The Embed Equation

It’s taken a while to write because I’m just not sure what to say these days. I’m embedded with the 515th National Guard unit in Iraq, stationed at Log Base Seitz, a 2.5 square mile patch of dirt just west of the Baghdad airport. There are 625 people at this base, 55 of whom are New Mexican. The base is mostly logistical, dealing with supply issues and transportation, supporting the war effort from “behind.” Only there aren’t any behind and front lines in this war, so Log base is in the thick of it. Things have been quiet since I arrived and talk is of the next imminent attack, wondering where it will be and hoping it won’t be as bad as some, as the unit has already lost six people with dozens more injured. The calm days make people almost more nervous than when there are attacks, because, as one NM guardsman put it, “At least when they mortar you, you know they’re executing a plan. But when it’s quiet you know they’re plotting.”


The other reason for the delay in writing is that I have to admit I sunk into a kind of depression after the Tidal wave hit. I wasn’t able to tear myself away from CNN reports and feeling progressively more sad and helpless as the death figures rose. I even spoke to the People bureau about sending me over, but they sent a staffer from London instead. I felt a bit better after interviewing the Sri Lankan kitchen workers and talking to the commander about taking up a collection for their families. The other depression was realizing that I wouldn’t be working with, much less seeing, Iraqis on this trip. Even contacting the friends I met here in the past feels like it puts them in danger.

The worst times are when I stand and listen, over the generators, trucks and soldier noise, to the call to prayer outside the base walls. I can’t reach that Iraq right now, and I know that no one inside could even understand why I would want to. “Sometimes that call to prayer is so angry,” said one soldier who saw me paused in front of the chow hall listening to the faint call. They have no understanding of Iraqis or Iraqi culture outside of framing them as killers and “heathens.” And why would they? For the most part, the only Iraqis they have a chance to encounter are trying to kill them. In turn, Iraqis see Americans as people who hate them. This is what breaks my heart most, and why I think we have a very long road ahead of us.


When I first arrived the unit was on Amber alert, which meant we had to wear full body armor and helmets everywhere. The heightened security followed the attack on Mosul, plus they had “credible intel” that suggested a holiday attack was imminent. This made for an absolutely exhausting first few days. But as time went on I got used to it and by the time we were relieved from wearing our armor on base, I decided to keep mine on. I’ve gradually loosened my own requirements but donned full gear for my first venture back to the Green Zone, which I did with a unit delivering medical supplies to the hospital there. The place is an absolute fortress, even moreso than last year. Concrete barriers line almost every road and checkpoints run throughout. The US embassy and its annex have completely taken over Saddam’s huge palace and I not only couldn’t get in but couldn’t even get near to ask a visa question. “They’re treating you like a foreigner, aren’t they?” said one soldier who accompanied me on my short jaunt. I had to smile.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.
It was Captain Chris Garcia from Santa Fe who picked me up at the airport the day I arrived. He grabbed my arm as I passed and asked if I was indeed “Ms. Pollon, the reporter.” He admitted later that my helmet gave me away. I bought the piece of equipment for $130 my last night in Turkey. The transaction not only cost me an arm and a leg but almost cost me my flight; I made the plane five minutes before gates closed. But the moment I walked onto the C-130 I began to get comments: “Ma’am, where exactly did you get that?” They called it a training helmet, plastic, worthless. Once I arrived on base, and the men knew with whom they were dealing, the comments got even more ruthless: I could use it for a washtub or even a pisspot. The helmet couldn’t stop rain, one Sgt. told me, much less mortars. It became a piece of show and tell in the commander’s office. All in good fun they’d say. And it was, particularly after they offered me a replacement helmet for the duration of my stay.

Capt. G warned me that the Lt. Colonel of the base, Richard Rael, could be a prankster but that he could also be pretty rough when it got down to brass tacks. “I like things to be relaxed here,” the commander told me at our first meeting, “but I’ll come down hard if someone gets out of line or breaks the rules.” Sounded good to me, so we were off to a good start. In fact, we’ve all taken to each other to each other extremely well. It’s definitely a nice and interesting experience having a bit of New Mexico – accents, habits, expressions – here in Iraq.

