A Day in the Life...

I've talked a lot about the basics of life in Baghdad, but the reader may find it odd that I don't talk about what I do, day-to-day. There's a reason for that, of course.

I just can't.

The nature of the work I do means that a lot of it I can't talk to with anyone. And even if I could, I certainly wouldn't put it out on the Internet. I could try all that, "I could tell you but I'd have to kill you" nonsense, but that would be a little extreme. If I were James Bond, I certainly wouldn't have a blog. Either way, it's best to keep it simple. As an intelligence officer, I work with information.

Not that much different than my old days as a journalist, only these days, I write the truth for a change. ;)

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First of all, let me say, I've worked a lot of tough jobs. In High School, I pretty much worked on the farm. One summer in college, I worked at a wholesale produce terminal on Zarzamora Street in San Antonio. I worked from 3 a.m. until noon six days a week, unloading 100 lbs. bags of potatoes or frozen crates of corn from freight trains and 18-wheelers and putting them on smaller trucks to haul to grocery stores and restaurants.

Working on political campaigns, I sometimes did 16, 17 and 18 hour days. But those were limited to the end stretch of the campaign, and you always knew that on a particular Tuesday, the entire thing would be over...for better or for worse.

But when it comes to long hours, my current schedule blows those out of the water.

I work from midnight to noon. Six days a week. On my "day off," I only work six hours. All together, that's 78 hours a week.

And like a campaign, there's almost always something going on. Even when there isn't anything critical, there's always some long-term project that needs attending to. At first, I thought this was insane. That I'd never get used to such a schedule. But before too long, it became natural. And in a wierd way, it makes my time over here go by faster.

I usually set my alarm clock for about 10:45 p.m. Already showered the afternoon before, I quickly shave and head out. It's nearly pitch black outside, and the area of the base I'm in is covered with waist-high Jersey barriers made of concrete. On the way to the DFAC (Dining Faciliy), there are numerous obstacles that rise up at you out of the darkness. There's a canal from an old irrigation system, with a small bridge across it. A road or two, with curbs on either side, a jog through a parking lot filled with Humvees and Up-Armored Suburbans, a path along a reed-filled, smelly canal, etc.

The base is almost entirely blacked-out most nights. Partly for security, partly because electric power is such a scarce commodity here. Although the Iraqis are now nearly operating at power levels equal to the pre-war period, there are still interrupions. And in a country with blazing summers, the needs are great.

What power we have comes almost entirely from generators. Generators require fuel. Fuel is too heavy to airlift. Therefore fuel must come in via convoy...and run the gauntlet of IEDs, small arms attacks and whatever else Joe Jihad wants to throw at them. And if you didn't guess, fuel trucks have a bad habit of burning when they get hit.

So conserving energy here is obviously not just a good idea. There are soldiers and Iraqi truck drivers who are risking their lives every day so I can plug in my laptop. Kind of humbling.

As for my late-night snack at the DFAC, it leaves a lot to be desired. Not that the food is bad, but it's not...right. I mean, I'm about to start a full day on the job, and I want breakfast. But at 11:15 p.m., they don't have breakfast. They have dinner.

It only gets worse six hours later when I get my "lunch" break. Because by that time, they're serving breakfast. Only my noon meal makes any dietary sense.

Walking around in the dark allows you to do some thinking. At first, you're just thinking about where the next hole or curb or tree is, but once you learn your way, it's not so bad. You can just continue on, seeing things at the last moment in the dim glow of Baghdad's lights reflecting off the dust clouds (the only kind of clouds we have, typically). You know exactly when you need to turn on your mini flashlight. In one part of my commute, there are a pair of Jersey barriers, with a chain strung between them, directly across my route. Usually, it's disconnected, lying on the ground. But I know the one time I don't look for it, it will be up, and will catch me right at the ankles.

I also like looking at the stars, when I can see them. It's not so easy. Although Baghdad's power is erratic and non-ubiquitous, it is a city of 5 million people, and it's always going to have a glow of some kind. Add to that the fact that the air, from ground level to about 1,000 feet is about 900,000 parts per million sand. Nothing shows this more clearly than when a car's headlights cross my path, and I can see the swirling sand like snow, dancing in the beams of light. Of course, I'm always thinking, "Great. I'm breathing that."

