Baba Christmas and the Lion of Baghdadi
“The soldiers shook their heads disapprovingly as they looked at Pierre. But when they had convinced themselves that this man in the white hat was doing no harm, but either sat quietly on the slope of the trench with a shy smile or, politely making way for the soldiers, paced up and down the battery under fire as calmly as if he were on a boulevard, their feeling of hostile distrust gradually began to change.”
-Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
“Captain Velandy, why isn’t Peter Dolan in Dulab? He was supposed to leave here an hour ago.” It was 6AM on a weekday in August, 2007, and the speaker was Lieutenant Colonel Jim Christmas, commander of the U.S. Marine Corps’ 1st Battalion, 2nd Regiment, opening his daily staff meeting inside Combat Outpost MHC in Khan al-Baghdadi, Iraq, a thickly settled stretch of the Euphrates River in Anbar province, one hundred and forty miles west of Baghdad. The battalion was deployed here and among two other outposts astride the river.
Son of the acclaimed Marine, George Christmas, the forty year old Lieutenant Colonel from Louisiana was meticulous, tireless, vivacious, and above all, ambitious. This was not at all the promotional ambition that curries favor and prioritizes decorum. Instead it was more akin to the legendary Ottawa Indian chief, Pontiac, so intensely focused on ejecting his enemies from their Great Lakes forts that, for over a year, he was said to have discarded any person or activity or even thought that did not advance his objective.
Christmas was similarly obsessed with driving his Al Qaeda enemy from the river valley, either east, to hide in the swamps of Lake Tharthar where he could be isolated, blockaded, and attacked, or west to Syria and Jordan. How high had he set the bar? A Khan al Baghdadi businessman sidled up to the reporter after a town council meeting to describe a plan to open the nation’s first riverbank casino, and to ask for his opinion on whether or not American tourists would visit.
“Ah, well, he said that he didn’t want to miss General Odierno at COP Timberwolf, sir,” replied the Battalion’s executive officer, Captain Sid Velandy, twenty-eight, a recent graduate of the University of Virginia’s law school whose dry sense of humor was responsible for the outpost’s name. Forgoing the martial names of other Marine outposts scattered about Anbar province, names like Timberwolf, Falcon, Spear, Sword, and Iron, Velandy chose plain MHC, the acronym for Military Housing Complex.
“He said what?” Christmas barked. “I didn’t realize that embedded reporters can overrule orders.”
“Well, sir, technically you didn’t, ah…he’s not actually required in the same way that,” Velandy began.
“Never mind,” Christmas interrupted while clicking his ball point pen and crossing off the first item of his agenda.
“We’ll send him up from Timberwolf,” he added.
“Yes, sir.” Velandy answered, relieved by the quick settlement.
Ten feet away, the subject of this conversation was laying on a fold-up canvas cot with his feet crossed and hands clasped behind his head, listening closely. Only a thin piece of plywood, nine feet tall, separated his tiny quarters from the adjacent room. Like songbirds at dawn, the Marines of COP MHC made a ruckus every morning between 5:30 and 5:45. Loud voices preparing, encouraging themselves, cleaning their weapons, and waking him as reliably as the alarm on his wristwatch. When the Colonel moved to the next item on his list, the reporter swung his feet to the floor and sat up.
“Good lord does this guy even sleep?” he muttered to himself, frowning and recalling the previous night when he’d accompanied the Colonel, his imposing Sergeant Major, Waldo Rodriguez, and an intelligence officer to dine at the home of the town’s famous police chief, Colonel Barzan Hamrin Shaban, renowned throughout Anbar province as the Lion of Baghdadi.
Filling the chamber of a small percolator with bottled water, he added four heaping tablespoons of coffee to the perforated basket then turned the power on and monitored the progress through the glass top, letting it brew for ten minutes while the hot water circulated through the grounds, extracting the caffeine that he craved and creating a robust aroma that filled the cubby and wafted above the meeting next door.
Consistent with nearly all of the outpost, neither his quarters nor the officers’ meeting room had a ceiling. This was due to its makeshift nature, which was constructed in the following manner: An old, one story, cinder-block building with an open interior and twenty foot high roof had been transformed by the Marines into a plywood honeycomb with multiple hallways and barracks, a tactical operation center and meeting room, an infirmary, an intelligence element that did have a ceiling, a dining facility with a large television, a computer room containing six terminals that provided sporadic internet access, and an outdoor weight room.
