World Chump - Wanderlust

Have you ever recalled enjoying a television program even when you didn't understand it? Worse yet, did you feel that not understanding it was the very key to its entertaining character?

Granted, the word entertaining is a dubious expression not everyone would bestow on certain programs. One you don't have to understand and still read about everywhere in the world is Al Jazeera (translated: 'The Peninsula'), the world famous news channel that even the US Air Force could not resist bombing. In a supposedly flagrant violation of the Geneva Convention, Al Jazeera has drawn fire for showing the dead bodies of English and American soldiers. They have been virtually the exclusive outlet for Bin Laden's Funniest Home Videos, which more powerful nations like the US don't find funny at all. People here get into very heated discussions what Al Jazeera really is. The Isrealis say it is anti-Jewish. Some Arabs here claim it is a Jewish front. Others a CIA plot. But they still all watch it. It wouldn't be fun watching a train wreck if you didn't get to see the impact and the bodies afterwards.

Though a staple for any Arabic television set, Al Jazeera is nothing I would call extraordinary. True, it may be sensationalist from time to time, but that’s something I would not mind on occasion from our ratings-lusting western media. And no, Britney Spears’ latest divorce proceedings don’t count here. So Al Jazeera is biased? Cry me a river the size of the Nile. What then is Fox News? I have never seen anything like Fox News. Here you have a roundtable discussion of views that reach from the right... all the way to the far right. Even more surprising than watching the Arabs with all of their kings and sultans watching Al Jazeera is a democratic republic like the US watching Fox News.

What is entertaining is channel surfing. There are hundreds of channels I can receive on satellite, fifty of them with solely religious content. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me, but do we really need fifty of these television channels? Allah oo akbar. Click. Next channel. Allah oo akbar. Click. Next. The prophet Mohammed. This one’s in English. Click. These people are making the televangelists in the US look modern and moderate by comparison, not to mention sane.

Then there are the Arabic soap operas. Okay, I don’t get the point of these. Here, touching, kissing, and hugging is not allowed. Wait a minute, this is a soap opera? Say it isn’t so. No hugging. No kissing. No touching. On a soap opera. I have an idea. Why not play soccer without a ball, and the players can pretend they’re kicking it? Of course you would have to do away with the referee, which would be folly as the first argument will take up the entire ninety minutes of the game.

Player : The ball was in.
Goaltender: It was not.
Player : Yes it was. You never even saw the ball.
Goaltender: And neither did you? You shot it somewhere near the floodlights.
Player : No I didn’t. My teammate is bringing the ball back to midfield now.
Goaltender: (holding up his hand)
Player : What’s that?
Goaltender: I’m red carding you.
Player : You can’t do that.

How about creating the news without any headlines? We’ll sit and watch the news anchor silently gaze back into the camera sipping a soft drink. I still have to scratch my head over that one. What could be the draw of a soap opera that will show no skin? Extremely witty one liners? The singing and dancing? Does the last word of every reply rhyme with that of the question? Do the sponsors of these shows promise everyone who watches free hummus? Just what is the appeal?

Then there's the soap opera featuring warrior tribes that could hark back to centuries ago (or yesterday, who knows?). I still forget the name of it. Although there is definitely some basis in fact here, it does not show the Arabs in a very flattering light, no matter which tribe is fighting. If the West saw this, they wouldn't think it was a soap opera at all. Nice job, Arabs. The West couldn't have stereotyped you any better. Again, I don't have to understand a word here (and I don't) to find it even mildly entertaining.

As a Peace Corps Volunteer in Morocco, I used to watch Egyptian movies with my family. Again, I didn't understand a word, but some of the scenes were just so cliched, so banal, almost vaudeville to be taken seriously. I feel the same way today, no matter what I watch on Arabic TV. How little has changed in the years since. They might want to pipe down on censorship, for starters. That might do the trick.

A funny thing happened on the way to the forum, prompting me to switch from my original topic (Arabic TV) to something a little more inspiring. The Arabic soap operas, commercials, Al Jazeera, and MTV videos will have to wait, in other words.

Salameh is one of my drivers who accompanies me to the airport whenever our flights are scheduled. He's been doing this for some time, you can tell. He knows the rules at the airport, the authorities, the solution to every problem. In short, he's a real pro. He is about middle-aged with thinning hair and facial features that suggest that somewhere in the family tree a branch did not grow in this area. He is a typical born-again Muslim. Having raised hell as a young man, he has now settled down to become a respected family man and a father of four. 

On this day, we took the road through the downtown area. As we were waiting in traffic behind one of these little busses that could pass for an old minivan almost anywhere else in the world, he told me about his oldest daughter, how she was working on her finals in High School and would start at the University next year. Salameh, though proud of his kids' education, knows he will be in a bit of a bind when she enrolls, as there will be some serious cash that will have to be plunked down. 

Although I sympathized with his financial enigma, I told him to look on the bright side. In this part of the world, he is almost guaranteed to be taken care of later in his life by his children. This goes without saying. The options here are not which nursing home to stick him in or which useless retirement plan decides to squeeze you out of which benefits, but exactly what the working rotation will look like among the children when that time comes.

To fortify that theory, he mentioned his mother. She is 87 years old, but still in good health, Salameh's mother still has ten children she can look forward to seeing throughout the week, not to mention seventy (seven-zero) grandchildren. Her sons, seven of them, each contribute a certain amount of money each month to pay for a maid who can watch over her when they can't, which is rare, to hear him tell it. Salameh claims that his mother's hearing and sight are superior to his own, which she owes to a lifelong of healthy living, in particular organic foods. 

