I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

—T.S. Eliot

Sundays here are NOT “groundhog days” for me. Thanks to the luxury of having both a physician and a nurse practitioner in our troop medical clinic, I am able to give LTC Bullock Saturdays off, and I take the Sundays. This means I get to sleep late one day a week, and I remained in bed until almost 8 this morning. The best thing about sleeping late here (aside from the obvious beauty of pure laziness) is the fact that an extra hour or two of “Iraq time” drifts away from me unconsciously.

Today I woke up a bit headachy, probably from sleeping too long. Breakfast was a BSC pop-tart with some Gatorade to wash it down, and then I listened to some talks as I wrote a bit, surfed the web, read, and did some minor straightening around the canister. Around noon, a couple of people needed to be dropped off at the post office (it is open seven days a week here, though sometimes no mail will be flown in for 2-3 days in a row), and I was the only available person who could drive a stick shift. The upshot of this was that I ended up having the truck to myself, which meant that I’d have a ride home from church (I usually end up walking or taking the bus). Sweet!

Church was even more reserved and quiet than usual, as there were only 11 of us there, including one lone sister and a bunch of balding (or close-shaven) men in uniform. A funny thing about having such a small congregation is that it only takes about 5 minutes to pass both the bread and the water. We then tried to watch a talk by President Hinckley, but there must have been dust in the DVD player (a chronic problem here), and the video kept getting unfixably stuck, so we eventually abandoned it, and instead we ten men and one woman enjoyed Sister Beck’s talk on “Mothers Who Know.”

The early PM was naptime, and after some reading, I fell asleep listening to George Orwell’s “Down and Out in Paris and London,” which I downloaded from audible yesterday, and wholeheartedly recommend. Around 5:30 was dinnertime, and yet another unexpected, unique experience.

After we had eaten, I walked out into what I expected to be the typical blinding Iraqi sun, but instead the sky in front of me was dark, and behind me it seemed to be an ominous purple color. I did a double-take, and on closer inspection noted that this was not, in fact, sky at all. It was a unspeakably huge (ginormous, humongous, massive) mountain of sand, and it was rolling and billowing in our direction, with occasional lightning flashes at its edges. It is next to impossible to describe the massiveness of one of these things, and unfortunately, none of us had our cameras with us. To give you an idea, here a couple of pictures of a sandstorm over Al Asad in 2005. These pictures are very similar to what it looked like today, but do not convey the enormity of the thing, and do not quite reflect the deep purple color of today’s massive cloud.

If you look closely, you’ll notice the tiny-looking people in the forefront of these pictures; that will give you some idea as to the size of the typical Al Asad sandstorm. More (and larger) pix of this same sandstorm can be seen here.

When I pointed out to my companions that we were being stalked by a giant dust cloud, they suddenly became very wide-eyed and started literally running towards the bus, and yelling at me to do the same. I didn’t hesitate, and once we were all in, we started heading back to the canisters. Unfortunately, everyone in Al Asad had the same idea, and so we ran into a bit of a traffic jam, even as we watched this ominous thing billowing in our direction. We were about a quarter-mile away, when I saw the cloud climb over a bank of tents to our right, and come literally screaming towards our bus. A brown, sandy gust of wind hit the right side of the bus, and the force of the thing, though not enough to lift up our vehicle, was nonetheless very palpable. At that moment, everything outside of the bus suddenly went pitch black.

The blackness of a sandstorm is unlike any darkness I have experienced before. It is thick, and it is heavy. There was a car just ahead of us (maybe 10 feet), but its tail lights were absolutely gone. We slowed down to a crawl, and eventually made it to our camp. SGT Evans parked us as close to the cans as possible, with my permission to leave the bus in this not-quite-legal spot overnight. We all got up and poised ourselves for the three doors, and Evans signaled to us: “Ready? Go!” The three doors were opened up simultaneously, and we jumped out of the bus like it was about to explode, and ran towards our canisters. I could taste the dust in my mouth, and felt the grit in my eyes and my nostrils. I held my breath, kept my eyes closed to a tiny slit, fiddled with my keys and eventually opened my door just enough to slide in through the crack.