The Marines occupied one half of the building and an Iraqi Army force the other, demarcated by tape on the floor. The Americans and Iraqis peacefully coexisted by going separate ways to hunt their common enemy during the daytime and ignoring each other at night, while always respecting the boundary, like bordering wolf packs.
There were no bathrooms, running water, air conditioning, or real food. Instead of those things, PVC tubes were driven deeply into the sand for one function and a nearby row of outhouses was constructed for the other. An outdoor shower area, where brown hands, wrists, necks and faces clashed with ghost-white torsos, offered limitless stacks of bottled water to be poured over the head. At night, fatigue easily overwhelmed the discomfort of extreme heat, and Meals Ready to Eat provided nutrition and energy.
Surrounded by several tiers of gabions and by concertina and razor wire, the Marines were further protected by checkpoints at entrances to a road from which the outpost was accessed, and finally by four Humvees that fully blocked the access lane, halfway between the road and the outpost.
Earlier in their deployment a vehicle slipped undetected behind several Iraqi Police cars that were waved through one of the checkpoints. When lateral to the outpost its driver revealed himself as a suicide bomber by turning off the road and accelerating down the gently sloped lane toward the Marine infantrymen at the four Humvees, all of whom immediately began firing. Hundreds of armor penetrating rounds from turret-mounted M2 Browning machine guns slammed into the vehicle, chewing up its grill and flattening its tires. When just thirty yards away it exploded, wounding each Marine at the Humvees, cracking the outpost’s cinder blocks, and staggering everyone inside. From the vehicle, shrapnel and body parts were launched in every direction. One hundred yards away on the sand-packed yard behind the outpost, Lance Corporal Kimani Boyea was minding his own business when he heard the explosion, lurched from its blast wave, and felt the left side of his face sliced open by the driver’s whole right arm, shoulder to hand, neatly clipping him as it cleaved the air and whizzed by like a tomahawk. Using his hand to prevent the detached skin of his face from flopping, he walked to the infirmary and quietly waited his turn for the sutures that would leave him undaunted, but with a long and ropy scar.
The reporter turned off the percolator and used its steam to clean his eyes, then filled a large mug, savoring it as it cooled, and considered how to approach the Colonel. In two days the moon cycle would enter the last quarter when it appears from midnight until noon and leaves the evening in darkness, and an operation was planned to take advantage of the Marines’ night vision goggles by slipping Corporal Pearson Crosby and his ten man Bravo Company squad out the back of the outpost to move silently on foot across the desert steppe to a large covert, several miles away. Suspecting the enemy may have been using it as a staging area, they hoped to use the element of surprise, giving him a taste of his own medicine. According to Captain Velandy, the reporter’s request to join them was ‘under consideration’ (the following day, permission was granted). He reached into an old and faded canvas bag for a notebook and pen and in reverse order, began jotting down the prior day’s events.
This is what he wrote:
“3:30AM: Lost in COP, Iraqis”
Too much sweet chai tea at dinner caused him to wake up in need of the PVC tubes. The outpost was pitch black and silent when he left his quarters with a flashlight, confident in his knowledge of the maze and the correct route to the Americans’ exit. So as not to disturb any Marines by the flashlight’s bright beam as it passed plywood doors left ajar, he pointed it at the ground, close to his feet.
When thirty seconds had elapsed with no sign of the door, he silently cursed and momentarily paused to find his bearings, but like a driver refusing to admit that he’s lost, did not turn back. Continuing down a long straightaway, he saw a narrow hallway entrance appear next to his feet on the left and turned intuitively, certain that this would lead to the exit.
Keeping the flashlight low he took two long strides, then suddenly froze. The hallway was apparently full of Iraqi soldiers, lining both sides, shoulder to shoulder and facing each other. The flashlight had passed four boots and now illuminated his own and those of the two Iraqis nearest him, between whom he closely stood. For several silent seconds, nobody moved. Slowly he extended the gleam along the floor of the dark hallway, revealing the boots and lower legs of a dozen men. As he returned the light back to his own boots and those of the two Iraqis who bracketed him from inches away, he realized by their continued silence that the Iraqi soldiers were equally stunned by an American’s sudden, unauthorized and unprecedented appearance. He considered greeting them, considered apologizing to them, and considered saying nothing to them while slowly backing out of the hallway, but did none of those things and instead moved impulsively forward with the same long strides, as if nothing was amiss. When the boots stopped appearing next to his own in the flashlight he exhaled in relief and expected to see the door, but saw only cinder blocks, a dead-end. He silently cursed again and castigated himself severely. “Now you’ve done it,” he thought. “Fine work. Wasn’t enough to trespass on their side. No, you had to be stubborn. Here’s when the knives come out. Well don’t just stand there.” Keeping the flashlight low he returned briskly through the congested hallway, then back to the American side and out the correct door.
