Flying into Baghdad reminded me of the way an osprey hovers high over our bay in Maine, then drops suddenly to snatch its prey from the water. The two-prop plane circles at more than 5,000 feet, then turns on its wings and makes a tight, twisting plunge toward earth. Called a “corkscrew landing,” this maneuver seeks to avoid missiles launched by the insurgents who roam the airport perimeter. For a few minutes, the increased gravitational pull presses the brain against the top of the skull, and a book on one’s lap becomes almost too heavy to lift. With little time to spare, the pilot levels the plane and bounces down hard on the runway. Unexpected and disorienting, the corkscrew landing makes a fine metaphor for life in the Green Zone of occupied Iraq.
Working on a six-month contract with the Coalition Provisional Authority, my focus was its $3 billion “food pipeline” to ensure that 27 million Iraqis do not suffer major food shortages. During the orientation in Washington, D.C., officials assured me that humanitarian aid workers had not been shot. “Just keep your head down and stay safe,” they instructed.
Sweating under the weight of two Army duffels and a backpack, I waited at the Baghdad airport for transport. A bus with windows covered in black curtains pulled up, and the driver called out, “Toss your gear in the bin below and get on quick.” Initially embarrassed to board a bus while wearing the “battle rattle” of flak vest and helmet, I saw instead that I would fit right in.
The bus entered the Red Zone and began a dash toward safety. All at once there was congestion: soldiers on foot along the roadside, three lanes of traffic ballooning into five. “Could be an IED up ahead,” the driver called out. This was my first new word of many. Insurgents assembled IEDs—improvised explosive devices—by night and detonated them by day when Coalition forces passed. IEDs had killed three civilians and wounded two soldiers the previous day. Minutes later, we entered the Green Zone: the 4-square-mile haven bounded on one side by the Tigris River, but otherwise walled off from Baghdad by checkpoints, barricades and bunkers.
Lying in bed that night, my battle rattle within reach, I listened to my first evening’s concert. The Sounds of War started with the syncopated “bumf-bumf ... bumf” of incoming mortars, soon answered overhead by the timpani of attack helicopters. Variations on this theme repeated almost every night and gave me hours to contemplate how I’d come to be in Iraq. For 23 years, my wife, Maureen (O’Keefe, ’74), and our four children and I had zigzagged through foreign aid assignments, including time in Jordan, Oman, Sri Lanka and Peru. Ostensibly, I was in Baghdad because of an impressive résumé of humanitarian work. But an inner voice reminded me that the lure of adventure had played a major role.
After expropriating the presidential palace from Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard, the Coalition Provisional Authority converted it into an office unlike any I had ever experienced. Chandeliers illuminated floors and walls of Italian marble in shades of cream, salmon, charcoal and beige. Soldiers outnumbered civilians, and I got used to seeing an M-16 pushed under a chair in the chapel, or set against a table as the owner poured blue cheese dressing on her salad. The palace was a great equalizer. Man or woman, Iraqi or foreigner, American or European, in helmet or in hijab (headscarf): we all shared the same frustrations and fears.
I worked with Iraqis who had grown up imprisoned in their own country. I learned of executed brothers, of sons reunited with widowed mothers after 20 years of self-imposed exile. Saddam had worked his brutality in the same dining hall where the more than 500 Coalition Provisional Authority workers ate. Iraqi friends described how Saddam would invite dozens of guests to dine with him and then, halfway through the meal, point out whose plates had been poisoned for being “enemies of the revolution.”
In a country where telephones seldom worked, where travel a few miles to meet colleagues risked injury, the simplest conversations affirmed people’s dedication and bravery. When anyone donned battle rattle to attend a meeting in the Red Zone, we all knew how precarious the next two hours could be. A simple “Come back safely” was tinged with an apprehension and affection that beggared those earlier warnings about keeping your head down.
Late one evening, an explosion sent us scurrying to the palace basement. Seeking solitude from the noisy corridors, I ducked into a dimly lit room where low ceilings were laced with water pipes. Following a bend in the room, I stopped short, surprised by a wall covered with calligraphy. The flowing Arabic letters had been painted years before, perhaps while Saddam was scheming in the rooms above. The artist probably assumed his brushstrokes would never be seen except by an occasional janitor.
I began intoning the words I could decipher, when behind me I heard a lilting voice: “b’ism Allah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim—In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful.” I turned to face a lovely young woman in her hijab. Hers was one of dozens of faces I passed day after day, smiling as our lives intersected fleetingly. She worked across the hall as an interpreter in the Ministry of Sports and Youth. She helped me pronounce lines from the Koran, explaining that the wall’s verse spoke of peace and harmony.
A day to epitomize life in Baghdad occurred not long afterward. Talking to a consultant in a part of the palace far from my office, I spotted a small bowl of paper clips. “Could I take five of these? They’re the first paper clips I’ve seen in Baghdad.” She laughed and told me to help myself to 10. Triumphant with my bounty, I then headed to the cafeteria for lunch, where I heard people talking about an incident that morning. The minister for sports and youth had been waiting to enter the Green Zone, when gunmen appeared from the crowd, sprayed the minister’s car with bullets and fled in a waiting vehicle. Three people had been injured, and the minister’s interpreter had been killed on the spot. That day is forever etched in my mind: my delight in finding paper clips, and my sadness at hearing about the death of a gentle Iraqi woman who had read the Koran to me. B’ism Allah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim . . .
Inevitably, we endured other violent incidents. My Iraqi office mate was in the third vehicle behind a suicide car bomber. The palace hairdresser was shot in the face by assailants who killed her parents, probably as a reprisal for their daughter’s collaboration with the Coalition. A colleague mentioned that someone killed by an IED had worked down the hall with the Ministry of Oil. His description matched that of a man with whom I had exchanged smiles for several months, as we passed each other in the corridor. I had always intended to meet this man, whose face I found kind and compelling.
With only a few weeks left in my Baghdad assignment, one evening I was rushing through the corridor with a plastic plate of macaroni and cheese, a bottle of water sticking out of my pocket, and a cellular phone to my ear, listening to an Iraqi colleague’s ideas about how to get more rice distributed to remote villages. Rounding the corner near my office, I almost dropped my plate. Coming toward me was the man I thought had been killed. Not wanting to embarrass him or myself, I simply set down my plate and phone, stuck out my hand, and said, “Hi, I’m Stan. I think you must work down the hall, at the Ministry of Oil. I’ve wanted to meet you.” “I’m Joel,” he responded. “Shall we have lunch one day this week?” With our handshake, some of the despair in my heart recoiled into a successful corkscrew landing.
What they say about living in a war zone is true: colors are brighter, sounds are more glorious, life is more intense. Walking back to my trailer at night, the moon that shone through the palms was bigger and whiter than the one that shines in Maine. Thinking of home, I remembered how the osprey hovers and dives, then soars to new heights, ever vigilant of the life below.
STANLEY STALLA, '74, is retired from the United States Agency for International Development and is now a consultant. He was in Iraq as a food security adviser, until the handover of sovereignty at the end of June.