Once inside, I assessed the damage which was only minor. My glasses were covered in fine sand, and my clothes had turned a dull grey on the front and the right side. I had expected that the air in my can would be cool and relatively clean, but was sad to notice a layer of dust on the shelf that is directly in front of my air-conditioner unit. The filter was not keeping much of this particulate matter out, and I could see it blowing into the trailer. My whole room smelled of silt and dust, and I decided that I needed to remedy this as soon as possible. Within a few minutes, my A/C had been rigged with a wet, brown Army towel in front of it, so that any dust that was blown out would hit the front of the towel and drop from there, rather than blowing all over my living space, like so:

Not too fancy, but it did the job. About 30 minutes after the sandstorm started, it began to rain. Hard. A good thing, I thought, as it would bat down the dust a bit. I also noted that the gritty sound of sand hitting the side of my trailer had ceased.

Then, I had an idea. I grabbed my Army-issue wet weather gear, along with my Dopp kit and soap. I then hid a towel under my coat, opened the door, and ran towards the showers. The landscape outside had changed: there was a thick layer of dust and/or mud wherever I stepped, and everything was greyish-brown, including the air visible beneath the outside lights.

But no matter: for the first time in a month, I had the entire bathroom to myself.

On Saturday, 01 March 2008, four weeks ago today, I said goodbye to my wife and kids, checked in to CRC, and began my current existence in the “real” Army. Three Saturdays ago, I was introduced to the dust as my plane touched down in the middle-east. Over the past few weeks, I have observed some of the challenges the troops face over here, including family separation, the stress of deployment and combat, physical issues like the dust and the heat, among many others.

But on a Saturday which does not feel like a Saturday, one in which I got up at the same time as usual, went to the same place for work, and did the same things I do on other days, I am reminded that the worst enemy to our troops in post-surge Iraq, aside from the bad guys themselves, is the stifling boredom, the day-to-day sameness which presses upon the soldiers every day we are here. Deployees have a phrase for this monotonous, repeating daily routine, taken from the great Bill Murray film in which he is doomed to repeat one particular holiday over and over until he finally gets it right: “Groundhog Day.”

Now, the reader at this point would not be blamed for thinking something along the lines of: “If boredom is your worst problem during deployment, then you should be grateful.” I wholeheartedly agree with this, and I quite literally pray every night that it will continue to be as “boring” in Al Asad throughout the next five months as my first few weeks have been. There was an article in the Stars and Stripes (the free daily paper here) this week which discussed how chest pain, and not trauma, is the number-one cause of medical evacuations out of theater. One of the doctors was quoted as saying “When you put a middle-aged man in 130-degree heat, give him 40 pounds of gear and start shooting at him, all of the sudden that can bring out a lot of heart disease that may not have been appreciated before that time.” We “fobbits” are very happy NOT to be in the heat, wearing the gear, or fending off the bullets.

But there is indeed a danger, both psychological and physical, of being in the same, zombifying, numbing conditions day after day after day. Allow me to illustrate, using my own situation as an example.

—————-

Imagine, for a moment, that you have moved to a new town. This move was not your choice, but was required of your employer (an employer who happened to be able to throw you in jail if you refused the relocation). In this new “town” you are well-protected by people at the borders, and are even given a weapon which you can (and must) carry everywhere you go. However (and here’s the catch), at the borders of the town you are surrounded by people who have feelings about you ranging from a wary distrust to an outright and clearly-stated desire to kill you. Some members of the latter group have even been known to lob a few bombs in your town’s general direction, but you are very well-buffered from such things. At least for now.

The “town” itself has some issues, too. Its practical living area is fairly small (two miles square), and due to importing issues, there is very limited transportation, so you walk or bike to most places. There are only two restaurants in town. Both are of the same chain, which is run by a government contract. These are of the “all-you-can-eat” variety, with plentiful quantities of cheap, greasy food, very little produce (tomatoes on Tuesdays only), and no take-out. (To be fair, the town does have some American fast food staples like Burger King and Subway, but these are also run by the same contractor, and taste remarkably similar to each other and to the bigger restaurants.) There are no grocery stores in town, so eating at home is not a real option. Of course, you have no kitchen, either.

