Headquarters gave us the old van some twenty miles north of the capital. It took us more than two hours to drive the mostly unpaved road that connected the two cities, and then another two hours, staying off the main roads, to find the building we now occupied.
Cooper drove the van disguised as a civilian. He knew the language and some of the culture, and we relied on him to talk us through any checkpoints. We stayed hidden in the back, ready to attack anyone who discovered us. We had been told that most people supported one clan or another because they had to, and that their only real allegiances were to themselves and their family. But the clans were brutal and well armed. We were bombing the outskirts of the city in order to scare them into surrendering the territory they controlled without a fight.
My stomach turned and I felt dizzy. I was having a hard time holding even water down.
Santiago stepped up behind me. I closed my eyes and tried to relax for a moment. I felt as if the wind was being blown into me by way of a strange kiss, as if the city was breathing directly into me. The thick stench of shit and piss, along with the slightly sweet smell of death, smothered me like a blanket. Then I heard Santiago walk away from me and I opened my eyes.
I took a small sip of tepid water and spit on the ground next to me to rid myself of the sand in my mouth. The spit was dry and thick. I looked into the darkness below and at the door of the school across the street.
We’d arrived just before dawn that morning. During the day I watched what appeared to be a school across the street. There were children going in and out, along with a few adults. What was there to teach children in a place like this? How could they learn when armed gangs patrolled the streets and people strolled about with swollen bellies? How to focus when violence pervaded every moment?
We had more than enough water. We’d each brought two half-gallon canteens, along with three or four bottles bearing Arabic writing and rainbows. None of us knew where these bottles had come from. There was something mysterious about them, a touch of the exotic that made the water inside even more delicious, as if it had been drawn from some secret oasis.
“How are you doing?” Cooper asked, crawling to the corner between his side of the building and mine. He was both the medic and my battle buddy, so his interest in my health was twofold.
I moved toward the corner to meet him. “I’m here.” Rocks scraped at my elbow and dug into my knees as I crawled over to him. Once there I brushed away the rocks that were pressed into my hands and looked at the indentions they’d left.
“Do you need another IV?” he asked.
“Not now,” I said. Then I pulled a canteen from my LBE and took a small sip of water as a sign of goodwill, and because my mouth was dry. The water tasted like rank plastic. “I need some sleep.”
“How long has it been?” he asked.
“Close to two weeks.”
It was true. I’d been too scared, too nervous, too excited to sleep. I hadn’t had a dream in the past two months and I was starting to worry that dreams had something to do with sanity and happiness. And I suspected that my sleeplessness had something to do with the way the world felt inside out, a thick, sticky mess.
“You can’t die from lack of sleep,” he said. “You just go until your body shuts down, forcing you to sleep.”
“Sounds great,” I said. I thought about it, the moment your body finally forced you to sleep, home at last.
“My stomach’s still a mess,” I said. I felt nauseous, as if I was upside down in the world and someone was trying to shake everything out of me.
“It’s the sleep,” Cooper said, “it’ll hurt your stomach.”
Soon the sun would be out, trying again to kill us. It was a hundred and twenty in the shade most days. I had shit on myself the day before and I was afraid the sickness might roll over me again without warning.
“If you fall out it’s on me,” Cooper said. “You should eat something.”
“I know,” I said.
“Even if you’re sick it’s better to try and eat,” he said.
I’d been hearing this advice my whole life.
“You’ve got to keep your strength up,” he said.
We hadn’t been prepared for the heat. We were mainly a cold weather unit, the 10th Mountain Division, Light Infantry based out of Fort Drum, New York. And yet there we were in the desert.
People in other platoons were falling out left and right. They called out strange and often beautiful things as the heat finally forced them to race, face first, to the dirt and sand. Lopez, from first platoon, called out, “Where’s the keys,” before he fell victim to the sun. But no one carried keys into combat.
When I visited Lopez at the hospital, I asked him, “What the hell was that all about?”
“Hell if I know,” he said.
But it had stuck with me nonetheless. “Where’s the keys?”
The city shook under a heavy barrage of fire. Dogs howled all around us. Dust rattled into the air. The sun had baked the scent of death into the city’s bricks, and it rose with the dust.
People gathered in distant streets, trying to see the sky over the desert. Our faces were camouflaged so they couldn’t make us out if they looked up at the top of the building.
“Do you think Santiago’s afraid?” Cooper asked.
“I think we all are,” I said.
“This is fucking spooky,” said Cooper.
“He knows what he’s doing,” I said.
Cooper looked up at the sky. “Still.”
Santiago wasn’t