The “beaners”, as they jokingly call themselves, pretty much stay together as a unit, and when Christmas came around, I felt I was invited into the quarters of a tight knit family. Dinner was a round of red chile enchiladas, carne adovada, sopapillas and beans and rice. Food hadn’t tasted so good in weeks! One of the most striking things I noticed about the unit is that the men, though crude at times (stress relief, I know), have a warmer, more friendly way of dealing with each other. They joke and prod like the best of them (throw Christmas trees at each other and pack each others’ beds with crushed Pringles, etc), but there’s a sweetness that I don't often see from white boys in the military. It’s been a saving grace. In general, the folks here have been incredibly kind to me and sometimes I forget that our outlooks on life, politics and this war can be vastly different.

The head of the medical team is still one of the coolest people out here. She’s the Wisconsin ball buster I mentioned last time who can criticize a rule when she finds it absurd (Every once in a while she reminds me of Monica, so Obviously, I love this gal.). No one would dare challenge her though, because when the casualties come in she runs the tightest ship around, and at Log Base Seitz, dealing with casualties is unfortunately a big part of the experience. So, yeah, about those mortars…

Log Base Seitz was established when relations between Americans and Iraqis were still good enough that soldiers wandered into the town of Abu Ghraib for supplies, they ate in Iraqi restaurants and talked to Iraqis on the streets. Those days are long gone. Now the logistical base is considered by some disgruntled soldiers as a mortar magnet and a buffer zone for the much larger Camp Victory right next door. People have asked to be moved into the perimeter of nearby Camp Victory but apparently there’s no room on the enormous base. So instead, the supply group has suffered 84 separate mortar attacks, with more than 60 wounded and as I said, six dead. Their delivery convoys have experienced near daily attacks, some as minor as small arms fire and as major as IEDs, rocket grenade launchers and land mines. (An article on this is next in line.) Colleagues had warned me about the lack of distinction between rear and front line these days in Iraq. Here at Seitz, it’s pretty clear. But as I said, I haven’t seen any of it, and with some luck, never will.

I haven’t yet settled into a rhythm here, or found a focus for my longer-term projects. In the meantime I’ll wait, witness and take notes.

So here’s wishing everyone a happy and PEACEFUL New Year.

Post Partum Blues and The Next Step

So the Rumi festival is over and I'm in that post partum depression, a mixture of sadness that all the new friends are going their separate ways (I'll make it to Iran one day, but don't know when and the situation will be different) and total exhaustion, plus a bit of nervousness about the road ahead. Part of me is sorry not to join the foreign traveling band and head up to Cappadoccia-- that wild volcanic city - and another is trying to get into the right mind frame to catch a plane the day after tomorrow to Kuwait and a flight into Baghdad two days later. And to make matters worse, I can't find a darn hotel for less than $120 in Kuwait!! So it's a mixture, and I'm always grappling with whether travel is really Doing anything or whether it's valuable, apart from my own momentary entertainment. Yes, I want to write but every time I think I have a sense of how to frame it, another angle opens, more depth enters and I feel completely overwhelmed and underprepared.

The day Rumi united with his beloved was a totally emotional day full of prayer and intensity, WAY too much sugar and not enough rest. It’s a very special day to Sufis, especially in Konya, and the museum where his tomb is stored was packed with worshippers weeping, praying and reciting poems. There was a single line of worshippers that ran through the stalled crowd much as a stream works its way through sand. In time I found myself in a small eddy directly in front of the tomb standing quietly. An old woman next to me saw my contemplation and said something sharply to me in Turkish. She could have been admonishing me for not having a headscarf for all I know and I was in no place to fight. But when I looked down at her she gently put her hand on the side of my face. I closed my eyes and out of nowhere began to weep. I took the woman’s hand and held it until I could stop crying. Then I leaned down, kissed her cheek and made my way back into the stream. From there a strange series occurred: A woman from Turkey sought me in the crowd and wanted me to come meet a spiritual teacher from Istanbul. A woman from Iran who was giving out Iranian money and candy to celebrate the wedding took me in her arms and held me as I began to cry some more. One man whose music I had listened to the night before, and who had given me several rings broken from his drum, found me to tell me he had dreamt about me, and that we had been traveling together. Then there was poetry (when it got too passionate the guard came to quiet things down.) then music, food and ceremonial goodbyes.