The housing in town is of two varieties: very small efficiencies with no attached bathrooms (you share a communal latrine/shower 100 steps out the front door), and larger multi-occupant dwellings with no walls (a.k.a. tents). You are “lucky” to live in one of the 8 x 12 efficiencies. There is no movie theater (though one is in perpetual “reconstruction”), no library, no ATMs or banks (though there is a government-run “finance office”), no grass, no families, no children, no museum. There are very few females, and those that are here are allowed nowhere near the males’ living quarters. Even if your spouse were here also (and she isn’t), she, too, would not be allowed in your “space.” There is absolutely no hanky panky here. Don’t even think about it.

You have free cable TV, but with only seven channels which show delayed versions of the more popular shows. More popular, that is, among twenty-somethings, who make up the great majority of the town’s inhabitants. All of the people in town share a single internet connection. The landscape is dusty and brown, dry and hot, but without even tumbleweed to break up the monotony.

There are some positives, though. The gas is free. The buses, though unpredictable, are also free. The food is free. The other people in the town are either quiet and demurring, or else friendly and sympathetic. There is a communal sense of being in the same difficult situation together and ninety percent of the people here are making the very best of it. There is free laundry service, with a 72-hour turnaround. There is little running water, and what is here is not potable, but there are pallets of bottled water everywhere you look. The bottled water is clean and refreshing, and three versions a “Crystal-light” knockoff are plentiful and also free. You are not the king of this place (by a long shot), but you are some form of low-level royalty—an “earl” or a “duke” perhaps. This does not afford you anything special most of the time, but in a few key situations (i.e., travel, getting things fixed), it really helps you, and also the people with whom you work. Kind-hearted people from the “homeland” send you things, just for being here, and those who will never have to “relocate” are grateful to you for doing so, even if it wasn’t your choice. Finally, and most importantly, this relocation is temporary; you will, after a certain number of days, be allowed to go home. This fact takes quite a bit of the sting off of all of the negatives listed above.

—————–

As with all analogies, this one is not quite right. There are a few things I have missed, both on the positive and the negative sides. The stifling boredom coupled with the sense of a vague, surrounding, impending threat brings on a feeling of isolation which is very hard to explain, but which one can envision bursting into all-out paranoia in the more susceptible or more greatly-tested among us. There are long periods where I do not feel this isolation at all, followed by brief, acute periods where it is exquisitely painful. At first I thought that these episodes were random, brought on just by shifting chemicals in my head, lack of sleep or whatever. But I have come to realize that they are triggered sometimes by the strange incongruities experienced by the deployee. There is a parody song which is popular in theater, sung to the tune of “Hotel California.” It is mostly profane and childish, but occasionally right on, as in these lines from the chorus: “Welcome to the Hotel Camp Fallujah/Hear the speakers sing/We’ve got incoming/Livin’ it up at the Hotel Camp Fallujah/You’re in a combat zone/Go get your ice cream cone.” I guarantee you that the person who wrote those lines has been here, and has eaten many of the Saudi “Drumsticks” out of the freezer near the mess hall exits, all the while wondering if he can stand to partake any more of these same day-in-day-out markers of the time he has left in this place.

FROM THE “I AM NOT WORTHY” DEPARTMENT:

On Friday afternoon, I was the big, BIG winner among my clinic staff when it came to mail call. (Count ‘em) SIX packages came to me. The first was from my lovely wife and children, and included some precious mementos from home, which have already taken up residence on the walls of my cave. Lorri also sent me some nutty goodies from Earthfare (those sesame-seed-and-honey bars which I have always loved so much) and a Bruce Springsteen t-shirt which I got at a concert Barry and I went to back in 2003. I remember that night–we met at Shea stadium. I came from the south (DC) and he came from the north (CT), and we met, saw the concert, and then sat in my car talking till 2 AM. Finally we each headed back home, remaining on the cell the whole time to keep each other awake. Good times.

Another package was from a good friend, Diana, who like me suffers from post-lasik dry-eye syndrome. I know Diana from dryeyezone.com, a place which anyone reading this who has dry eyes should visit immediately. She had read about the dusty biscotti package sitting in our clinic’s “free” basket, and decided that we need a lesson in taste, so she sent us some homemade biscotti. Diana, it is delicious: not at all the hard, pointy stuff which I have been served before. thanks for that and a big thanks to your kids for the great pictures. They are also adorning my “den” as I write this.