Seeking an explanation for their early morning muster, that afternoon he and the outpost’s interpreter walked out to the yard where the Iraqis were busily at work, some of them making last minute preparations to patrol in their unarmored pickup trucks, others on guard duty, another unfortunate group distorting their faces and groaning as they removed and burned the contents of their outhouses, and near a door that had eluded the reporter twelve hours earlier, a small sergeant on tippy toes mercilessly berating a tall cadet. When the torrent of abuse ended and the recruit was dismissed they approached and spoke to the sergeant, who was very friendly and pleased to speak with an American reporter. He explained that among the Iraqi company there were a small number who emulated the Islamic prophet Muhammad, who took a brief daily nap at noon, and that they expanded this principle by dividing their sleep almost evenly between night and afternoon. At that moment, as if to prove the sergeant’s assertion, a soldier wearing flip-flops emerged sluggishly from their door, yawning and rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
“Midnight: Today Show story, Navy Corpsman, (Ireland and Captain Boycott)”
After returning from dinner the reporter went at 11PM to see Lieutenant Colonel Christmas to discuss delaying his visit to the Battalion’s third outpost, but he had not yet returned. An hour later he tried again, with the same result. Deciding to call it a night he walked outside to use the PVC tubes and saw a group of young Marines seated nearby around a shallow pit where a small fire was kindling. Enticed by the immensity of the desert’s night sky; its brilliant, infinite, panoramic stars, its waning crescent moon hanging low on the horizon where it tricked the eyes to appear disproportionate and enormous, and by its invigorating fresh air, he pulled a flimsy plastic chair along the sand and joined them, interrupting a thirty year old Navy Corpsman who had just started telling a story and who greeted the reporter by offering him a Winston cigarette.
“Mr. Dolan, I was just telling these young leathernecks about what happened to my buddy’s friend on an aircraft carrier. You see on every carrier there’s a small room on the flightdeck for a Navy Corpsman, in case anything happens, which almost never does. So the kid is sitting at the little desk in there, bored, reading that day’s Stars and Stripes, when all of a sudden the door flings open. He looks up and sees the guy from the Today Show standing there. He’d gone up on a flight and the fancy little fuck got airsick,” he said, pausing to take a long drag from his cigarette and to enhance the dramatic effect, like all good storytellers. “The guy looks at my buddy’s friend, doesn’t say a word, then walks right in like he owns the place, over to the little sink, which by the way is right next to a toilet, and starts power booting. Couldn’t be bothered to use the toilet; just fills up the sink with his puke. Then, still without even acknowledging the Corpsman, who’s sitting there horrified, he walks out and slams the door behind him. My buddy said the Corpsman wanted to run after him and literally throw him off the ship.”
All at once the young Marines, who were enthralled by the story and had remained silent during its telling, burst out in angry condemnation with a loud stream of colorful expletives and severe threats. Just as crows pass the identity of an aggressive human down to successive generations, resulting in a lifetime of harassment for the offender, Navy Corpsmen were systematically passing the word throughout the Marine Corps, irrevocably sentencing the newsman to a permanent shunning.
“6PM: Dinner at The Lion’s house, Traumatized nephew”
Shortly before 6PM three Humvees left the outpost for the short drive to the home of Colonel Shaban. The police chief was thirty-nine, medium height and stockily built, sporting a Saddam-like mustache, sideburns, and thick, closely cropped hair. Al Qaeda had placed a large bounty on his head and on that of the man he referred to as his brother, LtCol Christmas. Shaban had already survived seven assassination attempts. In the first three he was lightly wounded by gunfire. Changing their tactic, he next survived four separate suicide carbombers. The first one, in front of the police station, killed sixteen of his officers including his brother, and took the legs of his teenage nephew. The next two were detected and foiled, killing only the drivers. The most recent one attacked him on a nearby highway, killing his two bodyguards in the front seat of the car, seriously wounding him and sending him rushed by a Blackhawk helicopter to our surgical units in Baghdad.

The reporter had already interviewed him once, observed him during his daily meetings with LtCol Christmas, and dined with him twice at the homes of his neighbors, Sheik Mal-Alla Barzan Himreen al-Ubayd, the Chairman of the Baghdadi City Council, and his brother, the fearsome enforcer Jabbar Barzan Himreen al-Ubayd, whose home stood out in this friendliest of neighborhoods by its conspicuous display of the Stars and Stripes flying from a flagpole affixed to a parapet on a front corner of his roof, flagrantly taunting Al Qaeda.
