I Have Iraq in My Shoe (11 page)

We had been walking for an hour, in ninety-degree heat, when we finally reached an area that looked as if it might have restaurants. It was a busy street with basic buildings that included dusty storefronts for furniture stores, a produce market, and a couple of hotels. Adam had been hoping to get us to Bakery & More, a Lebanese restaurant with a bakery on the ground floor. He thought we were headed in the right direction, but we had been walking a long time and were both losing steam, and my stomach was starting to eat itself. We stopped in front of something called the Darya Hotel and decided to see if it had a restaurant.

We entered the lobby, where there were several men sitting on leather couches, smoking shisha pipes. They all turned and stared as we approached the front desk.

With my previous traveling and experience living in a foreign country, my pantomime skills were pretty good, and Adam and I were able to mime “menus” and “eating,” so the manager led us to the restaurant area. It was empty, which usually isn’t a good sign, but then the manager motioned for Adam to go into the kitchen to take a look. For once, I welcomed the role of lowly female and collapsed into a chair, just relieved not to be walking and sweating profusely anymore.

Adam came back from the kitchen, shrugging, and said, “Yeah, looks good. Clean.” We had a delicious meal of (da-da-da-dum) chicken kebab, hummus, and fatoush. I was noticing a distinct lack of variety in the cuisine. But here, I could completely ignore variety, if the trade-off was Diet Coke.
Diet Coke!
I had been looking for it since I got here! I squealed as the waiter brought it to the table.

The waiter at the Darya Hotel was a lively young man who told us he came to Erbil to avoid the unrest in Mosul. Mosul was the notoriously dangerous city two hours west of Erbil; it was discussed in one of those Internet news stories I had carefully ignored prior to coming to Iraq.

This waiter was the first one who had asked me what I wanted before asking Adam. Over the past couple of weeks, I had been ignored in most interactions with locals (even with Man-About-Town Chalak), and I was the last to be acknowledged and served at restaurants. The waiters at Assos, in Suli, spoke to and waited on the men first. The manager at the Bayan Hotel spoke to me only after conversing with Warren and the male drivers. When we were getting settled in Erbil, the university’s drivers directed all inquiries and comments to Adam. It was no surprise that men were treated better here, but it was a little unsettling to experience it, repeatedly, firsthand.

One day, I was thinking out loud that it was annoying that they
really
didn’t respect women here. I was certain that Warren had been thoroughly brainwashed when he countered, “Gretch, they
totally
respect women here. They’re treated like gold.” Gold is a commodity. “They are like prized
flowers
.” Flowers, also a commodity, just slightly less valuable than gold. “That’s why they have to keep their heads covered, to shield their beauty…” Blah, blah, blah. I couldn’t believe he actually bought that. I later heard him say, “Yeah, they [Muslim men] basically think all women are whores. It’s why the women can’t be left alone. The men think they’ll just screw anything that walks.” I’m sorry, what?

My brain veered off on a tangent, and I considered the likelihood of Muslim women
really
wanting even to have intercourse with their husbands, much less “screw anything that walked.” Female genital mutilation was still practiced in many of the smaller towns and villages in this region (probably the ones we passed, made out of brown Play-Doh), and if I had experienced a horror like that, I would demand a chastity belt made out of granite, equipped with biometric fingerprint and retinal scan, that only my gynecologist could access, so that nothing could get close to that area. And the women who didn’t have their lady flowers brutally maimed? I had serious doubts that they even enjoyed sex. Did conservative Muslim men go down on their wives?

I had too much free time (when would classes start?!), much of which I spent scouring Google, typing in phrases like “oral sex and the Koran.” I’m sure this was sacrilege, but Islam dictates all areas of life for the Muslim, and my curiosity was killing me.

The first link I clicked on said that oral sex is permitted, according to the Koran. But then it had this paragraph about women and “their courses,” with an opening quote from the Koran.

This was fascinating, not to mention valuable information. I didn’t need a handgun, or mace, or pepper spray, or even that fancy granite chastity belt to protect myself here. All I had to do was tell any potential attacker that I was experiencing the diabolic menses and they’d go screaming into the woods, a la Scooby Doo when faced with an evil, wax-faced villain. I would be smug in the knowledge that the diabolic menses was just my highly efficient self-cleaning uterus, and that the wax-faced villain was really just Old Man Murphy trying to protect his property from those meddlesome kids.

*
 Adam was not to become the Love of my Life—in case you were thinking about that Tish Durkin article. He was engaged to a really adorable girl back in Canada, and I just wouldn’t want you reading too much into our interactions. Adam was absolutely hilarious and fun to be around, though. Warren was the brother I never wanted, and Adam was the awesome brother I never had.

Two weeks had passed. I was working on my assimilation, but it was still a very strange, unfamiliar place. When one finds oneself in a very strange, unfamiliar place, and one is female, in a female-unfriendly region, one is not terribly inclined to open one’s door should one’s doorbell ring at 10:30 p.m.

My doorbell rang at 10:30 p.m., and it stopped me in my tracks. Suddenly, I was Scarlett again, sitting alone in the living room knitting (watching TV) while menacing Union soldiers pounded on the door. The doorbell startled me into a state of wide-eyed paralysis. I mentally ran through my new, standard defensive opener, “I am totally having my period right now!” The doorbell rang again, and I was finally able to mobilize myself, and crept to the stairwell and yelled, “ADAM?” A muffled voice from behind the door answered, “No, it’s Tom Pappas from the university.”

Who?

I opened the door to find one middle-aged, bespectacled American man, one short Kurdish man smoking a cigarette, and one short Kurdish Buddy Hackett bodyguard (who had escorted me to immigration and now stood outside my front door with a rolling suitcase). I was one startled, bespectacled girl, and I was in my pajamas.

