Overnight Lows
or
In the Beginning the Embed Said – An Historical Fiction
The war began and we sat in bed watching the earnest reporter with Canadian accent on “out” and “about” tell us how troops bulking on the border in some faraway land. These were exciting times to be alive. That the human being could live in peace and that there was no need for a war writer were notions long gone by. And I am thankful for that. Imagine, really, if I had to find honest work, instead of planting myself in the middle of the action, risking my life, and getting the story. On the home front today, millions watched the television and millions more tuned in to the president’s speech and he was all the happier for it. I watched a film by Polanski about a Polish Jew who survived World War II and made it through to play the piano again. He lost his entire family. His sister was a beautiful woman. I watched another film by Fellini about the making of the making of a film. A film of mirrors. And then I see for no reason a soldier shoot a beautiful woman whom he’d chosen indiscriminately from a line-up. What excitement! What furious wartime fun!
Then, when the female basketball player from Virginia who protested the war by turning her back to the American flag during the National Anthem was categorically shunned by members of the left and right, when the Democrats “rallied around the flag and the president,” when it became clear there was no dissenting voice with any set in the entire country (save a few long-hairs from the Pacific Northwest who climbed down from their trees in order to engage civil disobedience), I decided to outline my next novel, engagingly titled The Unpatriot. My, yes, planting myself in the middle of the action is it. Coming up with the story for you, of wartime, of disobedience, a bad-bad boy. What fun it is to sing a sleighing song tonight, a member of a jingoistic, nationalistic, chauvinistic society.
There has never been a better time to get the story, never a grander moment to be a war correspondent. Posh the boring times under Clinton, times of prosperity and peace where a writer could only pen something about a bank robber who meets the love of her life. No, we have arrived upon the times of our lives. Thanks to an administration on crack and speed. “Georgie, the coke makes you mean!” proclaimed a protest banner in San Francisco, flown by some friendly gay boys on a pre-war rampage. We wonder how the protests will go now: that the protesters, all camps, divided about how to approach our feelings, and the feelings of middle America, now that our boys and girls are in the desert, engaged, fighting, to battle. No, we’d better not shout too loudly. Better to stand in line. We of the resistance. Do not turn your back on the flag not in this country.
A gun to the back of the head. A boom a bam thank you ma’am. Oh what fun it is, now that peacetime repudiated, forsaken, vanished. Now I’m famished. Sir, do you have any bread for a poor beggar? Going to be cold tonight. Weatherman Said. Weatherman Said on the TV that is gone be cold tonight. And there’s a sandstorm over our boys and girls in the desert. God help them. We have amassed. Some columnist wrote about “The Iliad” and wet himself. Fellini wet himself. Polanski wet himself. I’m wetting myself presently: a little on your shoe. Watch yourself. Yes, The Unpatriot in a theater near you.
()()()
I picked up Silby no that is incorrect. Silby picked me up during my lunch hour. My boss gone and I reading the International Herald Tribune online and watching the television news. Ted Koppel on the front lines. He learned how to use a gas mask today. How to prepare for a chemical attack. The press to have unprecedented access for this war. Until the taps are turned off, in case anything goes drastically wrong, in case the folks in Basra do not in fact cheer the arrival of the Americans. Ted Koppel was in ‘Nam. Real men went to ‘Nam. I covered ‘Nam with Hunter S. Thompson. A fun time in Saigon before it fell. I swam out, to safety, in the nick of time. One print reporter was asked whether he was afraid. He answered, “Well, a little anxious. But, you know, I am surrounded by an army. Ha ha, literally. The most powerful army in the world.”
It must feel nice to have a sense of great protection. Unlike the vulnerable citizens of the world. And there it is, on the desk in front of me as I awaited Silby’s arrival: the advertisement in the New York Times that offered for $568.00 a complete survival kit: gas mask, hatchet, helmet, food rations, water supply, canteen, sealant, duct tape, plastic sheets for the windows and doors for that hermetically sealed special room, or “popcorn room” the Israeli schoolteachers call it – a specially equipped room for children during a bio-attack, one with fruit drinks and popcorn and coloring books. The ad asked, “Are YOU prepared?” Don’t be left behind. Gazed upon the gas mask and thought, “Well, you know.” It could happen. I’d better buy one. So I called the eight-hundred number and the survival kit should be here UPS by Friday afternoon. I’m excited. I’m excited for my own personal safety. But more so because I am going to get the story, a war story, the front lines of this global fight.
Prime minister Tony Blair of Britain survived the mutiny. Parliament gave him support for Britain’s role in the war. He breathed a sigh of relief. The world ascramble. Imagine, by the moves you make and your choices the entire world sets to scurrying about. What incredible power! What awesome responsibility. Wish I were the president. Of the most powerful country in the world.