Jabbar, who led a potent group of militia fighters known for their violence, was surly, tactless, and braggadocious. Inside his home, where another American flag was displayed next to a mantle that contained an official Letter Of Appreciation from the Marine Corps alongside photos of prominent Marines posing with Colonel Shaban, including the most prominent of all, General James Mattis, he once angrily responded to a logical request from the reporter, via the interpreter, to wait for a moment while he set up his video camera.
“No, I will not wait,” he thundered. “This is my home and I’ll speak whenever I want and say whatever I want! This you can do in America, correct?”
Despite eating on the floor, using only his right hand, and praying before each new dish of food so that the devil could not use it to enter the body, all practices of devout Muslims, he was a materialist and boasted to the reporter when showing him all around an active construction site that would one day become his sumptuous home. From all these flaws he was redeemed, however, by his unequivocal support of America, by his visceral hatred of Al Qaeda, and by his astounding courage.
Colonel Shaban was different. Unfailingly positive, but unlike the other three guests whose ebullient optimism expressed itself both in their frequent laughter and in their unprompted descriptions of various grand plans, the police chief rarely smiled and never spoke of the future unless required to by a direct question, and seemed to the reporter as a man resigned to his own demise. During the earlier interview, he summed up his partnership.
“When the Marines first got here we had been having a very hard time. The terrorists controlled everything,“ he said, pausing for the interpreter and gazing out a window. “They want chaos only, and they offer nothing. The first time Colonel Christmas visited me here at my home they fired rockets at us; rockets which missed us by one hundred meters. When it was over we went out in the street and Colonel Christmas told me, ‘Two weeks. You give me two weeks and that will never happen again.’ I knew then that this was a man of courage and a man who would help us fight these takfiris. Right away the Marines were very aggressive in hunting them and together we were very successful and killed many of them.”
LtCol Christmas’s devotion to the townspeople and their security was reciprocated. Attending a recent City Council meeting, he turned past the corner of their building and was met near the front door by a ten-man police honor guard facing each other along the walkway, wearing navy blue pants and caps, pressed and starched light blue shirts with epaulets and embossed patches, white gloves, and spit-polished shoes. Following their captain’s cadence, they presented their rifles and dramatically saluted with an impeccably synchronized, double-foot stamp. A gesture of respect, zealously performed, to which Christmas responded by slowing down and acknowledging each officer, left and right, while passing through their lines.
The three Humvees dashed up a wide street and turned into the police chief’s neighborhood, half in shadow and the other half glittering as the setting sun’s rays reflected off the mineral-rich sand that coated its asphalt roads, driveways, and sidewalks. Caught warming itself in the middle of the road, a spiny-tailed lizard bolted and disappeared under a fence as mobs of children came running to loudly greet the Marines, shouting and peering inside the small windows to try and spot the American leader whom they all called Baba Christmas.
Earlier that week the same group dined in the same neighborhood, seated on the carpeted living room floor at the home of Sheik Mal-Alla. On that occasion when the bountiful meal had ended and the dishes were cleared, a serious discussion had just commenced when nine children darted into the room and swarmed the recumbent Marine commander in a dogpile, giggling with unbridled delight. After a minute of indulgence, Sheik Mal-Alla raised his voice threateningly and the chastened youngsters obediently stood and walked out the front door in single file. But five minutes later they were back, and this time with neighborhood reinforcements. While not daring to enter, the congregation stood crowded together on the home’s terrace and boldly serenaded the meeting inside with a four syllable, two word chant, “Ba-ba Chris-mus, Ba-ba Chris-mus, Ba-ba Chris-mus”, over and over, louder and louder, until Sheik Mal-Alla sprang to his feet and chased them away for good.
As Marines in the three Humvees set up their security cordon in the neighborhood of single story, stucco-walled houses with gravelly sand instead of front lawns and with date palm trees providing the only consistent foliage, LtCol Christmas and his contingent walked through the front gate of Colonel Shaban’s home. Still wearing his police uniform, he greeted the four Americans and the interpreter at the door and led them inside, which was alive with the sound of unseen Arab women busily preparing an extravagant meal. The tantalizing scent of a lamb that had been alive that morning but was now roasting, permeated throughout.
