Sand and Rubble

I'm ready to write about Iraq. In the weeks since my return, I've tortured myself with a conflict that kept my experiences tossed around and aloft in the updraft caused by uncertainty. Uncertainty about how best to write those experiences.

I could easily write them as straight news, void of the voice of a man who thought he had seen enough of the horrors manufactured by evil people. But the destruction of life I saw deserved more. Iraq changed me, and it's taken a few weeks for that change to move through every cell in my body, for every neuron to learn to fire differently. It's a significant change.

I'm amazed at how much torture the human body and mind can sustain, how hard they fight to keep working even when subjected to all that hell can throw at it. If I've returned from Iraq with one certainty, it is that hell exists, and it has a master. Because I know that, I'm even more convinced that God is always present -- no matter how dark the night.

I saw ordinary people doing extraordinary things in Iraq, but that has been happening there since the days of the Old Testament. This isn't the first war that has stirred the desert sands of Iraq, but it might be the beginning of the last. I transported a smidgin of that sand to the United States where it rests in the serenity of De'on and Greg's living room. That Iraqi sand embraces a few pieces of rubble, all that remains of the building in Fallujah where Aaron fought the insurgents with heroism.

Today, I realized that sand is my strongest bond with Aaron. I scooped it from the site where his blood spilled so that others could live. I scooped it a few minutes before other insurgents arrived at the same place where Marines fought valiantly April 26, 2004. Without a weapon, I wasn't able to engage the insurgents as Aaron and his Marine brothers did. It didn't matter. My mission was to get the sand and rubble back to Aaron's mother, and he had my back.

I thought today of the sand and rubble I retrieved from Fallujah, and, later, my jumbled memories of the Middle East stopped swirling and came to rest in the arena of my mind. The dust settled, exposing clearly the events I was having difficulty describing. I can now examine them at leisure, replaying them and fast-forwarding them as needed.

I didn't just bring back any sand and rubble. I brought back sand and rubble drenched in a history that spans thousands of years. It is the history of the Garden of Eden, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and of Mesopotamia. Aaron's blood soaked into that sand, covering grains that for thousands of years have absorbed the blood of other warriors.

I want to squeeze the stories out of that sand.