Your war correspondent has let you down. I am sorry. First of all, in an effort to coordinate my timing with Donald Rumsfeld, who arrives at the office by 6:30 A.M. Eastern Standard to begin his war pow wow, I set the alarm for 3:30 in the morning Pacific. Figured it was my duty – to you and to my country – to stay on top of this story, especially given that many of my colleagues breathe on aircraft carriers and standing with the 3rd Infantry Division on the Kuwait-Iraq border. When the alarm went off I said, “Fuck that” and slapped the thing down and slept until 9:30, when the first game of the NCAA tournament scheduled to begin. Game between California and North Carolina State.
Eagerly grabbed the remote, with which I’d been sleeping, and flipped on the tube. Channel 5 CBS Bay Area. Like a poor sap war correspondent, we do not have cable. Damn! Now, my coverage limited to the broadcast networks. We do what we must during these times of war. Umm Qasr a dangerous place to be right now, if you’re in the Iraqi military. There’s a big red circle around you. Satellite images grab close-ups. We see the presidential palace. Weapons of mass distraction. Turned on the tube for the first game of the Road to the Final Four – every year since four I have absorbed; and which gives me incredible thrills to watch all twelve hours of coverage on the first Thursday and Friday of the tournament, game after game after game – and there sulked Dan Rather, mumbling his tortured way through coverage of the war.
The ground invasion has begun. Oh, my no it hasn’t. Well, we’ll clear that up for you soon. He mentioned that if any slacker war correspondents desired to watch the basketball tournament, we would have to turn to ESPN. And don’t have cable. Damn! I called a friend to get an update of the score and he apologized, too. He’d taken a day off work so that he could watch the games. The brackets printed and picked and he’d joined the office pool and all possible Bracket Sweepstakes. He’s picking Kentucky to go all the way. However, he did not know the score of any game because he was watching the war. I go, “Dude, what’s the score of the game?” And he, “Man, I don’t know, the 3rd Infantry Division has just entered Iraq. But their movement slow. They have to breech the sand berms and sweep for mines. Slow going, you understand. And they aren’t sure whether the bloke who spoke earlier was Saddam himself. He may have been a double. Rumsfeld wants to wait before he begins the full assault until his status is confirmed.”
“Okay, Tim, well, thanks for that report. Please, stay near a phone in case I have to get back to you.”
“Okay. May I suggest you keep a close eye on the ticker. The clues contained in the ticker.”
“Okay, Tim, thanks for your report.” That, folks, was Tim Further, reporting live from his living room in Berkeley, where the game of war has overtaken the game of basketball. At least for these early rounds. As he is strategically positioned in front of his television with satellite capabilities, we will employ his services from our control room in Oakland. Thank you, for now.
A digitized bulldozer taking care of a sand berm again. There file footage of the Apache attack helicopters in action. A woman on the USS Abraham Lincoln, wearing a headset, shouted into the microphone, “The situation on board is very tense right now! If you could just feel the adrenaline! Morale is very high! After eight months at sea, these kids are ready for the mission to begin. There was a sigh of relief after the president’s speech.”
Smoke billowing over Baghdad. No news yet about how the Tigris River feels about that development.
Yesterday, before the real action began and commercial underwriting halted – though product placements did not – the stations broke to commercial. Watched Israelis trying on gas masks and then the first advert out of the block a pharmaceutical that took care of your heart problems and your weight problems all in one. The disclaimer voice said, in clear language, in addition to a long quick-voiced run of other things, “. . . may cause inexplicable bleeding in some.”
Anti-war protesters in San Francisco effectively shut down the Embarcadero. One hundred protesters have been arrested. Smoke seen in Baghdad near the west bank of the Tigris. One unit of the phalanx will march up the Mesopotamian Valley. Silby’s mother flying to Phoenix this weekend. The largest nuclear power plant in America situated just outside Phoenix. It produces enough energy to power four million homes. The nuclear place has received a direct, immediate threat. The National Guard deployed. Tom Ridge, Secretary of Homeland Security, said that all effective measures were being taken in order to contain the threat.
