I Have Iraq in My Shoe (17 page)

Daroon called me “Flower,” which was a much better nickname than “Gerts.” Dara, one of the other teachers, had a six-year-old daughter whom Daroon called “Baby Flower,” so Dara was subsequently “Mother Baby Flower.” I later discovered that he called most of the female teachers “Flower,” but that didn’t make the nickname any less appealing. I would take compliments where I could get them. Whenever I was sitting in the teachers’ room, Daroon would come in, look surprised to see me, and say, “Oh! Flower! Welcome, Flower.”

Daroon, in addition to being a charming presence, made fantastic Turkish coffee. I tried to resist it at first, when Warren attempted to talk me into having a cup. I was finally learning to ignore Warren’s suggestions. Baby steps. I explained to him that I hated coffee, and it didn’t matter which country it came from. Warren refused my refusal. He had Daroon bring two Turkish coffees up to the office, in cute little china cups with saucers, which I eyed suspiciously after thanking Daroon for welcoming me. I squinted into the little cup, sniffed at it, and whined that I didn’t want to drink it. Yes,
whined
. I really didn’t want to drink it. Coffee was nasty. Warren rolled his eyes and said, “Just try it. You might like it, you might not. Just try it.”

This was the Warren I liked. He wasn’t calling anyone a skank; he wasn’t wearing his Terminator sunglasses, gesturing wildly with a cigarette while making fart jokes; and he wasn’t giving me the used-car-salesman hard sell about something I might not like. Of course, he also wasn’t listening to me when I said I hated coffee.

I took a few sips. It wasn’t bitter like normal coffee. It was strong but had a slight sweetness to it and was delicious. I loved it. I loved coffee! I was assimilating
and
being grown-up. I associated coffee drinking with grown-ups, and I never quite fit into that ideal. I was jealous of the grown-up coffee drinkers, always running around waving their Starbucks cups. When I found that I could get a chai latte in one of those cups I was thrilled. I could just fake being a grown-up.

Warren was pleased that I liked the Turkish coffee and patted himself on the back for suggesting it. It was such a welcome change to have him back like this. We just hung out in his office for an hour or so, talking, joking around, and drinking our Turkish coffee. I missed this Warren.

The Turkish coffees became a habit, and I drank them every time I went to Suli. I was a grown-up, Turkish-coffee-drinking flower who was
assimilating
. Warren should also be given credit for introducing me to za’atar, which, while not specific to Iraq, was very Middle Eastern and very awesome. It was kind of like a flat-bread pizza with green herbs and sesame seeds and other spices, and we could get it at Bakery & More. Sometimes I would get crazy and eat za’atar and drink Turkish coffee at the same time.

Assimilating meant more than just consuming what the locals did. It also included dressing as the locals dressed. Contrary to my prior beliefs, burkas were not commonly worn in Kurdistan. I had yet to see one. I did see some hijabs/niqabs, which were the headscarves, and abayas, which were basically burkas minus the face-covering. The abaya looked similar to a nun’s habit.

YOOX didn’t sell nuns’ habits, so I sometimes struggled with what to wear in Iraq. I wanted to be careful not to offend anyone, and remembered the Cultural Awareness pamphlet’s “dress code” section. I had been trying to pay attention to what the local women were wearing.

After several months of close observation, I had reaffirmed my original conclusion: showing skin was bad, but covering your entire body with skintight clothing was perfectly fine. I was really surprised to see that so many women wore colorful tops with skinny jeans and high heels. Now, they may have been wearing those skinny jeans and heels with a hijab, but still. Also confusing to me was the seeming disparity between what was deemed sartorially acceptable and what was being sold in the clothing stores.

On another shopping excursion with Jen (we had to use my Maximall dollars), I was sitting in one of the comfy, loungy chairs set in the middle of the store, waiting for Jen to come out of the dressing room, and watching one of the friendly salesgirls arrange a rack of clothing. She looked at me, smiled, then selected a pair of Barbie-size denim hot pants from the rack. She hugged them to her chest, with the same dreamy, faraway look in her eyes that I get when talking about my love of cheese. I said, “Ahhh,” aloud and laughed with her, but then found myself thinking “Can she even wear those? Where can she wear those?” Even with tights or leggings underneath, hot pants would still be pretty racy.

The only racy part of my Iraq ensembles these days were my shoes. Since my “commute” simply involved my walking down the stairs and into the classroom, there was no danger of my shoes being defiled by any of the dust, dirt, mud, or trash of the Kurdistan streets. There was an episode of
Sex and the City
where Carrie went to Paris and accidentally stepped in dog poop in her Christian Louboutin pumps, and it made me cry a little.

My solution to the requirement of dressing nonoffensively was wearing Capri pants under just about everything. On one particular occasion I was wearing a loose safari/khaki sort of short-sleeved shirtdress with black Capri pants underneath (and Jean Paul Gaultier gladiators).

