19 March 2003

Sand Storm

I slept badly last night, and I awoke heated and sweaty under the covers. I threw the covers off and embraced the coolness of the darkness, realizing it is 18 hours to the end of a deadline. I turned on the radio and heard that taxi fare from Baghdad to the Jordanian border is now $1,200.

I stumbled out to the balcony and smoked a cigarette, looking down on the highway. It is breezy and it has turned cold again after a few teasing days with temperatures in the 60s. I had dreamed of the little park behind the house in which we lived in the 1960s. There was a bridge there across the river that formed the end of our property. That bridge and the placid river were integral to my early teen years. My brother and I would build models of proud Navy ships and float them down the stream, trying to hit and sink them with the stones the City put on the approach to the wooden structure.

In my dream I saw it clearly, the vegetation rich and green and thick, forming little grottos in the park. But then it became opaique, obscured. As I smoke I heard that there is a sand storm out in the desert today, harsh and gritty. Visibility is restricted, the troops cannot see and the airborne debris eats engines and clogs electronics. When the storm clears, I wonder what vista will appear? Will it look as it did before, or will it have changed in some way, the berms of the border shifting, trenches filling with sand drifiting like heavy brown snow.

As I put the cigarette out in the half-filled coffee can I considered the nature of what we see. This is a world where the veil of normalcy can suddenly be pierced, the fabric of the common lifted suddenly by a little breeze, revealing something alien behind it. A glimpse of something obscure, familiar but different, making you realize with a start that things are not what we have conjured them to be. I look up at the Capitol's proud dome when I take a quick break from my interior office in the Humphrey Building tto smell the air and watch the tourists and bureaucrats coming and going. And I think what it might have been like if the passengers hadnot revolted on the airplane screaming across Pennsylvania.

Security is tighter with the change in alert condition, but we have a toy guard force, no guns. I am happy about that, since they are not like the hard-eyed special protective force at the Agency. Going through the gate at Langley there was a certain comfort to the black uniforms and the automatic rifles. But of course they have actually been attacked there, the veil of normalcy penetrated by a gunman who shot commuters out on the road.

Governor Ridge said to expect some sort of retaliation by the Iraqis or Iraq's sympathizers. Nothing specific, he said, though low-cost "smart bombs," the ones on two legs that the Isrealis have come to know might be a possibility. The ones who change the view of a commuter bus from a comforting article fo the commonplace to something very different.

I am supposed to have a "Go bag" packed and in my office in case we have to relocate to an alternate operating location. There is one here in town, and another further away. I need to pack a duffle with some underwear, my camera, a bottle of vodka and a carton of cigarettes. I haven't done it yet, the packing, and I realized how different things could appear, and how that reality must be in Baghdad today. The ops manager of the command center was anxious last night and he came in to see me last night, inquiring about the wisdom of reserving a couple of small commuter airplanes in case they were needed to relocate the headquarters out of town. There is a plan, but everybody in town has been directed to have a plan and there is competition for resources. I wonder how the equivalent Department to mine in another captial is preparing for the beginning of a storm. Do they have go-bags, too? Cauht they afford a cab?

Things will become clearer as the blowing sand dies down. Maybe by tonight, certainly as we get deeper into the week. As one of the Royal Marines said this morning we need to get on with whatever it is we are going to do. Full moon tonight. The troops will be somewhere else by the time it is new again.