Christmas with a U.S. soldier

December 25th, 2005. Christmas day in the Atlanta airport with a U.S. soldier on his way back to Iraq.

A young man in combat.
Short brown hair, blue eyes, nice new shoes, my age (28). He is dressed well in his clean crisp army attire. He sits next to me in the smoking lounge, awaiting his flight as am I. We begin speaking. I ask him "How are you getting there?" He responds "I haven't been told yet." He doesn't know how he is getting to Iraq (they don't tell the soldiers their itinerary in advance).

He is an infantry soldier based in the impoverished town of Abu Graib, just north of Baghdad. There are no journalists embedded where he is stationed because it is too dangerous. He's already spent nine months there and is on his way back. On Christmas Day.

Violence everywhere
He seems surprisingly calm. He has a gentle face, but is cleary weathered by war. He tells me he has become numb to the violence because there is so much of it. He expressed his disappointment with how much the press covers only the bad news (violence) and not the good news. The press cares about selling programming, whatever it takes.

He is on the front line, in the infantry and has been in the U.S. Army for years. He was in Bosnia in 1995 and says that the violence is much worse now in Iraq. There is a sense of confusion and helplessness amongst the Iraqi citizens. They are living in war and many of the rich Iraqis have left. Those that remain in Iraq are often paid by the "freedom fighters" (a.k.a. insurgents, resistance ... terrorists ... civilian-killers) to plant bombs. This means that many Iraqi citizens are so poor that when they are offered money, they accept, even if it goes against their morals.

This U.S. soldier sitting next to me is saddened by the situation in Iraq. He has heard atrocities from the Saddam times and wonders what alternatives there were but to take Saddam out of power by force. He hopes the situation improves and is there being as respectful as he can, given the horrible situation.

Road bombs and bombs in the markets.
"Bombs go off all the time in the open air food markets found all around town," he explains. "When a bomb explodes near civilians, my human nature is to go near to help the hurt. However, many times, another bomb explodes, hurting those that get near to help." It is disastrous.

Mercenaries
"Do you have any interaction with the mercenaries?" I ask him. He responds: "Well, I wouldn't call them mercenaries, but we don't have interaction with the security contractors, even though they are paid by the government too. I actually have no idea what they are doing there." I ask him: "I've heard that some of the worst atrocities have been committed by the security contractors and not the U.S. military." His response: "Yeah, I could believe that."

Integration?
"Do you ever eat Iraqi food?" -- "No," he replies, "although sometimes the families whose homes we enter offer us sweet and delicacies, we must decline because the sanitary conditions are much different there." He enters peoples' houses and tries to respect the people inside.

A brief encounter
We leave no contact information with each other and don't even exchange first names. We speak for around twenty minutes. He asks me if I've ever been to Iraq. "No, I haven't," I confess.

He confirms to me that other towns and villages are now being seiged and closed off much like Fallujah was in April and November of 2004. When I tell him about a recent documentary, made and released in Italy, showing how white phosphorous burns peoples' bodies but not their clothes, he responds vaguely, saying it is unfortunate that extreme measures must sometimes be taken.

A colleague of his comes into the smoking lounge and exclaims "our fleet is ready to go!" With that, the nameless U.S. soldier and I part ways -- both spending the rest of Christmas day on airplanes crossing the Atlantic Ocean.

As I walk to my gate, for my flight to Europe, I pass swarms of other army men and women on route to Iraq. On Christmas Day. Back to the war on Christmas Day.

Unclip the wings

I woke up another dimension in an unconventional time and reeked.

A young Rumanian girl with her family mingle on the metro while an elderly accordionist strolls by spouting anti-fascist anthems, without lyrics, such that unsuspecting passengers don't catch whiff of his "power to the people" chant. That gypsy family may not know it but they're getting empowered from it too -- and their stench is less offensive as they pile onto the metro. They become a majority --> the people, the workers, the foreigners, the different ones --> intermingling and intermarrying within their rung on the triangle. But the ones on top will never ride underground. And so whereas the fibers of the social fabric may shift color, smell and flavor, the shape and form remain pointy and distinguished like the Andes.

I thought life was a game and work was an occupation for caged birds. Radiant beauty not to be hidden, voracious cultural rapture, societal captivation igniting flares of conscientiousness in a sea of stale cages -- open, but filled with birds with clipped wings. UNCLIP THE WINGS.

Creel, Chihuahua, Mexico

Flashback: Creel. August 12th, 2004
We had arrived into Mexico days earlier and had been through Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua City. We had been very lucky with accommodations, staying with Holly and then at Martha's (with a quickie night in a shady hotel in the red light district of Chihuahua City, no bro!) We debated going to Creel and finally decided to check out who this Padre Pato Jesuit character was, and what the Raramuri in the Sierra Tarahumara were up to.

Enter Creel.
After making an appointment with Padre Pato for the following morning, we walked around the one main street of Creel. I was listening attentively to passers-by, hunting for voices speaking the Tarahumar language. No one. Y'all were checking out the local folks. Two young chicks from Chihuahua came up to speak with us and wanted to spend time with us exotic foreigners. They spoke some English and were very young.

We told them we were going to mass early the following morning and then meeting with Padre Pato, defender of the human rights of the Raramuri people. They were not so interested, as their main focus was finding some nightlife in the sleepy mountainous town of Creel. If they only knew how hard those church nuns rocked on guitar the following morning!

The Duck Sings
The youth hostel we stayed in was cute with a colorful mélange of people. There was a short Argentine guy who was on his fifth year bicycling around Latin America. We had dinner at the hostel -- good and cheap. Much later, as we unloaded our stuff from the car, we saw Padre Pato leaving his office. We were suspicious. The next morning, Padre Pato gave mass then confessed to us his love of trova singing.