I Have Iraq in My Shoe (28 page)

She took the recent trend of layering to a new level and was always covered, neck to toe, with sweaters and multiple scarves. There may have even been some opera gloves as well. She did not mess around with the dress code. Jen and Ellen said that during the meeting, while she was supposed to be addressing the general security questions from the new faculty and staff, she went from tense to psychotically shaking, and finally began shrieking a tirade about how the Western female staff was currently dressing. The town hall meeting devolved into a disastrous verbal kerfuffle.

Nina’s attack had unintentionally thrust us into a new war zone, and the enemy was tank tops. The administration was more concerned with discussing how the female staff members were dressing at the villas than addressing legitimate safety concerns.

We were told from Day One that we could dress however we wanted at the villas, as they were completely blocked off from the city, and we could feel like we were at home there. The Cultural Awareness pamphlet specifically noted “Dress Code—University building, local markets, and shopping malls.” It did not include the villas. We dressed as we would have at home: shorts and tank tops in hundred-plus-degree heat. The overdressed dean of students was threatening everyone’s right to comfort by suggesting that, even when inside the villas, we should cover up.

Upon hearing about the tank-top tirade, I wanted to stand up and yell, “Hey, LADY, this is UNACCEPTABLE! UNACCEPTABLE!
^*
You can’t cover up this sexy! The sexy is on the inside!” You also can’t just come in here and start swinging your judgmental accusation lariat around. I heard Mammy’s disapproving voice inside my head:
“You can’t show your bosom ’fore 3 o’clock, Miss Scarlett!”

The oppression is now coming from inside the building.

Strife seemed to be swirling around the university, and another jarring event occurred not long after “the incident.” Someone scrawled an anonymous, threatening note and taped it to the overdressed dean of students’ office door one afternoon. The resulting murmured gossip that spread like a water-main break throughout the school was that it was a death threat from a disgruntled student. Chancellor Tom exploded. In an email-read-round-the-world he managed, in one fell swoop of the “Send” button, to offend every instructor at the university by suggesting we were indirectly responsible for the death threat. We weren’t effectively “controlling” our students, or teaching them proper respect or some crap. Then he venomously spat out an order that we were no longer to refer to our students as “our kids,” as if that somehow encouraged violent, anarchic behavior. I wasn’t the only one who did this, we all thought of them as such, and it was more a term of endearment than anything else, but Chancellor Tom was not having it: “This is not a family.” (Well, if it was a family, we know who would play the rageaholic stepfather.) Rather than assuaging the university’s potential collective worry and anxiety with calm, rational guidance, his rant just drove a sharper wedge between the administration and the instructors. The Tom Pappas email was an awesome spectacle of written temper tantrum. He may as well have ended it with, “You threaten my girlfriend, you meet me at the bike racks at 3:00 p.m.!” The irony of all this was that his, again alleged, girlfriend, the one who had shrieked the loudest protests at the town hall meeting, was married. My guess was that the judgmental lariat swinging was designed to deflect any judgment that may have been heading her way.

The proverbial fan had been hit twice at the university, the drama had escalated to outrageous soap opera levels, and I was relieved to get back to the relative calm of Erbil.

*
 When faced with adversity, or perhaps an obstinate authority figure, or simply someone who is not helping you achieve your objectives, my friend Card’s dad says, “You need to say to her, ‘Hey, LADY, this is UNACCEPTABLE!’” Card’s dad is of the generation where all women worked in the steno pool, and men in management positions said, “Have your girl call my girl,” and things of that nature. On many occasions, I now find myself saying “Hey, LADY,” but just inside my head.

    
ASTOUNDING
    
ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF PART 4

Running total spent on overweight luggage: $3,720. It is astounding that in spite of my careful planning and dedicated use of the Balanzza, this number continues to increase.

Debt eliminated: $33,453—shazam! I’m feeling terribly impressed with myself at this point.

Countries traveled: 5—Austria, France, Croatia, Greece, and England.

Pairs of shoes purchased: 10. I would like to remind everyone that this is a running total. I would also like to point out that two of these were gifts for my sisters. Never mind that Ellie decided to sell hers on eBay for a horrifyingly low amount. It’s the thought that counts. But really, Ellie, Stella McCartney slingbacks for $27? Someone was a happy bidder that day. No, no, it’s the thought that counts.

Soul mates met: 1—I think.