The third and fourth packages were from Lisa and Adam Spice, who have contributed to this blog. They contained two incredible pillows (leaning on one now), a much-needed mouse for my computer at work (woo-hoo! now I can get all the way to the left of the screen without using both hands!), and some huge (HUGE) Ziploc bags of the kind prominently featured on The Sopranos. You seriously could fit a body in these things, but, more importantly, a whole lot of stuff that I want to protect from the dust. Thanks, Spice Family!

The final two boxes came from an address a bit north of the Spices in Indian Wells, CA. These boxes weighed about 20-30 lbs each (I’m guessing) and contained a bunch of Sam’s Club items which have already taken a prominent role in our humble clinic. Among these are: a box of 850 gumballs (the large, 25-cents kind, Double Bubble brand), two big boxes of beef jerky, two boxes full of regular-sized candy bars, bags and bags of assorted sweets ranging from Hershey miniatures to Starburst, to Charms lollipops. The labels on the boxes state only that they are from the “AG Family.” I have wracked my brains trying to think of who that could be, so that I can send you a proper thanks, but to no avail. If you wish to reveal yourself to me, drop me a line at rupard@gmail.com. If not, please accept my grateful thanks (and that of my medics and patients). All of us have partaken of your generosity, and it will “feed” us for weeks to come. I truly cannot thank you enough for your generosity.

Time for a long bike ride, and then (if it’s late enough) a call to the birthday girl, Madeline Rupard, delivered in Payson UT on this day in 1991. Maddy, we had the BYU health plan back then and your birth cost us 75 dollars. I want you to know that you have been worth every last penny of that (even when adjusted for inflation).

See you tomorrow!

It’s 9:51 PM, Al Asad time, and I am sitting in my bed, a whole bunch of Spice Family pillows behind me (more on those tomorrow, just got ‘em today), staring and typing at my laptop. I cannot claim this to be a unique posture for me. My wife would out me on that one—our king-sized bed at home has been the birthplace of more than a few essays, papers, journal articles, and even a book chapter (from the fantastically popular “Encyclopedia of Respiratory Medicine”).

Well, here in Iraq, my bed has become much more than a place for sleeping, computing, and snuggling. Given that it takes up about 1/6th of my canister, this should not be surprising to anyone. But there is another factor which makes the bed even more of an all-purpose piece of furniture here in Iraq. I do have a chair in the room (as does just about everyone here), but it is of the only variety to be found at the PX: one of those foldout, canvas “captain’s” chairs, complete with the cupholder on the right armrest. These are great chairs for sitting and talking, watching a soccer game, or leaning back and watching a movie. In fact a few of us do the latter about every other night in the little alley between our cans, with the cool air and the sparkling desert sky providing us the perfect setting as we stare at the insanely large screen of CPT Baker’s laptop, and eat micro-pop. The folding chairs, however, are not the greatest place from which to eat a meal. The hammock-esque build of these things results in the seated party not quite being able to reach anything very far away, and not able to get enough leverage to spork the intended food item. So, I eat in bed. Gross, I know, but wait: it gets grosser.

Yesterday I went to the mess hall with SPC (that stands for “Specialist,” which is the title for certain 4th level enlisted personnel, the others being called “Corporals”) Holgate, an unfortunate kid who was supposed to be out of the Army months ago, but was “stop-lossed,” a word which means that the Army would not discharge him, even though he had completed his obligation. To add insult to injury, he was moved from his regular job (which had ended) into our clinic, where he currently doubles as front desk staff and manager of our “pharmacy closet.” SPC H’s prior job in the Army, the one for which he was trained, is as a cook. As we talked yesterday, we got onto the topic of foods we like, but nobody else does, and we found a common denominator: kippered snacks. If you don’t know what kippered snacks are, well, I don’t either, really, but I can tell you that they are some kind of fish, smoked, chopped up, packed in oil, and somehow squeezed into a can a bit longer and bigger than a sardine can. When the can is opened, the things stink to high heaven, and people actually get up and leave the room (not necessarily a bad thing). If all of this sounds really disgusting to you, congratulations. You are among the 96% of people in the world who would not eat a kippered snack if they paid you to. In other words, you are normal. But me, I like the stinky, smelly, oily, canned things, and so does SPC H. So when I had the truck for a few minutes today to pick up my laundry, I went by the PX on the way home, and grabbed five cans of kippered snacks off of the shelf where I had seen them, looking lonely, dusty, and oh so kippered, just a few days before. (Somehow, I knew that they would still be there.) When I got back to clinic, I gave SPC H a couple of cans, and put the rest in my bag.