I’m guessing that it’s the nature of such a festival to have strange, powerful connections that come and go in an instant and that my experiences were a few of hundreds of similar exchanges throughout the week. At least I hope so. The next day my back felt brittle and sore and my brain fried. But what a beautiful festival. I'll certainly be back here and can't wait to reunite with this crazy band of pilgrims, whoever they may be.

My Istanbul transit
Ahh…so this is what everyone was talking about when they waxed on about Istanbul!
The streets are filled with people, the energy is great, and the night skyline is one of the most beautiful I’ve seen anywhere. And this was just night one. My first short tour was given by an Israeli photographer I met in Konya and in whose roommate filled pad I might stay once I return to Turkey. Plus the folks might want to join me for both Turkish and tango classes. Que suerte. Despite transportation difficulties and a pretty high cost of living, I think I could get to like this place quite a bit. I’ll be back here after the holidays sometime and will investigate every crevasse and corner, but right now other adventures are calling.

Christmas in Baghdad
It wasn’t exactly the way I had planned, but somehow I’m spending Christmas in Baghdad. It was the Los Angeles Times article that did it, the one that led with the line, “No one spends Christmas in Istanbul.” It went on to describe a cold, dark city where restaurants closed early and the streets were bare. It was completely wrong I later found – Istanbul is always bustling and though they don’t celebrate Christmas per se, New Years is a huge celebration -- but it was too late. I had already called the New Mexico National Guard and asked if I could embed. They were so enthusiastic I thought they would put me on a plane themselves.
So now I write this from Kuwait, where I’m staying in a high-rise apartment with some contractors I met on the flight from Istanbul. Everyone is Iraq-bound or just emerging and we all share stories of the incredible ineptitude of the reconstruction so far. One thinks the problem is that there’s not enough capitalism, another that there’s too little optimism. We all agree there’s too much bureaucracy for effective people to get anything done.
Dean is a former banker and reservist who was called to action last year and ended up running the finances for most of southern Iraq. After leaving the service he decided to return as a private contractor and is now in his newest incarnation as a hostage negotiator since a colleague “went missing” near Basra. Negotiation may be a bit premature, he admits, as they have yet to hear a word about the Turkish businessman from a Veery wealthy family. Johnny just came in from the southern town of Samawa where he’s building a power plant for a Texas company using Iraqi labor. He’s off to meet his wife in London for the holidays and couldn’t be happier. The apartment they all share—these two and a couple others -- towers over the bay opposite the heart of Kuwait City. It’s beautiful and glitzy, just like the city. That is, at least on the surface, though cost and my own exhaustion is keeping me from exploring a bit more. This country is insanely rich from oil and prices are to match. It’s not exactly the backpackers destination and Dean laughed when he saw me change only $50 for the night. “You haven’t been in these parts for a while have you?” In fact the exchange is about $4 US for one Kuwait Dinar and it flows and flows and flows. The mighty dollar is not very mighty here! Yet here I am hanging out and watching bad movies while overlooking a sparkly bay scene. We - myself and the contractors - all wait for our next moves and compare severity of our pre-flight jitters. Mine are exceptionally strong. When the news announces the explosion near Mosul that seems to have killed 22 people and wounded more than 50 we sit in silence and wait for our program to continue.

The next morning I take a brutal, rollercoaster flight (they called it "avoidance tactics") into Baghdad airport where I’m picked up by two New Mexico National Guardsmen from the 515th Command Supply unit, my military escorts for the next month or so. We arrive at Log Base Camp Seitz, northwest of Baghdad and just below the town of Abu Ghraib. I’m right away ushered into the office of commanding officer Jose Rael, a Santa Fean and one of the more down to earth military personnel I’ve met in Iraq. He briefs me on some ground rules, namely no pictures of wounded, then gives me a brief tour around the base before it gets dark. My favorite stop: the medical emergency center run by a group from Madison, Wisconsin (with a Green Bay Packers flag center wall). The head physician’s assistant is hysterical and invites me to “ladies night” on Christmas Eve. I can already tell this will be a very different experience from last time.

So now I sit on a skinny bed in my own comfortable room near the commander’s headquarters and feel the walls shake as helicopters pass overhead and the skies moan as Bradleys patrol the surrounding area. I’m excited to be back here and eager to work. But I miss the Iraq I was first introduced to and the people I once easily visited. This time around there won’t be any walking in the streets – or even leaving base at all. There will be no Iraqi food or music or culture because this place hardly belongs to Iraqis anymore. It belongs to Americans, so this is the story I’m here to write.

