I Have Iraq in My Shoe (4 page)

Since I was going to The Iraq and
would
be making a substantial salary, I thought it would be okay to buy a new pair of boots. What?! They were on sale! I doubted that I would be able to do any shoe or boot shopping at all once I moved, and part of my mental preparation was making a point to do all the things I would have to give up. I went to Starbucks, I got together with my friends at the wine bars, I went out for sushi, and I bought new boots. They were Diane von Furstenberg tall, red suede boots with a two-and-a-half-inch heel, which almost made them sensible. They were my Wonder Woman boots, and I loved them so much. My mom did not. “Suede boots? Those will be practical in Iraq” was her official position. I packed them anyway.

There were other phone conversations with Warren leading up to my departure, during one of which he excitedly informed me that he had “hooked me up” with a unique situation. The main university was located in Suli (the lazy Western abbreviation for Sulaimani). However, Warren had opened up a sort of satellite campus, three hours north of Suli, in a city called Erbil.

Warren practically gushed about Erbil and went on and on about how all the other teachers would donate a dominant limb to be up there. “Seriously, Gerts, it’s way more of an actual city. There’s a German restaurant, with
real
German beer—they serve it in steins. There are all kinds of restaurants and places to go out and there are two five-star hotels on either side of the compound where you’ll be living.”

I tried to picture a giant, shiny high-rise with a doorman welcoming me, but it didn’t really work.

Warren paused a second and then said, “Sure!”

This new development called for a readjustment of my expectations. I would no longer be at the main university, and I had to ask Warren an entirely new set of questions about what to expect in Erbil. He was, as usual, vague and unconcerned with details, which crippled my ability to create any type of visual to help me picture my upcoming life there. It was just a blurry unknown,
Erbil
. Meh, Iraq was Iraq. If Erbil was moderately fancier, with German restaurants and five-star hotels, all the better.

While packing I came across an article I had saved from Oprah’s
O
magazine (October 2005). I had been single for a long time. Yes, yes, quite possibly due to the combination of control issues, self-diagnosed claustrophobia, the shoe obsession, and the cat. There had been a couple of longish relationships in my early twenties, and then a handful of shortish dalliances into my early thirties, but nothing earth-shattering. I wasn’t bitter, I wasn’t jaded, but I also wasn’t going to settle, and I would save anything in print that validated that stance. While some girls were clipping pages from bridal magazines, I saved Tish Durkin’s 2005 article in
O
about “holding out for real love”:

Preach! I had attended at least two weddings that could have been mistaken for funerals and knew countless couples who I was certain were together more out of convenience than actual, genuine affection. I had friends who endured numerous awkward evenings of blind dates, and even more painful second and third dates, in the hopes something would work out and they would get to wave a big, shiny diamond around and excitedly chirp, “I’m engaged!”

It wasn’t necessarily that I didn’t want the big, shiny diamond (jewelry is fun) or the excited chirping (enthusiasm is always good), but I was bound and determined to have it be the real deal. As I reread Durkin’s article, I sprouted goose bumps. She had met her “great, glove-fitting love” in Iraq.

I made the ridiculously incongruous mental leap to understand this meant all the tall, gorgeous, brilliant, and hilarious soul mates who had been mysteriously evading me must be clustered in some sort of Hot Man/Glove-Fitting Love Warehouse in the middle of Iraq. WMD didn’t stand for Weapons of Mass Destruction. It was the Warehouse of Men we’ve hidden from you in the Desert.

I thought,
Oh, now, wouldn’t that just figure. That I would have to go all the way to Iraq to meet The One?
Like everyone else who searches for metaphysical road signs, I thought maybe the article was at least an alert. Your love alert level is now at orange.

So that was one more thing to add to my List of Reasons to Go to The Iraq:

• Eliminate debt
  

• Travel
  

• Buy shoes (or at least have enough money to do so)
  

• Meet soul mate
  

And while we’re at it, I should probably attempt to increase my cultural tolerance of the Middle East, shouldn’t I? They say, “Don’t knock it ’til you try it.”
Who? Who says that?
Probably members of a 1940s barbershop quartet, but it was still a saying that stuck in my head. I had never been to any Middle Eastern country and may have been unfairly judging.

