living quarters

The night I first arrived onto base was surreal to say the least. I had no real grasp of our location in the greater scheme of Al Asad. i only knew that we were dumped unceremoniously next to our unit and told to given a very short briefing before receiving our sleeping assignments. I had been placed with a good friend. She was in a foul mood, and it was hard to understand why initially. Only later when I saw our can did I realize why. We had been given a container at the far back of the grid of sleeping quarters in order to be housed with our unit. In theory, this made sense. Keeping the unit near each other is usually how things are done. The problem came in the location of the sole women’s bathroom. The one bathroom for women was located at the very front of the grid. In order to reach a restroom, we would have to walk a gauntlet of sleeping containers housing several other units. Easily hundreds of men. This made us easy prey for assault or abuse, particularly in the evening hours. An absolutely unacceptable situation. The thought of having to take that walk in the middle of the night for a bathroom emergency was terrifying to say the least. Rape is not uncommon on deployment, and neither of us wanted to become a statistic. 

My friend was fiercely adamant that we be moved and refused to take no for an answer. I was surprised at how hard she actually had to work to convince our command. They just could not see the reason for our fears. After intense conversation and refusal to budge, we were finally granted a room next to the bathroom. Even then, I still felt extremely uncomfortable making use of it after dark. It felt like too much of a risk. 

Our can, like all the others, was simple in design. Upon opening the door, on the wall to the right lay one of the single beds and storage locker. Mine rack lay against the wall to the rear. On the wall to the left lay a third rack and locker, for the one other woman from our unit at Al Asad. Cheap linoleum flooring, no windows, and a single air conditioning unit were all that formed “home” for the eight months of our deployment. 

A single lock in the handle of the door held as security as we slept, initially. It wasn’t long before we started hearing the “jiggle”. Nearly every evening, we would hear footsteps on the plank walkway outside our room, and then somebody would jiggle the handle of our room…for what purpose we never figured out, and we were never able to find out who was behind it. It added another layer of tension to falling asleep each night. The woman marine who worked night shift never had the “jiggle” happen to her that I know of. My friend and I talked about it often though, and even came up with a plan for how we would react if someone ever did come through the door that didn’t belong. We slept with our rifles within easy reach, magazines at the ready. 

For being surrounded by our “fellow Marines”, it was maddening to not feel safe. I always felt on edge and watched as I came and went from our room. 

Later, when our lock actually broke and no longer was functional, it took several days for me to convince the contractor in charge of maintenance that we did indeed need a new lock with new keys. He swore up and down that I just didn’t know how to open it correctly. A door lock, with a basic key. After I made him come over to our room with me, and showed him physically how the lock just spun in its casing, neither unlocking or locking the door, only then would he do something about it. While we waited for the repairs to be done, we were especially on edge at night.