I Have Iraq in My Shoe (14 page)

I truly did appreciate the struggles that my students went through. Learning a language is hard. In addition to my multilingual capacity for “thank you,” I spoke Vacation Spanish and Menu French, and even still struggled with those on occasion.

Lazy loves convenience. I would wake up every day around 10:30 a.m., watch a little TV, occasionally run out to the produce truck, eat lunch, and spend some time on the Internet until I had to prepare for the three hours of evening class. That was my extremely demanding schedule. When I told my family and friends at home about it, they would gasp indignantly, then cry, “That is not fair!” before remembering where I was, and then say, “Oh, yeah.”

Being able to communicate with people at home was such a luxury. Facebook and Skype were making up for that horribly lonely year in South Korea, where I was in a state of perpetual desperation for any phone calls or letters from home. Having access to the Internet was excellent, and at the same time, kind of scary. I discovered that, even all the way in The Iraq, I could shop online. I had unfettered access to Barneys, Bergdorf Goodman, Net-a-Porter and the Outnet, and my favorite Italian high-end discount site, YOOX (which my mom consistently, and incorrectly, pronounced “Yocks”).

After successfully transferring two monthly paychecks into my bank account, back in the United States, I was ready to reward myself with a new pair of shoes. I mean, another new pair of shoes, in addition to the shoes I had purchased in Paris. Those were specific vacation shoes and didn’t really count. I was on the slow climb out of my personal recession, and it was shoe time. Over the past couple of years I had begun to turn up my nose at affordable shoes in my tax bracket in favor of any ridiculously overpriced, high-end brand I could find: Gucci, Burberry, Ferragamo, Prada (but only if I could find them on the clearance rack—I did have some boundaries). I would still blame my mom and the fashion magazines for this.

When I discovered that I could shop online in The Iraq, I was both “Wheeee!” and “Oh.” I had to resign myself to the reality that I would have to have the shoes delivered to my parents’ house in Oregon. The mail system in Iraq was far too sketchy to expect anything, especially anything of value, to show up as requested. “Isn’t that kind of anticlimactic?” my friend Sally asked, “I mean, you will buy something, and then you won’t get to wear it right away.” I thought about this, and yes, she did have a point. However, I planned to fly home for summer vacation in July, and would then get to open any and all boxes that had been delivered. So it would really be like a second Christmas.

The aforementioned YOOX, my favorite site, was an Italian company that sold overstock and past-season pieces from the widest variety of designers. Everything in the company’s standard inventory was marked down 50%, and the site would increase the fun periodically by reducing the prices even more—all the way down to 90% off. I loved % off, especially with “90” in front of it. My shoe-addict friends back home would email me photos of their latest shoe coups, and I would try not to cry about having missed out on the massive clearance sale at The Nordstrom Rack.

I had introduced Sally to YOOX, as she was a high-end label whore herself, but she said YOOX gave her a headache. “There’s just too
much
.” She was right. In the designer index there were approximately two hundred labels, for each letter of the alphabet. But I loved a challenge, and YOOX made the whole experience fantasylike by offering a Dream Box, where you could put up to fifty items over which you were drooling, but you wouldn’t actually have to buy them. I liked to think of it as my virtual closet. I could wear the things in my virtual closet to imaginary events held in my head, and being isolated in a gated community in Northern Iraq meant there were many, many imaginary events. But the online shopping was mostly like therapy for me. It really just relaxed me to log on, forget the world outside, and click through the pages and pages of beautiful things.

One pair of beautiful things made its way from my Dream Box into my shopping cart, and I am now the proud owner of handmade, gray leather Golden Goose riding boots. I could see someone snarkily asking, “Oh, riding boots? So you
ride
?” Yes, I ride. I ride bikes, and I ride in cars, and I ride on subways and trains, and those boots normally retailed for around $1,000, and YOOX let me have them for $390. Ride that.

Oh my God, I finally had money! I could actually buy things! Granted, $390 was not parking-meter change and was the second-highest amount I had ever paid for a pair of footwear (see: Paris trip and Louboutin purchase). But they were handmade. And so, so, SO pretty. And I didn’t have to justify my shopping to anyone. I was the boss of me! As I pointed out to my reproachful mother, in addition to a large salary increase, I was no longer paying $1,000 each month for rent. My rationalization was, I should at least have been allowed to spend that amount on shopping. Suze Orman may have disagreed with this logic.

After our initial restaurant excursion, Adam and I rarely left the gated compound, what with our newfound über convenience and all. We did still have the need for weekly Chalak-escorted trips to the grocery store for nonconvenient-store fare or to pick up other necessities (wine and beer), but otherwise we kept to ourselves in the compound. This was disappointing to my dad, who really wanted me to “get out and mingle with the locals.”