Bespectacled American Man held out his hand and said, “Hi, I’m Tom Pappas, you must be Gretchen.” I had no idea who Tom Pappas was, why he knew who I was, or, most importantly, why he had brought his suitcase to my house. In situations where I’m bewildered, my reaction times are a bit slower than usual, but I did manage to extend my hand for a greeting, all the while looking from Tom Pappas, to Buddy Hackett, to the cigarette, to the suitcase, then back to Tom Pappas.

Tom Pappas said he was the chancellor of the university. He then asked if anyone had told me he would be coming, and I slowly responded, “Noooooo…” while wondering if I was supposed to invite him in for a slumber party.
I’m sorry, but we can’t have a slumber party, because I’M TOTALLY HAVING MY PERIOD RIGHT NOW!
Although, I wondered if that diversionary tactic might not work on American men the same way.

I had not been briefed on this type of situation. What was the protocol when the chancellor of the university showed up on your doorstep at 10:30 at night, while you were wearing your jammies and he was toting a rolly suitcase and an entourage? After an uncomfortable silence, he finally asked, “Is this the girls’ villa?” and with relief I answered, “Yes, Adam is next door.” I was still in slow-motion bewilderment as the trio turned to walk to the next villa and I closed the door.

Then it sunk in: Tom Pappas was the chancellor of the university, and I had just had my first meeting with him in my pajamas, and it had been extremely awkward. And once they had gotten the chancellor situated in Adam’s villa, the two short entourage members would be returning to spend the night in my villa.

Adam came over ten minutes later, looking for an extra towel for his slumber party guest. My language gets really bad when I’m angry, and I blurted out, “WHAT THE FUCK?” to which Adam just shrugged. “Did you know they were coming up here?” I asked it as an outraged rhetorical question, in a conspiratorial manner, as I was sure no one thought to let either one of us know what was happening.

Adam said, “Oh. Yeah. Warren sent me an email a few hours ago.”

My eyebrows were scraping the ceiling at this point. “And you didn’t tell me because…”

Adam just shrugged again and said, “I didn’t think they’d come to your villa.” I thought Adam could probably skip the next few gym workouts with all the shrugging he was doing.

An exasperated “Pffft!” came out of my mouth. Our villas were on a dead-end street. There was one villa at the very end (that belonged to some oil company), then Adam’s villa, then mine. If you were driving to the villas, mine came first. Of course they would go to my villa first. I had to explain to Adam that he needed to tell me things like this, so I would be
prepared
for them and would not be wearing
jammies
the next time someone came up from the university. If Adam were actually my brother, I would have demanded our parents ground him for a week. Honestly. It was times like those when I really could have used a drink.

Adam did not agree with my shrugging-as-workout idea and went to the gym every day at 10:00 a.m. The next morning I decided to hitch a ride with him and Chalak, and then have Chalak help me track down some wine and hopefully Diet Coke. I was given reason to hope during our adventuresome lunch at the Darya Hotel.

Adam had thus far been the one doing all the communicating with Chalak. If Chalak had questions about anything, including my villa, he would ask Adam. It was like I was invisible. I was convinced it was the Middle Eastern man/female-aversion thing, and Chalak didn’t want to deal with me directly. So I thought this excursion would be interesting. We dropped Adam off at the gym, and as I climbed into the front passenger seat, I said, “Okay, so the liquor store?” Chalak looked confused and I had to run through other ways to say “liquor.” “Wine? Wine and beer? Alcohol?”

“Alcohol” was the magic word, and Chalak’s eyes registered recognition. He drove me to a small, shabby-looking shop that was markedly different from the nice little liquor store Warren had shown us in Suli. The Suli shop had a really nice Chilean Sauvignon Blanc; this shop had only Chateau Kefraya. I guess we would be indulging in some Lebanese wine. It was worth a try. They did have a lot of “spirits” at the shop, but I really wanted wine. “Spirits” seems like a misnomer for hard liquor. “Spirits” seems light and sparkly and fruity, much like wine. I never describe Jim Beam or Captain Morgan as “light,” “sparkly,” or “fruity.”

Chalak could sense my disappointment at the shabby shop and said, “Okay, I take you better place. Ainkawa.” I thought Ainkawa must be the name of another liquor store, but apparently Ainkawa was a neighboring town. Exciting! New Iraqi town! My mom would be wringing her hands at the idea of a new Iraqi town. She had seen one of my photos of the road signs that said “to Baghdad—to Mosul” and had declared, “No exploring, Gretchen!”

Chalak explained, “Here? Liquor store? Only two. Ainkawa? Two hundred!” Ainkawa sounded like my kind of town. It was a short five-minute drive from English Village. It took less time to drive to Ainkawa than it did to drive to the Erbil grocery stores. Ainkawa was predominantly Christian, and as we turned off the vast, wide roads of Erbil onto Ainkawa’s narrow residential streets, we passed at least one church and many beloved liquor stores. God bless and praise Jesus. I bought Jacob’s Creek Chardonnay, and Chalak bought cigarettes. All the men here smoke like their mustaches depend on it for growth, and he was no exception.

Back in the car I asked, “Can we find Diet Coke? Or Diet Pepsi?” Chalak looked confident and said, “Yes!” We were having such a fun errand day! And I had been worried about communicating with him. We stopped at five different stores with no luck though. The last place we tried, Chalak spoke to the store manager, who said, “Don’t even bother looking.” He meant anywhere in Ainkawa. I thought I might have to drown my sorrows in Jacob’s Creek.