Dalzar had spent several minutes of class ranting about the fact that women in his office dressed like they were going to a nightclub. I was distractedly excited at the prospect of there being a nightclub in Erbil. I hadn’t been dancing in ages. I gasped, “There are nightclubs in Erbil?!” to which he looked at me blankly and said, “No.”

Deflated, I asked, “Then how do you know how women in nightclubs dress?” He simply answered, “TV.” Dalzar then looked me up and down and declared, “Okay, you give Kurdish woman, uhhhhh, one million dinar? She not wear what you wear.”

Renas stared at Dalzar, mouth slightly agape.

One million dinar is around $100,000. It’s a sizable sum to turn down.

Cue uncontrollable laughter. It was the kind of doubled-over laughing where you can’t really catch your breath, and there is wheezing and eye-watering, and you’re seriously hoping you don’t fart. This continued for about a minute, with me sobbing and laughing, while Dalzar and Renas just stared at me, perplexed. It was honestly one of the funniest things Dalzar had said in class, and he said a lot of funny stuff. I had to wave my hand back and forth, shaking my head, indicating I really couldn’t explain my reaction to them.

I mentally filed the khaki shirtdress/black Capri pants ensemble into my “totally acceptable” outfit list. This assimilating thing was easy.

Renas and Dalzar were keeping me entertained, and I was trying to keep them engaged in the learning process. It was still making me crazy that Renas constantly spelled people “peaple.” And Dalzar spelled “their” like “thier,” although I had friends on Facebook who did this. There are a lot of Americans who can’t spell.

Dalzar continued to bulldoze through conversations but was getting much better about listening, as I practically barked, “DALZAR! LISTEN!” at him frequently. He responded by pausing, nodding his head, smiling, and saying, “Yes!” with a flourish. Every time.

I instructed Dalzar do a couple of things that may have seemed unconventional in the teaching realm: quit smoking and watch
Oprah
.

Smoking was just a nasty habit. Watching
Oprah
was just good common sense (and would help Dalzar with his listening comprehension). After watching several episodes, Dalzar came to class one day and said, “I think…uhhhh…people like her very much—the black woman.”

He had no idea. That was something else that perpetually astonished me: how little the Kurds knew of the outside world. I had to keep reminding myself that they had been completely cut off from anything beyond the Iraqi borders throughout most of the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s. I’m not sure when international television station broadcasts were permitted in Kurdistan, and that undoubtedly helped inform people about the outside world. But even in 2009 there were restrictions on which Kurds could even apply for passports. The students had never even heard of The Beatles.

Dalzar had a loud, sharp cough that often distracted from the lessons, so one day after a sharp-cough interruption, I just said, “Dalzar, when are you going to quit smoking?”

We discussed a reasonable plan for cutting down the number of cigarettes each day. I wanted him to cut down to ten the next day, then five, then two, then zero. But he actually looked very thoughtful and said, “Today? April 7? Twenty. April 24? Zero,” with the flourishy head nod.

The next few times I saw him, I asked, “How many cigarettes did you smoke today?” Each time the answer was “twelve,” and I hadn’t seen him smoking at all. During their break one night, Dalzar and Renas sat out on the deck, eating crunchy snacks, and Dalzar, looking very proud said, “Not cigarettes! THIS!” and shook the bag of crunchy snacks at me. So, if not English, they were at least learning healthy living habits.

After the crunchy-snack break, I was attempting to explain the concept of indirect speech, which involved detailed punctuation.

My dad had sent several disgruntled emails in response to the number of UPS deliveries he had been receiving of late (period). A pair of Dolce & Gabbana gladiator sandals may or may not have been the most recent catalyst (period). But I was still managing to pay down my debt (exclamation point)! And was making monthly donations to the ASPCA (exclamation point)! No judging (exclamation point)!

Many of the students here seemed to struggle with punctuation, as I had heard from other instructors and experienced with my own kids. (All the instructors called their students their “kids,” regardless of their age. We adored them and felt responsible for them.) Dalzar was one of the worst punctuation offenders. There were run-on sentences, and then there were Dalzar’s run-away sentences. There was almost no punctuation at all, and the thoughts just kept going and going. This was not surprising, since it was also how he spoke.

I took the indirect/direct speech lesson as an opportunity to stress the importance of punctuation, which required a virtual visit from Victor Borge, one of my dad’s all-time favorites. (Dad, I’m not mingling with the locals, but I’m incorporating Victor Borge into my lessons!) I found a clip on YouTube, where Borge singsonged through a monologue, creating sounds to replace the punctuation marks. Like “Pfft” for a period, “Zzzwuit” for a question mark, etc. Renas and Dalzar loved it and would use some of the sounds in classroom conversation.

I would always end the last class of the week by saying, “See you Sunday,” to which Dalzar, or Renas, or both would answer, “Inshallah.” Just like the Muslim airline pilots. “If God wills it.”

My problem with inshallah was that everyone here would say it, as if they truly would have no control over any of the events themselves. “Hopefully you will do well on your exams!” “Yes, inshallah.” “Well, inshallah, yes, but you are going to at least study, aren’t you?”