We, as a nation, are at code orange. This may cause inexplicable bleeding. Watch yourself. If you live in a major metropolitan American area, pray. On your knees and pray. George Bush either a new Hitler or he is not. Too early to tell. Paul Krugman of the New York Times worries in his column that this is merely the beginning; that after Iraq we will take care of Iran and then Syria and then North Korea, a nuclear power. Wrote a novel titled New Clear Power. Removed it from the closet, dusting it off. Oakland school children storm the Fruitvale BART station and shut it down. The presidential palaces in Baghdad have been hit. U.S. ground forces wearing gas masks. Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, said that if Iraq uses chemical or biological weapons “the public opinion of the entire world will turn against him.” Ari Fleischer, in a press conference, said that the “coalition of the willing” is building to a point greater than the First Gulf War. Turkey’s parliament just allowed the Americans to use their airspace. The Defense Department has not confirmed that the helicopter the Iraqis claim to have shot down was indeed shot down. A military spokesman said that it had to employ a “hard landing.” The experts of the world using voice analysis to determine whether in fact the bloke speaking as Saddam Hussein, after the first wave of attacks, was indeed Saddam Hussein. Please, for the purposes of this exercise, pronounce the man’s name as Sad-Amm.
Senator Joseph Biden, Democrat from Delaware, presently addressing us. He would like to point out that there is bipartisan support for the president. At this point, he said and I’m paraphrasing, there is no room for protesting this war. Once begun we have to rally around the president. An opinion piece in the New York Times on Wednesday, about the Air Force, called “Rally Around the Rapist.” Joseph Biden said, when Peter Jennings asked him what people who are against the war are supposed to do, people who traditionally look to Democrats for this kind of thing, for a “port in the storm.” Joseph Biden said, “Those people should not look at me. And they should not look at the Democrats. We are at war.” And therefore if you feel like expressing your protest, expressing your frustrations, then you may, if you like, look to me. I’ll be your port in the storm. We’ll start by saying, “Fuck the flag and fuck the president.” How did that feel? Felt great. Now that we’re un-American, let it be known that Rumsfeld will be after us. He’ll probably torture us.
Peter Jennings – oh, there’s a weapons expert! – chats with a fellow about stuff.
The nuclear plant near Phoenix in real trouble. It could go any day.
Iraqi port city reportedly falls to alliance forces. Is this Basra? Has it happened? A few soldiers have defected already. They ran across the border into the arms of the Americans. A patriot missile intercepted. And what of the Stanford game? Who knows? Who truly knows, during these trying times. I’ll check the web.
And just so you know, though your war correspondent does not have cable – perhaps a tragic occurrence – but does have three newspapers, the broadcast networks, and DSL. The TV on as I sit here in bed reporting, and the newspapers, all three of them, spread out on the bed, reading the editorials, reading the maps and diagrams, and, best of all, I’ve got a Mac doing its thing continually streaming, bringing me BBC and Reuters and global newspapers’ coverage. A constant, fluid motion, a barrage, a set of fireworks, an excitement. In short, want you to know that I am doing my job, for you.
President Bush spoke to the country a little while ago. Stooped over; but honestly, he looked like he was having fun. He did address domestic issues, like education, the elderly, and literacy. Yes, he did. And he reiterated that the coalition of the willing was growing every hour.
In 1987 wrote a novel called The Coalition of the Willing. But it was about sex and drugs and the sporadic over-consumption of alcohol and orgies.
We have arrived then, as men next door prepare a home for external painting – hammering and scraping and scaffolding – on what has to be called the second day of war. Men playing basketball in arenas around the country. And watch this war, engage in protests to clog city streets, sure; be thrown dramatically into paddy wagons – still call them that – shout and scream, pray and hope, and remember, vigilance, as these trying times may cause inexplicable bleeding.
“A-Day” has begun. I’m feeling a general sense of shock and awe. I can tell you from my position that the major bombing campaign has begun. “Boots on the ground in the north, boots on the ground in the south,” and the TV correspondents in their studios getting a little excited with their military lingo. 2,000 pound bunker penetrating bombs dropping. Sad-am appears to be alive. Silby has announced this morning, before she went off to work, that she would like to name our first born son Uday. Hammurabi and Ebekeneezer are two of the Republican Guard units. The Pentagon about to address the nation from the briefing room at 1:30 Eastern. Time sensitive information. There a lot of speculation. Shock and Awe underway.
The Iraqi government has shut down the CNN operation a couple of hours ago. Some Marine wives interviewed from their bases this morning. They offered cupcakes to children, wearing their Marine T-shirts, red and yellow, and one of them broke into weeping. Before the Shock and Awe campaign began the networks a tad disappointing this morning at 8:30 Pacific, when I turned on the tube. They had regular programming in effect, Regis doing his thing, and commercials. The selling continued. Is the war over? I wondered. The men painting next door. My beautiful healthy girl went off to her job.