In its sandy backyard a long, white, linen-draped table and eight chairs had been centered while a dozen men sat as spectators in a semicircle at a respectful distance, quietly chatting. Near them a uniformed police officer slow-grilled several fish as the first course, standing them sideways to cook in the flames before smothering them with sumac spice, pomegranate seeds and lemon. Behind them a cluster of teenagers milled about and whispered to each other, likewise waiting to watch the entire meal. Through the kitchen windows a half dozen women wearing colorful hijabs could be glimpsed, cooperating and sometimes bickering, as a wait staff shuttled in and out replacing empty plates and constantly refilling the diners’ small cups of sweet Chai tea.
Seated at the table, Sheik Mal-Alla and Jabbar had changed out of their daytime attire of slacks and dress shirts into immaculate white dishdashas and white keffiyehs, worn symmetrically behind the shoulders and held in place by two black agals that circled their heads. The fourth Iraqi diner, wearing a short-sleeve, button-down, plaid shirt and acid-washed jeans, was Ammar Abdalla Ahmed Murhij, 45, an accomplished engineer who owned a newspaper in Baghdad before the war, where in 2005 he and his son were kidnapped. Fortunately the kidnappers were motivated primarily by financial considerations, which led to a safe release after a deal was struck but didn’t prevent them from gratuitously torturing the two in the meantime.
“Sometimes, when there is not a coward at the front to shout, 'We are cut off!' and start running, but instead a brave and jolly lad who shouts, 'Hurrah!', a detachment of 5000 is worth 30,000.” -War and Peace
Even during Al Qaeda in Iraq’s peak, when it was led by the infamous Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and counted all of Anbar province under its dominion, years before the tribes summoned their courage and began to organize their Anbar Awakening, lonely Khan al-Baghdadi and many of its 5000 residents fielded a stiff resistance. Control of the town seesawed between Al Qaeda and the locals, led by Colonel Shaban and Jabbar, whose men ambushed them at every opportunity and became a stubborn thorn in their side. Part of the cost of those battles was displayed on a laminated poster inside the police station: photos of twenty-six officers, along with their names and the dates on which they had been killed.
After dessert, luscious Somali bananas that tasted nothing at all like the comparatively bland ones sold in America, LtCol Christmas asked a Marine in his security detail to retrieve a bag from his Humvee. It was filled with toys and one by one, each joyful youngster was called over to receive a gift. In their midst was a listless nine year old boy who stood out from his peers by his silence and by the vacant look in his unblinking eyes. When it was his turn he timidly approached LtCol Christmas and reluctantly accepted an inflatable pool, a summer jackpot. Without so much as a hint of a smile, he maintained this frightened disposition and hurried away to sit next to Colonel Shaban, where he apathetically disregarded the gift and began studying his own feet.
“Colonel, these children are all so happy but this glum one won’t smile. Why not?” the reporter said to the interpreter, who translated the question.
Without sending the child away or making any effort to shield him from what was coming, the police chief replied and the interpreter grimaced as if stung by a bee, then said, “This boy’s father was my brother-in-law, and he was martyred. The terrorists caught him on a road near here and captured him. They tortured him with an electric drill for a very long time and then they cut off his head. This boy is his son, and he has not smiled much since then.”
“10AM: COP Timberwolf, Carlos praying the rosary, Bridge confrontation”
The monotonous summer weather continued: cloudless blue skies, dry air, an already scorching sun, and a light wind from the northwest that lifted the hot sand and sent it streaming. Led out the front gate by a Marine on foot, four Humvees departed the outpost and headed for COP Timberwolf. They drove toward the Euphrates before continuing northwest on Highway 12, into the thick of the town’s residential neighborhoods and municipal buildings and continuing to its sparsely populated outskirts. When they reached a point where the river snakes to the east, the Humvees exited and drove along a dirt road, edged on one side by the walled homes and farms that line the fertile riverbank, and on the other by small, gateless houses in varying states of disrepair, passing a mosque and a charter (religious) school that contaminated minds and turned normal boys into suicidal men. They had entered Shamiya Jaba, a smaller and less friendly town.
A few days earlier the reporter and a squad of Marines were there, returning to MHC from Timberwolf late in the afternoon when a logistical error left them stranded on the riverbank, waiting for Humvees. Standing at the end of the road with the Euphrates directly behind them and with no place to take cover, they were vulnerable. To a well timed suicide carbomber, they were defenseless. Watchful eyes, seen and unseen, were noticing. Taking the initiative, a Lieutenant ordered the Marines to start walking. They proceeded up the asphalt section of the road’s short hill and continued as it turned left, while groups of men sat on front porches and stared contemptuously. Passing one such group of scowlers, the reporter slowed to face them then stopped, smiled, and gave a friendly wave. The foremost man replied by slowly dragging his right hand across his neck. Then he extended his right arm, squinted his eyes, and pointed his imaginary knife at the reporter.
