highnote
05-15-2005, 08:41 AM
Here is the latest letter from my high school classmate Dr. Batcha:
-----------------------------------
Friends and Family 13MAY2005
Everyone:
Hello again. It’s heating up over here, both figuratively and literally. Temperatures have been climbing to around 100, and the dry wind has been blowing making it feel like a blast furnace. The heat sucks out ones energy, making it difficult to do anything, and forces everyone into the shade or the air conditioning, seeking some relief. It also makes everyone cranky. Thankfully, the temperature drops at night to a bearable degree. I truly can’t understand why anyone would choose to live in such heat. I’d take snow and cold any day.
If you’ve been following the news, you may have heard of a suicide bomber that struck an Iraqi Army recruiting station in Hawija a few days ago resulting in about thirty civilians killed. Hawija is area where our brigade operates. Thankfully, no US forces were injured, but several of our troops provided medical aid in the aftermath and disturbing accounts of the carnage. It truly amazes me the population allows these terrorists to operate with impunity, particularly since they have been targeting civilians lately. Hopefully this will provide some impetus for the local populace to provide some intelligence on the terrorists’ movements and locations. The most disturbing factor is the terrorists seem to have no ideological agenda, other than creating chaos and spreading fear.
Some Iraqis I’ve had the pleasure to deal with do work hard at trying to establish a civil society, often at risk to their own lives. The Deputy Director of Health is one of these individuals, and he’s been fighting this battle since before our arrival. A short rotund man, he has a cherubic face and a bald pate unsuccessfully camouflaged by the notorious “swoop.” He is responsible for most of the day-to-day workings of the local Directorate of Health, and is their liaison with various international aid agencies. I’ve been working with him to help coordinate projects the US forces have been undertaking to help reconstruct the Iraqi medical system in the region.
Toward the end of March, he asked me (as well as about 15 of my best, most heavily armed friends) to tour some rural health clinics in the area. We were traveling into Kurdish territory again which due to the efforts of the Kurdish militia, the peshmerga, is a safe area. We rendezvoused at the DoH, and proceeded out of Kirkuk. Our first stop took us to a village which had once been home to an Iraqi battalion of the former regime. There was a ruined “hospital” there which was going to be “refurbished” with the help of a NGO. The structure was little more than rubble, and as attested to by the vast amount of droppings on the floor, had been home to nothing more than goats for some time. I wondered that they would “refurbish” the structure, as it would have made more sense to bulldoze the place and start anew. But, hey, it’s not my money.
After our grand tour, we stopped at a small café, ostensibly to get some chai tea. Now I must digress for a dissertation on chai tea. Chai is a concentrated brewed tea. It is served in small fluted glasses, often which are gilded or otherwise ornately decorated. The glasses are about as voluminous as an espresso cup, and against the laws of physics there is a not so thin layer of sugar on the bottom, the scalding brew above. This is served on a similarly ornate saucer, and is usually the hospitable prelude to any social or business meeting. Now if there are any entrepreneurs out there who live in communities with any sizable population of returning veterans from Iraq, I would strongly recommend opening a chai tea shop, as the stuff is positively addictive.
In any case, we sat down on the patio of the café, which amazingly enough was very clean. The server brought out the tea, and subsequently brought out some small plates of onions, olives, tomatoes, and peppers, as well as an unidentifiable mélange of a red obviously very spicy condiment. The reluctance of all the troops to partake was evident in their faces, and as the senior military as well as medical person, they looked to me for guidance. The dilemma was significant. Well aware of the various viral, bacterial, and parasitic maladies that might have been contained therein, as well as my prior warnings about eating off the local economy conflicting with the political and social ramifications of refusing the hospitality, I politely picked at a few of the offerings. Following my lead, several of the other soldiers did the same. Then the dam broke. Suddenly we were confronted with a veritable banquet of kebobs, meats of unknown origin, vegetables, and bread. Figuring that we had already crossed the point of no return, we dug in. I forgot just how much food a twenty some year old guy can consume. In Middle Eastern cultures, if you clean your plate, it is a signal of you desire for more. In order to not eat them out of house and home, I conspicuously stopped eating with food still on my plate, and remarkably enough, the rest of the guys picked up the cue. I felt bad about leaving some of the food untouched, particularly the bread. Bread here is flat, like pita bread, but unlike the saw-dust texture of pita bread from home, it is pleasantly chewy.
