Beneath That Great Big sky

I know Iraq's ambassador to Kuwait has more important issues on his desk than my visa application, and he probably thinks I'm worse than the plagues of Egypt. But I've learned that if you want something from a government official, you have to keep knocking on his door. So I'm knocking. Everyday. Still, though, no visa to Iraq. I've been told it can take up to a month, but I'm one of those guys who likes to move at the speed of sound once I've made a decision to do something. The Iraqi ambassador doesn't care how fast I like to move. I think he's worried about just staying alive.

I haven't posted much lately because I'm in a Kurdish village in Turkey where electricty and running water exist only in the stories the villagers tell of their trips to bigger towns. They don't take those trips often. I'm from Texas where we think nothing of driving 50 miles to have dinner in another town. We take so much for granted in the United States.

I'm treated like an honored guest here. They don't have much in material possessions, but they offer their hospitality in generous amounts. It's their hope that the they will have their own place in northern Iraq where they can live with a diminshed threat from the murderous oppression they've faced from the Turks and Saddam.

A couple of the men in the village told me they will take me to Iraq. Who needs a visa, they ask? Well, uh, I do. The last thing I need is to be caught in a warring country without permission to be there. Also, I want the visa so that the United States will know I'm in Iraq so that if I disappear they'll at least know I disappeared in Iraq. The Kurds don't understand my determination to get the visa. Just go, they advise me. Oh, OK. I'll catch the 4:30 Greyhound and buy postcards along the way to send back.

I walk five miles to recharge my laptop and satellite phone. Sometimes, kids go with me -- both the human and goat variety. It's great. One little girl showed me a Tshirt that I haven't figured out yet how it came to be in her possession. It's an adult shirt with a huge Denver Broncos logo on the front. I can tell that she never wears it, and she pulled it out of a trunk that would make an antique dealer salivate. I laugh to myself because the little girl thinks the Tshirt is the article of worth when it's really the trunk that, if sold in the United States, could feed this family for two years. They think I'm nuts when I tell them that, looking at the trunk and then at me, proof of American stupidity. The little girl folds the Tshirt as if it were the flag that Betsy Ross made, and she carefully returns it to the exquisite trunk. As far as I can tell, an American soldier or Marine gave it to one of her relatives during Desert Storm. I doubt it has ever been worn since it changed hands.

I'm staying in a house with six other people. At night the house's population is increased by the addition of the family's eight goats. They're too valuable to be left outside during the night. I agree. Bring them all in, I say. After all, I'm the one who would rather sleep with my dogs than another human, so who am I to say anything about bringing in the goats. They sleep peacefully, and make little noise. It all reminds me of my grandmother who always had chicks in her kitchen to protect them from predators and to keep them warm by the stove. She was forever fussing over those chicks. Funny thing tough. It never bothered her to wring their necks several months later and toss them into a pot.

I'll sign off by telling you about the incredible night sky. I've never seen anything like it. Once the sun sets, it is pitch black here, and the stars are dazzling. It's mesmerizing. I've never seen a night sky so inky black and adorned with a million diamonds thrown haphazardly about. And the silence. In Spanish we have a saying about sleeping soundly that translates something like "a rock in a hole." It means that deep in the hole, the rock hears nothing. That's how it is here. No cars, no trains, no sirens.

It's difficult to believe that just across the border, Iraqis are murdering one another under that same sky.