A Dad in Baghdad
(T)hou art the helper
of the fatherless.
—
Psalm 10:14(c)
This
empty-nester friend of ours is on an adventure in Iraq. He's a retired police
executive who's so meek and mild-mannered you'd never guess how many bad guys
he's nabbed. He decided to go over there last fall as a civilian law
enforcement advisor to the military. He's helping nab Iraqi bad guys now, as
well as serving his country and mentoring the much-younger military personnel
in harm's way. A kindly father figure, if you will.
It
has been inspiring, amusing and a little scary to receive his weekly emails
home:
n At 4:30 a.m. one recent Saturday,
the bad guys fired some mortars into his camp. "How rude of those people," he
wrote. "I had just got to sleep and it was cold outside (23 degrees), so I just
reached under my bed and pulled out my IBC (bullet-proof vest) and put it over
me and went back to sleep. I'm too old to go out into the cold to a shelter at
that time of the morning. LOL."
n The camel spider is the size of a
dinner plate, light brown, very hairy. "They eat birds and live in the eves of
houses, attics and outbuildings, and yes, I saw one."
n "These people do not use toilet paper. None. Zip. Nada. So if you
see Hajji (slang for Arabs) with a
little pot of water coming back from the desert, he's not coming back from
watering the plants and you don't shake his left hand. I will leave it to your
imagination as to the process. The desert is full of Hajji piles, as stuff does not deteriorate as it does in a wetter
climate."
Yes,
it's vastly different than life here in the 'burbs. But no, people are not
really that different on the other side of the world. That's what's great about
multicultural experiences.
He's in this group of civilian
consultants getting ready to go over to Iraq,
but his identity is being kept private
for his protection.
Here's
my favorite story so far:
He
met with a bigwig in Tikrit, and drank several shots of chai - very, very strong tea with lots of sugar. Afterwards, he visited
with the bigwig's bodyguards in halting Anglo-Arabic. He offered them gum,
Reese's peanut butter cups, and his tri-colored pocket laser light. They
offered him Iraqi chocolate (bitter) and cookies (good). They wanted his cheap
motel pens, and then they wanted his Oakleys - no way. Next came arm-wrestling.
My friend lost, which is PC over there, and picked up some useful new
vocabulary.
After
two hours of this, they invited him to eat with them, a great honor. The meal
was cut-up boiled chicken with spices, boiled rice and a red soup with pickled
cucumbers. You pick up a ball of rice in your hand, make an impression in it
with your thumb, scoop the chicken into this makeshift "bowl," and wash it down
the hatch with more chai. All with
the right hand. (Never the left. See above.)
Then
he met another official, age 28. They compared family pictures. The official
said his father was killed in Baghdad by the Shi'ites, just for being Sunni. He
said the American was about his father's age and that he laughed like him, too.
They
shared more chai and talked for about
an hour. Suddenly, the Iraqi man got up from his desk and walked over to a
cabinet. He got out an ishma, the
traditional headdress. He carefully folded it up, slowly walked over to the
American, and bowed.
He
said, "This belonged to my father, and I am honored to give it to
you."
My
friend was stunned.
The
two locals he was with later said they had never seen anything like it. He knew
better than to refuse the gift, which would have been highly offensive. He
thanked him profusely, and shared more chai.
That
night, my friend lay awake until past 3 a.m.
Was
he mulling over this gesture of thanks to a representative of the American
people?
Touched
by a fatherless fellow reaching out?
Amazed
by their connection, despite the differences in race, color, creed and national
origin?
Noooooo.
He
found out later: one little cup of chai
has more caffeine than a whole case of Pepsi.
Now,
THAT'S multicultural. †
----------------------
The people in Iraq,
Afghanistan and most of the rest of the Middle East are "Fatherless" in the
spiritual sense of the word, too. Let's pray for them to come to know the God
of the Bible, perhaps through friendly encounters like this one. Let's pray for
the success and protection of the courageous and kind Americans who are over
there right now, trying to help.