After the meal we expressed our thanks, and of course were not allowed to pay for our repast. We loaded up into our convoy, and headed for our tour of other health care facilities in the region. I won’t bore you with all the descriptions of the other facilities, and in any case one clinic looks pretty much like another, with the exception that these were much cleaner and well maintained than similar ones I had visited in the city.
Driving from village to village, we ended up on some roads that were rough enough to compare with some of the worst Forest Service roads in Idaho. One grade was so steep our Humvee almost couldn’t make it up. We forded streams and even a small river, and did some otherwise bone jarring four wheeling. We approached one village which sat at the base of a cone shaped mound. The mound was covered with young pine trees, and there was an unidentifiable white structure on the top. We stopped at the clinic, and as we took the tour, we were informed this was one of the villages that had been gassed by Saddam, with several hundred lives lost, and the white structure was a monument to the dead. After the clinic visit, we climbed to the top of the mound, with most of the village children in tow. The white structure we had seen from afar was a sculpture in cement, the dominant facet a large bust of a Kurdish man screaming, and the base consisted of intertwined bodies of people and animals in their death throes. It was very poignant, as the sculptor obviously had some degree of talent, but was somewhat hindered by his medium. The allusion to the current state of affairs struck me-a people struggling to overcome their violent past, hampered by the lack of resources, and making due with the materials at hand.
From the back of the mound there was a spectacular vista, looking over the valley of a fairly sizable river, mountains in the background. It was reminiscent of the Boise River toward Lucky Peak. It was a great view to have for a while, and I could almost imagine myself hiking down into the river bottom and up into the far hills to hunt birds or deer. (Aside for Waj and Willie: I actually did see a small covey of chukars on the base a couple weeks ago, and they also have some species of pheasant here as well).
Afterward, one of the villagers invited us back to his home for some chai. We sat cross legged on oriental rugs, and made small talk through the interpreters. I had two glasses. I would have liked to have stayed longer, but we had more places to visit, including a displaced persons village. Now I’m not sure what image a “displaced persons” village conjures in your mind, but I see ramshackle huts, sagging tents, and filthy children with bellies swollen from malnutrition, dirt and filth. What I saw was wide paved streets, cement stucco houses with walled gardens and fenced drive in garages. I thought I was in a suburb of Phoenix. Curiously enough, due to the unique geology of the area there are many limestone caves, and the water that collects in them enables the reproduction of the Anopheles mosquito, making this one of the few endemic areas for malaria in Iraq.
After our tour of this village (during which one of the local boys stole my pen), we drove off on winding roads back into the hills. We had pointed out to us a place where a holy man lived as a hermit, and some of the caves where the Kurdish rebels hid during their war against Saddam. As we drove further, we noted a group of cars pulled off the side of the road near a small stream. Our guide’s car pulled over, and we followed. These were some staffers from the DoH, and they had met us there for a picnic. And out it came, goat and lamb and kabobs and chicken and rice with grapes and bread and fruit and on and on and on. We stripped off our body armor, took off our helmets, and felt like human beings for a while. It was disappointing when we were through, but we still had a fair way to go before we got back, and it was getting late.
The remainder of the ride was uneventful, with another brief stop at a village and a pass by of a ruined fortress that Saddam had built and we destroyed.
I’m looking forward to get out that way again, but I’m unsure if I will have the opportunity.
Well, that’s all for now. I hope you all are well. Thank you for thoughts, e-mails, letters, and packages. I’m looking forward to June, as I have two weeks of leave coming up, and will be heading home to Idaho.
