new country, new way of life
...one speak in Kurdish due to the fact I was in Baghdad, Fallujah, and Najaf, where the Arabic language was predominant. The Arabic language sounded hilarious when I first heard it because I had never spoken to anyone whose native language was not English. With the help of interpreters who were able to speak many different dialects of the Arabic language, my fellow soldiers and I were able to gain the respect of a number of Iraqis who wanted Saddam out of power. Many of the Iraqi children knew a few words of English, and they always tried to converse with us, but the occasional “American” or “Marlboro” mixed within their broken Arabic made the conversations difficult and hard to understand. Most of the population in Iraq is Muslim. At the start of my second tour in 2004, I noticed a change. A small number had converted to Christianity. Even though I am not a very religious person, I was still happy for the people of Iraq who made a blatant effort to show that they were no longer under the oppression of Saddam’s regime. I discovered that many of the freed Iraqi people tried to be more western like ourselves. Since the Iraqi people are Muslim, they do things differently than we do here in the United States. Instead of going to a church or synagogue, Muslims go to a mosque. Mosques were a major problem for us because Iraqi militants would use the mosques as “safe houses”, and if we were to shoot remotely close to them, it would be much like blowing up the Vatican in Rome. Many times in firefights, we had to hold our fire, rather than begin a holy war with the people of Iraq. Iraq is a barren wasteland. The country is nothing more than rubble, a select few palm trees, and desert. Baghdad was in ruins after the “Shock and Awe” bombing campaign was over. It resembled the Bronx in New York during Ronald Regan’s term as president. The country strives off the trade it makes with the rest of the world in oil production. It is sad because I caught myself asking the question “If they have all of this oil, why is this country so poor?....