In San Francisco yesterday there were over 1,400 arrests. Two Marines were killed in combat in the south. The British expeditionary forces took some peninsula in the south. They have secured oil fields and the port on the Persian Gulf. Some of the Tomahawk missiles fired from ships and submarines in the Red Sea. Investigate an atlas: see how far that missile has to travel, and over which countries. Al-Jazeera getting the best shots. A cruise missile costs “a million dollars a pop.” Kentucky playing their game this morning before the “A-Day” bombing began. CBS slow to show the first massive barrage. FOX let the tape run without commentators in their furvorious yammer and the sound of the explosions astounding. We’ve all seen the World War II documentaries.
From his position, every time your war correspondent checks the screen there are flashes and bangs, explosions. In the night darkness fires burning. And, to wax step-by-step with some of the commentators, “there is tracer fire and anti-aircraft fire in the night sky over Baghdad.”
France said they will veto any American or British Administration to run Iraq after the war.
Several fires visible across the city. One reporter began screaming. And, twice, said, “let me just catch my breath here.”
B-1 bombers took off from Britain this morning. The anti-aircraft fire diminished somewhat. Perhaps taken out. “Darling,” I said from my position in the bathtub last night, “how come you never let me be in a Marine expeditionary unit?”
“Let us now run a tape of the sights and sounds of horror,” Dan Rather said from his position at the CBS desk in New York. Kentucky taking care of Manhattan just now, one assumes, in the background, somewhere back there. Poor Greg Gumble, doesn’t get the chance to show his stuff.
Wait, here comes Rummy. Let me get out my notebook and pen. Shh. I’m in a coat and tie. He started by mentioning the dead Marines. “Our hearts go out to their families.” We are here, just so you know, to liberate the Iraqi people. The general will provide some details about the progress of the operation.
Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The local television networks continuously excited about the protests in the city. Many streets were shut down, some minor violence, some idiots had blunt weapons in their backpacks, stun guns were found, and there were over a thousand arrests. But, what was more interesting was the lead pieces to the weather reports. The meteorologists, who ordinarily must cover the pacific weather of California, were excitedly and rather self-importantly showing us satellite images of Iraq, and the current weather over Iraq and the extended forecast. “A system moving over Jordan should. . .” says a fellow ordinarily dealing with fog movement around the bay. “A dust storm approaching from the west.”
Given that I am not an embedded journalist – they removed my press credentials – it is difficult to bring you the story from the 3rd Infantry division. There are some embedded journalists with the Special Forces and the Navy Seals. Those stories, said the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will be brought to you soon, when we have obtained our objective.
Near Nasiriya, on the Euphrates River, there exists a bridge. The 3rd Infantry Division is attempting to take the bridge. There is some resistance. Two Marines have died in the South. Basra is about to fall. Does it fall? They want to capture the bridge and not destroy it. Ted Koppel reporting. He is speaking with the commanding general. “We should be able to seize the bridge in the next few hours,” said the general. They are facing the Iraqi Ninth Division. There is hope that they will surrender. But they have not yet done so.
Collateral damage is one of the wonderful phrases of our modern times. As is the phrase ‘embedded journalists.’
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is a mean son-of-a bitch. I’d hate to be on his bad side. I had a nightmare last night that Rummy had read some of my earlier novels and decided that I was a threat to our civilization. He had me arrested and transferred to a cell in the nation’s capitol, where he could visit me every day. I was tied to a chair. He would arrive with some members of his staff and slap me around. He yelled, “What are you, anti-establishment?” Slap, slap. “No sir! No sir!” He would pace, in his fine suit, and then return to me, slap slap, “Well, are you a commie?” No sir, no sir! “You realize, son, that we’re going to have to keep you locked up for the rest of your life? You cannot be writing this crap, this horseshit! Besides, we know that you visit porno sites on the internet! We know of your filthy habits. We know that you grew a marijuana plant in 1995! We have you, boy!” And then Rummy would slap me again with the back of his hand and march out of the small room with his aides and staff members. They would slam the door and not return for many hours. And I would sit there and wonder, and wonder.
They are attempting to beat it out of your war correspondent, my friends. They are pushing hard and I am feeling the pressure.
Your correspondent took two hours out of his wartime schedule to watch Warren Beaty in Shampoo. I’d never seen the picture before; I’ve already begun growing out my hair. It was difficult to point the remote to the TV and leave the coverage of the war. Thinking of you, my audience, of course. However, I located effectively the strength and watched a movie. I couldn’t wait, however, to get back to my coverage of the war.
Ted Koppel, lover of history, is looking forward to passing by the birthplace of Abraham. I think we’ll name our first born Abraham. The name Abraham exists in every culture of the world.
