In and Around Ramadi

Originally published by the New York Times on April 8th, 2006

Today, I will venture to give you some description of my temporary home in the deserts of western Iraq — the weather, the surrounding area, and the general feel of living in Ramadi, where I have been stationed for the past 9 months.

Geographically speaking, a F.O.B. in Iraq is a mere circle in the sand. Spanning out in all directions are countless cities, villages, rivers and vast expanses of desert. We’re about 60 miles west of Baghdad. Falluja is nearby. If you were to land at BIAP (Baghdad International Airport), you’d pass Falluja on the way to Ramadi. And if you could simply drive as you do back home, it would take about an hour. But with military convoys, vehicle checkpoints, and various other safety measures, the trip takes about four hours. Any trash, rock, dead body (human or animal), piece of a tire, discolored dirt, or even a stray object mere inches in diameter could be hiding an I.E.D.

You’re likely to see military convoys, non-American coalition vehicles carrying British or Australian troops, and S.U.V.’s sporting bulletproof glass filled with buff civilian-looking dudes who work for some obscure security agency. You’d see Daewoo, Opel, and Mitsubishi cars and trucks. And there are a lot of Mercedes and BMW’s out on the roads. I’ve seen a small Toyota truck with a boat tied on top. Both the truck and the boat were going down the highway filled with children and adults. I’ve pulled over a group of vehicles during a traffic control operation, and one of them was a nice Suburban with an unpainted wooden coffin roped on top. An old woman leaned out of the back window, looked at us, and said, “My mother. My mother.” When we waved her through, she said, “Merci. Merci.” She did not look French.

The housing is the same as in many cities back home: there are gorgeous palaces where rich sheiks live, and within a stone’s throw, some of the saddest looking houses you‘ve ever seen. The closer you get to the city, the more apartment buildings you see, and the closer together they are. I’ve been in a small, doorless, two room “home” on a chicken farm in the rural area surrounding Ramadi, where a beautiful little girl slept peacefully under a blanket on the dirt floor even after we landed 300 feet away in helicopters. She didn’t seem to mind the flies all over her cheek. The walls were made of cardboard boxes that had been filled and “sealed” with concrete. The man, woman, and six children living there had no running water, hardly any furniture, and were living in intense heat. But they did have a 12-inch TV and a satellite dish.

When I first arrived in Iraq, the heat was shocking. Even with no wind, it felt like you were standing next to a jet engine while someone held a hair dryer in front of your face. We drank a lot of water. July and August were treacherous, sometimes 120 degrees in the shade. The dirt and dust that covered everything was fine as talcum powder. Around November, the weather cooled down dramatically, with moderate days and cool nights. And then came the rain.

The dust here is instant chocolate pudding – just add water. Water pools in the most unlikely places and sticky mud clings to everything. From November to February, the sky is typically cloudy. Rain and thunderstorms come a few times a week. Even in March, there is often a nice breeze that belies the unforgiving summer that will soon will come. I haven’t seen a true sandstorm yet, but I think I will.

There are a few groves of palm trees on my F.O.B., and a few other trees here and there, but the base is nearly devoid of flora. There is not a single blade of grass, which is surprising because we are very close to the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

The sounds of this place took a little getting used to. Pretty much every day you hear something explode, whether it is an I.E.D. or a controlled detonation. You might hear small arms (rifles, pistols, 50-caliber machine guns, AK-47’s) in the distance, or an indirect fire attack. And of course, the sounds of tanks, H.M.M.W.V.’s, helicopters and other military vehicles become background noise that you hardly even notice.

There are no streetlights here. Walking around at night, you’ll pass darkened figures with flashlights wearing reflective vests. You’ll see H.M.M.W.V. headlights from a mile away cutting through the dust in the air. You’ll see light leaking out of someone’s open office door. There is this one palm tree that has been wrapped with multi-colored Christmas lights.

Another common sight is darkened figures hunched over burn pits like homeless people in a secluded alley. They’re burning their classified trash and any kind of correspondence they receive from home with personal information on it. We take no chances of that information getting into the wrong hands.

We communicate with you back in the States often. And even though it gets harder and harder to remember what it really feels like to be there, morale is still high in my unit. We are getting weary from working so hard and being in the same place with the same people for so long, but that’s human nature. We laugh all the time, pray often, and make the best of it. We are proud of the work we’re doing. And as far as I can tell in my little microcosm, all the negative media attention and anti-war rallies notwithstanding, we know America loves us and supports us. And we get incredible support from our families as well. So we keep slogging away, knowing that if we do our best and stay busy, we will leave this temporary home soon and return to our own. We miss you America. You’re still so beautiful when looked upon from across the Atlantic, from way over here, 9,000 miles away, or pictured in our mind’s eye as we lie in our beds under these Middle Eastern stars.

tags: ramadi  middle  east  western  iraq  ied  

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