Free I Have Iraq in My Shoe by Gretchen Berg Page A

Intelligence Service, was dubbed “Chemical Ali” by Iraqi Kurds for his use of chemical weapons against them.

Chapter Ten
    Attempted Assimilation
    Immediately after the drivers left my villa that first morning, my anxiety just evaporated. It was as if I had been holding my breath all week and was finally able to let it whoosh out. I unpacked and put everything away in proper places, and it felt like home.
    It’s amazing what a familiar down comforter and fragrant candles can do for a place.
    Adam came in to look at my room, out of the sheer curiosity of seeing where all the crap would go, took one look at my homey bed, and enviously wailed, “Aww, a comforter!” He was stuck with the shiny, garish, standard university-issue polyester top blanket. I grinned at him and shrugged.
    Every morning I would wake up, unlock my bedroom door, pad down the hallway and down the cold stone stairs to the kitchen. There was a large picture window over the sink that displayed our small front yard, immaculately manicured by the Kurdish septuagenarian gardener, who worked in his traditional costume. The traditional Kurdish costume was essentially an MC Hammer jumpsuit with embroidered cummerbund and rolled-scarf head wrap. The little old man was always crouched over the short rosebushes, picking at something while various small birds chirped and flitted from our eaves to the neighbors’. Ahh, domestic life in Iraq.
    Classes hadn’t started yet, and Warren was being vague about the start date, which just meant I was being paid to hang out and wait. I was really good at doing nothing, so it was a win-win.
    The Erbil campus came equipped with both a gardener and a driver, Chalak, to whom I referred as our Man-About-Town. Chalak didn’t really speak English, but he understood most of what Adam and I said, and would take us on errands and help us with household needs when he wasn’t busy sitting on the porch swing, smoking his cigarettes. Chalak was also really good at doing nothing. He wore jeans and plaid button-down shirts, had light-colored hair and blue eyes (unusual for a Kurd), sported the ubiquitous Kurdish-man mustache, and loved his cigarettes. He lived somewhere else in Erbil and would drive his trusty old pickup truck to English Village Sunday through Thursday to work for the university.
    One day our Man-About-Town informed us we had to go to Security. That was all Chalak could explain in his extremely limited English. “We go Security.”
    One of my biggest frustrations was the absence of maps or organizational material for the city of Erbil. I had asked Chalak for a map, and he said there was none. Warren was also unable to assist in my endeavor and said there really just weren’t any maps or many marked streets. At home I was so used to driving myself everywhere, but here I was stuck in an unfamiliar city, chauffeured from place to place, and completely dependent on Chalak and his knowledge of Erbil. I had no bearings, no sense of the city at all.
    Chalak said Security was “around corner,” so Adam and I thought it was the little booth at the entrance to English Village. Chalak, however, kept driving out of the village, onto the main road. We drove about six or seven miles before reaching our destination. Security was a small three-story building with many random employees who stopped and stared at Adam and me as we walked up to the second floor, down the hall, and into a large office. The office was furnished with several couches and armchairs upholstered in a rough, textured fabric. I imagined the catalog offering the set as their Loofah Collection. Opposite a large, clunky desk sat a large, clunky television set showing a Turkish soap opera. Perhaps the security employees didn’t know about the Asian-woman aerobics show? It was funny that I had felt slightly silly and shallow, asking Warren if I would have TV there. The Kurds clearly loved their TV as much as I did.
    The man behind the desk didn’t look