Status Updates From The Kurdish Bike

Who the heck cares what a hoplite phalanx is?

The Red Jail is like a raw artifact, with everything left exactly how it stood when Saddam's regime fell. Bullet holes still pockmark the walls. Rows of tanks rust outside in clumps of weeds. The awfulness of every square inch makes me want to gag. We don't need signs to explain how many Kurds were tortured to death here, or how many were shot in the quad. We recognize it in the marrow of our bones. It's that bad.

Dancing with Kurds — at first, I’m mortified, my jeans so unisex compared with the other women’s gaudy femininity, as I stumble to learn the intricate steps. Then the odd tempo gets into my blood and breath, and my feet start prancing of their own volition. I’m carried along on a stream of Kurdishness, two beats to the right, then one beat dipping toward the center, in an irresistible current.

The baby was born into a tight community that will help sustain her. Her country is no longer at war and her people are not being bombed, gassed, tortured or taken away in the middle of the night by the government. She will no doubt go to school. And if she is like Bezma, hopefully she will one day get to choose her own husband. Compared with the older women, Ara and Houda, her life will be heaven.

I try to leave. Sobbing, Bezma clings to me. "I love him! I love him too much. You must speak my mother. You make mother say yes."

She must be nuts; no sane person would try to reason with the glowering Ara now.

At some unknown signal, they switch.

Bezma gets mad, and Ara sobs. They're akin to two squirrels chasing around a tree.

“Amreeka! Amreeka!" Jumping up and down with excitement, the brave boy pantomimes a bomber hovering above us. Now he’s jackknifing as the bomb wobbles its way down. Somebody else mimics pulling down the great statue of Saddam in Baghdad, shaking the earth as it crumbles into pieces. I’m not entirely pleased at the associations. But at least I’m clearly a friend. One of the Great Liberators.

Later, I heard the echo of a few doors closing, but no voices — which made me even more lonesome than before. I kept remembering the time I had to put down our German Shepherd, and my son Andy slept in the dog crate all night before it lost the smell of his fur. That kind of lonesome.

Only 100 pages left, thank you lord!