the bunker bar - a speakeasy

Last night was my roommate Jim’s going away party. He’s almost completed his arduous three month Air Force tour. I will admit he put in a lot more late nights than I ever would.
We had his party at a place called the bunker bar which we formed a small convoy of unarmored vehicles to take us there. The best part I thought was getting to talk with mine and Shane’s friend Suha. We always see eachother and say hello in passing but I’m awful about stopping to talk to people when I work so I don’t think we’d ever had more than a two minute conversation.
We drove down the road toward BIAP but not far and turned onto a small side street, you know the one: it’s the one where the Iraqi guy sells beer under his carport from the back of his van…there’s an overturned boat in the yard. We stopped by a small window and Iraqi guy stuck out his head. “We’re here to see Tony,” yelled Jim out the window of our Suburban. With those words a large metal gate slid open and our convoy drove into the compound. Inside the Bunker Bar as its called the walls were white bathroom tile and lined with an assortment of automatic weapons, rocket launchers and unexploded ordinance. There were pictograph signs instructing children of varying nationalities not to touch anything that looked like this because it may blow up. Invariably the kid threw a bomb into the air then the last frame would be a blast of fire with the kid’s head and shoulders sticking out. The gentle side of war, taking care of the children, helping them play nice.
Early on Jim broke out the Romeo y Julieta Cuban cigars but only he and I smoked them. They were dry so he got a small tumbler of cognac to dip the ends into. After dipping I stuck mine in my mouth but nearly gagged when a stream of the foul liquor shot into my mouth like I’d bit into a sponge. After a couple of minutes it soaked in and the cigar became smokeable.
Although they had a pool table I never got to show off. I spent most of the evening talking with Suha about our blog pages, the Iraqi neighborhood where her dad lives and stuff. She grew up in Iraq but after high school spent several years in the states, going to college in the Midwest. She told me she’d talked to the journalist who’d just been released by kidnappers. She had met him at the Convention Center where he had been working on a documentary. Independent filmmaking in the new Iraq can be a hazardous enterprise but luckily his adventure turned out alright.
We came back to the compound before midnight and I went to bed. I was sleeping well until some kind of blast shook my trailer and woke me up. I didn’t sleep very good after that. I had expected celebratory fire but never heard any. I don’t know how Iraqs soccer game against Paraguay turned out.