After work, I hit the gym and worked out for nearly two hours, all the time thinking of those kips. I got back, showered, put on the PJs that Lorri sent me earlier this week, and sat on my bed, remote in one hand, and You Know What in the other. As I peeled open the sardine-like metal lid, I said the following to myself, almost aloud: “Erik, do NOT spill the kippered snacks on the bed. That would be very bad. Your little living space might not ever recover from such a toxic waste dump.” It was at about midway through that third sentence that I felt something cool on my leg. I looked down just in time to see it drip onto the bed spread. About 50 baby wipes later, and I now feel confident that I got rid of at least 1.3% of the smell of oily smoked fish. Only 98.7% to go! Ahh well, I wasn’t planning on inviting anyone over to my pad anyway. Time to call 1-800-MATTRESSSSS (the extra “s”es stand for “stinky salmon snacks”).

The weekend is coming up (here, actually, though I work on Saturdays, so it makes Friday night kind of irrelevant), and I plan to push out a longer, more cohesive entry tomorrow, but tonight it is late. For now, I will stew in my own kippered juices and fall asleep, dreaming of the following:

TEN THINGS I WILL DO WHEN I GET HOME

1. I will surf the web from the comfort of mine and Lorri’s king-sized, non-pungent Posturepedic. I will repeatedly click on the Wall Street Journal’s home page and marvel that it takes 15 milli-seconds to open up, rather than 15 minutes.
2. I will wander around town asking people to pronounce the word “potable.” If they pronounce it correctly, I will bestow upon them one Iraqi dinar–the old, worthless kind with Saddam’s picture on it, but still…
3. Our cupboards will be laid bare, and I will find something—anything—in them which is NOT “chunked and formed.” I will immediately eat that thing.
4. I will gaze upon the shiny, happy faces of my lovely wife and my precious, precious children. It will seem like an eternity since I have seen them, but also like only yesterday and that it the way that it’s supposed to be.
5. I will go to church, without a 9mm pistol strapped to my chest, and there I will be offered the sacrament by someone who, also, is not carrying a weapon. That I know of.
6. I’ll get in my car and drive more than 3.6 miles, which is the farthest I can go straight in any direction right now without running into the wire which borders our little “village.” Then, I will drive back home, and Maya will run out to meet my car when it gets there, so that she can hug me first. Never gets old, that last part.
7. I will get the largest cup in my house (maybe the horse bucket in the garage) and I will fill it with ice to the brim, and with filtered water from the little dispenser in the door of our refrigerator. Then, I will take a series of long, cool sips, and it will not taste even the slightest bit like dust or diesel.
8. I will head to Walmart and make my medics a care package, full of M&Ms and Chips Ahoys. When I send it, I will put all twelve of their names in the “address” field.
9. I don’t care if it’s raining, sleeting, snowing, hailing, thundering, or lightning-ing. I’m going swimmin’! I fully expect the pool to be green and more-alive-than-dead by that point (this will be September), but its dangerous algae levels notwithstanding, I’m getting in. Try and stop me.
10. And last but certainly not least: Group hug. If you’re reading this, you’re invited.

Okay, not quite 1300, but it is bright and cold here, which is an unexpected surprise. There is a part of my brain which knows that, sooner rather than later, I will be walking around post in my manditorily long-sleeved uniform in the 120-degree heat, sweating bullets down the side of my shiny head. It is this same part of my brain which is embracing today’s cool temperature, along with the nice, fairly-clean (read: less dusty than usual) wind which has been whistling down the halls of my clinic all day.

By the way, first one to get the literary reference in today’s title wins.

