I Have Iraq in My Shoe (18 page)

I was encountering some interesting individuals in Iraq. There were expats here who had lived in other Middle Eastern countries like Syria or the United Arab Emirates, but those countries were veritable vacation destinations in comparison to Saudi Arabia. There was no Middle Eastern country I found more daunting.

The university had sent someone from the ESL testing center up to Erbil for an appointment, and Adam and I took him to lunch. He was a middle-aged British man named Nigel, who had recently arrived in Iraq from Saudi Arabia. I was engaged with him in what I thought was a casual conversation about teaching English in foreign countries, and the conversation went a little like this:

Although, this was information I had learned from Warren. The accuracy was suspect.

Like “ha ha ha.” Get it? Like they were being super naughty? Try the veal! Tip your waiters! I’m here all week!

Have you seen my “Where I’ve Been” map app on Facebook? I’ve been places! I’ve gotten out and seen more of the world! Dammit!

Adam had committed to staring intently at his lunch plate and pretending to ignore the tense exchange that had bubbled up beside him at the table. I kept silently inshallahing the conversation to end. There was a time and a place for seriousness, and it was almost never when talking to me. I was so caught off guard with the sharp swerve the conversation had taken, I didn’t know how to escape. I just sort of stopped talking and joined Adam in trying to pretend to eat my chicken kebab.

Oscar Wilde famously said, “Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.” And he was British. I considered the irony of Nigel being British and coming from the home of Monty Python, yet not having much of a sense of humor; and then there were my students who came from Iraq, home of Saddam, and were both pretty hilarious. Inshallah, everyone else I come into contact with will be a little less uptight.

    
ASTOUNDING
    
ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF PART 2

Running total spent on overweight luggage: $2,920. We’re almost at the point where we can laugh about it. Almost.

Debt eliminated: $8,882. Progress!

Countries traveled: 2—Austria and France.
Danke schoen
and
merci
.

Pairs of shoes purchased: 3

Soul mates met: 0, but I’m seriously considering calling up one of those female security officers at the Erbil airport.

Cultural tolerance level: 8—my assimilation and the friendliness of the Kurdish people bumped it up to 10, but the collective smell of the men reduced it by two.

The washer/dryer argument was the first of many between Warren and me. As the months went on, it just seemed to get worse. We had never argued before, but that was the Old Warren. Turkish-coffee episode aside, New Warren was the person I saw emerging more and more frequently. Director, Boss-Man, and Fearless Leader, and we argued.

Some of the arguments were silly. For instance, based on one or two conversations he had with him, Warren was convinced Dalzar was the more advanced of my two students and would score higher on the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) exam. After having taught both Dalzar and Renas for a couple of months, I felt justified in my assessment that Renas was actually the more fluent of the two. My disagreeing with Warren really seemed to annoy him, and the fact that he was ignoring my credibility as an instructor was annoying me.

The most taxing argument we had was regarding “my” villa, and how to deal with my alleged nonworking time. I pointed out that I shouldn’t have to answer the door or answer questions on the weekends. I deserved weekends like any of the other instructors, but because the villa and the campus were one and the same, Kurds would show up on the weekends, ringing the doorbell or knocking on the door, asking questions and wanting to enroll in the courses. It infringed on my privacy, sure, but also on
my weekend.

Sometimes they would show up when I was in my bikini, crouched out of sight on the second-floor balcony. The villa balconies had waist-high railings around them, and I would drape sheets and blankets all the way around mine to create a little private solarium for myself. It was the
weekend
; I wanted to lay
out
. Or, if not in my bikini, I might have been wearing shorts and a tank top around the villa. It was freaking hot (forty degrees Celsius!), and there was no air-conditioning in the hallways, foyer, bathrooms, or kitchen. I knew I couldn’t answer the door in shorts and a tank top, but I also didn’t think it was fair to expect me to wear long sleeves and pants all the time, you know, just in case.

During one of the villa/classroom arguments, Warren grew irritated and blurted out, “Well, Gretch, you know, if you’ve got such a problem with it, we can just bring you down to Suli to teach.”

Warren knew I didn’t like Suli, but he didn’t know the reason was
he
was there, and when he was around, it always had to be The Warren Show. Drama seemed to follow him wherever he went, and it was exhausting. And since drama always followed him, it seemed to follow our entire department. There was an unspoken divide between CED and the rest of the university, and I could feel the separation whenever I went down there.

The CED staff didn’t really mingle with the other instructors or staff, and I felt like a big part of that was because Warren considered everyone else to be outsiders.
We’re the cool kids.
It was a little junior high. I felt like being in Erbil was the easiest way to disassociate myself from the dramatics and the clique-ishness and the general gossiping that is inevitable in any workplace. I wanted to be Switzerland and remain neutral.

He knew I preferred Erbil and he was threatening me. Since we were no longer coworkers, these were not simple disagreements. He pretty much had absolute power. It was just like Tara. When Jonas Wilkerson, that ugly, ruthless Yankee overseer, suddenly became a carpetbagger and didn’t have to listen to Scarlett anymore, he threatened to buy Tara when it was auctioned off for taxes. The horror! “We’ll bring you down to Suli” was the one weapon Warren could pull out of his petty arsenal to win the argument.

I would never have come here, knowing he would be my boss. He was not Santa. New Warren was one mustache short of a dictator, wielding his power with all the subtlety of a battering ram and casting out confidants if they dared to disobey him or forgot to show their undying gratitude.

Take Johnny and Chady. They were two Canadian Lebanese cousins from Warren’s hometown whom he had hired to work at the university. After a year or so, Johnny applied for and got the position of director of general services; then, not too shortly after, Chady was made the director of procurement. The director positions were great promotions, but instead of being proud and happy for them, Warren behaved as if both had betrayed him, and before you knew it, they were among “the outsiders.”

I didn’t react to Warren’s threat to banish me to Suli. I just sat, holding the phone away from my ear, waiting for him to finish his tantrum, and silently praying he wouldn’t follow through with it.

Although it was my preference, Erbil wasn’t all sunshine and lollipops. In addition to the privacy issues, there were the bugs. Lots and lots of bugs. I hated the mosquitoes that would zip into the villa when the students left the doors open, which was all the time. Dalzar and Renas quickly learned the phrase “Were you born in a barn?” I hated the quick-slithering silverfish that wiggled across the walls and ceilings. I hated the little black something-or-others (which I just called “dirty flies”) that had made themselves at home in the upstairs bathroom.

But I loved the spiders. Spiders ate the mosquitoes and bugs, and I just always appreciated them.

I was a huge fan of
Charlotte’s Web
.

The spiders living in the villa had become my version of household pets. I’m not saying I had gone completely crazy, but I would talk to them. Mostly just friendly greetings like “Hello, there!” when one would surprise me in the hallway or “Don’t forget to eat the mosquitoes!” or “Okay, but please just don’t crawl into my bed” when I saw that one had made a little web in between the bed and the nightstand.

There were several different varieties of my villa spider pets: some were thick, and the color of the Saudi Arabian dust that blew into Iraq; some were plain brown, skinny, and spindly; and the one I almost stepped on, walking into the kitchen one day, was small, slim, and had faint stripes. I had no idea if any of these were poisonous. I jumped out of his way and then leaned down to scrutinize him. After a minute or so I whispered, “Don’t get stepped on by other people.”

I then slowly straightened up, thinking,
This must be one of those Oprah Aha! Moments. Ahaaaaaaaaaaaa. I am going to take my own advice.