-----------------------------------
Friends and Family 13MAY2005
Everyone:
Hello again. It’s heating up over here, both figuratively and literally. Temperatures have been climbing to around 100, and the dry wind has been blowing making it feel like a blast furnace. The heat sucks out ones energy, making it difficult to do anything, and forces everyone into the shade or the air conditioning, seeking some relief. It also makes everyone cranky. Thankfully, the temperature drops at night to a bearable degree. I truly can’t understand why anyone would choose to live in such heat. I’d take snow and cold any day.
If you’ve been following the news, you may have heard of a suicide bomber that struck an Iraqi Army recruiting station in Hawija a few days ago resulting in about thirty civilians killed. Hawija is area where our brigade operates. Thankfully, no US forces were injured, but several of our troops provided medical aid in the aftermath and disturbing accounts of the carnage. It truly amazes me the population allows these terrorists to operate with impunity, particularly since they have been targeting civilians lately. Hopefully this will provide some impetus for the local populace to provide some intelligence on the terrorists’ movements and locations. The most disturbing factor is the terrorists seem to have no ideological agenda, other than creating chaos and spreading fear.
Some Iraqis I’ve had the pleasure to deal with do work hard at trying to establish a civil society, often at risk to their own lives. The Deputy Director of Health is one of these individuals, and he’s been fighting this battle since before our arrival. A short rotund man, he has a cherubic face and a bald pate unsuccessfully camouflaged by the notorious “swoop.” He is responsible for most of the day-to-day workings of the local Directorate of Health, and is their liaison with various international aid agencies. I’ve been working with him to help coordinate projects the US forces have been undertaking to help reconstruct the Iraqi medical system in the region.
Toward the end of March, he asked me (as well as about 15 of my best, most heavily armed friends) to tour some rural health clinics in the area. We were traveling into Kurdish territory again which due to the efforts of the Kurdish militia, the peshmerga, is a safe area. We rendezvoused at the DoH, and proceeded out of Kirkuk. Our first stop took us to a village which had once been home to an Iraqi battalion of the former regime. There was a ruined “hospital” there which was going to be “refurbished” with the help of a NGO. The structure was little more than rubble, and as attested to by the vast amount of droppings on the floor, had been home to nothing more than goats for some time. I wondered that they would “refurbish” the structure, as it would have made more sense to bulldoze the place and start anew. But, hey, it’s not my money.
After our grand tour, we stopped at a small café, ostensibly to get some chai tea. Now I must digress for a dissertation on chai tea. Chai is a concentrated brewed tea. It is served in small fluted glasses, often which are gilded or otherwise ornately decorated. The glasses are about as voluminous as an espresso cup, and against the laws of physics there is a not so thin layer of sugar on the bottom, the scalding brew above. This is served on a similarly ornate saucer, and is usually the hospitable prelude to any social or business meeting. Now if there are any entrepreneurs out there who live in communities with any sizable population of returning veterans from Iraq, I would strongly recommend opening a chai tea shop, as the stuff is positively addictive.
In any case, we sat down on the patio of the café, which amazingly enough was very clean. The server brought out the tea, and subsequently brought out some small plates of onions, olives, tomatoes, and peppers, as well as an unidentifiable mélange of a red obviously very spicy condiment. The reluctance of all the troops to partake was evident in their faces, and as the senior military as well as medical person, they looked to me for guidance. The dilemma was significant. Well aware of the various viral, bacterial, and parasitic maladies that might have been contained therein, as well as my prior warnings about eating off the local economy conflicting with the political and social ramifications of refusing the hospitality, I politely picked at a few of the offerings. Following my lead, several of the other soldiers did the same. Then the dam broke. Suddenly we were confronted with a veritable banquet of kebobs, meats of unknown origin, vegetables, and bread. Figuring that we had already crossed the point of no return, we dug in. I forgot just how much food a twenty some year old guy can consume. In Middle Eastern cultures, if you clean your plate, it is a signal of you desire for more. In order to not eat them out of house and home, I conspicuously stopped eating with food still on my plate, and remarkably enough, the rest of the guys picked up the cue. I felt bad about leaving some of the food untouched, particularly the bread. Bread here is flat, like pita bread, but unlike the saw-dust texture of pita bread from home, it is pleasantly chewy.
