a daze.”

“You've only been there once,” I said. “And look, I'm fine.”

“No, I think it's your apartment. There's some kind of superflu virus breeding in there.”

She looked at the menu and frowned. “There's a lot of lamb,” she said.

She didn't touch her food; I ate an appetizer, an entrée, and had a coffee.

“It's good you're enjoying the meal,” she said.

I'd assumed we would go to her place after dinner. She lived on Central Park West, about five blocks away. She told me that was out of the question; she had a roommate and it wouldn't be appropriate. She said she would go downtown, despite the health hazards of my studio. We argued about it. I told her I would have gotten a voucher for a
Newsweek
car service, if I'd known, and now we had to flag down a cab, and that was such a hassle around here.

“We should have just gone to your place,” I said.

“Why are you freaking out? You okay? You're going a bit odd on the voucher.”

Finally, I waved down a cab, and we went to my apartment.

“When was the last time you cleaned your sheets?” she asked.

The minute we were alone, though, the argument over the voucher seemed ridiculous. I asked her how she was feeling. “Better,” she said, “but you really need to clean your apartment.” I kissed her. She was so soft, her head resting on my old pillow with its
Return of the Jedi
pillowcase. We fell asleep. But when I awoke in the middle of the night, she was putting her clothes on. “What are you doing?” I asked. “I'm leaving,” she said, “I need to get home.” “Don't leave—there's no need.” “No, I don't want to stay,” she said. If she left, she would explain to me later, she couldn't get hurt. She'd be leaving me before I could leave her.

Toward the end of July, Andi helped me shop for Iraq. She also gave me a gift basket of gum and other travel items, souvenirs, and books to remember her by. On my last night in New York, we went back to Alias, where we had gone on our first official date. In every way, it was more awkward than that first night. We fought; there were too many feelings to do otherwise. I said I'd like to stay longer in Iraq than the two months I was scheduled. This hurt her feelings. She said she was convinced I wouldn't come back. Our conversation was so intense, the negative vibe so palpable, that the waitress didn't even ask us if we wanted dessert—she just brought us the check as soon as she could to get us out of the restaurant. By the time we got back to my apartment, there was too little time left to stay angry. We forgave each other and made promises—we would stay together.

I gave her a book, Hunter S. Thompson's
Rum Diary.

“Where did you get this book?” she asked.

“Oh, I bought it.”

“You bought it? Isn't this the book that has been on your floor for the last month?”

“Yes, it is.”

“So when did you buy this gift for me?”

“Well, I think I bought that book a couple of years ago.”

“So, you're giving me something you found on your floor?”

“If you put it like that, it sounds bad, sure. But I'm giving it to you. Just read what it says.”

On the inside flap, I'd written:
I don't miss, but I'll miss you, mh.

The next morning, a Saturday, I lugged my bags down the stairs and flagged a cab. I had to go in to work for the day. I would leave from the office to the airport in the afternoon. We both got out on 57th Street. She held in her feelings when we said goodbye. I tried to kiss her, but she pulled away and walked around the corner. That evening, I got on an eleven-hour direct flight from JFK to Amman. For a while, I wondered if Andi and I would actually be able to make it. Would she wait for me? Was I capable of keeping my commitment to her? And then I started thinking about Iraq.

BAGHDAD, AL KARMA, CAMP FALLUJAH

American soldiers usually asked me the same three questions during an embed.

Question 1: Do you carry a gun, sir?

No, no, I don't.

That's fucked up. I wouldn't go anywhere in this country without a gun.

Question 2: So you must get paid a lot of money to be here?

Not really, not as much as you think.

Question 3: Why don't you reporters ever report the good news?

I learned not to answer this one honestly—saying I hadn't found any good news didn't win friends.

Fuck it. You gonna put me on the cover of your magazine?

