I Have Iraq in My Shoe (16 page)

That we lived where we taught was already kind of a challenge. There were random Kurds ringing my doorbell at indiscriminate hours of the day and evening—and on the weekends—showing up to inquire about English classes, and now staff and faculty, who viewed Erbil as an exciting weekend-getaway destination, expecting to come up and stay in our villas. I was losing my sanity. Warren claimed he understood and kept saying, “Gretch, that’s
your
villa, it’s YOUR villa.”
How? How was it MY villa?

I had finally put my foot down about the male drivers sleeping in my villa. There were about twenty different drivers who interchangeably chauffeured people and supplies up to Erbil. I’d never met many of them, and they would just come in and make themselves at home, preparing their dinners in my kitchen, helping themselves to my precious Diet Cokes. My cooperative veneer promptly shattered when one night I was sitting and watching TV, trying to ignore the fact that the hairy, hulking Ahmed had to stay overnight and was in the room downstairs, talking loudly on his cell phone. I was uncomfortable enough just knowing he was there, and the discomfort amplified every time I heard him bark into the phone. I was trying to immerse myself in an old episode of
Friends
when I saw that Ahmed had finished his phone call and was slowly and inexplicably making his way up the stairs.

GAH! The drivers know they’re not allowed upstairs! FARK! I leapt from the couch out into the hallway and leaned over the balcony.

“Yes? What do you need?” Ahmed was carrying a plate with some plums on it, and a can of soda, and held these items up as an explanation.

“No, thank you!” I could feel myself growing shrill, which was annoying. I hate shrill, but I was entering panic mode, with this essential stranger encroaching on my personal space.

Ahmed said, “For you!” and continued his slow climb up the stairs. GOD DAMMIT! (
Women are all whores…probably definitely single American women…)

“NO!” I shouted, as he clearly wasn’t getting the hint with my polite/stern voice, “PLEASE TAKE THAT TO THE KITCHEN, THANK YOU!” Ahmed looked irritated and said angrily, “It’s for YOU!” His threatening tone was enough confirmation that I was justified in yelling, and I answered, “YES, THANK YOU VERY MUCH; PLEASE LEAVE IT
IN THE KITCHEN
.” He finally turned around and retreated to the main floor with the fruit plate and soda.

I had been double-locking my bedroom door at night and turned the key extra hard that night, just in case there was a triple-lock option. I did not feel safe, and not even the image of Joey wearing every piece of Chandler’s clothing could perk me up. Jen later confided, “I can’t believe you put up with that for as long as you did. I would have freaked.”

After the disastrous Rana weekend, Warren said he would make it clear that no faculty or staff would be staying in “my” villa uninvited. Although he really seemed more bothered by the fact that Rana said his pillowcases smelled bad.

Warren confided that Chancellor Tom had developed a casual theory about why Rana and I didn’t get along. I thought it was just because she had poor manners and a wackadoo sense of entitlement, but Tom explained to Warren that Rana and I were both lionesses. We were both “strong, attractive women” and felt threatened by one another, had to prove our prowess, blah blah blah. I found it difficult to listen and roll my eyes at the same time and am not sure how the theory concluded, but I imagined it probably involved wrestling around in fur bikinis, a la Raquel Welch in
One Million Years B.C.

Adam was technically living in Erbil with me, but only during the week. He went down to Suli every weekend, and yes, often-times people stayed in his villa too; he was just rarely there to deal with it. Adam had spent the prior semester working at the main university and enjoyed the Suli compound social life in the less-picturesque, but infinitely more private, moderately Soviet-looking concrete villas, with all the front-porch beer drinking and testosterone bonding and whatnot. We got along really well and had fun during the week, but Adam wasn’t teaching any classes and was bored to tears. He was also pretty miserable, being so isolated up in Erbil, not to mention thousands of miles away from his fiancée. Not even the
Sex and the City
marathons could cheer him up, so Warren would send a driver to fetch him on the weekends.

I had to limit my Suli trips to the monthly bank runs. It was a three-hour drive through topsy-turvy mountains and wasn’t something I wanted to do twice a week. Since we all make choices in our lives, and my choice was a sort of self-imposed isolation, I found things to love and keep me sane in Erbil.

1. Facebook and Skype:
   Technology helped connect me to my old life back home, and at least let me talk to, and look at, my supportive friends and family.
   
2. Food:
   The stores finally got Diet Coke, I became very friendly with Nutella, and there were peanut M&Ms and Snickers bars to remind me of the Western World.
   
3. My new blender
   , which I quickly fell madly in love with: It cost an incomprehensible $26, and was glass, with an apple-green base and rubber lid. It encouraged me to consume the requisite two to four servings of fruit per day in the form of smoothies, which
   almost
   counterbalanced the Nutella and candy bars.
   

I also did the unthinkable and purchased a bathroom scale.