Cultural tolerance level: 7. I am not a fan of fasting, whether for religious reasons (Ramadan) or otherwise, and a brutal attack by locals on a Western female did not help this rating; however, learning more about the culture via my fantastic students pushed the needle on this one higher than it would have been. In contrast to my above-average cultural tolerance level, my university administration tolerance level was at an all-time low.

I was triumphantly returning to Erbil, where no one would tell me I couldn’t wear a tank top in my kitchen. For this semester Steve would be joining me as my coworker/villa neighbor instead of Adam. (Adam’s fiancée had secured a job with the university and joined him in Suli, so he was happy and I was happy for him.) Steve was the one-who-was-not-Brandon, from the Royal Jordanian flight, Joe’s brother Same-Same. He was a little needier than Adam, and a little aimless at times, but for my first weekend back, he was still down in Suli, so I had Erbil all to myself.

Adam was being replaced by Steve, and Chalak (our Man-About-Town) was also being replaced. He had been fired, basically for excessive sitting-on-the-porch-swing-and-smoking, rather than working, and also for talking about Warren behind his back.

Chalak’s replacement was a cousin of Rana, the HR director. I desperately wanted to know how to say “nepotism” in Kurdish. Apparently he needed a job, and even though he didn’t speak English, they hired him to be our driver. All I knew about him was that his name was Dadyar and he was married with five children.

On Dadyar’s first day he brought our new Ethiopian cleaning woman, Vana, to the villas around 10:30 a.m. I was rejoining the Progressive Dinners and had volunteered to be “appetizers” on the circuit that night, so I needed Vana to clean the deck and the downstairs area of my villa. No one had been in Villa #69, the boy villa, for a couple of months, so it didn’t need to be cleaned. Nevertheless, Dadyar took Vana over to Villa #69. I was in Villa #70, enjoying my lunch and getting a bit of sun in my makeshift solarium on the balcony.

At 2:00 p.m., I looked down at the deck area and saw that it still hadn’t been cleaned. That was strange. I went downstairs, walked over to Villa #69, and tried to open the front door. It was locked. I rang the doorbell. There was no answer. I called Dadyar’s cell phone.

I was curious to see where Dadyar would be coming from, as I didn’t really believe that he had gone home, so I peered out the window like Gladys Kravitz and watched. Less than a minute later I saw both Dadyar and Vana emerging from Villa #69. They had been inside the villa for over three hours.

What the hell was that? It was Dadyar’s first day of work. What was going on? I marched down to the deck, all sassy boss-lady with hands on hips, and demanded, “Where were you? Were you in that villa this whole time? Why was that door locked?”

Dadyar was either not terribly bright or an excellent actor, as he looked genuinely perplexed. This could have been because he didn’t understand what I was saying. I usually spoke more clearly and slowly with the Kurds, but I was irritated and the sentences were rattling out of my mouth like machine-gun fire. Vana, on the other hand, spoke a little more English than Dadyar and looked like she knew exactly what I was saying and what I meant. Her face said, “Uh-oh, busted.”

I really didn’t have time to serve Moral Judge & Jury Judy Duty, and I still needed the deck and downstairs cleaned. I turned to Vana and calmly said, “I need you to clean the deck, and the downstairs in this villa,” and pointed to my villa. Vana asked, “Now?” and I said, “Yes please, now.” She replied, “Okay, I go finish five minute other villa,” so I said, “Fine.” Dadyar and Vana both walked back to Villa #69, and I turned to go back inside Villa #70 to call Warren.

It was the weekend, and it was hot outside, so the CED staff in Suli was partying on Ellen’s villa roof. Warren was drunk when I called him, and therefore did not sympathize with my ranting. He saw that it was me calling, on his cell, and answered the phone “GERTS! YOU BIG WHORE!” If I hadn’t been so frustrated, and looking for resolution to the current problem, I would have hung up on him. As it was, I just ignored the slight (or what he probably considered a hilarious greeting) and told him what had happened so far.

Still holding the phone, I went to the front door of Villa #69 and tried to open it. They had locked it again.

I rang the doorbell, and this time Dadyar answered. I yelled, “WHY IS THIS DOOR LOCKED? THIS DOOR SHOULD NOT BE LOCKED!” He gave me the same dopey, perplexed look as I walked in the villa, still holding the phone up to my ear.

Upon seeing me, Vana had quickly grabbed her mop and was dragging it dramatically back and forth in the upstairs hallway. I marched up the stairs and asked, “What have you cleaned today?”

Vana directed me to the upstairs bathroom and said, “I clean here,” and then led me down the hall to the living room and said, “I clean here.”