I have a few essays on the workbench, but not quite ready for prime-time. This includes one about my ongoing search for a suitably accessible and usable latrine on post, a post about the plodding sameness of the days here and how the soldiers combat the stir fever which this threatens to create, and a discussion of the medics themselves—my lifeblood here on Al Asad, and the source of 90% of my daily human contact. How did each of these men and women ended up working as an Army medic serving in Iraq? Each one has an interesting story, often poignant. Look for those longer pieces in the future (or, not at all—depends on where things naturally take us from here).

Today, I have a few brain droppings for you, on seemingly random subjects, though as I read back over this on final edit, they don’t seem so random to me any more.

1) I bought a bike two days ago, from a SPC (E-4) who came to my clinic for a post-deployment health assessment. 60 bucks, included the locks and a nice Schwinn helmet. It needed a bit of work, but 36 hours later, I was taking this fine machine out past one of the checkpoints, and near the flight line. as I got about two miles away from the busier part of the post, I looked around and saw no people at all, nor any signs of them, except for the pyramid-shaped “yugo” bunkers which I have described previously. Looked like a lunar landscape to me, except with birds circling (not circling ME, mom!) and those crazy, whacked-out pyramid thingies. When I got to the flatter area, the wind started whipping me and my poor little bike around like Dorothy, and so I flipped around and headed back to the main area. I’ll be taking that trip again, soon, on a less windy day. The bike, with brakes I had just recently adjusted, help up pretty well. I have a severe case of “bicycle bottom” today—need to toughen up that backside a bit.

2) When I went to pick up the bike at the Specialist’s can, I was reminded how good we medical types have it. He and another soldier were crammed into a room about 3/4ths the size of mine, and they had clearly given into the dust many many moons ago. Which means they have been here that long. I go home before either of them does.

3) The food here is really, really, really bad. Really. I could add a few more “really”s there, but my English teacher wouldn’t count them towards my word total. I know that you, dear reader, are saying to yourself something like “Didn’t Erik tell us the food was great?” Answer: the food in Kuwait was very good, but remember, I was absolutely starving from the 24 hours of travel by the time I got to Kuwait. Maybe it tasted better than it was. All I know, is that I ate twice at the DFAC today, and it was not good either time. Lunch was particle-board (a.k.a. chunked and formed”) turkey, like those Jennie-O turkey rolls I used to like when I was a kid. (I also liked the taste of boogers when I was a kid, let me remind you. Personally, after today’s lunch, if given the option, I’d take the boogers. They would at least have more non-synthetic protein.) Even slathering these pieces of turkey plywood with gravy, Texas Petes, Tabasco—in short, all of my “hide the flavor” tricks; none of these worked, gosh help me. Everyone at my table had something different for lunch, and we all left there with the same unsatisfied, slightly sickly look on our faces. Dinner was “Cordon Bleu.” That is what it said on the menu. Before I ordered, I did not think to ask what poor creature had been “Cordon-Bleued” (if you’ll excuse the awkward verb). I still don’t know. Again, it was particle-board, and would probably claim to be (mostly) chicken, but I left there wondering if perhaps on the shooting range earlier that day, there had been some sort of mishap with an M9 pistol and a camel, and the US government was trying to make the best of it, recouping their $5000 simoleons. Lorri, I’m looking forward to that jambalaya in September. I’ll be piling it high and deep.

4) You may have read on the always-reliable wikipedia that Al Asad has a Burger King, a Subway, and a Pizza Hut on post. Sounds like a reasonable alternative to the DFAC, but there is one problem, insurmountable to my feeble brain: the workers there are “regulars” at our clinic, and many have come in this week with hacking coughs, runny noses, ear infections, warts, you name it. To be fair, I have not heard of even one infection coming from the food there, and the workers aren’t unclean, just ill. But once you give antibiotics to a person, you want some time to pass before he prepares you a meal, especially in this The Land Of Non-Potable Water.

5) Our laundry service just went from 3-day to 2-day turnaround. This is nice, as I just happen to be a member of two groups (possibly the ONLY two groups in the world—you can figure out which ones they are) which require special undergarments, and I just can’t seem to keep enough on hand, always end up having to re-use a t-shirt before the next batch comes back. This will be remedied soon, as I have the appropriate undies on order as I write this.

