One Bullet Away

We traveled east along a dike overlooking Sadr City. Fetid trash and pools of stinking sewage waited below for any Humvee unfortunate enough to slide off the dirt berm. We eased under fallen power lines while packs of yapping dogs ran alongside. Children playing soccer stopped to wave as we passed, and women dug for water in the foul dirt fields between apartment buildings. Men rocked on their haunches in the shade, smoking bad cigarettes and staring us down. I got the feeling that only our overwhelming force kept them from stringing us up as infidel invaders. From my admittedly narrow perspective, the climate on patrol had worsened in only a few days. Violence and looting continued to plague a city lacking even basics such as electricity and clean water. I felt as if we were under constant scrutiny by people who were less and less impressed with what they saw.

I stopped the platoon outside a collection of brick buildings three kilometers beyond Sadr City. A heavyset man with thinning hair led a crowd toward us. He introduced himself as Mr. Kadem and requested, with a ceremonial flourish, that all aid to the village be coordinated through him. I asked what sort of aid he wanted.

“We need only two things: clean water and bronze statues of George Bush.”

I decided to play along. “We can help you with the water, but what will you do with statues of George Bush?”

“We will put them in our streets to show our loyalty. First, though, the Americans must help us pump the sewage which is flooding our town.”

I told Mr. Kadem we could give him a hundred gallons of water immediately and would stay for an hour to provide medical care to children. He nodded and barked commands into the crowd behind him. Men surged forward, pleading for aid while pointing at small bruises and cuts or their seemingly healthy eyes, legs, and heads. They shoved the children aside.

The platoon started throwing elbows and pushing with rifle butts. For a moment, I feared a riot. Mr. Kadem restored order, and we treated a long line of kids for cuts, burns, and dehydration. With the Marines’ help, a team appointed by Mr. Kadem emptied our spare water cans into the town’s common cistern. Depleted of water and medical supplies, we packed up and continued east along the berm, looking for the next place to put our drop on the Iraqi sponge.

The dike ended at a paved road leading north from Baghdad. People there, a week after Baghdad’s fall, had not yet seen Americans. Crowds filled the street. Open markets sold everything from fruit to stereos.

Storefronts lined the road, and above them clotheslines stretched between balconies. Every few blocks, a mosque punctuated the parade of buildings sliding past our windows. Most of the town was dusty brown, dilapidated, and forlorn, but not the mosques. Bright lights stretched to the ground in strands from the minarets, like the rigging on cruise ships. The buildings were washed a bright white, with garish murals of happy crowds and singing children. Even their yards were well tended, little islands of greenery in a sea of dust and stagnant sewage. Of everyone we saw, the men lounging near the mosques looked the toughest. According to the map, we were twenty kilometers from the power plant, and I felt every inch of it. Normally, we updated the battalion on our position every two hours, but I started sending updates every thirty minutes, just in case.

In the same spirit that had inspired us earlier in the week to roll into the neighborhood that had looked most like a Ba’athist hideout, we parked in front of the biggest and most ornate mosque. We were careful to stay outside the mosque’s marked perimeter but wanted to “show American presence” and speak to someone with real authority over the people living nearby. In post-Saddam Iraq, those authority figures were the mullahs.

As expected, it took less than thirty seconds for a crowd of men to surround us. Mostly middle-aged, they didn’t surge forward to touch us and practice their English as other Iraqis had done. Instead, they kept their distance and appraised us. Espera and I stood together near the front of the crowd.

“Mexican standoff,” I said. As was usually the case, I left my rifle in the Humvee, wearing only a pistol on my thigh in an attempt to close the distance between occupier and occupied. I was helmetless, but not quite committed enough to remove my body armor. The rifle slung diagonally across Espera’s chest loomed large in my peripheral vision.

“Sir, I’m deeply offended that you would slur my people that way,” he said jokingly.

An older man, dressed in white and crowned with a turban, stepped forward and introduced himself as Mullah Mohammed of Diyala. Next to me, Espera mumbled under his breath, “Yeah, well, I’m Sergeant Tony of Los Angeles. Who gives a fuck?”