Then Salameh launched into the story of his late father, who died at 96 about fifteen years ago. I quietly did the math. Assuming Salameh was telling the truth, then he was conceived when his father was past 60! This man clearly didn't need Viagra. He settled for a teaspoon of olive oil per day, some strong coffee (Jordanian only), and cold showers in the dead of winter. This guy was making Rocky look like Little Red Riding Hood. He did not smoke or drink, loved his family, and, like his wife, only bought and ate the healthiest foods. Salameh told me that his father was in great shape until maybe the last six months of his life, when his health slowly began to deteriorate. His sons and daughters would regularly drop by, and Salameh recalled the day he brought his father to the hospital in what proved to be the last week of his life. Though in pain and discomfort, he was giggling like a schoolboy. He had only been to the doctor three times in his life, and he knew this would be the final time. He thanked his children and his wife and eventually passed peacefully, the entire small town of a family at his bedside. He was lucky, I told Salameh. Lucky to have been born here in Amman, believe it or not.

As we were waiting at a traffic light, I looked at a lone old man wearing a white skullcap gingerly pacing down the sidewalk. I already began to feel jealous toward him. Surely he had his own family somewhere who would fuss and fight to ensure that he could live his late life with dignity, minus the lawyers and insurance companies. 

I am also aware that this is not an isolated case. My barber, for example, saved up all of his money so he could put his younger sister through college... for just the first year. Am I missing something here? 

I am aware that a family's love can't be measured by material wealth, but we're talking about two years of income that this guy just spent to keep his sister's dream alive. I could name dozens of other cases here, as relayed to me by the most common people. I am also aware that in some families altruism does not necessarily rule, especially when there is a lot of money involved and the children already start to shred each other over an inheritance that has become their very reason for being. I still claim that this is the exception and not the rule that we have seemed to firmly embrace in the west.

While politicians in the western world continue to parrot lines about family values, people like Salameh here will give a leg to save a leg over here, it seems. They have not forgotten what it was like to be children, children dependent on others. Maybe the do-it-yourself approach is the key to happiness and success in life. Maybe pride is not a deadly sin but a virtue that created the Henry Fords and Walt Disneys and assembly lines and Mickey Mouse hats. Maybe we should resign ourselves to the fact that we are ultimately alone and responsible for our own destiny. In the meantime, the Arabs will continue to cherish real family values as practiced by real human beings.

"I fought authority, authority always wins..." - John Cougar Mellencamp

If people actually knew of this song and what it meant, it would easily hit the TOP 40 here in Jordan, albeit stuck in the bottom third and never a serious threat to all of the hits praising Allah, Habibi, or both. At least be something people can identify with.

I suppose authority seems to be the logical choice to write about on the day after the elections. You know when Election Day is coming up in Jordan. The sides of the streets are inundated with posters depicting the candidates. Not unlike the United States, these are old, fat, almost-Caucasian men, each one of them promising everything short of the clouds in the sky. 

The guys working with me, old hats at this spiel, will usually take a quick glance, shake their heads and say, "Liars, all of them." It's so old it makes 60 Minutes look like the latest European reality show. Every now and then they'll throw in a woman (veiled, of course) for good measure to convey the impression that lying, stealing, and cheating is not just a monopoly reserved for guys. One candidate actually did make my guys laugh. Referring to history in the last century with Israel and the West Bank, the candidate claimed that he would 'regain all land lost in 1967', but that he could not promise the same for 'all land lost in 1948'. Clever. I still don't know if they actually voted for him.

Besides the posters, you will find tents erected throughout the city designed to invite ordinary people to rallies, where the candidate pays for food, drink, and free gifts. It is certain that buying votes is omnipresent here, although the government has been hesitating to crack down on said practice. Coming from the west, you have to smile at the posters, the promises, and other outdated modi operandi. The last time I remember campaign posters must have been in the 70's, when my father ran for the School Board in Southern California. The promises printed on them are ridiculous, almost something you would hear voiced by a second grader running for President during some mock election. I think people should have a lying contest. I understand there is actually such a thing, somewhere in Scotland, although lawyers and politicians are routinely barred from it. How about telling the truth for a change? This is what I would love to see on these posters.

"My opponent is a liar but I am a bigger liar."
"I will rob you blind."
"Nothing like the status quo."
"Lock away your children."
"Every day I promise to look after MY best interests."

I still understand that politics are a Catch 22, that you're doomed if you tell the truth, but that the lie is still preferable in people's minds. How do you win a swimming contest without arms and legs? Do you flap your ears like mad? In the end, the best players always win, not necessarily the best people. Most Jordanians are no longer fooled by their politicians, which is more than I can say for people in the west. When it comes time to vote, there is a distant cousin or uncle in the family that will get the nod.

Speaking of authority, I have had my run-ins with them as well, the police most specifically. They are not bad people (although I am sure you will find plenty of people who beg to differ in these parts), but they are clueless sometimes. I remember once when the Canadian Ambassador to Baghdad came through our little airport and the authorities demanded to x-ray his diplomatic pouch, which he resisted as if they had just asked him to climb into the machine himself, minus his suit. Sometimes they will frisk me, sometimes they won't. Lately they have demanded to x-ray my bag upon leaving the airport (a new one). 

The policemen are not a bad lot, but they are suspect. A lot of them are overweight, probably a result of sitting on their asses all day. Then again, how is that different in the west? I will say this: Their gear definitely looks silly. I saw this policeman directing traffic today with a batting helmet on. That's right, no derivations here, a batting helmet. The guy looked like he was ready to break out a bat and swing at the windshields. Then there are other traffic cops who have this World War I helmet on, coupled with this cloth cascading down the back of the helmet, presumably to prevent them from getting sunburns. I don't know, to me it looks more like Kaiser Wilhelm having produced an offspring with Jar Jar Binks. Ja, da sun doing MURDER to mesa skin.

It seems to me that people here respect authority, though not for the right reasons. As I recall from my Peace Corps days in Morocco, the locals would always tell you that a policeman was the last person you wanted to see before bedtime. How that works here I can only guess.

My cousin who emigrated a long time ago to New Zealand came across this local in Australia while traveling there. When the local was asked about the difference between Australia's two major cities, Sidney and Melbourne, the man rubbed his chin for a moment, then replied, "Melbourne was planned, Sidney happened."