In a small town about an hour south of Basra, near the Kuwaiti border, there were shots of locals and Marines in full combat gear tearing down massive billboards of Saddam. There goes his smiling mug. A man in a turban jumped up and down and he pounded Saddam’s face with a brick.
Another local weatherman, after the briefing from the Pentagon, pointed at a map of the Middle East and spoke of a front moving in from the north. This was the first time in his life that he’d ever pointed with a stick to Iraq.
1,000 sorties have gone out. That is a lot of sorties. Toby Dodge is speaking right now. He wrote Iraq Under Sanctions. All of my colleagues are out there, in the country, covering the war.
From my commanding position here at Intelligence Central, or I.C., the war continues. The rockets did glare, and blare, and tracer fire streaks across the nighttime sky over Baghdad.
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A military official said “The electricity is still on in Baghdad because we want it to be on.” Then he walked out of the room. They are blowing out “instruments of regime control.” They are hoping that a coup will be staged. Saddam’s eldest son was known to have been playing Nintendo during the beginning of the “A-Day” campaign.
I need to go on a campaign. I need to attack a leadership compound.
On Telemundo, beautiful broadcasting from estudio on the left side of the screen and “Bagdad” without the ‘h’ on the right with the title of the whole broadcast – as all TV stations do these days, network or cable, offering catchphrase titles to their coverage – called OBJECTIVO SADDAM.
On NBC Tiger Woods is lining up for a putt. It is Saturday morning. The Fighting Irish playing the Illini on the Road to the Final Four on CBS. ABC showing some programming under the heading ‘ABC Kids.’ Fox is showing Japanamation. Meanwhile, there have been more helicopter crashes and more Marines dying in small battles on the move toward Basra. Dr. Phil yells on Channel Four in San Francisco, the local network that lost the NBC feed two years ago. And “I’m Taking Your Man” on Jerry Springer. Bo bo bo bo!
Your war correspondent woke this morning and Silby said, “I’m going to engage sye opps on you today.”
“What?”
“Sye Opps.”
“What the hell is that?”
“You know, Psy Opps. Psychological Operations.”
“Oh, oh yes. I’m sorry. It’s early. How’s the war going?”
“I don’t know. The broadcast networks are showing programming right now. I can’t tell what is going on in Iraq.”
Damn, and to you I must apologize for not knowing what psy opps were. Silby is ahead of the game. She used the term because she wants me to help her move the furniture around in the living room. Before one thirty, she says, because she wants to attend the protest this afternoon in the city across the water. “It’s going to be massive,” she said. Move the furniture around in the living room? A task for a war correspondent? When Richard Engle, on his balcony in Baghdad, is going without sleep for 24 hours at a time? “You have no choice,” she says. “Besides, I’m dropping propaganda leaflets all over your ass.” And then she left the war room for the kitchen.
In the war room I pondered being cut off from the war. Perhaps I should watch the cartoon, a thought, in order to get in touch with the mood of the country. I have a ribbon sewn on to my T-shirt.
The propaganda on television has been extraordinary. Like when Barbara Walters interviewed a group of Iraqi women living in exile who said repeatedly that they couldn’t wait for Iraq to be liberated. Over and over again these women, a few with scarves on their heads, pumped up the American cause. And the shots in southern Iraq of the liberators after they secured their town? Over and over again, eleven dudes shown cheering the Marines. Eleven dudes in a small clutch and the one guy with the brick on Saddam’s postered head. Eleven dudes in sandals and robes offering a little ebullience for the occasion. Shi’ites in the south who hate Saddam, the reporter said again and again, “welcomed the liberators.” Eleven dudes like they sometimes show of Palestinians when something goes bad for America.
Don’t tell Rummy that I said there was propaganda on the tube, our tube, last night. I’d rather watch the cartoons.
Even Peter Jennings was condescending to the cause of the two protest organizers he interviewed last evening. Asking them silly, sophomoric questions, stammering, not quite knowing what to do with these young people who stood against the war. What’s it called? Oh, yes, patronizing.
Another dream last night: I was in a suit and tie being interviewed by Peter Jennings and then I was rushed over to the News Hour with Jim Lehrer. I was incredibly eloquent. “Where have you been all this time?” Peter asked me, overcome by my forceful and lucid employment of words and phrases. “Well, after all Peter, this is what I do.”
“So tell me, why are you against the war? Why did Rumsfeld hold a burning of your books?”
“He claimed that I was un-American.”
“Are you un-American?”
“Not at all, Peter. Not at all.”
“But you’re against the war.”
