I am writing this sprawled sideways in an armchair, feet and legs draped over the side, hot coffee in a potter’s mug resting on a kitchen stool beside me in the living room. The laptop is propped up on two books I’ve stacked in my lap. It’s not comfortable, but it’s not uncomfortable either. It’ll do to get me started.
I’ve been told to just start writing. Let the words out, and edit later. As an editor by profession, this feels impossible. I want to go back and correct the misspellings and odd miscapitalizations that occur with speedy fingers on a smaller keyboard, but I restrain myself. Mostly. I can edit it afterwards. I’m supposed to be writing about Iraq. More specifically, I’m supposed to be writing about my experiences in Iraq. In the Iraq War, in 2007, when I deployed as part of 1st Radio Battalion, USMC. I was a team leader for a while, until I wasn’t, for a team of cryptologic Arabic linguists. We were in Iraq from January 2007 to August 2007. Except for me, I came home on Red Cross leave when my 18 year old brother-in-law completed suicide by hanging himself in his family’s basement at the end of February. I was gone for 3 weeks, and when I returned, I felt like a different person, separate and outside my company. And perhaps I was in many ways. And perhaps I wasn’t.
But that’s not where this story starts, I think. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out where exactly to begin. If I write about joining the Marines, I need to write that I joined partly because I was fleeing a wedding that I’d called off. If I write about the wedding, I need to write about college and growing up. If I just write about climbing on the white buses (why are they always white??) to head to the air base to fly out to Iraq at the start of the deployment, I need to write about what happened in the parking lot before the buses even arrived.
It feels mixed up in my head, and I suppose all war stories are that way. Can I even call this a war story? I didn’t get shot at, I didn’t get blown up. Was I in danger? Yes. From enemies both inside and outside the wire. But that makes it sound more dramatic than I feel like I deserve to make it. I write to understand my role in a war that should never have happened. I feel both confused and complicit. Ashamed, but still somehow unwilling to say that my service meant nothing. Hopefully by writing it out, I can figure out those feelings.
As I’ve tried to make sense of my personal place in the Iraq War, I’ve also tried to make sense of the greater context. As a life-long reader, this has meant devouring history books on contemporary Iraq, the Middle East, and tracing the lines of conflict backwards in time. Back through the Gulf War, back through Saddam Hussein’s atrocities against the Kurds, back through Iran’s revolution, back through WWII, and back to WWI. It still doesn’t feel far enough, and I’ve found myself reading widely even of the Great Game, and beyond to SE Asia.
Looking for threads of connection and understanding to help tie the story together, I’ve read memoirs from my peers, of their experiences in places like Nasiriyah, Fallujah, Kirkuk, Mosul. I’ve read military strategy by Rommel and Patton. T.E. Lawrence and Gertrude Bell. Exoticizing poetry from British soldiers. Beautiful love poems by Rumi. Hummed along to Om Khalthoum. While women appear in these histories, the voices of war and conquest ring maddeningly masculine. What place does mine as a junior enlisted, a woman, have in the narrative of battle? Is there room for the likes of me? When I examined the military history section at Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon, the number of women authors was shatteringly, depressingly few. It feels like arrogance to try to fill that void. And yet I feel compelled.
So let’s begin, shall we?
pine sap & paper 