Living in Jordan, you get a little sense of both, the planning and the happening. The growth here is apparently beyond what anybody expected. The minor exits leaving the main highways. The minor ones feeding into it? Whew. How about building a tricycle path with a ramp to feed into the highway? 

At the same time, Amman is adjusting shway shway, little by little. Only a few weeks ago, they finally completed a pedestrian zone in the center of Swefieh, a shopping area that is actually beginning to look chic. Not a bad idea, that concept. People might just enjoy shopping a lot more if they don't have to inhale unleaded gasoline like patrons at a shisha bar. The result is a zone surrounded by modern stores with something to offer other than the inventory of your basic One Dollar Store back in the States. These people are beginning to get it with the concept of consumerism. A baby store here, a sports equipment shop there, a Starbucks across the road. That's how people slap down their plastic!

Of course even the fanciest pedestrian zone pales when compared to the latest pawn (make that something bigger, like a queen) of corporate capitalism in Amman, the City Mall. Even my wife and I were impressed: a giant supermarket that alone would make any Walmart in the States look like a Seven Eleven, adjoining dozens of big name brand stores selling clothes, sunglasses, electronics, sportsware, etc., scattered on five floors with elevators and escalators to connect them. Granted, the parking house is still a project in the works, but one people can easily overlook as long as they can take that latest mammoth flatscreen or remote controled toaster home with them.

It makes up for a long list of blunders people formerly assigned with the task of building Amman were charged with. Case in point: the sidewalks. No city is complete without them. If you are to enjoy a city to its fullest, it's better to do so at your leisure, rather than having one hand on the steering wheel and another on the horn. Amman has miles of sidewalks. The problem is, some expert decided they would look more aesthetic if they planted palm trees in the middle of them. Genius move, sir. You might want to take your baker's apprenticeship and apply it to your own area of expertise before screwing up an entire city. As a result of this brainstorming session in the middle of the desert during a sandstorm and an acid trip, people still can't walk on those sidewalks for ten meters if they tried. I have an idea: how about building a playground in the middle of the street? Better yet, give the kids a remote to operate the traffic lights with. If filmed, the ratings of that show would be through the roof of the City Mall.

Amman, of course, was built on seven hills, so getting from one hill to the next is as easy as making it through a pool of sharks with a bleeding seal strapped to your back. That was until it finally dawned on somebody that, hey, what if we actually built a bridge? Well, it took a few years and thousands of hours of cheap imported labor, but the bridge is finally standing, even though another Isaac Newton somewhere decided that pedestrians were not important enough and thus left minimal room for people to walk. Think on the bright side, though: that's quite a drop (maybe 60-70 meters) to the road in the valley below it. If people wish to commit suicide they will have to earn it.

But again, most attempts to block the efficient expansion of the city are doomed to fail, no matter how hard people try. Dozens of skyscrapers are in the works, cranes are as abundant in Amman as crocs in the Nile, and the city is loosening its rigid height limit for residential and commercial buildings. Good idea, I think. It's not like Amman is blocking the view to anything around here but a desert mirage. With the latest constructions, most notably the Abdali downtown project that supposedly will include a series of canals and water fountains (although which country will they have to attack for the water?) to surround a series of stores and office buildings, people here are banking on a future that might compare to that of its more wealthier neighbors in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait and the UAE. Again, considering that downtown Amman now looks like a giant sewer with a couple of one star hotels in its midst, I think people might welcome the idea.

Summa summarum, I tell people Amman is just all right. There's nothing special about it, although I can also guarantee everyone that the Amman that people will actually remember is yet to come.

Progress, I am sure we agree, is a fact of life. Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. 

I am sure that not many of us miss rotary phones. The cell phones of the 80's don't compare to the ones they make today. In twenty years, they will probably have created a Swiss army knife cell phone. Press a button, and out comes a blade. Presto, you can shave. Press another button, and out comes a can opener. Another, a pen. The deluxe version will probably have a miniature pistol that could wipe out an entire office. Cars are another good example. My father, a former mechanic, loves cars, but doesn't miss the double-clutch, steers-harder-than-a-bus-stuck-in-fresh-cement models. 

Although some people might argue differently, TV too has improved. Sometimes I look at a re-run of some drama from the 80's, say Magnum or Simon and Simon, and I am thinking. Damn! And I used to watch this stuff? Wear those shorts? Cut my hair like that? Unless you're the Taliban steadfastly clinging to your caves and ranking your women slightly beneath your goats, you know what I am talking about when I use the word progress.

But then there's AFN (Armed Forces Network) television.

Don't get me wrong, AFN has come a long way. Back in the 80's, we had a grand total of one channel that made up AFN television. Even so, it was still good enough to watch Saturday Night Live or the Super Bowl. Today, there are something like a dozen channels. All right, so the Pentagon Channel is as desirable as sending your kids to Neverland Ranch, but my wife and I actually have options today. Hollywood gossip on one channel, ESPN on another, game shows, talk shows, movies... not bad at all. Granted, it's not Cox Cable, but it's as good as it gets for any expat. Even though I rarely watch TV, it's good to know I can go channel surfing once I do pick up the remote. Except that one thing has not changed at all.

The commercials, better known as infomercials.

Oh boy, I have never seen anything worse hit the airwaves, and I am even including the old Flash Gordon series or anything from the Shopping Channel. People who have never watched AFN should never start, unless you're really fed up with all of those Cialis, McDonald's, and Domino's ads clogging the airwaves before doing the same to your arteries. 

The alternative, you will find out, is even less palatable. You see, AFN doesn't rely on big corporations for survival. In its place, you will find plenty of low-budget, hair-raising, blood-curdling infomercials with a content equivalent to the nutritional value of rubber tires. 