I went on four embeds on my first trip to Iraq. To spend time with American soldiers was to experience Iraq framed by the square bulletproof Humvee windows and behind “combat locked” doors; Iraq from three thousand feet in a Black Hawk helicopter; Iraq through the scope of an M-4 rifle. It was a world with its own language and geography. Divisions, brigades, battalions, companies, platoons. 4th ID, 3rd ID, 10th Mountain, Two-One Marines, Three Fourteen, 256th Field Artillery Regiment, First Cav. Roger. Outstanding. What the fuck over. It was a world that could be described almost entirely by acronyms. MNFI, MNSTICI, MEF, TOC, AWOC, DFAC, TCPs, OPs, TTPs, HMWWW, CHUs, MiTTs, SPITTs, BEPs, MEPs, PFCs, LTs, PAX, PX, LZ, CPATT, MSRs, IBAs, AOs, LN, TCNs, BOLO, AIF, LSAs EJKs, GOI, SPs. Multi-National Force Iraq is MNFI. A TOC is a tactical operations center. An LSA is a life support area or a logistics support area. AIF stands for Anti-Iraqi Forces, the enemy. LN is a local national, an Iraqi. GOI is government of Iraq. Iraqi street names were usually irrelevant; routes were named after things soldiers could easily remember. Route Green Bay, Route Wolverine, Route Blue, Route Orange County, Main Supply Route (or MSR) Tampa. Each AO, or area of operations, had its own hotspots: RPG Alley, IED Alley. Iraqi town names were interchangeable with the military bases that were now located near them, the forward operating bases. FOB Justice, FOB Duke, FOB Prosperity, FOB Victory, Liberty, Slayer, Striker.

Someone who never left the FOB, who never “goes over the wire” (the wire being the perimeter that separates the American bases from the rest of Iraq) was a “FOBBIT,” like a Hobbit. A subspecies of the Fobbit was the TOCroach—someone who doesn't even leave the headquarters. It was the latest version of slurs from previous conflicts, like REMF (rear echelon motherfucker), or POGUEs (people other than grunts), meant to underscore the difference between those who fight the war, the troops who are killing or at risk of regularly being killed, and those who generally stay out of harm's way and support those who fight the war. There were names for Iraqis, too. Vietnam had gooks and Somalia skinnies. In Iraq, the military had depersonalized the lingo—sometimes Iraqis were Hajis (each base had a market run by Iraqis called “the Haji shop”), but more often they were merely “local nationals,” or “AIF,” or just “bad guys” and “terrorists.”

If you wanted to relate to the soldiers or marines (never refer to a marine as a “soldier” in print, I was warned; marines are marines; use “troops” if you need to generalize between the services), you had to understand their acronym-laced dialogue.

“The BUB's at 1630 in the TOC, and Delta's CO is going, but the BC's not going to be there so the S-3's running it.” Translation: The daily battle update brief is at 4:30
P.M.
in the headquarters, and the commanding officer of Delta company will attend. The battalion commander won't, so the battalion's operations officer will be in charge. “Our ROE is fucking retarded.” The rules of engagement, under Multi-National Force Iraq, are unsatisfactory. “Three AIF detained, seven AIF KIA. Two LNs WIA and one TCN WIA requesting MEDVAC, nine-line to follow.” Three insurgents captured and seven killed; two Iraqi civilians and one third-country national (meaning a civilian who is not Iraqi or American) need to be brought to the hospital.

Roger. Outstanding. What the fuck over.

IED was the deadliest abbreviation. The improvised explosive device. The roadside bomb. The cause of over 60 percent of American casualties. I wanted to understand the IED—the Eye-E-Dee in Eye-Rack—so I put in requests to embed with the guys who go looking for them.