“Two can play at that game,” he thought, holding up an index finger before pointing back at the man and pantomiming a different story: whirling helicopters above the ramshackle home, men rappelling down, spraying fire from automatic weapons. Then he smiled again and waved goodbye.
Enveloped by a cloud of sandy dust, the tardy Humvees came into view racing down the dirt road in the distance. A minute later the walkers climbed in and the route was retraced, passing through the checkpoints and through the access lane where the four Humvees were posted, blocking the path as soldier ants block the entrance to their nest.
Now passing by again and soon arriving to the part of the river where American Seabees had built one pontoon bridge to Jaba Island in the middle of the river, and another from there to the river’s east bank, which they called the ‘wild east’, the Marines exited the Humvees and approached the bridge. Standing nearby, a middle-aged Shamiya Jaba resident stood with his arms crossed and his chin out as his head slowly swayed back and forth at the passing Marines, all of whom ignored him.
“Behold, the enemy,” the reporter thought, glancing and then averting his eyes. He’d once made the mistake of indiscreetly observing his attire and demeanor, which had been misconstrued as a provocation and caused the Arab to glare. Everything about the man indicated salafism and jihad: the filthy dishdasha; the wild, unkempt beard, tangled in mats; the clean-shaven upper lip; the disheveled keffiyeh worn in front of the shoulders; the white, cloud covered cornea of his blind right eye whose glaucoma was never treated because all things that happen are the will of Allah; the irksome, repeated presence at the bridge, as if he were its tollkeeper; and the body language that signaled his deep resentment of the Americans’ presence, all of them infidels and oppressors.
They started across the bridge. A quarter mile wide and five eighths in length, lush with vegetation, the island was home to a couple hundred residents. Upon reaching it an officer and interpreter stopped to chat with three men in sweatpants while nearby, rambunctious teenagers took turns running and leaping from the floating bridge into the Euphrates before surfacing and swimming hard to shore at an angle to offset its strong swift current. Off to the side two old fishermen sat on stools next to a boat that had been laid ashore, preparing their nets for nighttime when they would launch the small craft and use a light suspended from its prow to lure schools of anchovy fish, while a beardless young man with uncovered, neatly combed hair and wearing a spotless white dishdasha posed vainly and pestered the reporter to take his photograph.
Almost immediately after leaving the riverbank and starting across the island, armed men began to appear. They carried AK-47 assault rifles nonchalantly, either strapped to their backs by embroidered belts or in front, resting in the hollows of their folded arms. Although they displayed no sign of hostility, their failure to greet or even to acknowledge the passing Marines by a nod of the head or a smile, concerned the reporter and sent red flags flying.
They reached the other side of the island, crossed the second bridge and were met by four new Humvees for the final leg of the trip. Timberwolf, a desolate, austere, small camp of tents, was set upon the plateau of a high hill and cornered by guard towers that provided a clear view of the vast desert and twisting Euphrates. There was no television and no computer room, increasing its isolation. Even its dining facility was demoralizing: a broiling cabin set apart from the tents, with picnic tables and boxes of artificial food coated by the sand dust that constantly penetrated its crevices. Seeking the outpost’s only redeeming quality, a large refrigerator with a sliding glass door that was always full of cold water and Gatorade, the reporter made it his first stop.
“The promised land for the French during their advance had been Moscow, during their retreat it was their native land. But that native land was too far off, and for a man going a thousand miles it is absolutely necessary to set aside his final goal and to say to himself: ‘Today I shall get to a place twenty-five miles off where I shall rest and spend the night,’ and during the first day's journey that resting place eclipses his ultimate goal and attracts all his hopes and desires.” -War and Peace
He walked in and saw Carlos, the outpost’s interpreter, alone and praying the rosary, which he attempted to conceal. A Saudi who’d moved to Germany in the late 1990s and converted to Christianity (Catholicism), he was now in his sixteenth straight month at Timberwolf, with no end in sight. No weekend passes and no vacation to which he could count the days. In that time Marine companies had twice come and gone, and now a third had two months until it, too, would rotate home. It was not what he signed up for. One year was the term of the dangerous job he’d accepted, after which, as part of the Special Immigrant Visa program that had been designed for our interpreters in Iraq and Afghanistan, his ticket to America would be punched. But the resilience of the insurgency created an exigent need that caused officials to simply renege on the deal, indefinitely extending his stay.
