JimSpiri ”THE LAST LAP #13”

The latest journey called, "The Last Lap" - IRAQ, 2015

July 27, 2015 It is Monday morning in Baghdad. In less than 24-hours I should be on a plane headed out of Iraq as the last lap of this journey comes into view. For the past 36-hours I’ve been in an apartment provided for me by my host along with others who use this place as a kind of “transit hotel” while working in Baghdad. I was afforded all hospitality while preparing my final entries about this journey. I have spent these past two days catching up on my writings while at the same time thinking about all the things I forgot to do or just ran out of time to do. Sometimes, I feel like a failure. I had wanted to get into some specific combat areas yet it was not possible given the constraints of travel restrictions that would endanger my hosts. I just could not do it all this time. Who knows if there will ever be a “next time”. Perhaps I will leave that for someone else who is much younger than me to follow in some of the footsteps I have blazed a trail for. I feel a little like Brett Farve, the former American football player who just didn’t know when to retire. I’ve done what I could with the minimal resources I had available to me over the years. If one is going to “fly by the seat of his pants” then one has to accept that going it alone on one’s own dime does in fact have logistical restrictions. I remember nearly 30-years ago having this same feeling. It is like a fisherman who never catches that one fish he continually seeks. He’s left to talk about the one that got away. I am content with what I’ve done in the realm I was forced to operate in and among. Some would say “it’s not enough” while others would say, “kaafe” which translates to, “enough”. Like in Italian, they say, “basta”. I am forced to mentally agree that “enough is enough”. I believe that no matter what I do in the places I go, I will always feel that I could have done better. I am at peace however in my being that I did for the most part the best I could with what I had available to me at any given time. There is no memoir to write. There is no legacy to promote. There is no “Brian Williams type story” to fabricate. I was and remain an independent freelance war historian-photographer-type of journalist who pulled off the impossible without any big budget from a major news organization to fund my passion for having wanted to go to the “other side of the hill” just to see what there was to see. I just went. I saw. I left. And now, like the people of Dholoyia, I just move on. Period. Before I left Dholoyia, one of the last things I did was to visit a distribution of materials to those that became homeless that lost everything due to the battle for Dholoyia. My hosts’ youngest brother, Nektal, who is also an IP (Iraqi Policeman) came to get me and told me to come with him. Through some hand signs and very limited English words and my very limited Arabic words, I figured out to just go with him and see where we would end up. We drove into town at a quick clip, but I have come to know that all younger folks around the world do indeed have a heavy foot on the gas pedal. We stopped to pick up a friend named, Waleed, who speaks fairly sufficient English and volunteered to tag along for my benefit. We arrived at a place that looked like a large enclosed tennis court area that was fenced well over 20-feet high. There was a massive amount of people cramming to gain entrance inside where the items for distribution were held. By this time in the morning it was well over 100-degrees. The humidity has been on the rise this time of year so all of this took place in what felt like a roasting oven. There was basically chaos all over the place. They had a system in place that had the names of those who would receive the supplies. But the lists did not have everyone’s name on it of course. It became apparent that not all would receive what they had come for. Remember, they have nothing left, they are living in abandoned dwellings in the area but are not allowed to return to their own homes just across the river. That is controlled by the Popular Mobilization Forces, (Shia militias) and the squeeze play of sorts making life hell for those Sunnis who are at the bottom rung of the ladder suffer the most and are the ones once again before my eyes as I watch them through the viewfinder of my camera. The scene became even more chaotic when the gate would open and let someone in, such as me and the two guys with me. We got in because Nektal is one of the policemen and knows the crew working this event. It was Nektal’s day off but he forfeited it for my benefit so I could have the opportunity to see this. The late morning sun was now totally intense and the light was not what I like to shoot in. However, I changed the ISO setting and adjusted for the light intensity so as to try to get better image results. We spent about two hours there and by the time we left I can say I truly had enough of the place. It was not easy to be there. It was sad and ugly at the same time. It is what war leaves behind. And the heat intensified the scene the more so. I was glad I went, but I was also glad I could leave and return to my hosts abode. Nektal took us on a little drive out in the country and we stopped in to see one of the officers in charge of a check point and had good conversation with him. We drank cold water and talked for a while. He had been a media officer in the Army while stationed in Mosul but had been transferred back to his hometown area of Dholoyia. He was not able to do the job anymore that he was trained for and it bothered him. We left after about 45-minutes and returned home. This would be the last event I would report on in Dholoyia. Later that evening, as I have written about prior, I went to dinner and then returned home. To Baghdad On the evening I left Dholoyia it was arranged that we would go in a two car convoy leaving at about 8:00 pm. We would cross the way I came into Dholoyia over a wooden bridge that is used to get across the Tigris River because the main bridge had been blown up last year by ISiS and still remains closed. The concern among my hosts was the check points. Travel is restricted and limited. Especially for Sunnis. We passed through without too much of a hitch. There were times that it was questionable whether we would be granted passage or not, but the lead vehicle in our two vehicle convoy made sure we got through. The driver of that vehicle said all the right things. As we left the area we passed in close proximity to where I was stationed for two years at Camp Anaconda. I thought back to my time a decade prior and now was experiencing things on the other side of the looking glass, again. I was leaving this area, again. I seem to go and come from here and there if one looks back over the years. After a couple of hours, we ended up in Baghdad. It is not that far distance wise, but there are scores of checkpoints