Peace at last, drained (July 2005)

The big move is at hand; a full year spent in a god-forsaken stretch of land beside the Euphrates River is at an end. I can see every street and house, corner and shop, school and mosque in my mind from Fallluja to Ramadi. I can picture with the clarity of reality the men moving with their heads down against the rising sand and the women in groups moving down the streets in a hurried motion that in the untied states would show a purpose but here it is in subjugation. There is no life left on the streets where I have walked. Each family living day-to-day listening to the tanks and soldiers racing back and forth across their lands. Business as usual until the first roadside bomb, leaving wounded locals and hurt soldiers, followed by the main tank rounds impacting on structures to week from the wind and the sand to support themselves, collapsing on the street. Every face in the street knows what evil lies in wait at the bend of the road, every man knows where the attack will come from but they are dead. There is no life left so no will to fight, or to help. They are just existing in the loosest sense of the word. My friends and I have walked each street looking for the face of someone that still breaths the air of life. We have found such precious jewels in the beige sand blown backdrop. That is what they are jewels, precious children of war. They are the ones that you fight for everyday; they are the ones that in one smile will make you forget the bombs, RPG’s, and the assholes shooting at you. There have only been two types of dreams I have had about this place, the ones the revolve around the future of bright children who will grow up in the darkness of this world, with out education, without freedom. With only the will to live each day. This strip of land will have American boots leaving prints in the mud for years to come, but alas they will no longer be my concern, I am going back to the world of the living, where everyone is breathing deep the joys of this earth. For the United States is clearly blessed and I want to drink my fill.