6) Finally, I am really enjoying the Barack/Hillary circus. Once upon a time, I wrote a weekly column for a paper in Utah (and later, a larger paper) in which I often made the argument that we spend too much time on Presidential news, especially during election season. At that time (mid-90s), the President was becoming more and more irrelevant, and the Speaker of the House was actually Time’s man of the year once. It seemed, I wrote, that it didn’t really matter who became President, but rather which party was in power, writing the laws. That is very clearly NOT true today, something I can say with some conviction as I sit in my bunker in Iraq, 7000 miles away from my family, serving in a war which began 5 years ago, and which, as of Easter Sunday, has cost 4000 American military members their lives. Where will those sacrifices play into the history of this troubled region (and, by extension, the world), we do not yet know, but one thing is very clear to me: these days, it does indeed matter who becomes our President.

Backing up just a bit.

On Saturday (22nd), I woke up at my regular 6:30-ish time, and staffed a pretty mellow, low-volume clinic until noon. As usual, the medics and I hopped in the Mitsubishi dust-bus and headed out to the large DFAC for lunch. At some point, while I was eating my “Krab Kakes,” and drinking my Saudi Cola, I felt myself getting more and more sleepy, in that inevitable way that sometimes comes on during PowerPoint presentations, and very long sermons. By the time I made it home, around 1:30 PM, I flopped onto the bed, figuring I’d “rest my eyes” (a euphemism I have learned from both my mother and my wife) for a half-hour or so. You know what happened next.

At 4:30, I finally awoke, feeling prune-dry and beset by a dense grogginess which bordered on intoxication. I have had a cold for the past week, and I think that the combination of virus and antihistamine were conspiring against me. Knowing that if I did not get the blood flowing soon, my day would soon become a total loss, I dragged myself out of bed, put on my ACU uniform, grabbed a big bottle of water from the fridge, and began to trudge towards the clinic. There, I hoped to pick up the truck and get over to the PX, where I needed to pick up a couple of essentials. A few moments later, I was walking out of the clinic, keys in hand, and accompanied by LTC Bullock-Price, our clinic’s nurse practitioner, who wanted a lift to visit a friend. LTC Bullock is Jamaican by birth, American by citizenship, and has that kind of island accent which makes her sound happy all of the time, even when she is complaining (which she doesn’t do much, anyway). As we drove, I remembered that she had previously spoken of an oasis on Al Asad, and I asked her if she’d mind taking a detour in that direction, since we currently had transport. A U-turn later, and we were on our way.

I can’t tell you our exact route, but I will state that this trip took me to areas of the base which I had not yet seen, past more yards full of mechanized stuff, some camp areas, and out towards some newer construction. After a few turns, I looked up and saw them: palm trees! Green palm trees, in fact (and green is not a color which generally makes up the Al Asad landscape). They were in a low-lying area, maybe 1/2 mile square, with some standing, swampy-looking water in certain areas surrounding the oasis. Reeds and tall “cattail”-type plants rose out of the water.

This shot of my travelling companion, LTC Bullock-Price, demonstrates the sterile brown which surrounds and abuts the lively green of the oasis, behind her.

The reedy swamp which surrounds the front of the grove.

This trail leads into and through the palms.

A cement marker designates the oasis, and discusses the myth that this is “Abraham’s well” from the bible (Genesis 24, among others). There are other, likely better theories as to where this well is actually located. The papers enclosed in this “monument” (written during the Army Corps of Engineers’ restoration of the oasis circa 2004) describe a lush, verdant grove, replete with frogs and minnows. Looking down at the thick, swampy water, I figured that those would be some pretty tough minnows, and I did not see or hear any frogs, but perhaps those are only around during the rainy season.

This shot shows the date palm’s fruit, hanging in bunches in a circle around the base.

As we walked through the area, in almost complete silence (no talking, and far enough away from the helicopters that they were less than a dull roar), the darkness began to descend. I have noticed that here in the Al Asad “bowl,” once the sun drops near the “rim”, things get dark pretty quickly. I have gone into the gym at 6:45 in seemingly bright sunlight, and left at 7:30 in complete darkness. The sunset afforded a few pretty shots of the palm trees.

Looking back at the grove of palms, I was struck by how much this view reminds me of one of our favorite vacation spots at home, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.

