globes whose promise of fresh vegetation in just two weeks makes them a big seller to soldiers hoping for a little green in this dusty hellhole.
A fly-by-night bazaar rings the dusty concrete courtyard outside the PX, a hodgepodge flea market of folding tables, open-bed pickup trucks, and outspread blankets full of wares Local Nationals have brought to the FOB for sale, having first gone through a rigorous security scrubbing at the entry checkpoints. This, U.S. military officials believe, serves two purposes: it gives the soldiers a taste of “real life” outside the FOB wire, and pumps good old American dollars into the local economy. It is here that Fobbits can buy the false souvenirs that will later corroborate the equally false stories of their adventures “outside the wire.” That same jagged piece of metal that gets slapped down on the bar at the American Legion with the claim that it’s from the hull of a Republican Guard tank blown to bits “while out on patrol one day” is actually scrap scavenged from a local auto junkyard by an enterprising merchant by the name of Emad T. Hamad who whaled away at it with a ballpeen hammer in his garage the night before, offering it up for sale to one Specialist Bert Huddleton, a computer specialist in Task Force Headquarters who, after spending 341 days growing pasty-skinned by the light of his workstation monitor, was looking to buy his way into combat authenticity four days before he redeployed to the United States. Bert went away $44 lighter in the wallet but secure in the knowledge he now had something to show and tell for the story he’d been spinning in his head regarding a (nonexistent) patrol that had “gone bad” one terrible day outside the wire; Emad T. Hamad pocketed the forty-four Yankee infidel dollars with a grin, muttering the Arabic equivalent of “Suckah!”
Walk through the bazaar and you’ll find plenty of Fobbits like Bert and plenty of Local Nationals like Emad. In the PX courtyard, the nut-brown vendors chatter like monkeys as they try to pull the pale, blinking American boys and girls to their tables and blankets. “Mister, mister! Here, mister! You like? You buy?” This, then, is where the discriminating shopper can find scarves (gaily patterned with camels and palm trees), musty-smelling Oriental rugs, pirated blockbuster movies, carved wooden camels, elaborate glass-and-metal contraptions that look suspiciously like hookahs, black-velvet paintings of Jesus, Elvis, and Ricky Martin, and silverware once used by Saddam Hussein (authenticated with a computer-generated certificate by a “Dr. Alawi Medrina, History Professor Emeritus, University of New Baghdad”).
Did we mention this military city was constructed on the former site of Saddam Hussein’s palace and hunting preserve? It’s true. FOB Triumph has overtaken the grounds where Insane Hussein once treated his guests to weekend hunting parties. Nervous staff officers would join the dictator when he walked through the fields, knee-high weeds whisk ing damply against his pants legs as he flushed the stocked pheasants and quail from their nests and killed them in a bloody burst of feathers before their little beaks had a chance to form the words “Allahu Akbar!” On some weekends, when he was feeling especially jaunty, Saddam would place an order to the Baghdad zoo and they would deliver pairs of lions or jackals or foxes for his guests to hunt. As the integration handbook given to newly arriving soldiers will tell you, “Wildlife is abundant on the compound in the forms of rodents, snakes, deer, fox, golden jackal, and gazelle to name just a few.” It goes on to advise: “Do NOT, ever, ever, EVER, at any time, feed wildlife or domesticated animals such as dogs; report sightings of loose dogs on the compound at once, so they can be disposed of properly. The keeping of pets for personal pleasure or profit is STRICTLY prohibited.”
Beyond the realm of menageries, in the midst of the
A fly-by-night bazaar rings the dusty concrete courtyard outside the PX, a hodgepodge flea market of folding tables, open-bed pickup trucks, and outspread blankets full of wares Local Nationals have brought to the FOB for sale, having first gone through a rigorous security scrubbing at the entry checkpoints. This, U.S. military officials believe, serves two purposes: it gives the soldiers a taste of “real life” outside the FOB wire, and pumps good old American dollars into the local economy. It is here that Fobbits can buy the false souvenirs that will later corroborate the equally false stories of their adventures “outside the wire.” That same jagged piece of metal that gets slapped down on the bar at the American Legion with the claim that it’s from the hull of a Republican Guard tank blown to bits “while out on patrol one day” is actually scrap scavenged from a local auto junkyard by an enterprising merchant by the name of Emad T. Hamad who whaled away at it with a ballpeen hammer in his garage the night before, offering it up for sale to one Specialist Bert Huddleton, a computer specialist in Task Force Headquarters who, after spending 341 days growing pasty-skinned by the light of his workstation monitor, was looking to buy his way into combat authenticity four days before he redeployed to the United States. Bert went away $44 lighter in the wallet but secure in the knowledge he now had something to show and tell for the story he’d been spinning in his head regarding a (nonexistent) patrol that had “gone bad” one terrible day outside the wire; Emad T. Hamad pocketed the forty-four Yankee infidel dollars with a grin, muttering the Arabic equivalent of “Suckah!”
Walk through the bazaar and you’ll find plenty of Fobbits like Bert and plenty of Local Nationals like Emad. In the PX courtyard, the nut-brown vendors chatter like monkeys as they try to pull the pale, blinking American boys and girls to their tables and blankets. “Mister, mister! Here, mister! You like? You buy?” This, then, is where the discriminating shopper can find scarves (gaily patterned with camels and palm trees), musty-smelling Oriental rugs, pirated blockbuster movies, carved wooden camels, elaborate glass-and-metal contraptions that look suspiciously like hookahs, black-velvet paintings of Jesus, Elvis, and Ricky Martin, and silverware once used by Saddam Hussein (authenticated with a computer-generated certificate by a “Dr. Alawi Medrina, History Professor Emeritus, University of New Baghdad”).
Did we mention this military city was constructed on the former site of Saddam Hussein’s palace and hunting preserve? It’s true. FOB Triumph has overtaken the grounds where Insane Hussein once treated his guests to weekend hunting parties. Nervous staff officers would join the dictator when he walked through the fields, knee-high weeds whisk ing damply against his pants legs as he flushed the stocked pheasants and quail from their nests and killed them in a bloody burst of feathers before their little beaks had a chance to form the words “Allahu Akbar!” On some weekends, when he was feeling especially jaunty, Saddam would place an order to the Baghdad zoo and they would deliver pairs of lions or jackals or foxes for his guests to hunt. As the integration handbook given to newly arriving soldiers will tell you, “Wildlife is abundant on the compound in the forms of rodents, snakes, deer, fox, golden jackal, and gazelle to name just a few.” It goes on to advise: “Do NOT, ever, ever, EVER, at any time, feed wildlife or domesticated animals such as dogs; report sightings of loose dogs on the compound at once, so they can be disposed of properly. The keeping of pets for personal pleasure or profit is STRICTLY prohibited.”
Beyond the realm of menageries, in the midst of the
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