Twenty years ago, you would have some jackass soldier telling you about common sense and operational security. With a straight face, a soldier of any given rank would warn you not to smoke, not to drink, not to breathe, whatever. It hasn't changed. Sure, the technology has, so you might find the captions on your screen jump up and down and explode. Some dorky looking Private might talk to you through his braces about the War on Terror in a perfect computerized Arnold Schwarzenegger tough-guy voice. Those body bags they refuse journalists to film by now might have become distorted until they appear like little purple Barney dinosaurs acceptable to any family-friendly audience.

But some things don't change, and it's the ideas. There is one infomercial warning the troops about Operational Security (OPSEC), meaning you should always watch what you say about your plans to deploy, travel, shop, brush your teeth, etc., because the enemy may be watching and/or listening. Fair enough. But to illustrate this, they use a mouse to walk down what appears to be your typical neighborhood street in the heart of Suburbia. Watching it with cardboard binoculars is a cat lying in wait for it. Unbeknownst to the mouse, the cat only moments later slides a mousetrap into the picture, conceivably to trap our little rodent friend. The message, naturally, is beware, don't get trapped. But a cat using a mousetrap to catch a mouse? Honest to God. They have been catching mice since their very existence started. Displaying a cat attempting to catch a mouse with a mousetrap is like asking a goat to eat grass with utensils. Just plain silly. The combined cast of Sesame Street has a combined higher IQ than the staff concocting these genius infomercials somewhere in their bunkers.

But wait! There's less. Another favorite is one that features this black screen, some words appearing moments later as if in a dialogue, and before you know it, it's God himself speaking! Call me, I will wipe your slate clean. Drum roll, drum roll... a few seconds pause... Signed, GOD. Again, there's nothing wrong with assisting the soldiers with their spiritual health. The problem I see is that the letter font used for these messages is something I would expect to see as the opening credits for Tails from the Crypt or some other creepy ghoul TV series. In the background, they also play music. Not the positive vibes of a pan flute or the sweet waves of a Sonata to put the viewer at ease, but an abrupt, deep, menacing beat coming from a synthesizer. Great, now God has teamed up with the Military to totally creep me out. Well done, AFN. Nobody could create atheists any better. 

Finally, there is this kids' baseball team warning about drug use. JUST SAY NO is the old phrase being rehashed here. Nothing really wrong with that, except that these teenager kids have a median weight of over two hundred pounds. Nice try, AFN. How about saying no to butter flavored toothpaste? To deep-fried coke? To dessert? To seconds? Better yet, why not just have a junkie, needle still fresh in his arm, warn about the dangers of peer pressure?

Whenever they create that device that totally wipes out commercials, I will be one of the first to stand in line for it. Of course I am sure it's already been created dozens of times, but then again I bet the GM's and the Pfizers and maybe even the military have teamed up to buy out the inventor (or boil him in oil as a safe alternative) and blow the existing patents into orbit. Until one of these inventions slips through the cracks it will be death, taxes, and AFN infomercials.

To achieve the objective noted in the header, I get up at four in the morning and walk a couple of blocks through the biting desert cold to the showers. When all is said and done, I stand in a tent waiting like the other passengers for the contractor to complete the roll call. 

No VIP treatment this time. This time I sit in the belly of the C-130 like everybody else, and I am glad I did. It's kind of nice not knowing when the plane is making an abrupt turn, nearly flying on its head, or abruptly ending the travel plans of a flock of birds heading south. What's more, I find the seats designed for the paratroopers more comfortable than that mangy sofa in the cockpit. I am even able to stretch my legs. We land in Amman in a timely fashion, the guys greet me when I hop off the plane, and it is soon back to business as usual.

My men drop me off at home, and the moment I enter the house, I recoil. The damn heater is on. Mind you, this is not one of these environmentally friendly heaters. You need to submit a work order to have the heat restored to you after the long hot months in Jordan, and then you have two options:

1) No heat
2) The heat is on full blast. You're convinced your own little household is single-handedly responsible for taking out another iceberg.

It seems to me you have to turn on the AC to counter your made-for-home equator. But by doing so, now you have not only taken out an iceberg, but probably wiped out some rare bird species in the process. 

I have always had this thing about heat. As a kid, I would faint in church a lot, whether I was an altar boy or just a regular member of the congregation. I always wondered why the church did that, especially those ultra-modern consumer-friendly churches that don't have the cave-like chilling atmosphere of the big cathedrals. What was the new Catholic Church trying to prove with this? Was it some bizarre plot concocted by the Protestants to wipe us out as a species? Were the church deliberately trying to make us feel like sinners and, consequently, have us share the experience of burning in hell for a while? 

I've noticed it's the same with cars. As a kid, I used to suffer from motion sickness. On every trip we made, my brothers and sisters would yell, "Quick! Andy's going to throw up again!" Now add the heat to that, and I'll skip the sweating part and go straight to fainting or throwing up blood. People are weird. They need so much heat, you'd think they're longing to become unborn again, i.e. to crawl back into their mothers' wombs. 

There is absolutely nothing I have against winter. That way the canopy comes off the bed, and I don't have to worry about any damn mosquitoes (now there's a species I would suffer for. I would gladly leave the heat on full blast if I knew it was contributing to their extermination - it actually does the opposite). Summer can be a bit of a letdown, too. There are the rooms where the AC has turned the whole place into the North Pole (while reducing the ice shelves of the actual location). I think people are jealous. I think deep down they want to be cold. I think they want to freeze so they can stick it to the penguins and the polar bears. Otherwise they would just turn the damn AC down.

Anyway, it's good to be back in Jordan, not imagining that you have to listen for mortars or small arms fire. It's good to be back with my family again. Here you can settle for the dumb-ass who won't get out of his car and persist in honking his horn to some nut who has no idea he is there. By the time the guy has honked the horn five minutes, you have everybody in the neighborhood wishing they could aim an RPG at him. At least I have never heard of anyone dropping dead from the sound of a blaring horn.

Just when you think that Murphy's Law has run its course you realize that exactly the opposite is true. In Murphy's Law, not only will things go wrong whenever they can, but inevitably they get worse. I prefer a quote from my Dad: Shit comes in waves.