He was thirty-two, short and paunchy, with a wispy pencil mustache that framed a constant grin. Endlessly curious about the United States, its various big cities and especially its discos, he was leaning toward Miami for his future home but had not ruled out Los Angeles nor San Diego. He possessed great mental willpower, which in conjunction with his faith in God and his belief in the inherent goodness of America, the latter reinforced by the consistent kindness and sympathy of the Marines with whom he worked, enabled him to endure the gnawing loneliness of his circumstances. Today, however, he appeared out of sorts and uncharacteristically despondent.
“Carlos! What’s up, kid?” the reporter said, approaching and sitting down on the other side of the table.
“Hello, Peter,” he replied with a forced smile, “It’s as you see, my friend,” holding up his hands and looking around the empty room. “Another day in the neighborhood. I think there will be a mission with Major Laube in the afternoon.”
“Yes, well, when it’s all over those boots will be long gone and your feet will be up while you enjoy the view from your Miami Beach apartment. And what a view it will be!”
“Do you really think so?” Carlos asked morosely. “I’m starting to think that I’ll never leave this place, and that if I do it’s only because life has another trick to play on me.”
“Nonsense!” the reporter snapped deliberately. “They’re just disorganized right now. As you know, it’s the same for all interpreters in Iraq and Afghanistan. They’re doing it to soldiers, too, extending their deployments from twelve months to sixteen. One brigade, the 172nd I think it was, after counting down the days to the end of their deployment, rotated out, flew to Kuwait, then flew all the way back to their base in Alaska. When they landed they were told they had one hour to meet with their families in the terminal and then they were going right back to Iraq, extended for four more months. Guys were vomiting on the tarmac. So you see, it’s a real mess. But they’ll figure it out.”
To this Carlos sighed and looked away sullenly, but made no reply.
“Tell me, were you praying the rosary just now?”
“Yes, every day. But I’m starting to wonder if Mary hears me. I think that maybe I’m being punished now for not converting earlier.”
“She hears you. Of course she hears you,” the reporter replied, as if offended. “But it’s not like a formula. Caesar said that God often allows those whom he wishes to punish for their guilt, long periods of prosperity and impunity, so that when their reversal comes it is felt more severely. It seems to me that it’s true, and if it’s true then so must it be true for their opposites whom he wishes to reward.”
“Thank you, my friend,” Carlos said, placing his hand over his heart. “I will bear it. This life is difficult for me. But whatever happens in the future, I will bear it.”
“Not to worry, kid. Everything’s fine. You’ll see.”
He spoke the words but didn’t believe them. Carlos’ conversion to Christianity and emigration to Germany had alienated him from his family and entire village. To that could be added his decision to show himself openly during all his time with the Marines, confident that soon he would be safe in America and eschewing the bandanas and balaclavas that many interpreters used to conceal their identities. By now it was certain that Al Qaeda possessed and had disseminated his photograph and if they had not yet discovered it, would inevitably have his name and country of origin. Several Marine officers had written letters to Congress describing his case and attesting to his authenticity and reliability, but nothing changed and he remained trapped on the dismal hilltop.
After attending a meeting in a school a few miles downriver between village leaders and Major Gottfried Laube, who was commander of COP Timberwolf, at 4PM the four Humvees began the return trip to MHC. Plunging down a steep sand embankment just outside the outpost, the lead Humvee created a large wake of thick dust from the fine desert sand, fully filling the interior of the one that followed, which then doubled the size of the cloud for the third, which increased it proportionately for the doomed fourth. Seeing the dust approach, each Marine waited until the last possible moment before inhaling a giant breath and holding until the build-up demanded to be released in an equivalent exhale. From that point until the bottom of the hill was reached and fresh air flooded there was nothing to do except shallow breaths through the nose using any available cloth as a filter.
They crossed the first bridge and the island and approached the second. The reporter was exhausted. From apartment to Green Zone the trip to Iraq had taken forty-four sleepless hours. After multiple stops and layovers he almost miraculously avoided the typically endless stand-by wait in Kuwait at Camp Arifjan, boarding a transport plane and sitting along a sidewall less than two hours after arriving. Almost. Filled to capacity by Army soldiers, for too long the huge plane idled but did not move as its four engines repeatedly revved and slowed, revved and slowed. It was one hundred and fifteen degrees outside. Inside the packed plane it was warmer, and with insufficient breathing room. Like the soldiers he wore a Kevlar helmet and a vest, but unlike them he had yet to insert the Kevlar plates into the vest, under which he wore only a t-shirt.
