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

particularly official or businesslike in his Members Only–ish jacket, with his hair greased up like Danny Zuko, the Fonz, or one of the kids from
Jersey Shore
.
    The greasy man spent the first five minutes chatting with Chalak in Kurdish while Adam and I just sat there shrugging at each other and trying to figure out what was happening on the Turkish soap. It looked very dramatic. All of a sudden the questions began. Greasy Man asked if Adam and I were married, what our jobs were, what our parents’ names were, what our fathers’ jobs were, the names of our siblings, the occupations of our siblings, and our previous jobs. We answered all the questions as straight-faced as was possible, and after much note taking, paper-shuffling, and another five-minute Greasy Man/Chalak conversation, we were permitted to leave.
    What was that all about? Why did Kurdistan need to know if I had siblings, or what my father did for a living? I’m thirty-eight.

    Being an official, registered immigrant in Kurdistan was one step toward assimilation, but I also wanted to assimilate on a more personal level. I wanted to feel comfortable in my new surroundings. I wanted to have a routine.
    I really wanted to work out.
    Adam had discovered a men’s gym where he could do all his heavy lifting, and there was a women’s fitness center adjacent to the men’s. I was kind of amazed that there even
was
a gym (that women could go to). I decided I could have a little look-see one day while Adam was working out.
    Chalak drove Adam and me to the gym. When Adam took his gym bag and went off to the testosterone arena, Chalak walked with me to the estrogen entrance. Men weren’t allowed past the front desk, so Chalak explained to the man behind the desk that I wanted to go to the gym for a trial day. I walked past the front desk and around the corner into what seemed like an enormous, musty garage. The floor was covered with squishy floor mats that fit together like jigsaw puzzle pieces. There were a few weak, caged light bulbs that hung from the rafters, and broken windows so the birds could fly in and out and poop on the exercise equipment as they pleased. Oh, sad place. This was where crippled exercise equipment came to die.
    There were around twenty Kurdish women, all in some form of full covering, mostly velour sweat suits. A few wore head scarves, and some were just wearing turtleneck sweaters and pants. They were all in the middle of a 1970s aerobics class, where there was a lot of arm-flapping and calisthenics-type exercises. When I walked in, all heads turned toward me and I froze. I smiled politely and carefully sidestepped over to an empty exercise bike, climbed on, and started pedaling. There was no danger of my overexerting myself—the bike wasn’t plugged in. In fact, the only machine in the entire room that was plugged in was one of those vibrating things that you stand on and it just jostles you around.
    The women continued to flap their arms and do waist bends and, every once in a while, turned to look at me, sitting quietly on my broken exercise bike. Without warning, one older headscarved woman, arms still flapping up and down, marched over to me and shouted in (unfortunately) understandable English, “You join class!”
    Me: Ohhhh, no, no, thank you.
    Headscarved lady: (yelling) WHY?
    (Panic setting in. Everyone staring.)
    Me: Oh, I just…um…need to…work up to it?
    Headscarved lady:
(inexplicably still yelling)
OH, OKAY!
    She nodded curtly and marched back to her spot, still flapping her arms. I thought that was really quite nice of her to invite me to join them. However, I was still in my state of awed observation and was not prepared to be the main feature in the Kurdish version of a Jane Fonda flashback.
    The fitness center was kind of like a combination gym/party room/day care, with colorful “Happy Birthday” banners (in English) hanging from the ceiling and sticky children running around shrieking and playing on the