Photos of Konya

I'm starting with images of dervishes because this is first on my mind, followed by some photos of Istanbul. Plus, I'm in a fancy apartment in Kuwait using ethernet so I'm taking advantage of technology I've neither had until now nor expect to have for the next month.

Thirty-five of these dancers did Sema every night in Konya.


The youngest of the troop, an 11-year-old boy, had to take some breaks while watching the higher initiates.


After a session the group would bow and move to the outskirts. Then they would begin again.


Rumi poems hang over the streets of Konya.


I spent a lot of time inside a rug store sipping tea and looking out at this mosque. Just behind it is the museum with Rumi's tomb.


The beautiful, exceptional tomb of Mevlana.


Even more than places, it is the people along the way that make my travels special. These are my partners in crime in Konya: Manuel (R), a French anthropology student studying pilgrimages and Victor (L), an anthropology student from DC (the only other American!) studying music. Thank you both. And yes, I look possessed, but I promised Victor I'd use the shot where his eyes were open.


My Iranian partners in crime inside the Mevlana Museum on the day of his wedding. From left to right: Mohamed, Babak and Naser. The beautiful Shima and her mother had to leave a day early.


This strangely suggestive practice was first used to cure those with mental and physical problems (I took no offense that they wanted me to try it!). By placing your teeth on the end of the Turkish Saz and closing your ears you experience the most amazing surround sound with the vibration reverberating throughout your body.


Fifteen years after first learning about it, Z finally makes it to the Aya Sophia in Istanbul!


The Aya Sophia was a church for more than 900 years before it became a mosque which leads to this strange mixture of iconography. Archeologists are still working to uncover all of the amazing Christian mosaics.


After a whirlwind day of sightseeing my dear friend Dilek and I ate lunch overlooking the Bosphorous. Thank you Ahmet, Dilek and Melis for everything.

I'm headed to Iraq tomorrow for the holidays (yes, I know this sounds odd. I have more info on this coming soon) and it might be a bit before I have the technology to post photos again. Until then I'll try my best to keep you all posted. Happy Holidays!

Whırlıng through Konya

Though I arrived in Istanbul I can hardly say I’ve seen the city. I was picked up by the driver of a good friend I met in Iraq last year and shuttled to his beautiful apartment on the “Asian” side of Istanbul. The other side of the Bosphorus, the strait that connects the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara, is what they call the European side – and no one will let you forget it. Ahmet’s wife Dilek and I formed an instant friendship and I didn’t leave her apartment much after that, aside from a whirlwind tour of the Aya Sophia, Blue Mosque, Topkepi Castle and the Cistern (my favorite). Any descriptions will have to wait. Because the Rumi Festival in Konya, Turkey is the real purpose of this trip and from this everything else follows.

Come, come, whoever you are
Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving
It doesn’t matter.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come even if you have broken your vow
A thousand times.
Come, yet again, come, come.
--Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi
It’s the refrain I’ve been hearing all week, words from Rumi, the 12th century Persian mystic poet whose death and life I’ve traveled across land and ocean to celebrate. They say 200,000 of us – pilgrims, tourists and the just plain lucky -- come to Konya every year to mark Rumi’s death on December 17th, 1273, a very holy day in the Sufi religion when Rumi united with God.
To followers he is Mevlana, The Guide, and his body lies in the Mevlana Museum, formerly a Dervish lodge, in the center of town. More than a million visitors come to pay respects at the enormous tomb, which is shrouded in gold cloth and has a turban like covering marking the headstone (similar to the hats that dervishes wear). Muslims from around the world, but primarily from Persia and Turkey, pray at the holy shrine. Hundreds were seated along the hall, some crying, praying and others reading his poetry. Another room holds his relics. And yet another held modeled dervish scenes and art. Even passing by the closed door at night garners a bow and a prayer from worshipers.