Fifteen minutes after boarding he drew a breath that strangely lacked oxygen, followed by several more. Unnerved by a sense of suffocation, he unzipped the vest, removed the helmet, placed it on his lap, gulped at the air, and looked aghast at the long-sleeved soldiers seated below him in rows of palletized seats, suffering silently in their zipped-up, heavy Kevlar vests, with helmets tightly strapped under their perspiring chins, gasping for the oxygen-depleted air. The ramp was down but like a room with just one open window, there was no cross-ventilation to mitigate the effect of stale air accumulating from one hundred cramped soldiers exhaling carbon dioxide. Symptomatic of hypoxemia, one of them fainted, quickly followed by two more. Immediately the officers ordered everyone out and the plane was quickly evacuated, the passed-out soldiers carried off.
Fourteen hours later, still sitting in the military terminal, his name was finally called again. At the Green Zone press center he requested and received access to a quiet room and for four hours slept soundly on the thinly carpeted floor of a small storage room in the basement of Saddam Hussein’s palace. Then it was off to the helicopters for the long flight to Al-Asad and MHC, where the Iraqis were the only ones getting much sleep.
They stepped onto the second bridge. Although he knew very well the importance of caution, and despite the apprehension he felt when crossing the island that morning, instead of focusing on 2007 his mind had wandered to 115. He imagined the scene then, when the Roman emperor Trajan led his legions in galleys down the river, the warships’ baggage carried by elephant trains on the west bank, interspersed by standard bearers carrying crimson-dyed flags with embroidered golden eagles and by giant catapults and battery crews ready to launch salvos of kerosene, hot tar, and venomous snakes. Turning toward the east, strung out in a straight line parallel to the river and maintaining just a half-mile distance between each other, dozens of Iranian scouts on camelback and armed with compound bows were vigilantly following. One of them strummed a guitar. In the offing a larger group of their light cavalry refreshed themselves around a yakhchal, their giant, dome shaped refrigerators that stored ice and fresh food, while skilled stor-bezashk veterinarians fed and cared for their horses. Like the Americans, Trajan had underestimated the power of insurgency. Both would learn.
Absorbed by these daydreams and stupefied by the heat, as they neared the riverbank he stopped walking and foolishly began videotaping a woman standing among crops behind a home next to the bridge, working like a peon. Her back was bent and she defied the sun in a black niqab and black headscarf that blanketed her face and left only her eyes uncovered, tight black gloves that reached her elbows, and a black abaya robe that extended to her feet and loosely covered her body. Stunned by her energy and apparent immunity to the torrid weather, he stared absentmindedly at her and focused his camera like she was an exhibit at the zoo. Suddenly came a shout, more of a howl really, desperate and rageful. Without looking he immediately knew from whom it came, and why. It was the tollkeeper; the crops were behind his home, and the woman was the eldest of his three wives. All at once he realized the gravity of his mistake. Not only had he violated Islam’s ban on photographing animals or people, he’d done so to such a degree that even the most mild-mannered American husband would likely take offense.
Looking up, he saw the man sprinting with short choppy steps toward him from twenty-five yards away, passing the three bewildered Marines who stood between them. Just as snakes become unpredictable and dangerous when temporarily blinded by their shedding skin, the visually handicapped man, deranged by his hatred, was wildly lashing out. Snapped back into reality, he recalled a few nights earlier when he’d added the definitions and pronunciations of ‘delicious’ (ladhidh) and ‘I apologize’ (yaetadhir) to a short list of basic Arabic words and phrases that he’d memorized. But now under the pressure of the moment and with his mind sapped, the mnemonics failed him and he could not remember which was which. “Fifty-fifty, trust yourself,” he thought, and began shouting at the charging salafist. “Ladhidh! Ladhidh! Ladhidh!” (Delicious! Delicious! Delicious!) he yelled, but it was certainly the wrong word and only caused the enraged Arab to run faster and to scream louder.
……To be continued, 2025: Baba Christmas and the Lion of Baghdadi (Stories From Operation Iraqi Freedom)
Peter Dolan was an Operation Iraqi Freedom embedded reporter: FOB Speicher in Tikrit, July 2005; Camp Taji in Taji, February 2007; COP MHC in Khan al-Baghdadi, August 2007