“Absolutely. Since when is it un-American to be against a war? Or holding contrarian positions to any given administration? The problem with this engagement, you understand, is that war should be used as a last and final resort. Jimmy Carter, Nobel Peace Prize winner, has taught me that much. A last resort, Peter. You see, there were still options, the pressure was on the Iraqi regime, weapons inspections were working, and containment –that old Cold War policy relic – was in fact working. This is not a protest against the troops. This is not a stance against the American flag. It is an exhibition of anger and a certain constructive loathing against this bullying, arrogant unilateralist approach that the Bush administration is unfortunately engaging. And, I must ask you Peter, why is it so bad to heed the desires and opinions of the majority of the United Nations and the Security Council? Why can’t we act like we expect others to when we are against their policies? If the Security Council shuts us down we should accept defeat for the betterment of global relations. You see, the world, our allies, didn’t want us to do enact this invasion. And we did it anyway. Here is the crux of our opposition. Our voices must be heard. And since when is it a bad thing when opposition voices desire an efficacious hearing? Please, are we all supposed to quiet ourselves now, wrap ourselves in the American flag and play hush-hush? I do not think so. The Bush administration has categorically made this world a scarier place. And overnight. Furthermore, it is the antagonistic relationship with the rest of the world that we protest. It is the failure to support the Kyoto agreements on global warming. It is our decadent and wastrel relationship with the environment. It is Clean Water and Clean Air. It is the International Court and our refusal to play by its rules and when we expect others to abide by its jurisdiction. It is our self-removal from the anti-ballistic treaties, our tenuous ‘we’ll go it alone’ approach. It is this whole Bush doctrine thing. No, let me just say this, Peter, before you move on: after Iraq what is next. Why, even Paul Krugman and Nicholas Kristoff in the vaunted New York Times have voiced their concerns of the Bush doctrine and its manifestation in the post-Iraq construct. After Iraq is it Iran? Then Syria? Then North Korea? Are we going to roll across the world setting up mini-American democracies? And only allowing American companies to bid on rebuilding contracts? Is that how it is, Peter? Here is why the people are protesting, Peter. And honestly, I am surprised that you exhibit a sense of surprise. You, a Canadian and UN advocate and diplomacy advocate should know better.”
Peter thanked me for my time and moved back to an embedded reporter with the 107th Airborne in Italy who might be employed to deal with northern Iraq.
I am your war correspondent. I may not have made it to Embedded Reporter status. But perhaps my first born will make it, following in my footsteps but taking it farther.
Oh! Tiger just made the green.
And there is a gentleman cooking little balls and rolling them in flour in public television.
Dammit: I apologize as your war correspondent for not having cable.
Yesterday, in order to take a breather and get some exercise, a break from the intensity of covering this war, I strolled along the avenue down to its bitter end at the cemetery, that place where many are buried and many are burned. The veterans all have flags fluttering next to their graves during this time of crisis. I walked to the top of a hill where there is an overlook. One simple deep breath and a gaze upon the entire bay. – I want to say to that jumping Illini cheerleader after her boy just hit a 3 to give it up, you’re not going to win down by eight with two oh four left in the game. – On the return walk up the avenue to our home and to the war room, curious about what this little break would mean for my coverage of the war, worried that my coverage would suffer, I saw a large passenger bus, AC Transit, nail a small Japanese car driven by a small Japanese woman. She was, in reporting language, “visibly shaken.” She had stopped her car on the corner of 51st and Piedmont, where there are four mailboxes, pulled tight to the curb, and was about to get out of her car and drop some mail into the box. The large bus was attempting a normal right turn and instead took the entire car. Nearly drove over it. As folks broke out the cellphones in order to call the authorities I decided, due to the fortuitous location of the accident, to step into the Video Room and I rented three videos. Two foreign and one classic Billy Wilder film. – After I see a Marine or Army advertisement on the tele I want to join. – When I exited the Video Room with my cache the cops were there taking statements, another bus arrived to transfer the passengers, and the Japanese woman had stopped crying. Her car was crushed. The bus could be used tomorrow.
A coffee from the shop was then in order. I strolled the remainder of the avenue back toward the war room. A young woman – you may call her a girl if you like – wearing a corduroy jacket and a pair of overalls ran by me, wearing sandals. She was running down the sidewalk, nearly full-speed, with a cellphone glued to one ear. She bore a panicked expression on her face. As in the movies when a person is running down a crowded sidewalk our through the lobby of a department store, she was bumping into bystanders, jamming into the shoulders of women, knocking into men, jumping between two people running in a couplet. I stopped to watch her retreating form, dodging and weaving was she. Hmm, a thought, during a time of war and crisis the natives are restless. Clouds were moving in. I could already see the local meteorologists talking about overnite lows. The fog coming in from the peninsula to Monterey Bay. Another windstorm coming out of Jordan and heading toward our troops. Highs in Iraq during the day at 80 (and inside the chemical warfare bodysuits 110, according to Ted Koppel) and lows at night 48-54.