There was a
60 Minutes
piece on
Vogue
editor Anna Wintour, where she claimed the scale at the
Vogue
offices was simply there for the purpose of weighing luggage and not making certain that all perpetually hungry employees felt daily body shame. Whether that was true, when I heard that I thought, “
Brilliant!
” and immediately ran out to get my scale.

I would never pay fees for overweight luggage again. NEVAH! (Here is where I visualized Me-As-Triumphant-Scarlett-O’Hara, or Me-As-Triumphant-Joan-of-Arc or She-Ra. I mean, how does She-Ra get around the overweight baggage fees? Her outfits are all made of metal.)

There were other, unexpected joys in Erbil, the newfound Paris of Northern Iraq. One of them was Bakery & More, the Lebanese-run bakery Adam and I tried to walk to that one day. After being driven there by Chalak, I realized how far off we had been. Although it would have been worth the extra hour of walking.

Bakery & More offered croissants, cookies, cakes, and other fancy baked goods and had a refrigerated case with deli meats and cheeses on the first floor and a small restaurant on the second floor. The restaurant upstairs offered pizzas, sandwiches, and my Holy Grail of hangover cuisine: mozzarella sticks.
Naughty cheese
. This was officially one of my Happy Places. One of the men who worked there always gave me a big grin and a wave when I walked in, and then he would sneak me a couple of pieces of chocolate when no one else was looking.

Given the endless parade of sugar and fat, I really needed to find some way to work out. The Women’s Fitness Center had been frightening, it was a million degrees outside (which killed the idea of just running around English Village), and my
Biggest Loser Workout
DVDs had lost their allure. Adam was still researching women’s gyms, in hopeful anticipation of his fiancée coming to join him here. His fiancée would not have been okay with the bird-doody, broken-down equipment, velour-tracksuited aerobics gym, so he kept searching until he found the J&K, a mere five minutes’ drive from the Village, very close to Ainkawa.

It was probably slightly sacrilegious for me to call the J&K Women’s Fitness Center “Mecca,” but I did anyway. You did have to pay to experience Mecca (about $15 per visit), but it was worth it. The entrance displayed a lush, finely manicured lawn and the lobby was a study in sprawling luxury. I mean, yes, it was still understated Trump, although with purple accents, rather than the usual gold leaf. There was an actual workout room, with actual, plugged-in cardio machines.

The workout room overlooked an Olympic-size swimming pool, where women wore bathing suits. Not the futuristic, confining burkinis, but regular tanks or even two-pieces. Men were not allowed inside J&K, so the women roamed about freely, wearing whatever they liked. One heavyset woman even liked running on the treadmill in her bikini. To each her own, and go sister, go.

Mecca, naturally, had a day spa. There was an honest-to-goodness nail salon, where I spent a deluxe hour getting a completely professional pedicure from a charming woman named Sangela. She was a godsend, and God sent her from Nepal. I have been to Nepal, and absolutely loved it, and therefore could not understand why she came here. I asked her why she left, and she said she could make more money here. I guess that shouldn’t have been so hard to understand, since
I
could make more money here too. The Kurdish women who ran the salon were dismissive and abrupt with Sangela, which irritated me, and I wasn’t certain but thought it might have been just because she was Nepalese. If no one was looking, I would slip her a little extra money before I paid the women at the counter.

It was weird to witness racism here, but I had seen and heard of Kurds talking about the Ethiopians and Bangladeshis like they were no better than animals. I felt like this was probably a backlash, because that is exactly how many Arabs and Turks (and some Europeans) viewed the Kurds. When will people learn to simply judge others by their shoes? It’s so much more civilized. Crocs, you are low man on the totem pole.

So, aside from the possible racism of the Kurdish salon women, the J&K was another one of my Happy Places and a veritable bastion of serenity. Rumor around town was that the owner of the J&K had been granted $500,000 from the U.S. government in order to set up a women’s refuge. I did consider the J&K to be a refuge, but probably not the kind the U.S. government had in mind.

The next time I went down to the university in Suli I was careful to avoid Chancellor Tom’s office. I only spent one day each month at the main university, and it usually consisted of floating between the teachers’ office, the bank, the cafeteria, and Warren’s office. I always looked forward to seeing Jen, and the other teachers, and some of the local Kurds who worked at the university, in particular the tea-and-coffee-boy Daroon.

Daroon was unwittingly instrumental in my assimilating into the Kurdish culture. Thus far, I had really only made an effort to incorporate things into my Iraq life that reminded me of home: Diet Coke, wine, Snickers bars, a day spa. That wasn’t assimilating; it was procrastinating. Enter Daroon and His Magical Turkish Coffee.

Everyone adored Daroon. We would describe him as mellow in temperament and sweet in disposition. He always greeted you, arms extending with upraised palms, with a slight nod of the head, and a humble “Welcome.”