I checked out from the Embassy at exactly ten thirty last night. I surrendered my badge to the intelligence guys, received my passport, and checked out of the KBR brownstones, uh, I mean trailers. Of course, since I was technically no longer authorized to even take a piss within the IZ by myself, I had this sergeant trailing me wherever I went. 

From the Presidential Palace, I returned the key at the billeting office, with the sergeant from intelligence lending me a hand with the body armor. Presto, before the fixed time of ten forty-five, my driver was there. 

Damn, I told the sergeant. No such luck in Jordan, this business with punctuality. These guys really want to keep their jobs, I'm thinking. Affirmative, the sergeant said. It's not that hard to believe since the moment they lose their jobs and walk out of any of the gates of the IZ, there will be plenty of 'friends' to meet them, just drooling over themselves to put a bullet through his head for collaborating with the occupational force. 

The Iraqi driver took me to where the Rhino was. I know what I wrote about these things earlier, but even a Hummer (the ultimate turd-shaped vehicle for men questioning their own sexuality and/or size of genitals) looks like a Ferrari compared to these things. I waited for another hour in the cold after being manifested until a few doors popped open and the Rhinos were ready to rock and roll.

Some contractor hopped on the Rhino and gave instructions on what to do if we were taking fire from either side, what body armor was required, how to take the stairs down the Rhino without twisting yourself into a pretzel, how to breathe, etc. The ride on the Rhino was uneventful, and we were dropped off at BIAP, the airport, at LZ Stryker, to be more precise. From there the guessing game began, Where did I go from there? Would I be able to move before I turned into a human iceberg, one wearing body armor, no less?

Help came from a most unexpected source. This pretty black lady (let's call her Janet) addressed me and asked where I was going. When I told her, she noticed that, in short order, I didn't have a catcard (the badges usually issued for anybody doing business within the Green Zone; without it, you might as well join the illegal immigrants in California or the prisoners at Gitmo as entities with no rights), didn't have my country clearance (a special thanks to my own office for that), nor was I allowed to stay at Sully for longer than a night unless I had official business (luckily I did). 

I also realized that I knew who Janet was. She had once been stranded in Jordan after missing an outbound flight to Baghdad, and I helped her a little to contact her supervisor, book a hotel, and get on the next plane's manifest. I didn't have to do that at the time. She was neither a Chief of Mission employee or Embassy Staff. The easiest thing then would have been to let her fend for herself. I'm glad I didn't. She set me up with living quarters in no time, and I am absolutely sure there is no way I would have gotten that or received any other treatment than the typical runaround if I hadn't helped her out. With my bag stowed away, I went to sleep at around two thirty. Of course I missed breakfast the next morning, but sleep was just more important, and I still managed a solid six hours.

I showered and brushed my teeth the next morning and then ran into the fellas again from Sunday. When I called my counterpart in Baghdad to meet him, it turns out that he actually works at the Embassy, not at BIAP, as we'd all assumed. Should we just go ahead and give Murphy's Law another name? So my chance to meet him was yesterday. I won't be able to go back to the Embassy unless I can patent an invisible cloaking device and sneak onto some helo and then through the Pruvian manned checkpoints. Not going to happen. But imagine the fun I would have.

Me: Heyyyyyy, cabron!!!

Soldier: Que?

Me: (now whispering) Te quiero, hombre.

This would go on for hours until they would finally have to relieve the poor guy for emptying all of his clips at shadows. I still don't understand why Peruvians control checkpoints of an American held zone. Many times, they couldn't understand a word I was saying, and before you know it, the first brick of the tower of Babel begins to crumble. And all for what? What was Peru's take in this? A special bribe by the Bush administration? A scuba-diving weekend at the Tigris? Oh, I forgot. They wanted to be added to the Wall of Fame at our Embassy gym. What's good enough for Guam is good enough for Peru.

Later I paid a visit to the airstrip at BIAP and met with the ground chief responsible for most military planes. Talking under running engines is the ultimate exercise in futility. You might as well try to kick a soccer ball under water. What's worse, when the plane passes you, the dust swirls and kicks up, so now you have to cover your eyes. I imagine walking through a carwash would be a more pleasant experience. 

It was off to my five star dinner at the mess around six. There's this sign posted at the sinks where you wash your hands before you enter the hall. I can't remember it verbatim, but it warns about incoming rockets and mortars and to hit the ground immediately when you here a whistle overhead. 

People who have been here a while would remember the good ole days when incoming was the order of the day. Morning. Brush your teeth. Incoming. Coffee. Mortars. Lunch. Incoming. Naptime. Wake up, shithead, more incoming. Take a dump. Damn it, somebody just took a more compelling dump on me, etc. I can also believe that some people actually miss that kind of excitement. These are more than likely the guys who were born to wear the uniform. Not a problem: at the rate we're going we should always find a war for them.

Tomorrow at this time I expect to be back in my digs in Jordan, barring any breakdowns - I almost used the adjective 'unforeseen', but that would be misleading. Lord, I can't wait to be with the family again.

It turns out I hadn't seen anything yet. At Sully Compound, where people awaiting further transportation assemble, I checked my email, then met with my counterparts in their office, shot the breeze a bit, then went to dinner with this lady who was a Swedish embassy employee and another guy from Denmark. That Danish fella was sharp. You would think he'd been born in Virginia; his command of the language easily superseded that of so many natives. With time to kill after dinner, I returned to the Internet cafe, found my sunglasses I had left there without noticing it, then gathered body armor and travel orders to take the helicopter to the Embassy complex.

Once I was strapped in, I had to push in a pair of ear plugs to tune out the loud rotors of the Blackhawk and possibly the machine gun fire that might bark out at any moment's notice from the alert door gunner behind me. 