After the meal we expressed our thanks, and of course were not allowed to pay for our repast. We loaded up into our convoy, and headed for our tour of other health care facilities in the region. I won’t bore you with all the descriptions of the other facilities, and in any case one clinic looks pretty much like another, with the exception that these were much cleaner and well maintained than similar ones I had visited in the city.
Driving from village to village, we ended up on some roads that were rough enough to compare with some of the worst Forest Service roads in Idaho. One grade was so steep our Humvee almost couldn’t make it up. We forded streams and even a small river, and did some otherwise bone jarring four wheeling. We approached one village which sat at the base of a cone shaped mound. The mound was covered with young pine trees, and there was an unidentifiable white structure on the top. We stopped at the clinic, and as we took the tour, we were informed this was one of the villages that had been gassed by Saddam, with several hundred lives lost, and the white structure was a monument to the dead. After the clinic visit, we climbed to the top of the mound, with most of the village children in tow. The white structure we had seen from afar was a sculpture in cement, the dominant facet a large bust of a Kurdish man screaming, and the base consisted of intertwined bodies of people and animals in their death throes. It was very poignant, as the sculptor obviously had some degree of talent, but was somewhat hindered by his medium. The allusion to the current state of affairs struck me-a people struggling to overcome their violent past, hampered by the lack of resources, and making due with the materials at hand.
From the back of the mound there was a spectacular vista, looking over the valley of a fairly sizable river, mountains in the background. It was reminiscent of the Boise River toward Lucky Peak. It was a great view to have for a while, and I could almost imagine myself hiking down into the river bottom and up into the far hills to hunt birds or deer. (Aside for Waj and Willie: I actually did see a small covey of chukars on the base a couple weeks ago, and they also have some species of pheasant here as well).
Afterward, one of the villagers invited us back to his home for some chai. We sat cross legged on oriental rugs, and made small talk through the interpreters. I had two glasses. I would have liked to have stayed longer, but we had more places to visit, including a displaced persons village. Now I’m not sure what image a “displaced persons” village conjures in your mind, but I see ramshackle huts, sagging tents, and filthy children with bellies swollen from malnutrition, dirt and filth. What I saw was wide paved streets, cement stucco houses with walled gardens and fenced drive in garages. I thought I was in a suburb of Phoenix. Curiously enough, due to the unique geology of the area there are many limestone caves, and the water that collects in them enables the reproduction of the Anopheles mosquito, making this one of the few endemic areas for malaria in Iraq.
After our tour of this village (during which one of the local boys stole my pen), we drove off on winding roads back into the hills. We had pointed out to us a place where a holy man lived as a hermit, and some of the caves where the Kurdish rebels hid during their war against Saddam. As we drove further, we noted a group of cars pulled off the side of the road near a small stream. Our guide’s car pulled over, and we followed. These were some staffers from the DoH, and they had met us there for a picnic. And out it came, goat and lamb and kabobs and chicken and rice with grapes and bread and fruit and on and on and on. We stripped off our body armor, took off our helmets, and felt like human beings for a while. It was disappointing when we were through, but we still had a fair way to go before we got back, and it was getting late.
The remainder of the ride was uneventful, with another brief stop at a village and a pass by of a ruined fortress that Saddam had built and we destroyed.
I’m looking forward to get out that way again, but I’m unsure if I will have the opportunity.
Well, that’s all for now. I hope you all are well. Thank you for thoughts, e-mails, letters, and packages. I’m looking forward to June, as I have two weeks of leave coming up, and will be heading home to Idaho.