Dreams and Schemes and Circus Crowds

    

Last weekend we went to the circus.

    

(As one does on Sunday nights in Iraq.)

    

There used to be a lion but they left the poor dear out in his cage in the July Iraq sun without water.

    

So no more lion.

    

There were still cats and a snake and two tiny hairless dogs.

    

But mainly there were acrobats and tightrope walkers and clowns and one amazing magician.

    

Which is the best kind of circus, anyway.

    

Sandhouses

This morning we awoke to a world blanketed in a fine layer of dust. It’s not as romantic as the first snowfall in November, but it was a change, at least, from concrete-concrete-concrete and cars.

Sandstorms here, when they come, are not accompanied by howling winds, gusts, mini-tornados. One of our colleagues was out late last night at the circus with one of our drivers and his two little girls. Our colleague told us. When the sandstorm came just suddenly everything was hazy – the moon was fuzzy and big – the sky and the concrete earth were the same color dark – and visibility was nill.

It just dropped on us as if from nowhere.

It’s not like Darfur – it’s not like Chad – my colleagues said. I once saw part of a sandstorm in Cairo but was protected by the mammoth city.

Weekend

Somehow it’s the weekend again. I'm not sure quite how that happened, or how it didn't happen earlier. This does not mean no work. (There is oh so much work.) It doesn’t even mean no office. But it does mean sleeping in a bit.

It also means a morning walk through the park across the street where dozens of weddings are being celebrated and women in white gowns pose for photographs and children in traditional Kurdish outfits chase each other up ladders and down slides.

And it means a night out at the big ex-pat bar where you’re threatened to be tossed in the green pool if you don’t join in on the round of tequila shots being passed around, so you lick the salt, dump the Cuervo on the ground, suck on the lemon, make a face in pretend – and stay dry.

It means crouching down by cars in the gated community we live in to see the little kittens hiding by a tire.

It means swan boats and go-karts and sitting around chatting with friends, snacking on pistachio nuts that taste like Christmas Eve cocktail parties.

Well. That's all what it meant last weekend. This weekend it means working.

Dinner/Neighbors

Today I was so tired when I went to the grocery story (and it is only Monday!) (the equivalent of Tuesday for those of you whose week doesn't start on Sunday) that I forgot to remember that I had no money in my wallet.  I forgot to remember that I had none at all.  I filled a plastic bag full of eggplant and zucchini and then, when I couldn't pay, I carefully put it all back.  

When I returned to my car empty-handed, my colleague N, who is one of our drivers who drives us places, looked upset.  He refused to drive me anywhere until I accepted his loan of 25,000 dinar (about $21.20) and went back into the store to buy my dinner.

Breakfast

At first this weekend I was jealous of my friends in DC enjoying DC brunches.  Then we went to a local hole-in-the-wall and I saw breakfast.

Fresh honey, fresh cream, fresh yogurt, walnuts, piping hot-from-the-oven bread. After that, I was basically jealous of myself, because the food was so good.

Lunch

Normally, if we go out for lunch, we grab sandwiches, or we send a driver to buy us sandwiches. Sometimes we stay in the office and the drivers cook for us. Other times we pack our lunches. Today we went to a sit-down joint. It was huge and florescent, like two university cafeterias stacked one on top of the other, with chandeliers. It was a mass of contradictions. Both floors were so huge that bottles were delivered to tables in shopping carts to accommodate all the water for all the thirsty people. The bottom floor was reserved for the men and we had barely stepped toe over the threshold when we were ushered away, whisked upstairs to the dining area where women, children, and families could sit. Most women upstairs were covered head-to-toe, often in bright colors, and were as likely to be engaged in conversation with the men at their tables as they were to be chasing down their children. I felt naked in my black tee-shirt and khaki cargo pants (I’d forgotten my scarf to offer at least a bit more shoulder-coverage), but there were a handful of Iraqi women also with their hair showing, also showing their elbows and lower-arms. None of the waiters spoke English but they tried their best to understand our points and gestures and we tried our best not to be too annoying. We (my Kenyan colleague, my American colleague, and I) seemed to be the only foreigners in the place and they were patient with us. The restaurant had wheelchair ramps and an elevator.

Same-Same but Different

I got to the field, sort of, for the first time yesterday. I visited a refugee camp here for the first time. Afterward, it occurred to me that it may have been my first visit to any refugee camp anywhere. I’ve spent time in dozens of IDP camps in northern Uganda and a small handful in eastern Congo. But refugee camps, those are different.

This refugee camp, outside of the small city [redacted], houses some 12,000 people who fled from [redacted]. There is controversy surrounding [redacted] and some are suspected members of [redacted]. The houses are built of sandy-colored stones and have satellite dishes atop them. There are gardens and the camp-management office has plumbing and is air-conditioned. Electrical poles shoot upwards and wires crisscross the sky.

We spent time in the Handicap Center for a distribution. We saw exactly zero people-with-disabilities in the Handicap Center. People-with-disabilities’ relatives arrived to pick up wheelchairs for them. Frozen bottles of water were handed out all around, even to the children. No one begged for my empty water bottles. The older women at the center wore these long, colorful dresses with long sleeves, sleeves so very long that the ends were gathered behind the dress and tied up and there was still enough fabric for the women to have full use of their arms. A couple of kids showed me how to pull leaves off of a tree and chew them. The leaves tasted kind of minty. One little boy arrived to pick up a wheelchair for his brother which he was patently too petit to carry so we went with him to his home, assisting. The brother was about 11 years old, skinny as a matchstick, legs twisted up with one another like a corkscrew, lying on the floor of their house in their compound. The brother didn’t seem miserable but he didn’t seem healthy. The hair on the back of his head was all rubbed off from lying on the floor so much, like an infant's would be. A mom or an aunt was patiently wiping the brother’s face with a washcloth. We dropped off the wheelchair and left.

The [redacted] refugee camp has been open for more than a decade, since [redacted]. I thought about Mungote IDP camp, near Kitchanga in Massisi, open for two years, with shelters of thatched banana leaf roofs not taller than a man, and uneven volcano rock, clogged latrines, and mud. I thought about the camps in Northern Uganda, each with its own personality, some with huts crammed together and crumbling and dirty, some lovely with small gardens and swept dirt, open for twenty years. Like every city in the world, it seems to me that every camp is unique, dependant on culture and history and governing bodies and access to wealth. The Handicap Center we visited at the [redacted] refugee camp had its own truck.

Iraq isn’t a poor country full of poverty-struck persons. This is a rich country full of paved roads and electrical lines and other public works, even in the camps. But this is still a country with a horrible war surrounded by other countries in war. That makes humanitarian aid a different beast here, doesn’t it? And yet at the same time it is always the same.

What is The Same is that all these camps, no matter the circumstances, are inhabited by people who are reliant on others for subsistence, who are unable to govern their own lives.