Looking down at Baghdad lying there in the dark, I felt exhilarated. How peaceful it all looked, not unlike the picture of the tranquil desert sand as seen from the C-130 the day before. We crossed the Tigris river, landed to pick up a couple of troops, and were finally dropped off at LZ Washington near the Embassy compound. An Embassy officer, let's call her Betty for the sake of anonymity, was there to greet me and escort me to the Embassy compound. 

Of course, we were stopped at the first opportunity. The Peruvian soldiers on guard did not recognize my Jordanian embassy badge, and I was ordered to apply for a temporary vistor's badge. The Peruvians frisked me, gave me the whole nine, and applied the full procedures as dictated by security protocol on me, annoyingly so. 

There are so many layers of security around the Embassy that you have to wonder how any of our people get through, let alone the enemy. When Betty took me to the office to get a temporary badge, there was a guy who gave us a form to fill in and then left the room. Another employee returned minutes later, dialed his phone, Betty answered hers, and a short conversation ensued before they both realized that they were a couple of feet from each other. After this song and dance, Betty finally took me on a tour of the Presidential Palace.

The premier for me at the Palace is like visiting the San Diego Zoo for the first time as a kid. Big rooms here, bigger rooms there, possibly a room housing an entire shopping mall or golf course there. Did Saddam have shooting ranges here? Separate rooms for komodo dragons? I wonder. Did his two evil sons peer out from the rooms to the swimming pool and take potshots at the divers if they didn't land the perfect header? So this used to be Saddam's palace.

Give him credit, he spent his stolen money wisely. I have never seen anything like it. The Americans, of course, not somebody to rub it in, are still using this as their own digs until a bigger complex can be completed in the Green Zone. I bet not only is Saddam turning in his grave right now, but he must be doing summersaults, cartwheels and handstands. 

After the initial tour, Betty bid me farewell and I strolled over to the Cafeteria, the DEFAC, as they call it here. With all of these abbreviations, the Department of State is making the kids and their LOL and IMO phone lingo look like Neanderthals painting stickmen in their caves. Inside the DEFAC, there is a buffet that would make the Four Seasons dinner and breakfast spreads look like c-rations (your billions of dollars of taxpayers' money at work). I had a few root beers , watched a bit of football, then turned in at my trailer at a little past midnight. 

It was a peaceful night - a bit of small arms fire here, a muffled explosion there...all in a day's work in the Baghdad jungle, where the nocturnal creatures come out to hunt and play at night. Of course, my bed had neither sheets nor blankets, so I had to make another trip to the KBR Billeting office. Bush, I say. So billions and billions of dollars that help to add to our considerable national debt can't even get me a decent sleeping quarters? Ha!

I went to breakfast the next morning and ran into Megan, a former PCV I served in Morocco with. Small world. She said she would be in Jordan within a month and would finally get to see my little boy soon. He's going to charm her pants off like everybody else's, that's a given. I wonder how he is doing now, and whether he's had a nice reunion with his mother. Next I found Betty again at her office and she took me over to see other GSO officers, whom I recognized from former encounters in Jordan. Later I am to take the Rhino, some box-like bus that takes you through the entire IZ, the International Zone (RTA? Remember the abbreviations?).

Later, I met with Betty again and met a few others from the Embassy staff I recognized from Jordan. All of them (except for one stupid b---h who was adopted by pitbulls) were friendly, probably recalling what our office had done for them in Jordan. I had a chat with one veteran who described the past few months in Baghdad. Let's call him Ron. Compared to when he first arrived here, Ron claimed that mortar and rocket attacks within the Green Zone were now virtually non-existent. He chatted about the new Embassy complex, possible problems that might arise pertaining to its security, and other trouble spots in town. Very convincing, hearing this all from a non-politician with no agenda inundated with propaganda. 

The rest of the day was spent touring the Embassy complex. Again, very impressive. I paid a visit to the PX, where I bought a couple of non-essential items like mouthwash, Gatorade, and the like. In all, there was really nothing I wanted there. I looked at a few of the DVD's. Ugh! Sequels! Can't stand them. I know what you did last Summer. I still know what you did last summer. I will always know what you did last summer. Guess what, I don't give a rat's ass what you did last summer, even if you gouge my eyes out with a spade.

For photos I wanted to shoot I needed to obtain a permit and was told to fill out a couple of forms and promise not to photograph certain items, like posters (propaganda the enemy wouldn't buy anyway) and vehicles (Ugh! why would you? Those things look so nasty that's like them asking me to photograph mating hippos). There was this one soldier who needed to escort me to the officer granting permission for such things, and I was surprised to see how young this kid was. In general, the Green Zone is teaming with soldiers (duh! I guess that's like saying the golf course is loaded with grass), many of them fresh out of High School. Meanwhile I shot photos at will around the Embassy. Nobody even asked to see my permission. They usually don't when you actually have one.

Later, I went to the gym. The gym in the Embassy complex makes some of these high tech fitness centers back home look like playgrounds with slides and swings and monkey bars. 

The first thing I noticed was the long row of flags on display. There was one for Italy, one for the UK, then for Poland, then Guam, Denmark, etc. until it finally dawned on me that the Americans were honoring the coalition troops. Very important, considering that one hundred of our partners have provided us with a combined total of a quarter percent of all combat troops. 

Okay, I am exaggerating here, but let's face it: does Morocco's flag really belong up there for supplying bomb-sniffing apes? Costa Rica? What did they do? Insert your coconut joke here, I won't. Is this how we honor countries, those who participate in our illegal, money-driven war, however minor the contribution? Sad. Anyway, at the gym I put in my minutes, then shot some hoops with this huge black soldier from the Army outside. Despite his size, he was a sharpshooter from beyond the arc, and had a pretty good stroke going. I told him literally I was glad he was shooting from three point range, because I sure as hell didn't want to guard his big ass in the paint (think white pancakes with plenty of blood, I mean syrup on them).

Dinner later on at the DEFAC again (I still don't know what that stands for; damn teens running the Embassy - you are so not cool). Again the works: A sandwich stand, where you create your own sandwich, the salad bar, a Chinese corner, general entrees. Repeat: not bad at all. 

