July 2010
Freedom
by Marie Marchand
Marie Marchand is executive director of the Whatcom Peace & Justice Center. Her husband served in Operation Iraqi Freedom 2005-2006.
He returns to Camp Taji every Fourth of July to his 4-by-4 tower where, for the dark portion of 92 days, he was not allowed to lay down his sword and shield, or sit. It has been 36 months yet still he returns to Camp Taji every Fourth of July, his least favorite holiday, when eager men fire-up their mega gas grills and go around asking: Hotdog or hamburger? Hotdog or hamburger? When culturally-memorized songs proclaim freedom and liberty. Freedom and liberty. When fireworks deafen and stun like mortars and IEDs.
Mortars and IEDs.
The former soldier sits in a lawn chair looking leisurely in shirtsleeves, swirling the ice cubes in his lemonade. He pretends to be like them, but is dreaming of sand, armor, 110-degree days and frozen nights.
He must get up and circulate, protect. Check corners of the property, the neighbors’ roofs for snipers. But he is suddenly a still life portrait unable to move even his forefinger. His internal systems, however, are alert and ready. His eyes survey back and forth. Eyes, in combat, become vigilant sensors of defense.
He is derelict. He should be barking orders at these rowdy civilians. “Stop being loud!” “Return to your homes!” Security phrases well rehearsed in case a firefight breaks out and indiscriminate bullets go flying. The level of jubilance here is eerily identical to the wedding in Mogr el-Deeb, May 19, 2005.
“This was a wedding and the planes came and attacked the people at a house,” said witness Dahham Harraj. “Is this the democracy and freedom that Bush has brought us? There was no reason.” U.S. Brigadier General Mark Kimmit said, “There may have been some kind of celebration. Bad people have celebrations, too.”
At today’s family celebration, he will be ready at the drop of a hat, or a child’s slip and fall, to save or take lives as necessary. How could his brother host such a gathering anyway? Endangering everyone like this. The kids come out holding sparklers, snapping Black Cats. “Look Uncle John! Look!” calls his red-haired niece Caroline, four years old. He remembers four-year-old Amira whom he pulled out of char. Caroline and Amira. Beautiful girls, different worlds.
Caroline and Amira
Behind his suave demeanor, his cool attitude (he is, after all, only 23 and handsome), eyes of fire dart in a continuous circuit assessing these people’s level of vulnerability and risk. The men congregated at the grill talking softly with their heads down, and Mike and Samantha on their cell phones will make this situation appear suspicious from the air.
He is screaming inside but no one sees him, no one says a word. They are wary, ignorant of war. Last week, an old high school buddy shook his hand and said “Thank you for your service. Can I buy you a latte?” A double-tall extra foam latte when all this former soldier wants is to forget, to meld into these people’s ordinary lives, to have their struggles, not to have seen what he has seen. To be erased, absorbed into their black noise, to blend into the veneer of doldrums where concerns revolve around boring, manageable things such as work, school, laundry, grocery shopping, picking weeds. Hotdog or hamburger?
His tongue presses rogue grains of sand against the roof of his mouth—a desert habit he acquired to count down the hours to his freedom. That and tapping his forefinger against his cold magazine for hours. These tactile routines comforted him. He would imagine barbecues, sunshine, his lovely long-haired wife winking at him from the patio on the Fourth of July, his favorite holiday.
Will he ever be like his brother, playful and polite, innocent of horror? Will he ever return to his old self-content with flipping burgers and texting love notes to his wife? He frets over the impossibility. He is tortured by wicked memories of children in flames; of signing divorce papers, sweaty-palmed and in tears, from across the desert. They were newlyweds, for God’s sake. Newlyweds. Robert Redford and Jane Fonda. Where’s my barefoot girl? What about my walk in the park? My high school sweetheart, Julia.
Julia
His still life image cracks, there is movement in his joints. Relief. He gets up and makes his way for more potato salad; the Iraqi mud is still packed into the craters on the bottoms of his boots. Tonight he will climb his tower in the howling environs of war and sleep until the orange desert dawns. Alone and shivering he will twist and turn, toil and spin thinking of the bride and groom in Mogr el-Deeb, of their organist Basim Shehab, of Caroline, Amira, Julia—all of them drowning in his freedom and liberty.
Freedom and liberty. §