My new List of Reasons to Go to The Iraq:

• Eliminate debt
  

• Travel
  

• Buy shoes
  

• Meet soul mate
  

• Increase cultural tolerance
  

While I was busy making lists and imagining a wildly romantic, fateful encounter in Iraq, my mom sent me this email:

This continued in an MSN.com story I decided not to read. I loved the word “besmirching,” but “religious fundamentalists” and “tribal chieftains” were not things I wanted to think about. They would only make me second-guess my decision to go. I was normally not a big fan of ignorance; however, I was a big fan of bliss. The road to bliss went straight through The Iraq, and I would be taking it, apparently in some sort of convoy, while wearing my chain-mail tunic and matching headband.

The frequency of my phone conversations with Warren increased as March drew closer. I was still feeling apprehensive about such a monumental life change. I loved to travel. It made the world seem a much more manageable place. Being surrounded by a culture—the sounds, smells, and general feel of a place—allowed me to really see how other people lived, and I could weather a mild-to-moderate case of culture shock for brief periods of time (two weeks in China, a month in Nepal).

One whole year had been a struggle for me. I was in Korea from 1995 to 1996, when email was a radically new form of communication. Most people were still writing actual letters, with pen and paper, and using the abacus for financial transactions. Very few people used email regularly. Keeping in touch with friends and family back home was a challenge, which made Korea an isolating experience. There were many Crying Days in Korea. Ergo, I publicly declared I would
never
live overseas again.
Never say never.
There’s a reason Justin Bieber is so popular. He’s very wise.

I would be living overseas again, which meant schlepping stuff. I needed to know how much stuff I could or should bring, and whether or not it could be shipped, to avoid unnecessary schlepping.

Canadians. I didn’t know what hockey bags looked like, but I was assuming they were sturdy enough to carry big ice skates and hockey sticks, the Stanley Cup, and maybe a goalie. That actually sounded like a good idea. Some of my shoes bore a faint resemblance to ice skates, in both structure and weight.

I ordered two “medium” hockey bags online at Amazon, and two bags were delivered (unlike the ski-bag experience, which I’m still saying was not my fault). When they arrived, I opened them up and discovered they could sleep two people, comfortably. I don’t know how everyone else likes to pack, but I want the bags to be completely full, practically bursting. No empty corners or pockets; just keep stuffing them. Did I really need to bring forty-six pairs of socks? Probably not, but they fit into those empty corners so nicely.

I packed everything. Warren had transported five ninety-pound hockey bags with “no problem,” and I only had two ninety-pound hockey bags (so I thought) and two suitcases, which were probably around seventy pounds each. By my crafty powers of deductive reasoning, the airline would practically be thanking me for packing so light.

My mom went to the Delta Airlines website to look up their weight/baggage restrictions. She came to me with a worried look on her face and said, “Honey, they say you can only take two bags, at fifty pounds apiece.” I rolled my eyes in typical childish exasperated fashion and said, “Mom, Warren said he brought five hockey bags that were ninety pounds apiece. I’ll be
fine
.”

Mothers. They could be so meddlesome sometimes.

It is possibly my least favorite thing to be standing at the Delta Airlines counter, at 5:00 a.m., listening to the agent say, “You can’t take any bags over seventy pounds.” I had four bags, two of which were one hundred pounds each (stupid hockey bags with their stuffable corners, and my inability to balance them on the bathroom scale at home); the other two were seventy pounds. I was told there’d be no math at the airport.

If you’re saying, “I’ll bet you’re regretting packing all those socks now, aren’t you?”… you’re right. If you’re a mom, you’re probably also saying, “I’ll bet you’re wishing you had listened to your mom now, aren’t you?” Yes, ma’am.

From Portland’s PDX to New York’s JFK, I paid a staggering $1,530 to get
almost
everything to travel with me. I got the hockey bags down to ninety pounds each, and the baggage agent took pity on me and let them go through. I had my mom take a few things back to the house, like the heavy Lonely Planet guides for Greece and Sweden (both part of The Rest of Europe, and potential vacation destinations) and a few pairs of shoes (dammit!).

I had arranged to have a weekend stopover in New York, to visit friends and my favorite cousin, before taking the final plunge and leaving the United States for the unknown. This did not work in my favor. I ended up having to pay extra-baggage charges twice: once in Portland and once in New York, rather than just the one time, had I flown straight through. Do not listen to airlines that are whining and complaining about being bankrupt. I am supporting many of them solely through my overweight baggage fees.