...this familiar smell...

Below this is a post with photos.........
------------------------
04 MAR 2010

The longest flight I have ever taken was a forty-hour ride from Florida to Cape Town, by way of Minnesota and Amsterdam.  The only trips that come close to eating as much time have been my flights to the middle-east, the most recent being no exception; Texas to Kuwait, by way of Maine and Germany.  These military transits—on commercial airlines—are sharply scheduled by meal, movie, sleep, meal, movie, sleep and so on.  Upon arrival, I had eaten six times, watched as many movies, and slept some unknown amount with the usual interruptions expected by travel (announcements, urination, knees bouncing on the back of my seat and so on).  We landed in Kuwait some time near midnight, local time of course.

Our convoy of buses pulled into Camp Buehring some few hours later.  We passed through endless rows of concrete barriers, all neatly decorated by the units who have come and gone over the last nine years.  And then we passed by blank barriers, and I thought of macho, mainly soldiers from the 53^rd, sitting out in the desert with paint, having an arts and crafts hour with our blank slate.

They say smell is the sense that recalls the most memories.  I don’t care much for what ‘they’ say, but I was sure, once I stepped off the bus and had desert in my nose, that I was back.  And there was more for my senses to reaffirm geography.  The locals have a very particular way of washing their hands, a way my words will fall short to describe.  He pulled a bottle of water from a case, took it off to the sand and squatted into an invisible chair; he wet both hands and rubbed, then once more; and with clean hands he turned his attention to his face.  Finished, he shook his hands towards the ground and became lost in the maze of colorful barricades.

This place is just as I remember it, and somehow, something completely new, something you could not associate with the combat zone.  Like my last day in New York before the mobilization, and Austin too while pass was ending, I am inside of Starbucks, staring through windows and watching the passer-byes.  This doesn’t feel like war.  The full moon at the height of the coffee house window agrees, as I can see the man in the moon resting on his side, apathetic towards my espresso in the desert.

I’m anxious for the missions into Iraq to begin.  Equally so, to see what other changes the last six years have brought to this place.  And there’s just a tiny glint of hope, peaking through my stained cynical eyes, that maybe, and who cares if even by magic, that this place has changed for the better.

- The Exodus