My wondering and perplexion as to why the young woman was bolting down the sidewalk with a cellphone jammed to her ear did not last long. A car was pulled disjointedly up to a curb in front of the coffeeshop, across the street, in a red zone and at a crosswalk. The car’s lights were flashing. A woman ran to her car that was in front of the pulled-over car and moved it quickly. People began to mill. Smoke billowed from the hood, both into the air and into the interior. The smoke was black, pouring, thick, toxic. Sparks were falling red and hot to the blacktop below the engine. More people collected on the sidewalks, thickening as the smoke thickened. As expected, a whoosh was heard and flames began to lick the windshield, curling up from under the hood, underneath the car, an automobile on fire. I thought it possible – a reflection of these trying times – that the scene was one of a car bomb gone awry, or a car bomb about to detonate. I looked about for something behind which to hide. I ducked into the coffee shop, in fact desiring to be serviced. The employees, however, were congregating at the window, running around, one calling the police, one running to the back for a fire extinguisher. Finally a friend spotted me, in her apron, and asked, “the usual?” Yes please. She went behind the counter and filled my large paper cup to go with the usual. She decided, given the excitement, not to charge me. I poured cream and low-fat milk into the cup and located a plastic lid. The fire grew in strength and vigor. The kid located a fire extinguisher and ran from the shop across the street. He sprayed foam on the car, covering the front end in spray. The fire died down, temporarily, and there was applause. The actions from the heroic employee, however, merely exacerbated the flames and they came back tenfold, the energy of a genuine conflagration. Next, the cops who are often found refilling their coffee mugs up the street at the other coffee shop arrived, on foot, still holding their mugs. They were on the phone. One officer pulled up in a cruiser. Another police car blocked the intersection. The thicket of people grew, all the while with a questioning murmur. I avoided eye contact with anyone so as to not be called on to answer their questions. How did it start? and What is going on? Whose car is it? The officers sealed off the block, on foot and with their squad cars. Sirens were heard in the distance. I wondered what Baghdad sounded like right now. Or earlier, during the Shock and Awe campaign. I have a friend from Shockinawe, Michigan. Silby went to Camp Shockinawe in northern Minnesota every summer.
An officer approached the vehicle with a much larger fire extinguisher. His spray did nothing put piss off the flames. The car was now doomed. People worried about an explosion. People offered sagacious sayings and platitudinous witticisms. I shied away from eye contact, after the story merely. I told a cop about the running woman in the corduroy jacket with the sandy blonde hair and the manic look. A fire truck arrived. The men jumped out. They extended a thick hose. The hose filled with water. One brave fellow – bravery in evidence during this time of conflict; a Marine of a fireman – stooped in below the flames, inside the car at the driver’s side, and attempted to pop the hood. He was wiggling his hand and couldn’t seem to get the job done. Another fireman arrived at the hood with a large crowbar. He began prying it open. He went around all sides, a man with a large can opener. They wrenched open the hood and a third fireman in his thick long coat and rubberized boots began spraying water from his massive hose. In a matter of minutes the fire was out. People began to dissipate. The girl in the corduroy jacket arrived with two of her friends. She had been crying. She was now composed. A toxic, acridity was in the air. One man walked by with his coat covering his face. Three Asians with face masks. The cops began interviewing the young woman, writing things down. The girl and her friends started removing personal belongings from the car. She had two duffel bags and a well-stuffed backpack. Some books. The appearance of the bags made me think that she was on a visit or had been visiting. The two friends from up the street. The girl piled all of her things on the sidewalk. I imagined Kurds on tractors pulling their personal belongings and two families in a farm trailer. I wondered whether George Bush had ever put out a fire, with a hose or with sand or with a fire extinguisher. I know that Donald Rumsfeld has. He’s probably pissed upon a forest fire and shut it down to smoking embers and soiled sod.
But don’t tell him I said that.
I walked across the street to get closer to the emotional girl and her gear and her car and her two friends and the cops. Her belongings in a pile on the sidewalk and her car a charred mess, a stained frame, firemen still peering under the hood. Police officers removed their vehicles from the intersections and traffic began to flow along its ordinary patterns once more. I sipped my wartime coffee. And there, right there, a fireman rolling up his hose carefully, bent over the task, rolling. Others tucking away equipment. Your correspondent removed himself from the fiery excitement of the avenue and returned to his war room and debriefing room.