all along the way and the traffic volume becomes increasingly noticeable to where things just come to a halt. Eventually we got to the outskirts of Baghdad and before long the traffic was jam packed. Bumper to bumper. We headed for a place that is a main gathering site in the very heart of the central part of Baghdad. It was now late at night but the place was lit up and had wall to wall people everywhere. We found a particular parking spot and we all exited our vehicles. We were now in the center of the center of the big city, Iraqi style. We were at a place that was brimming with customers. It translates to, “Penguin” in English. The lights are bright and it seems like everyone in Iraq is here. This place serves the most phenomenal ice cream I have ever had. One of the folks with us is a good, good friend of the owner, who happens to have three of these locations in Baghdad. We were all given ice cream at no cost and frozen fruit drinks if we so desired. The moment I tasted the ice cream, I was hooked. The folks around were all doing the same thing I was doing. Enjoying their night out in the middle of summer in downtown Baghdad while eating the best ice cream I’ve ever seen or tasted. The crowd was a city crowd. I changed settings on my camera and was able to shoot under the available light and get a few clear shots of things. The people were all dressed in western attire which kind of took me back a bit, having been out in the country so to speak for the past couple of weeks. There were families all around with both husbands and wives and children all enjoying the night. I was amazed at how many people were taking cell phone photos of the night. I just could not get over how everyone kept doing this. It made me laugh. It was hard to imagine that just 25-miles away is Fallujah, a place I have been to where currently hell fire and brimstone is raining down upon the land at this very moment. It struck me as bizarre. Once again I just don’t get it. I know it is a disaster just down the road so to speak that all the world hears about daily. The region is consumed by the turmoil that is only a hop, skip and a jump away from where I am indulging myself with excellent ice cream here in central Baghdad. These kind of things weigh heavily on me and it makes me want to go there and see. But, that was not to be the case this journey. I’ve been there before. I can only imagine what this night has in store for the residents down the road a piece in Fallujah. I kept eating my ice cream. It was really good ! We stayed there a while until after midnight. Then we drove through all kinds of back streets for quite some time and ended up near the IZ (international zone) across the street from the MOF (Ministry of Foreign Affairs). I am now in the heart of the political world in Iraq, staying in an apartment that looks like any other place in the area that serves its’ purpose functionally well. I am surrounded by scores of apartment buildings that all are occupied. I am in a room that the folks I am among use as a “transit hotel” while they work their jobs in Baghdad. Many from Dholoyia have jobs here in Baghdad and they have made a way of surviving “Jubur style” in the big city. The nights at the apartment are alive with folks all carrying on discussions about things going on in Iraq nationwide while sipping chi and smoking cigarettes. I have been brought into their fold and have become a part of their daily lives which includes Baghdad from afar. It is like going on the road to work and coming home at the end of the work week in the US. This is what a lot of people, especially those with good education, do in Iraq. Yet I still kept thinking about the war the whole world hears about at the moment just a little “over the hill and not that far away”! So that brings me to right now, finally. I’ve done the journey and yet there is still a ways to go before I get home. Anything can happen. But, it looks like I’m on my way home now. At least that is the plan in the next 18-hours. I remember coming to Baghdad with my wife in 2005 as honored guests of the United States Marine Corps for a birthday celebration that November 10th. We both were working at Camp Anaconda and a Marine public affairs officer took note of the work my wife was doing and contacted me eventually. He had heard about our story and that we had lost a son who was a Marine. It took all kinds of string pulling to get our employers at the time, KBR, to agree to let the Marines fly us to the palace in Baghdad as honored guests. Somehow, we pulled it off. So as I look over the brown hazy sky today in Baghdad, Iraq I think back to a time when my wife and I visited via helicopter as guests of the USMC during a time when war was raging all around us. It was a lot of yesterdays ago. I am thankful we got to do that. Over a decade later, I am once again in Baghdad. At this very moment, there are “friends” of mine who are from New Mexico in helicopters somewhere nearby where I am. Before I left home on this journey I inquired with those “above my pay grade” as to the possibility of “hooking up” with these “friends” of mine. I even inquired as to the possibility of tagging along with the group and doing what I do for the audience back home. A decade later, after having been flown from Camp Anaconda to Baghdad via helicopter ten years earlier at the behest of the USMC, this time I was shown the door by an Air Force General from New Mexico and told, “You’re on your own Mr. Spiri. We are not going to help you on your journey”. That is the same thing Air Force generals in New Mexico told me fourteen years earlier when they refused treatment for my son Jesse, the Marine whose life was fading before my very eyes. I have a lot of experience in “going it alone” compliments of people “way above my pay grade”. The funny thing is I pay these guys to treat me and my family like this. Recently a man in Utah who is aware of things I’ve done in my life asked me this question: “Jim, if they (the folks that closed doors on me) had made it easier for you, do you think you would have had such profound experiences in the journeys you’ve gone on”? That question is the one thing I ponder all the time as I come to the end of this journey. I have suffered a lot in life and complained most of the time through the hard times. Yet as I discovered among the people of Dholoyia who have suffered more than most all I’ve ever met, and have suffered more than me, I can honestly answer my friend’s question from Utah now. I say, “Maybe” . The truth be known, I have been blessed by my Lord in all things and in all circumstances, no matter what obstacles were placed in my path. I always had a thought that would make things logistically easier for me to accomplish the vision I have as I go here and there to do this or that. In the end, I always end up re-learning what “keeping the faith” really means. This I learned from my son Jesse. “Sempre Fi” Jim Spiri, July 2015, Iraq