March 22, 2003
We had been rolling for about 30 hours when we pulled up in the vicinity of As Samiwah. Someone passed the word that some Hajjis were coming down along the column.
I looked around the side of the Bradley, and there they were. Three men in dishdasha robes and a boy. They were carrying MREs. As they came along, I said, “Marhaban,” and “Salaam aleikum.” They said some things back, delighted to be addressed in Arabic.
“Sahafi Ameriki,” I said by way of introduction. “American press.”
It was one of the few things I knew how to say, but they thought that was remarkable. They pointed around, asking if everyone was Ameriki.
“Na’am. Everyone’s Ameriki.”
They looked at Smitty, six-foot-six, black, and skinny with a big head made bigger by his Kevlar. One of them pointed at Smitty, and asked if that one was Ameriki, too.
“Na’am, even him. Ameriki.” Funky-ass Ameriki with size 14 clown boots, but definitely Ameriki. They discussed this among themselves, apparently not having previously contemplated the idea of a black American.
I had a look at their MREs to make sure no one had given them any pork, and then showed them how they worked, all the packets and the chemical heating pads, MREs being a somewhat complicated thing. The Iraqis tasted everything curiously. Pasty stuff, coming out of brown-colored foil packages, with little packets of gum and Tabasco and other things, it must have looked like Martian food to them. The boy tried the chili with macaroni, made a face and spat it out, which made the adults laugh. The adults ate it up.
In front of the M113 in line behind us, there was a black soldier on his knees on a prayer rug. He was a Muslim, taking advantage of the stop to catch up on his prayers. When they noticed him, the astonished Arabs looked at me and asked, were their eyes were not deceiving them, could this possibly be an Ameriki Musselman?
“Yep,” I said, “Musselman Ameriki.”
They discussed this unexpected phenomenon, then turned to me and through signs indicated there was a problem. It took me a minute, but I gathered that by their reckoning, he was praying in the wrong direction.
“Hmmm. Well, let’s go tell him.”
The soldier finished his prayers, and as he rolled up his prayer rug, he exchanged a couple of words of Arabic with the Hajjis, who were excited by this encounter. I explained the problem.
“These guys say you’re praying the wrong way. They say Mecca’s that way,” I told him, pointing about 20 degrees south of where he’d been facing. The soldier pulled out his compass and said, no, he had checked it, this was right. He tried to explain this to the Arabs, showing them the compass. But they weren’t having it and kept pointing the other way. The American stood his ground, pointing insistently his way.
It occured to me later that we had just moved about 200 miles west, and maybe the direction of Mecca had shifted a little. I don’t know what kind of navigating that 113 driver was doing. I thought about it for a minute, and then I said, “You know, these guys have been praying in that direction for about 1,000 years, and we’re leaving in five minutes. Maybe we should let them have it their way.”
One of the Arabs made a gesture at the column and asked if we were here to get Saddam.
“Na’am,” I told him. Saddam was all done. I drew my hand across my throat to make the point. That prompted a favorable reaction. In this part of Iraq, they were probably Shiites and in any case they’d had their fill of Saddam. One of them raised his dishdasha to show me a nasty scar on his leg.
“Saddam,” he said.
Then it was time to go. Smitty and I climbed back into the Bradley, clamped down the heavy rear hatch, and were gone. The Hajjis, if they stayed by the road, as I suspect they did, could have watched our column many miles long pass for a very long time.
Topics: Iraq
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 12:45 am on Thursday, March 22, 2007
3 Responses to “March 22, 2003”
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March 22nd, 2007 at 4:41 am
Bill’s Nibbles // Open Post — 2007.03.22
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March 22nd, 2007 at 4:49 am
March 22, 2003
March 22, 2003 Critter Crittenden We had been rolling for about 30 hours when we pulled up in the vicinity of As Samiwah. Someone passed the word that some Hajjis were coming down along the column. I looked around the
March 22nd, 2007 at 6:09 am
I love it! I know they’ve had compasses during part of the last thousand years. If they’d been praying in the wrong direction all this time, do the prayers count? I’ll have to go Ask the Imam.
It had to be scary. Whether you liked it or not, life was about to change in ways you couldn’t know, nor have control over. And it was doing so by means of a mass of destructive power that took hours to pass by a single point. Terrible unknowns for all, including Critter’s companions.