drums and fleet footed animals

You are so Baghdad if…
After a long day at work yesterday I took off early and changed clothes. Shane’s last night in town and we were taking him out to dinner at the Al-Rasheed. We rode over with Jill in her Pajero – me, Johnnie, Shane, and Kerry from the State Department. I remember the sun made the sky yellow then darkened to orange near the horizon as we walked down the pock marked sidewalk to the Rasheed, with its beautiful fountain which Shane thinks I want to pack it up and put it in my front yard. That would be cool.
Jill suggested we play some pool before dinner. I hadn’t eaten since my salsa drenched hash browns at breakfast so I was hungry.
We played three games. Ultimately Kerry and Johnnie beat Shane and I for the championship of the world. It was getting on nigh nine o’clock so we decided to go eat. We decided to go to the Chinese restaurant instead of the fancy National Restaurant.
We sat down and ordered quickly because they were about to close the kitchen. After we ordered Jill gave Shane and I presents she brought us back from her trip to Africa. Shane got a box and I got a cool drum with an impala skin stretched across it. We passed it around experimenting with different beats – drum circle Baghdad.
The first mortar hit fairly near and loud:
Woow, that was close.
Then came the whistle – long and loud in terms of a traveling mortar. I’ve never seen plastic lawn chairs fly out from under people’s butts so fast in my life. I fell to the ground but saw Jill running, yelling GET INSIDE GET INSIDE…reminded me of a platoon leader or something. We all got in to the rickety little concrete bathroom and laughed. After two minutes the waiter brought me my change from the $50 I’d given him.
We drove back but had to park in the big parking lot because the sirens were going and the palace was on lock down. We were able to come into the pedestrian gate.
Johnnie, Shane, and I walked back to my trailer to round out the evening. I walked inside to grab a couple of Carlsbergs and found my roommate in helmet and body armor taking up residence in the bathroom. We talked a minute then he got back in bed to read. The rest of us sat with King and a Jewish lady who complained she was being hit on too much here by anti-Semitic guys. Must be tough to pick up a woman when throw out racial slurs at her. Jews, the other white people she kept saying, pleased with her sloganeering.
In a replay of the night before a few more mortars dropped in, the Big Voice said TAKE COVER TAKE COVER so we walked around the corner to the bunker but didn’t stay long.
Bored with the intrusive mortars I picked up my drum and made up a song – I’m an impala, I’m a Chevrolet. Shane’s big send off courtesy of me and Johnny, Jill and Kerry, all the people he’d had to interact with everyday in our sour customer service way…he summed it all up with a twist as I finished my song. “You’re going to miss this place,” he said.
I know. In Baghdad everything ends with a bang.