Peter Jennings’s people called again when I arrived home. I quickly put on a tie and coat. After a few questions for the camera I added, “And don’t forget, Peter, what Bush’s actions have done not only to the United Nations, but ramifications extending to the European Union and to NATO. Because of George’s intransigence, the world is now splitting into pieces, divisions occurring everywhere, near-anarchy in the streets in cities across the globe, a tear among the allies. Now politicians are scrambling in Europe to repair the damage. That, Peter, is another reason to protest.”
He attempted to ask me another question, but I tore of my microphone and turned the television on once more. Saddam was showing old photographs of himself and his war cabinet.
I stopped by, as a unilateral reporter on this story, covering, what? – the Homefront?, the media?, the world? – a Spanish network. Donald Rumsfeld was on it, earnest, his head bent, jawing at some poor woman who’d asked an inappropriate – to him – question. I flipped away, memories of my nightmare still fresh, and arrived upon a Filipino network doing its thing. There was Donald Rumsfeld. Not shrieking yet, I flicked to and through another Spanish language station, to a German station, to a Japanese station, to a Chinese station, to an Arabic station – all, by the way, brought to the diverse Bay Area on local access channels, and more and again there was ol’ Rummy, looking pissed off, an angry man, tense, ready for a heart attack. And I thought, “I didn’t know Donald Rumsfeld spoke so many languages.”
Silby sleeping, on her side, curled in the fetal position as she most comfortably snoozes. Approaching two in the morning. I skim our meager fourteen (pretty good for non-cable, I understand: an urban area, many people, many languages) channels in search of war coverage. The pickings are, as they say, slim. People worry about the markets. Some journalists covering seven people waving American flags in support of our troops. And how much money it’s costing the city of San Francisco per day to deal with the anti-war protestors. Cops’ overtime pay is the big one. She is sleeping and I don’t want to mess with her peace. This flipping around, zapping, “when we come backs,” how the Oscars are not going to have their fucking red carpet this year, and good for them, too: I do not want to be a nuisance and therefore employ this skimming without sound. A silent late evening with flickering blue on the white walls, a deep silence, straining to read the occasional ticker as it streams across the bottom of the screen. Avoiding commercials altogether. And there, the Germans are at it again. They run the same Journal and News shows every hour, DW TV, these clean white people broadcasting in English and German from Berlin. Silby turns to her other side, a back away from me, and my right hand tires of the remote control, in this blue darkness, this stark soundless watching, watching for a sign of war.
At two in the morning I crawl out of bed after somehow mustering the energy, the power of will, to turn off the tube. A miraculous quiescence. Locating rest in this deep somehow. I walk to the kitchen and remove frozen blueberry waffles from the freezer, toast them in that miraculous American invention the toaster oven, butter them, warm up in a saucepan some maple syrup from Vermont (maple syrup from Vermont made possible because men and women are willing to die for that damn sweet stuff) and then sit my ass upon a chair at the kitchen table, my eye catching a small bookcase of history books, of war novels, The Fall and Rise of the Third Reich, For Whom The Bell Tolls, The Naked and The Dead among them. I reach for a non-fiction volume and read up on my history of the Middle East. T.E. Lawrence, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, which, it turns out, was one of Neruda’s favorite books. He read it seven or eight times while consul to Rangoon. I’m reading about the desert. I’m reading about the white man in the Middle East during World War I, the beginning of some sticky meddlesomeness that scurried us to this present conflict, quickly, a shot, false borders, oil and water proving that mixing is one of those natural impossibilities.
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On the Saturday morning, Silby announced that she wanted to get off her ass and hit the protests in the city. In New York there was, and still is, a reported 200,000 people marching along 30 blocks in the city. In San Francisco, in the Civic Center, a large throng gathered with signs of anger and protest. Silby made a handwritten sign and safety pinned it to her fleece jacket. She is also wearing an ACLU tshirt that cries YOU HAVE THE RIGHT NOT TO REMAIN SILENT. There is a screaming mouth emblazoned on the front of the T-shirt among the text of its announcement. She grabs me by the arm and insisting that I head out into the day for a moment of civic duty. “Why do you want to attend the protest?” I asked her. She launched in to a litany of the usual reasons, outlined in this missive even, and I added, “Hmm, that’s noble. I just want to see some heads bashed in.” Her admonishments were faux-severe. A cute couple in sync. And to the day then, as the war raged on, as a few more Marines died – a 22-year-old from Los Angeles – as cartoons and golf and the NHL playoffs and the NCAAs all competed with the war for our attention. And your correspondent continued his search for the story, only for you, the story.
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