Scott Johnson and Jack Tapes helped me pack for my first embed. I looked through the equipment we had in the bureau: a collection of helmets, eye protection, and body armor that had piled up in the house since the war started. There was a heavy blue vest that had a high collar to protect the neck and a piece of material that hung down to protect the groin. It came with a Velcro sticker that announced
PRESS
across the chest. Tapes told me that the neck collar and groin cover probably wouldn't actually stop any shrapnel. He also pointed out that there was no need anymore to announce you were press, as that wouldn't prevent anyone from shooting you. He recommended a new set, which we had in brown and blue, that was about four or five pounds lighter. It had two ceramic plates, one in front and one in back, that could stop an AK-47 round. It also had thin material on the sides that could stop 9mm bullets. I chose the brown one. Tapes took a piece of silver electrical tape, wrote my blood type on it (O POS), and stuck it on the front of the vest. Then I chose a large black helmet, Wiley X eye protection, and loaded my Sony Vaio laptop with software for the BGAN, a satellite modem that looked like a small gray box and could get a high-speed Internet connection from almost anywhere, as long as there was nothing obstructing the signal. I brought my phones: an Iraqna, a small gray Nokia that worked only on the local network; my T-Mobile, which worked internationally; my BlackBerry, which also worked internationally; a reliable Thuraya satellite phone for a backup. I brought my Sony digital tape recorder, my seven megapixel digital camera, five notebooks, and a half-dozen pens. I threw in two pairs of jeans and two pairs of Old Navy khaki cargo pants that I'd bought with Andi in New York, five white T-shirts, a towel, four pairs of hiking socks, four pairs of boxers, three long-sleeved button-down shirts, a pair of shoes, and a pair of lightweight hiking boots. I found a silver sleeping bag. I packed the electronics, along with chargers for all of them, into a black Victorinox laptop bag, and stuffed the rest of my gear into a purple North Face bag.

I tried it out to see how it felt. Wearing the body armor and helmet, with the North Face pack on my back, and the laptop bag slung over my shoulder, I could barely move.

Scott took one look at me and said, “Dude, you're bringing way too much stuff.”

Tapes gave me a smaller backpack that he'd used in the Royal Marines. It was black, compact, and looked much cooler than my purple North Face rack. I got rid of a bunch of my extra clothes, my pair of shoes, and a medical kit (it took up space, and I figured I'd be with military guys who would have that). Tapes helped me jam everything else into his pack.

The next night, eleven days after I'd arrived in Iraq, I was riding in a Buffalo on my first combat patrol. I was with the Desert Rogues, of the 1st Battalion 64th Armor Regiment, out of FOB Rustamiyah in southeastern Baghdad. The Buffalo is a massive armored vehicle, built originally for minesweeping. It weighs more than forty thousand pounds and has an excess of video cameras and mechanical arms, traveling on six giant tires. To get in, you climb up a ladder on the back, then step through a small door into a passenger compartment about ten feet above the ground. There was allegedly air-conditioning, but the whole cabin was hot air and steam and my eye protection fogged up. My body armor and helmet were soaking with sweat. The point of the trip was to find bombs, or as one officer described it: “You'll be driving around at five miles per hour looking at trash.”

Trash is everywhere in Iraq. It is the most distinguishing feature of the landscape. The trash defies description. There are huge piles of it outside homes, on doorsteps, in street corners, filling any vacant lot. No triple-canopy jungle or endless dunes, just pile upon pile of twisted and discarded junk, plastic, scrap metal, empty bottles, tin cans, cardboard boxes, gasoline containers, decaying fruit, a stunning collection of random shit. It is mind-boggling, as if every family in Iraq decided to toss their garbage cans out the front door at the same time, and when they figured out that no one was going to come pick it up, just proceeded to cover the trash with more trash.

In all that trash the insurgents hide their deadliest weapons, the IEDs. The IEDs are camouflaged as trash. They look like almost everything else on the ground. Very clever, very scary, very hard to see.

“What are the chances of finding bombs?” I asked the driver.

He looked at me. “We've been doing daily sweeps since April,” he said. “So far, we haven't found a single bomb.”

“Oh, okay. Why is that?”

“The Buffalo makes a lot of noise. The fucking insurgents can hear it coming a mile away and take their bombs someplace else.”

“Oh, okay.”

The patrol inched along. I tried to take notes, capture some dialogue. We were the middle vehicle, sandwiched between a tank and a couple of Humvees.

There was a flash a few hundred yards back. I didn't hear any noise. A call came over the radio—a local national had driven too close to the convoy, so the machine gunner opened up. The LN was apparently drunk and had driven in by mistake. The bullet had hit him in the leg, and the car went off the road into a ditch. The Iraqi police would bring him to the hospital. The machine gunner was twenty-one years old. One of the soldiers in the Buffalo with me said, “He'll be saying he's sorry now, but I bet he'll fucking brag about shooting the guy later.”