Let's face it: most of the facilities are extraordinary around here. The MWR center (Moral, Welfare, and Recreation - again those damn teens) is located next to a pool that looks like it was designed for a king (Well, it was designed for a dictator and his psycho kids, but that's close enough; wonder if Uday ever drowned any of his nannies in there). There are pool tables outside, posters with special events ranging from Country and Western Evening to Karaoke and dance classes. 

There are 'water stops' in the middle of the road, places where you find pallets with a couple of thousand bottles of water, available for anybody who can lift his hand and grab one. People never get thirsty around here. There are big screen televisions everywhere, computers like the one I'm working on now, yoga classes, other martial arts, masses and services to ensure your spiritual fitness. 

Not bad at all, I'd say. The trouble is, it's hard to enjoy these things in a jail, which is what the Green Zone essentially is, a complex of a couple of square miles that is more heavily guarded than Fort Knox. Once you're outside of it, though, you can put wagers on the time the first attempt on your life happens. I bet forty on the twenty-fifth. Pete puts down fifty on the twenty-seventh. Boom. You all lose. The house wins. Even with a family, I imagine it would suck, if indeed they were allowed to serve there.

Dad: Honey, let's go to Anbar Province this weekend.
Mom: Yeeeaah! Maybe little Johnnie will lose his other arm and our younger daughter can kick the bucket in style like her older sister last year.
Dad: I know. I kinda miss the cast I had when that shrapnel nearly severed an artery in my leg. 
Mom: Never mind that. I will never go back to fireworks for New Year's Eve again. Not after car bombs.

I will have to get ready to move out of here and back to Sully Compound. Got my body armor (Damn! that thing is still so heavy! Makes those vests you used to wear at the dentist's office feel like silk) and helmet ready. I will have to take the Rhino (that boxy vehicle that looks like an RV - when you're drunk enough, I guess; otherwise, it's just plain ugly.) tonight, so that will be another experience.

After months of waiting, I am finally here. I postponed it for the longest time, my trip to Baghdad, even after both the office chief and the deputy (and their predecessors) urged me to go. I told them to wait at least until my baby was born and then I could go splat or some lucky mortar might paint some Halliburton constructed compound with my intestines. Well, my son is born, alive and well, and I finally have to live up to my end of the deal, which is to take a C-130 military aircraft to Baghdad International Airport, or BIAP as they call it here. The title of this entry is very fitting, incidentally. If the C-130 doesn't fly (and it often doesn't), I will be stuck at home. The way I see it, this was my only chance to go to Iraq.

A nice surprise right off the bat - I was treated as a VIP (nice to have a good rapport with the ground chief!) and was allowed to take a seat in the cockpit. There were even some high ranking UN representatives and Embassy personnel flying with us - didn't see them in the cockpit, Hee hee haw. It is so much different watching a C-130 work from the inside. Now you don't see the engines running, you hear them. Instead of the customary earplugs, I elected to hear AC/DC, the Dropkick Murphys, and Robyn Hitchcock from my I-Pod full blast. Once we were in the air, it was just indescribable. None of this "I believe I can fly" soundtrack crap. Boy, now there's a song that should take its place right alongside "Deutschland ueber alles" and Kenny G.'s "Songbird", among other dubious classics in hell. At any rate, once the plane straightens out and you look dead straight ahead, you feel at peace with the world... even if there's a war on the ground, which was clearly the case here. Sneaking a peak downward, I saw nothing but miles and miles of sand, just this long white giant, again the quiet witness of a deadly war that has become commonplace in this supposed cradle of civilization. You really have to wonder what stories you could hear if mountains and rocks could talk. With all the blood spilled here, you have to wonder why the sand is still so light here.

It would be kinda boring being a rock or a hill in Greenland, I imagine.

Hill #1: Man, did you just see that?
Hill #2: Yup, another iceberg.
Hill #1: Guess what it's doing.
Hill #2: Uhhh, it's melting? Yeah, never saw that in my couple millennia of existence around here.

As we descended, the plane took this sharp left that almost made me pass out. I thought my balls had jumped through my throat and taken the place of the other balls flanking my nose. This was supposedly an old manoeuvre to avoid ground fire, rockets or even just small arms fire.

Finally, we reached our destination and were marched up to this shack, ordered to assemble in rows and listen to some contractor debrief us as to where we needed to go, where to get body armor, etc. Luckily I already knew a couple of folks from the Embassy, which made things easier for me. I was issued body armor (that shit is heavy!) and with four hours to spare before catching a chopper to where I needed to go, ended up at a series of shacks, all looking identical. Look at them as the airport's answer to Suburbia in the States. One is for the men's head, one for the ladies, one for the showers, one for the Internet (this one), etc. The compound here is much bigger than I thought. In fact, I wouldn't even know I was in Baghdad unless people told me.

Thus ends part one. Rather uneventful, I would say. But stay tuned.

Only less than six months ago, I finally became a father. It's a humbling experience, as, oh about trillions of people have learned before me. People have always said that having a baby is difficult because

After living in Morocco for over two years and now in Amman for almost one and a half, Arabs still fascinate me. No, I'm not talking about the mosques and those neat little minarets twisting into the sky, adorned by the bullhorns protruding from the side or topped by the little crescents. I have long gotten over the call to prayer, which by now is as common as the Pop goes the Weasel tune blaring from an ice cream truck on a hot summer day in Brooklyn. The hookah pipes in the various cafes are no longer a novelty, nor are the Camels you can spot on the horizon on your way to the Red Sea.

This is about the Arabs themselves. First off, I have no doubt whatsoever that what I am about to describe is your common culture shock, and whereas shocks like these invariably subside with time regardless of the country you live in, some events still prompt the raising of an eyebrow or a slow headshake. Ask any Arab who has lived in the United States about culture shock. See what I mean? 