On the few occasions that I had been in a car at night, I noticed that the streets were lit up and lively, with people sitting out at sidewalk tables and walking around. It looked fun and social! Upon closer inspection I realized these people were all men, and it was no longer fun and social. It was eerie and creepy. It was post-pubescent
Lord of the Flies
, you know, before they all lost their minds and started eating one another.

Apparently, if women here were out and about at night, unaccompanied by a man, they were assumed to be, to quote Dalzar and Renas, “bad women.” Of course they were. Women were all whores and would, I think I’m remembering Warren’s words correctly, “screw anything that walked.” I explained to my dad that I was perfectly happy just mingling with my students. They were local enough.

I had wondered about actual prostitutes and whether they had them in Northern Iraq. I was sure they did; it was the oldest profession in the world, and we were in one of the oldest cities in the world.
^*

I had seen groups of Ethiopian women walking around English Village and had learned they were employed as villa cleaners by many of the businesses and families there. It was rumored that a few of them also moonlighted as prostitutes.

I found myself wondering, again, “Are things in Ethiopia worse than here? Really?” I tried to predict where my friends would go if the only options I gave them were 1) Bangladesh, 2) Ethiopia, or 3) Iraq. I am confident that Iraq would come in last. I’m also confident my friends would be pissed that those were the only options I was giving them.

There was a handful of expats who lived and worked in English Village. A British attorney named Joanna told me about the time she went to Ainkawa for Chinese food. Joanna had been excited about the prospect of eating something other than hummus and chicken kebabs and had passed a Chinese restaurant one day while driving in Ainkawa, so she and a male coworker decided to try it for lunch. When they walked through the doorway of the restaurant, Joanna saw that there were several Chinese women standing around and every one of them just stared at her, wide-eyed. Joanna and her coworker were then seated and given menus, but the entire time the women stared at her strangely. They ordered, then ate their meals, paid, and left. She said the food was just okay, but the atmosphere was uneasy, and the Chinese women just stood off to the side, watching her.

Joanna was later talking about the experience to an American Army guy she knew, and he started laughing and then explained to her that the Chinese “restaurant” was actually a brothel.

I did not need a Chinese restaurant. Not only did I not like Chinese food, but I knew, coming here, that I would be doing without many things: Starbucks, wine bars, sushi restaurants, the Nordstrom half-yearly sale, a washing machine. Wait. I did not think a washing machine would be one of those things. But our Erbil villas did not come equipped with a washer or dryer. The teachers at the main university in Suli all had washing machines in their villas, but for some reason, no one thought we, up here in Erbil, might want to have clean clothing. Warren’s solution was “Take everything to the dry cleaner!” His blatant disregard for my finances was irksome. First the hockey bags, now the dry cleaners.

I had obviously not learned my lesson with his advice for the hockey bags, when I decided to have my clothes dry-cleaned. Everything but the dainties. I would hand wash my bras and underwear the same way everyone else living in developing nations did it: in the bathtub with Woolite. I could only imagine the potential confusion that would ensue if I sent twenty pairs of thong underwear to the Kurdish cleaners.

After my once-color-fast clothing came back from the Erbil dry cleaner in various stages of non-color-fastness (I am now fully stocked with pale pink T-shirts and socks that used to be white), I decided I would need to be the boss of
all
of my clothes and wash everything in the bathtub with Woolite. I also finally decided to stop listening to Warren’s advice. Warren’s advice was increasingly inconvenient.

*
 Adam became an instant fan of
Sex and the City
. He would burst out laughing every time Samantha said anything. At one point he asked me if I had any friends like Samantha, and I told him, “No one does. She’s not real.” He seemed disappointed.

*
There is an ongoing debate among several Middle Eastern cities as to which one is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. Erbil is one of the contenders, as are Damascus, Syria; Varanasi, India; Byblos, Lebanon; and Jericho. Erbil residents were constantly reminding us of how it was one of the original civilizations. Okay, then, let’s show some respect for your oldest continuously inhabited city and spruce up the squalor a little.

Here I shop, there I shop, everywhere I shop, shop. The riding-boot purchase triggered my spending impulses. It made no difference that I was in a country whose name was synonymous with political turmoil and danger. No, no, I still managed to make it all about shopping, and when Adam and I took one of our monthly weekend trips down to Suli to do our bank transfers, I made certain I had time to shop.

When I traveled to Suli on those weekends, Warren arranged for me to stay in the spare room in Jen’s villa, and we had subsequently become friends. She totally wasn’t a skank. Warren should have nicknamed her Buddha: she did yoga and meditated and emanated a relaxing, Zen vibe. It was such a relief to have another female to talk to, and finally to have someone to shop with. On her way to school, Jen had seen a store with mannequins in the window, wearing Western clothing, so we had one of the drivers take us there one Friday.