The patrol continued, on to Sadr City and back for about four hours. Iraqi families stared up at the colossal machine as we passed. We did not find any bombs. The captain who was running the patrol confronted me afterward. He was worried I was going to write about the shooting.

“This is a twenty-one-year-old kid. Are you going to ruin his life?”

I hadn't planned to write about the shooting, figuring it wasn't really news. An American accidentally shooting an Iraqi was a common occurrence, and the story on how the military didn't release statistics on the frequency of accidental shootings had already been told.

“I was praying,” the captain continued. “I thought when that car went off the road it was going to blow up.” He leaned closer to me to make his point. “These kids,” said the twenty-five-year-old captain, “are making split-second decisions to save our lives.”

I didn't disagree. Any driver of any car on the street, any asshole with a bulky sweater, could be a bad guy waiting to detonate. I took very few notes that night. It was too overwhelming. If I'd had more experience, I probably would have written a piece about the shooting. It was one of those things that happen in war, and would've made a great on-scene story for the
Newsweek
website.

With all the threats, all the varieties of bombs, shooting first made sense. You or them? Kill an innocent by accident, or risk letting someone blow up you and your buddies?

In addition to the IED, there was the VBIED, or vehicle-borne improvised explosive device, the car bomb (pronounced Vee-Bid). There was also the SVBIED, the suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive device, or suicide car bomb. (Es-Vee-Bid.) The troop favorite was the DBIED, the donkey-borne improvised explosive device, the Dee-Bid, which was rumored to have been witnessed more than once. The EFP, or explosively formed projectile or penetrator, also known as the shape charge, was a particularly deadly bomb that could rip through the thickest armor. The U.S. military officials claimed the EFPs were being imported from Iran. (The commander of the Desert Rogues showed me a photograph of the damage from an EFP detonation. He kept the photo on his laptop. The metal charge had gone through the driver's window and killed one of his soldiers. “See the brains on the steering wheel,” he said.)

The afternoon following the patrol, I spoke to an intel officer named Matt about a recent Es-Vee-Bid experience. Matt was six one, with blue eyes and reddish hair. We'd been talking for a while, sitting under the shade of a makeshift gazebo outside headquarters, when he got around to telling me what was on his mind.

He'd been out on patrol, one of those getting-to-know-the-neighborhoods, win-hearts-and-minds kind of thing. The soldiers were giving out candy to the kids. One of the soldiers was swarmed by children, jumping, smiling, standing in the middle of the street.

Matt was walking around the corner to the next street when he heard the loud explosion and ducked. He got a look in his eye as he told the story. His hand shook slightly.

“I ran around the corner,” he said. “I saw things, little body parts, children. Tiny pieces of children.” He looked at me like he needed to apologize for what he was saying. “You know, I know this sounds cheesy,” he said, and then, “Things you're not ever supposed to see. Arms. Legs. Of children.”

One American and at least fifteen Iraqi children killed. Matt's eyes drifted. He told me there'd been a counseling session afterward, set up by the army's mental health unit to deal with post-traumatic stress after incidents like this. Matt said he attended the meeting, but didn't think it helped very much. I told him I would email him to follow up and do a story. I was interested in how the army was handling combat stress. He never responded to my emails.

The Desert Rogues took me in a convoy across the city, from FOB Rustamiyah on the east side of the Tigris to Camp Victory on the west, to drop me off for my next embed. Camp Victory, one of the bases surrounding the Baghdad Airport, was home to an army EOD company. Explosives ordnance disposal. The Baghdad Bomb Squad.

The bomb squad had a small shack and yard, “the Bomb Garden,” decorated with explosives; rows of grenades and mortar shells (30mm, 60mm, 120mm, that's a big one), Iranian grenades, Italian grenades, American grenades, Russian-made rockets, mortar tubes, all manner of land mines. Next to the Bomb Garden was the Garden of Shame, where they kept the objects that soldiers had thought were IEDs but turned out to be false alarms. There was a tea kettle, an extension cord, a piece of cable, a brake drum. The bomb squad had responded to these calls, spent hours preparing to defuse them, only to find out that they had wasted their time.