Inside The Wire

The Surge is on, and we bump and roll our way out of the newest Combat Out Post in eastern Baghdad, ready for another exciting day of presence patrols and checking up on our IP buddies. Combat Out Post sounds pretty impressive, but really it's just a big abandoned building, full of rats the size of house cats and a top floor full of human excrement. We just added a ton of bottled water and MREs, a little concertina wire and some sandbags and a wall of concrete T-walls, and voilà! Instant Combat Out Post.

US Army Task Force 519th Military Police HHD, helping to outfit and train the local IP. (USN photo Photographer's Mate 1st Class Bart A. Bauer)

We're headed to one of our Iraqi Police Stations, since it's with these guys that we're going to bring safety and security to the peace-loving people of Baghdad. It's only a few blocks away, and don't you just love a short commute to work? Surely having no electricity and only being able to take a shower every 10 days is a small price to pay for such conveniences, right? Right.  

INPs' Superior Firepower

We pull in after just a few minutes' ride, and I'm a little surprised to see a whole squad of Iraqi National Police sitting there waiting for us. The INPs are a different agency than the IPs – sort of a paramilitary unit that serves as a bridge between the Iraqi Army and the police. Different uniforms, different vehicles and generally a heavier level of firepower.  Sometimes a ridiculously heavier level of firepower. I've seen INP trucks with massive 30mm anti-aircraft cannons bolted on to their truck beds, usually with some camouflaged dolt sitting in the high gunner chair, looking a little foolish as he cranks the massive barrel around in your general direction.

These guys are new to this neck of the woods, we haven't seen them before and they're wearing pristine, digitized uniforms, which sort of look like our ACUs. Five of the guys are sitting around the entrance to the IP station, and they greet me as soon as I step out of my armored HMMWV.

"Kurdish!  Kurdish!" they exclaim loudly the second my foot touches the ground. I'm feeling pretty jolly today, since I'm happy to be off of R&R and back with my squad, and so I react the only way you should to such a welcome. I exuberantly throw up my arms and loudly proclaim, "Kurdish?! I love Kurdish!"

The Universal Language: Sharing Smokes

Arabs enjoy making expansive hand gestures and boisterous proclamations, and so the guys jump up and surround me like long-lost partisans. We do the usual introductions, and someone produces a pack of cigarettes, which are duly handed around and lit, after which we find that we really don't have much more to say to one another. So we stand there and puff on our smokes and look at the ground and then at each other, and try to find the right words.

After a long and mildly uncomfortable silence, the Kurds seize on a topic for conversation; the same one that usually comes up whenever I meet a new bunch of Iraqi soldiers: my rifle.

My Rifle – Always a Conversation Starter

My rifle usually gets a bit of attention, both from Arab and US Soldiers alike. It's a standard-issue M4 with a M203 grenade launcher underneath, but I've added virtually every accessory imaginable to it. A 3X to 9X variable sniper scope with dual-color illuminated mil-dot reticle, Wilson custom pistol grip, a Redi-Mag secondary magazine holder, a M203 forward handgrip with Surefire tactical light, and a great honking Greenbeam 2000 tactical laser on the barrel. The whole Rube Goldberg contraption weighs almost as much as a SAW, but it's an awesome conversation piece. Iraqi soldiers, with their bargain basement AK-47s, really go ape-shit over it.

It's gotten so that I can sense when the topic is about to come up, and it always starts the same way. First, the guys start eyeing it, and then someone builds up some confidence, points to the M203, and asks, "Bambakshi?" The Soviets do make a grenade launcher – more of a little tiny rocket launcher than a grenade launcher, really – for the AK-74, but both it and the 74s never seem to have made it here, and the hajjis always mistake the 203 for a shotgun.

"La bambakshi!" I tell them – not shotgun. I don't know the Arabic word for grenade or grenade launcher, and so have to lurch into my charades version of a 40mm round popping out of the 203 and exploding, complete with sound effects. Thank God my mother insisted on so many games of charades when I was a kid – it's come in handy a thousand times in countries from Honduras to Korea – and now in Iraq. I guess I still have some acting skills, since the Kurdish cops get the message and look appropriately impressed with big bulging eyes.

"Ah, na'ahm, na'ahm – hermanah!" says one of them, pointing. "Hermanah sal-tee." He taps the 203 knowingly.

Learning Arabic 

Cool, a new word for the day! I've got to write that down; may come in real handy sometime.

Now where the hell is that Arabic dictionary? I'd sort of given up on learning the language a month or two ago; distracted by my upcoming R&R leave and the combination of burn-out and sexual frustration which preceded it. The enthusiasm of these guys is catching, however, and this might be a great time to start learning again.

Going and retrieving that dictionary turned out to be one of the most rewarding things I'd done in quite some time.

Turns out that the head dude, the one that pointed out my 203, speaks a little English, and we hit it off right away. I've got a little of the lingo down already – y'know, just the most-needed phrases. Hi, how are you, do you have identification, do you have a weapon, get on the ground motherfucker – you know, the basics. But beyond that, my Arabic is limited. We start at the front of the book with introductions, sabah il-kheir, "good morning," and work our way through the book from there.