The one thing that is most prominent is the gentleness and warmth exuding from the Arabs. These people, unlike so many in the west, have every right to still call themselves human beings. They have a code that allows them to communicate with each other that more than not can result in an understanding minus the voice going up a few octaves or fists pummeling your face until you resemble Mr. Potato Head. I can honestly say I have never felt threatened as long as I've lived in the Arab world, I have never been yelled at (except by kids, of course), and for the most part I have always been treated with the utmost courtesy and respect, no matter which class, race or religion the Arab represented. 

It seems this humanity has been stamped out in the western world. If you found people like this in the States or Europe, what would happen? Let's face it: you would withdraw, wonder about the man's sexuality, and distrust would reign before the foundation of a new rapport has been built. Communication seems so easy here, they should bottle it and market it. Not true, a lot of the locals here would say. People here fight each other as regularly as Punch and Judy. Jealousy is a common trait here. I admit I have often seen people deal with others in a backhand way that resembles bickering middle schoolers scheming in the gym. Still, we in the west are not immune to these character flaws either, and I still have rarely seen these little battles escalate into full blown wars. People take a long time greeting each other, they bend over backward to make sure people feel welcome, and their hospitality is still something I have yet to see duplicated anywhere in the west.

Ah, but then there's the flip side of the coin. That same person who just smiled at you and wished you God's speed on your way home might have just slowed you down and cut you off in traffic, creating a new traffic law in the process that has you praying for the road ahead of you to open up and yank the car into a huge wave of flames. So, there are only two lanes that can take you to the supermarket and both of them are full? That's what they invented anarchy for - create a third lane that has you scraping the sides of the two cars on each side. So there is only one lane in which you can turn. Improvise! Create! In this case, a second lane, which will find you passing the car as you turn. If a westerner never suffered from road rage before the Middle East, he will come down with a full bout by the end of the first week, guaranteed. 

In traffic, human beings become merely devices to steer and manoeuver cars, and it is everyone for himself. It's not much different in a store, or a post office. Are you standing in line with two people ahead of you? You should have cut to the front like they do here, chump. It's amazing how the few people who have actually discovered the courtesy of waiting in line won't reprimand Mr. Fast Lane for believing his business is more urgent than yours, how his stamp must be bought and his letter must be sent before yours, common sense and courtesy be damned. Would you call this selfishness? No, people just don't know any better. They have lived in a chaotic state for centuries without such minor hassles as queues or traffic lights and street signs to impede their journey through life. It is not willful or intentional, it's a prominent feature of their culture that you have to imbibe as much as their tea and their mesmerizing hospitality.

It's a duality you will and eventually can live with.

You would expect something dramatic, a plague the Thomas Manns of the world couldn't possibly have ever conceived, but the truth is much simpler.

A colleague of my wife, somebody I barely even knew, died four days ago of a brain tumor. This was not necessarily unexpected, either. She'd had cancer before, I'm told. And yet this is like a dark cloud following me the whole day, a cloud that was created to piss on/off yours truly, and I am surprised to discover that it has. Like a bullet through a breech on its way to your cranium (a sickening pun, given the circumstances), it also forcefully rams home the thought that you are mortal, that you always will be, regardless of how high or low the rollercoaster has decided to tumble for the day. Even more shockingly, I realize that we were born in the same country in the same month.

This is not intended to be a blog about death, God no. It just happens to be the leitmotif today, one I can't shake after said person's death. I also happen to be travelling to Iraq on Sunday, so I guess this is not as far-fetched as it seems. I have postponed the plans for this trip for a long time, citing the recent birth of my son as part evidence, part excuse. Now that my son has been born, my first born, and is healthy, I guess we can let the Iraqis have their shot at me. Fact is I am not as scared as this might read. If I am to go splat over there, so be it. If so, this will be the shortest blog ever.

I am not always this melodramatic prior to such events. In fact, this trip is for a couple of weeks. I remember when I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Morocco. There is this place called Ouarzazate (short Oz), beyond the High Atlas Mountains. People in the entertainment industry know this place very well. In fact, many a movie has been shot there, whether we're talking westerns, or any other movies requiring desert landscapes, low costs, and little interference from the indigenous population. Anyway, my girlfriend (now my wife) used to be part of a group house in Oz, and I would visit it now and then. The problem was that you would have to take a rickety old bus across the Tishka pass, a winding, breath-taking (and often dinner-taking after you threw up your dinner) route across the mountains. For many hours your head would be thrown from side to side owing to the hundreds of curves the bus driver was attempting to navigate. Whenever a stretch of road was long enough, you would dare to take a look, usually down... quite a sight, that two thousand meter drop with no railing to prevent that bus from becoming a deadly barbecue grill for dozens of natives and tourists alike.

Sometimes you'd catch yourself thinking what a beautiful place this is. I was only praying that the busdriver was NOT admiring the site and keeping his eyes on the road. Before trips like these, I would tell my host brother in Beni Mellal sick things like, "Don't forget if I die, and this bus crashes, the head must be fed-exed to my mother." I am telling you, you don't know what tolerance is until you've been with Muslims. Of course, the guy driving the bus knew fully well what he was doing, I would arrive In Oz alive but shaken and live to tell about it.

These busrides didn't end well for everybody, though. Not far from my site in Beni Mellal (about 3 hours east of Marrakesh) there was a bus that toppled end over end into a canyon, probably seven hundred meters below. Needless to say, the entire busload bought the farm. A very ordinary slice of life episode, except that an ambulance that sped over there hours later to check on survivors took the same wrong turn and ended up landing on top of the bus in that canyon. It would have been pretty damn funny if it hadn't been so tragic.

So now I am counting my days until I can board this huge military plane (breakdowns are at about 50%) and head to Iraq myself. This is probably the one chance I will ever get to go over there, and so why not use it? People far dumber (and far smarter) have made that flight over there and survived, so I reckon I will as well.

Very unusual to launch the birth of this blog with the word 'death' in it. What will be at the end of it? The birth of another child? Can't wait to find out.