Before the sun completely set, I got one final shot of the “wire” which surrounds this and all army bases, and beyond which I will likely never set foot during this deployment.

We headed back to the main post, and I dropped LTC off at her friend’s place, and then I dropped the truck off at the clinic, and walked home.

I have been waxing poetic far too much lately, so I will try to avoid it here. But there is indeed something very unique and (dare I use the word?) special about being in this part of the world, the very cradle of civilization, where so many history has taken place. While walking in the oasis, as the sun went down, and the silence took over, I had a bit of that “put off thy shoes” feeling. It is not the first time that I have had it here.

Next trip to the oasis, I’m bringing my scrips with me…

I am sitting in the “Chapel Annex,” a small square building behind the main on-post chapel. This is an appropriately humble setting, with floors made out of sheets of terminally-dusty plywood. There is a brown upright piano in the corner (untouched on this day), a CD player with European plugs, a small wooden stand before which stands our speaker. A larger pulpit with a prominent cross has been moved to the other side of the room, where it now stands unused. I count four windows and four blessed air-conditioning units pumping in air which is probably not any cleaner or less dusty than the air outside, but it is cooler, and thus carries at least the illusion of purity.

A Navy 0-4 (Lt Commander, I believe) and a Marine E-8 preside over the meeting, and a thin man in civvies with an Orson Pratt beard is delivering an Easter sermon. Previously, we sang an opening and then a sacrament hymn, mostly remaining in-sync with the pre-recorded accompaniment. Sacrament was brief (small congregation) and almost eerily quiet, lacking the wiggling, grunting, moaning, and occasionally screaming kid noises which are part of the aural landscape at home. Though I am not watching, it is apparent that not everyone takes the sacrament. I think we have some non-members here.
The audience, on our folding chairs, consists of enlisted Marines, a few Army folk, including a CPT, and a Navy chaplain LTC, Brother Vance, who is also the representative from the stake. There are nearly 20 of us here in total. Weapons are in hip holsters, or on the chairs next to church-goers. The atmosphere is quiet, and cordial. Everyone looks a little tired.

In the field, the LDS (Mormon) church services are only an hour long. Throughout my career, this has been perfectly consistent. Not sure if this is a DoD regulation, a standard Church rule, or if we can only reserve our little meeting spaces for an hour. I do know that it would be hard to manage the normal three hours here, and that Relief Society would be a fairly small group, in most cases. There are three women here today; one appears to be a Iraqi national, one a marine, and one an Army SGT with a Combat Surgical Hospital patch (likely an LPN). The hour meeting sems enough on this day, and we have a “Family Home Evening” during the week.

I am far from the first to say it, but there is something very reassuring about going to church in a deployed environment like this, and finding that it gives me that same spiritual renewal that I receive in church back home. President Kimball once spoke of the reservoirs that each of us needs to have, and pointed out that there is one reservoir that is of particular importance:

There are in our lives reservoirs of many kinds. Some reservoirs are to store water. Some are to store food, as we do in our family welfare program and as Joseph did in the land of Egypt during the seven years of plenty. There should also be reservoirs of knowledge to meet the future needs; reservoirs of courage to overcome the floods of fear that put uncertainty in lives; reservoirs of physical strength to help us meet the frequent burdens of work and illness; reservoirs of goodness; reservoirs of stamina; reservoirs of faith. Yes, especially reservoirs of faith so that when the world presses in upon us, we stand firm and strong; when the temptations of a decaying world about us draw on our energies, sap our spiritual vitality, and seek to pull us down, we need a storage of faith that can carry youth and later adults over the dull, the difficult, the terrifying moments, disappointments, disillusionments, and years of adversity, want, confusion, and frustration.

Dr. Archibald Brugger of my mission presidency once told us how we need to have our “buckets filled” every so often. I have found that to be true in my case, and things like prayer, scripture study, meditation on sacred things, all of these fill that bucket a bit. But there is something important and necessary about the company of other individuals, who are, like me, striving to be good with varying success. These brief, quiet moments never fail to renew my reservoirs, and to firm my grip on the iron rod. Perspective re-established, I walk back out into the blinding sun, the small/taste of dust and diesel, and I am ready for it.