There are concerts and lectures every day but I found them practically impossible to find until late in the week, and then the famous whirling dervishes who dance nightly and often in the afternoons. This latter performance is purely tourism as people from Konya will tell you, as the dancers “all come from Istanbul.” But who can complain of commercialism when it’s all about spreading the word of universal acceptance and love? Even I made my way to the “show” every chance I got. Plus the merchandising is fabulous: There are tchochkes touting poetry of love and God, mugs with the image of Rumi, Shams and whirling dervishes; banners with poems hang from the street lamps and pilgrims can be found singing and reciting poetry in the street (at least the group I found!). Even a cabbage patch was planted in the image of a whirling dervish.

They say that Rumi was born in Afghanistan but at the time of his birth in 1207 that site, Balkh, was actually a part of Iran. And they say that Rumi died in Turkey but that site, Konya, was also part of Iran. He wrote in Persian and claimed himself as Persian but still Turkish and Afghanis (I am told) claim him for their own. But come, come everyone, it’s the phrase of the day, the night, or during afternoon tea. Be you Christian or Muslim, Jewish or Atheist. There is room for everyone, friend.

I’ve been adopted for several days by a group of young Iranians, one of whom even speaks English. It’s amazing to land in a city where it’s incredibly difficult to find an English speaking person. I’ve judged people in the past for landing in a country without knowing a word of the mother tongue and yet here I am. Nada. The rug dealers are the most multi linguistic so I spend a lot of time visiting with them. Otherwise interviews have been a challenge, to say the least, much less finding a bathroom or ordering a bottle of water.

My quest to find one organizer to interview in English about the festival resulted in an hours long adventure to get me a press pass. The task involved no less than 11 “tourism police” officers, five culture officials, four others from the governor’s office and finally the governor’s own press chief who was ultimately taken away from preparations with the prime frinkin minister to come and grant me an “all access” press pass to all dervish events. I love being a journalist! My favorite moment, a surreal scene that anyone who has traveled will appreciate, was while waiting in the governor’s office for some official to figure out what to do with this random American – seemingly the only one in Konya - who was sitting before them. It appeared all the officials (including my three police escort team) were at wits end when we finally decided to take a rest, drink some chai and watch a bit of the movie Three Amigos, with Steve Martin and Chevy Chase, in Turkish. I finally got my press pass but the funniest part is that I never found an organizer who spoke a word of English! Still the experience was worth its weight in gold.

Zeliha’s Durga
I’m fortunate that in Turkey there is a common name very similar to mine: Zeliha, which is what all the Turkish people now call me. (It’s a huge leap from Zulig, or something, that I got in Iraq so I’m happy being Zeliha - pronounced Zelie-ha).
I met my Iranian friends when I interviewed them at the Sema, which is the celebration of Whirling dance. They were so extraordinarily passionate I instantly fell in love and knew I had to see more of them. Take Babak, for example, who is the most passionate of the bunch and eager to share his spiritual examination. He is beautiful and loving and breaks into tears each time he recites Mevlana’s poems, which Iranian children learn in school. A discussion, say over breakfast in the hotel, goes something like this:
“But who IIISS Shems?” said in a desperate, pleading voice with hands raised, fingertips clenched together. “The answer? He is so, so big,” he says grasping for an appropriate English word, but I’m not sure he would find one even in Farsi. Shems (Mehmet Shemseddin Tebrizi) literally was Rumi’s teacher, companion and his greatest inspiration. Persians believe that Shems surpasses Rumi in the spiritual hierarchy and that Rumi alone saw Shems’ greatness. To followers, Shems is everything, and everything is compared to him. Babak’s friends tease him and try to help with the explanation. They point to his eggs and joke, “This breakfast is nothing compared to Shems.” But they’re only half joking because they too are here with God – and Shems - on their minds. Shems was supposedly killed by Rumi’s followers who were jealous of their relationship. But according to Babak, many believe that Shems never died, much in the same way that Jesus is said to have moved to southern France and shacked up with Mary Magdalene. In fact a professor Babak knows in America swears he saw Shems on the street in Seattle. The man took himself to the Hospital he was so overcome with love, Babak said.

That night they invited me to a real life version of ecstatic prayer meeting in the Sufi religion. There must have been 200 of us smashed into a single hot, sweaty airless room, beating drums, singing, screaming, crying and dancing to the point of total ecstasy - or passing out, which in many cases is the same thing. It was a profoundly powerful experience and one that I hope to repeat.