Kurdish Hospitality

The Kurds are absolutely awesome – by far the most genuinely friendly people I have yet met in Iraq. I mean, sure, people tend to generally be friendly towards us in Baghdad, at least the ones we meet face to face. Kids smile and wave, and people are pretty polite – but then what would you expect? We're armed to the teeth and ensconced in layers of armor, both inside and outside of our vehicles. Usually there's palpable sense of resentment or outright hatred behind the thin smiles, and many times I've looked at the crowds of grinning, waving bystanders outside the ballistic windows and had to fight the urge to flip them the bird. I know that given half a chance, they'd dance around our burning HMMWVs and drag our bodies through the streets.

But the Kurds are different. Maybe it's because they're outsiders in this city, the same as us. These guys are part of the two or three brigades that have been brought down from Northern Iraq to help quell the sectarian violence in the city. Since they're largely outside of the Sunni-Shia conflict, it's felt that they will be more pro-active in restoring order. Hell, some of them don't even speak Arabic – they speak their own Kurdish dialect. So, they are something of an alien faction, like us, even though they are in their own country.

Breaking the Ice and the Language Barrier

Kurdish peshmergas training.

We have a great time, teaching the big former Jarhead how to stretch his mouth around the harsh Arabic syllables. Jamal, the head Kurd, uses what English he knows to explain the finer points of the words, and the whole crew helps out with teaching me the accent and pronunciation. It makes for quite a sight; this motley crew of gaunt Kurd cops with their AKs, clustered around me, leaning forward, lips extended, carefully mouthing out the fragments of inane Arabic phrases. Yijbak il-findiq? Do you like the hotel?

Every time we get a new phrase down, I find myself laughing in delight, and my dictionary rapidly fills with scribbled notes and new phrases. The best part is when we actually find useful stuff – questions and answers that we bounce off of each other. All the normal parts of introductory conversation that people usually fly through in the first 10 minutes of meeting – where are you from, are you married, do you have kids? We actually start getting to know each other, and the Kurds seem as happy as I am to break through the language barrier. I find out that within their squad, there are two groups of brothers, and all of the guys are from the same area of Kurdistan. All except the youngest fought in the Peshmerga, the Kurdish guerrilla forces, during the initial invasion of Iraq, and then joined the Iraqi National Police once the force was disbanded

A Surprise from Nazul

After a bit, one of the regular IPs from the station, a guy I've known for a while, comes out to join us. Nazul has a surprise for us, which he points out, across the street. The IP station is right next to a tiny alleyway, lined with small concrete houses. Most of the houses are owned by police officers at the station, and in fact the houses are within the T-walled perimeter. We turn to look, and Nazul's son has brought out a chair and a hookah, along with the ubiquitous tea service. He's inviting us over for chai and nagena – strong Arabic tea and a smoke. How can I refuse?

There's only one chair, and both Jamal and I make a big deal out of offering it to each other, as one should in Arabic culture. Basically, anytime anyone offers you anything, you are expected to turn it down several times, while the host offers it ever more emphatically, until you finally give in. We finally end up taking turns sitting in it, and Nazul's son serves all of us piping hot chai.

If you haven't had it, there is something magical about chai. The tea is served in tiny china cups, like thimbles, and a good third of the cup is filled with sugar. It's very strong, and very hot, yet somehow, even in the 125-degree heat of the summer, it's absolutely refreshing, much more so than ice water or Gatorade.

Hookah Magic

Hookah magic – Not your average smoke. (Stock photo)

The real treat, however, is the hookah. No, it's not used for drugs here – something strongly forbidden by Sharia law. Instead, the hard coals of the water pipe produce incredibly smooth, delicious tobacco smoke. The flavor is exotic, like the ghostly essence of amber honey, with a slight, smooth, aftertaste of licorice. The Kurds carefully show me how to hold the long stem of the coiled hose, and we pass it around, taking long draws of the sumptuous smoke. Somehow, the sharp, sweet tang of the chai and the silky taste of the nagena smoke complement each other, and I end up feeling completely refreshed and rejuvenated.

The whole scene seems surreal to me. I'm sitting in the middle of an alleyway in Baghdad, just a kilometer or two north of Sadr City. I'm surrounded by former guerrillas-turned-police officers, and we're all squatting and sitting together, in the dusty street, babbling back and forth in a mixture of Arabic, Kurdish and English, while sucking on a hookah pipe and daintily holding tiny china cups and saucers of piping hot tea. All while festooned with 65 pounds of body armor, grenades and assault rifles.

It's the kind of thing that makes putting up with the Army worth it, and more than that, it's the kind of thing that gives me hope for this poor, war-torn country. Perhaps my old British mother knew what she was talking about: maybe we should all just sit down, put the rifles aside for a minute and have a nice smoke and a good cup of tea.     
 
About the Author: SGT Roy Batty is a 39-year-old Army Sergeant and former Marine, currently serving with an active duty Military Police unit somewhere in Baghdad, and has been in country for eight months. The name is a pseudonym, courtesy of Philip K. Dick's novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? which inspired the film "Blade Runner."