Sand of course, is not the worst thing you can breathe in. Fortunately, with the winds the way they are, we don't get much of the sewage smell that permeates many of the bad neighborhoods around town. But Iraqis - and the U.S. Army for that matter - don't believe in landfills. Instead, they burn their trash. On days when this happens, the smell of burning, rotting trash is putrid, acrid and it is everywhere.

As I said, I usually get a lunch break, right around dawn. I come outside into the still-dark night and walk back to the DFAC. Sometimes, when my timing is right, I catch the sound of the call to prayer echoing from the mosques across Baghdad. Five times a day, the call goes out, with the Imams singing their verses with modulating pitches - a musical tribute to Allah and a rejoinder to Muslims to turn their mind to God.

It's pretty in a way, I guess, and kind of strikes me as an ironic parallel to good old-fashioned Gregorian Chants, in which the Catholic church used to turn its adherents' minds to God. Of course, the Catholic Church never got Friar Tuck into a minaret 100 feet into the air and gave him a P.A. system that could carry for miles. Thankfully, they kept the priests earth-bound and instead used heavy bells to accomplish much the same thing. Nobody had to crawl up into the tower whose name wasn't Quasimodo.

When it comes to their singing, the Baghdad Imams are pretty good. Not Three Tenors quality, mind you, but O.K. for what they do. And I have to say that they beat the Imams of the mosques in Turkey hands down. That's the only other Muslim country I've spent time in, so I can't say. Of course, Baghdad, like Istanbul, has its share of history and claim to Muslim greatness. But in Istanbul, the women wear Ray Bans, skirts and high-heels, and in that kind of place, you just know that their religious piety just isn't quite as authentic any more. Kind of like a Taco Bell Islam. Of course, if that's the standard, I'm sure there must be some potential opera virtuosos hiding in the mud-brick huts of Afghanistan. Their calls to prayer could probably bring people to tears...if those people weren't too busy attending public stonings in the soccer stadium.

Back to Iraq, by the time lunch is finished, it is now daylight, and I head back to work. That is when I run the gauntlet...of military etiquette.

We call it "Salute Alley." A narrow path in which dozens of soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines will pass. And in this narrow bottleneck, you can't escape.

I used to assume most people knew everything I did - or at least everything I did when I was a civilian - about the military. But they don't, and as the naive questions of some friends back home indicate, they need lessons now and then.

Soldiers (I use this term generically) are supposed to salute superior officers at all times when they are outdoors (except when working or driving or other times when it would be impractical). The officers, being salued, must return the courtesy.

Now obviously, you can't do this at night because you can't see someone's rank insignia. But once daytime arrives, the game is on. Passing through Salute Alley, I find myself saluting virtually everyone. My hand rises to salute, snaps up, snaps down, then repeats. Again and again and again. Enlisted people don't salute other enlisted people. They have it easy. They only salute officers. Officers however, must return the salute of enlisted people and junior officers, and must furthermore salute all the officers above them. The only people you don't salute are those who are your exact same rank. For me, a Navy Lieutennant Junior Grade, that means Army, Air Force and Marine 1st Lieutennants. And there aren't a whole heck of a lot of those around.

By the time I pass through the gauntlet, my right arm is nearly sore. I find myself holding it up for whole groups of people, because it's just not possible to get every one of them.

Foreign soldiers are not required to salute, nor am I required to salute them. This almost always holds true, but the Tongans (my good friends from Kuwait) are here, and they seem to get a kick out of saluing American officers. I always return the salute, usually matching it with "Malu la ley" (Good morning) or "Fe fe aku" (How are you)." Since I've been in Baghdad, I've learned more Tongan than Arabic, and the Arabic I know mostly consists of phrases like "Put down the weapon" and "Where is the suicide bomber car?" which isn't exactly the best way to politely greet an Iraqi Mulazzem Awwal (1st Lieutennant).

Finally, my exhausting day over, I head to the chow hall for one last meal (lunch, which is my dinner) and then to my trailer. Every 2-3 days, I try to hit the gym for an hour. When I'm not doing that, I hit the computer lab or read a book. In all, I rarely have more than 3-4 hours of free time before I turn the lights out, draw the shades (actually, my camouflagued poncho, which substitutes for shades) and go to bed, around 5 p.m., for the end of another day in Baghdad.

Six hours later, the alarm rings, and I start it all over again.