In another hotel the next night, Iranians played drums, a kind of guitar (whose name is a complete mystery to me) and created their own kind of prayer meeting until late midnight.

This week has included a mystic music festival with a group from a different part of the world playing each day. One day was Azerbajan, the next day Turkey and another – by far the greatest juxtaposition – a French/African gospel group. They say it’s the first gospel to play in Turkey, but maybe they meant Konya, as the Konyans certainly didn’t know what to do with them. Imagine a 13-member rocking gospel group singing their hearts out to Jesus and the audience for the most part sitting in stunned silence. There were of course the exceptions: a group of European Sufis in the front row who all held hands and furiously rocked back and forth in their seats. And then there was us, a motley group of westerners doing our own Baptist revival of sorts just behind the Sufis. Turkish television couldn’t get enough of us and I’ve heard from more than one person that they saw us on the evening news.
Now for those of you who may think we were going against custom here, I will beg to differ as I’ve seen a side of Konya I didn’t think existed.
I was convinced to attend a concert of a Turkish/Canadian trance music star named Marchan DeDe. He played in a ballroom at the Hilton hotel outside of town because, ok, there aren’t many music venues around here. The friend who talked me out of another night of dervishes said I needed to see how the young people were celebrating Rumi. Indeed the fusion of generations was worth a night of study.
The Hilton Hotel shoots out of a barren landscape about a half hour outside of town. It’s a four star complex with a lounge, bar, discoteque and even bowling alley for those who can’t to be away from indulgent western amenities while visiting Konya. The place was packed with young, hip kids sporting tight jeans, halter tops and all with a cell phone/camera attached to an ear. There also were a lot of Muslim girls with their heads covered and a handful of boys who were flat out drunk as alcohol was being sold in the hotel lobby.
The concert was an amazing mix of drums, horns and electronic music with the ney, a flute, video imagery and a female dervish from Canada whirling on stage. As the music thumped, the crowds started dancing, screaming with excitement as the beat quickened. One of the most interesting mixtures was during a trance song with the strangely sexual chorus “feel my drum” beating hypnotically. The crowd started jumping up and down like a single amoeba, and two girls wearing scarves next to me started yelling “Allah! Allah” to the sound of the beat. Thirteenth century Sufism was indeed meeting 21st century youth.

I must say, I LOVE Konya. I think I expected a small village of wandering shamans in the mountains, but in fact Konya is a bustling town of a million people with a university and lively street scene. To all those who described the town as conservative and fundamentalist I’d have to argue that it’s pretty secular. Which doesn’t mean beer flows from local taverns; it’s a dry town where alcohol is available only in select stores and any public consumption is forbidden. And the only disco is at the Hilton (where we heard a pretty rousing Turkish version of Gloria Naylor’s I Will Survive the other night). But the people are exceptionally kind and I feel completely safe wandering the streets at just about any hour. The Iranians have also been so kind and generous I’ve taken to calling them the freaky friendlies. They’re so nice it’s eerie (yes, It’s been a while since I’ve left the US).
Photos wıll follow but thought you all should know that my health is holding steady despite a steady intake of bread of chicken fat and my teeth haven’t yet turned black from the dozen cups of black tea I’m offered every day.

Off to the Middle East!

Now you've really done it. All your support of me and The Baghdad Project
has planted a seed -- and it's irreversible. I've decided to head back to
the Middle East to cover first the Rumi festival in Konya, Turkey, then more
of the story in Kurdistan, and then... Well, as we all know the Middle East
is and will continue to be full of stories, and independent reporting will
be as essential as ever.

Z interviewing last year in Iraq (2003)


This first trip will be exploratory: I'll be searching for an attractive
base from which to cover the area, possibly Amman, Cairo, Beirut, Istanbul,
or even Teheran, and will begin documenting, among many things, The Faces of
Islam.

I leave next Tuesday (Dec. 7th) and the first trip will be relatively
short (four months). I suspect I will be embedding with the military as early as Christmas and will send more news from Camp Victory.

I'm in major training on the fact and function of "Blogging" so I will be
able to keep everyone informed of my work on the ground. And I promise I
won't include the kind of details I did in my Iraq dispatches last year. I
scared myself half to death reading them recently, so I can just imagine how
they must have come across to concerned friends on this side of the pond. My
sincere apologies!