“Transport is here,”
thundered a service personnel decked in U.S. Army fatigues in the doorway of
the makeshift waiting lounge. I glanced at my watch. The hour was deep dark
thirty.
About fifteen men were scattered
around – a few were active-duty soldiers and the rest were Department of
Defense contractors like me. Some were reading and some filling out papers, while
the least concerned among us used Government-issued backpacks as their pillows.
We had been in the lounge for quite some time and people had grown tired of
waiting. In this part of the world, transportation was not guaranteed. This was
a battlefield.
A day earlier, I had taken a flight
out of Kuwait City to arrive at Camp Victory. A part of Baghdad International
Airport was carved up to house five U.S. military camps that were serving the
Green Zone. From here, I would be flying north, to Tikrit – Saddam Hussain’s
hometown. I had left my New Jersey home soon after Labor Day to reach Baghdad.
The night outside was warm in this
early part of September. “Remember to keep yourself hydrated,” cautioned the
security officer who checked my passport and the Government-issued CAC card,
“it is hundred-and-ten degrees (°F) during daytime.” Needless to say, we drank
water like fish. Water bottles were stacked up throughout the facility.
“Those who want to go to Camp
Speicher – the transport is here,” repeated the soldier. Speicher, formerly
known as Al Sahara Airfield, was an air installation that the U.S. Army had
captured in the initial days of the Iraq War. It was serving as the
headquarters of the United States Division-North and was my destination. I
quickly grabbed the steel-plated protective vest and Kevlar helmet from
underneath my seat. Without those armors, one would not be allowed on the transport.
A race ensued to slap on the gears –
one would easily be a good thirty-pound heavier with them – and falling in a
line. The courtesy transport was on a first-come-first-serve basis, and oh, the
soldiers were bumped ahead of the contractors. I learnt it the hard way on the
previous night. By the time I could ensure that my helmet was secured, there
were a dozen people ahead of me. Each transport, a UH-60 Black Hawk, could
ferry about eleven troops.
No room inside the transport meant I
had to look for an accommodation outside. Camp Victory did not roll out a
welcoming mat for me. I was just a number for the records. Fortunately, I was
traveling with two other team members from the same project, one of whom was a
Government civilian. He had a better handle on the military lingo and found out
the directions to our hotel.
We hailed a courtesy taxi to ferry
us. On our way, we passed one of Saddam Hussein’s several palaces. Our driver,
who was doubling as a tour guide, told us that that opulent structure featured
gold-trimmed toilets! As fate would have been, the erstwhile owner of that
place was resting six feet under, while the visitors swapped stories about his
excesses.
Our overnight accommodation turned
out to be a tent city with rows of empty cots under each roof. “I can sleep
anywhere,” I thought and so did my companions. Once again, we were not in
control of our destiny. It turned out that cold air was being pumped through a
maze of ducts in our sprawling tent. We soon realized that picking a cot,
optimally positioned with respect to those ducts, was a challenge. Too close to
the ducts, one would freeze to death; too far out, the sweltering heat would
overpower. Eventually, we ended up huddling in a tight spot.
I peeked at my watch; its hands had
struck two o’clock. That would be nine o’clock in Baghdad time – I adjusted the
mechanical arms accordingly. It had been a couple of hours since we landed with
the setting sun on our back. In the rush to avail a transport to our final
destination, we had overlooked the dinner. “Should we look for a place to eat,”
I inquired my fellowmen. By that time, I was no longer certain of the outcome
of such an effort.
The Ugandan soldiers guarding the
camp – the US military could not avoid outsourcing – informed us that DFAC was
closed for the night (no surprise there!) There were a few take-out places that
might be open, like Subway, Pizza Hut, etc. “I’m in a mood for fried chicken,’
declared one of my companions. Lo and behold, we found a KFC place that was
open, or so we thought.
As we approached the kiosk, the sight
and sound were familiar. There were three young men conversing in my mother
tongue. I went straight to the point. “Are you from Dhaka,” I asked in Bengali.
They were a bit surprised; clearly they were not used to seeing a person from
their ethnic background among the visitors. I went on conversing in a language
that I had least expected to use on this tour to the bewilderment of my
colleagues.
The place had closed up for the
night, but I resolved the situation in our favor. I did not want to be a loser
for a second time on that evening. I beckoned my party to follow me to a picnic
table in the quadrangle. Very soon, the three lads arrived with a large bucket
of fried chicken, a container of coleslaw and several biscuits. We continued
chatting in Bengali for a little longer, after which they left without even
collecting the money. I explained to my companions how those men took pity on
us and gave away their share of the dinner. Perhaps, our common ethnicity had
helped me to broker the conversation. Then that was not the first time I had
seen humanity to prevail over all other considerations and it would not be the
last.
“Please have your paperwork ready,”
reminded the soldier as we filed past him into the open field adjacent to the
waiting enclosure. There were ten people in front of me. Would I be fortunate enough
to secure a ride on this night? I looked behind where my co-travelers were
standing; each put his thumbs up. Nobody seemed as anxious to catch a ride like
I was.
My eyes were fixated on two bright
dots in the distant horizon. As they grew bigger, the whirring of rotor blades
became more distinct. The Black Hawks mostly flew in pair, but never alone.
Soon the beams illuminated the whole field and the Army’s lawn dirt pair gently landed, kicking up moon dust. We were
wearing protective glasses for no small reason. I could feel sweat dripping
from underneath the helmet and down my cheeks. The steel-plated vest appeared
heavier with every breath.
The doors of the Black Hawks opened
to unload their human cargo. A group of soldiers and civilians, twenty in my
count, streamed past us. I heaved a sigh of relief. We were ordered to file
against the rear of the birds to avoid being sucked into the rotating blades.
The men ahead of me got into one, while I waited for my turn. A soldier
motioned me to climb into the front. Front? I was bewildered for a moment. He
again pointed towards the cockpit. Carrying two backpacks and clutching the
helmet and the glasses – boy, did I move fast – I stepped into a Black Hawk, a
machinery made famous by Mark Bowden’s book Black
Hawk Down, for the first time in my life!
The dim cabin light had made the
interior mystic. The two pilots were listening to radio communications, while
the two gunners on either side adjusted their night goggles. Before I could
overcome my bewilderment, the doors of front and rear cabins were slammed shut.
I was still struggling to secure the seatbelt – the buckle on that contraption
was very different from the familiar ones – when the helicopter took off,
executing its typical gyrations. I glanced at the soldier sitting next to me.
He was taking a nap with the M-16 carefully tucked between his legs, a sight
reminiscent of the daily passengers on local trains in India. I held on to the
seatbelt tightly as the pull of the gravity became apparent.
The helicopter continued to climb up
and then pushed forward; piercing the envelope of darkness, it headed for a
destination in an unknown land. The final leg of my journey had begun. A blast
of warm air greeted us. The outside view, through the windows where the gunners
stood, looked very familiar. It was as if I was looking at rural India with its
dimly lit unpaved roads and scattered clusters of huts. The young gunners
craned their necks to spot muzzle flash as the helicopter leveled off at a low
altitude.
A train of thoughts wrecked my mind.
How predictable was a war zone? What were the odds of me reaching the
destination that night? One of my colleagues from New Jersey was stranded in
this place when he did his tour several years ago. He kept getting bumped off
flights, which were ferrying wounded soldiers, at the height of the Iraq War.
Eventually, he could secure a ride after five days of wait in Balad!
What would happen if the helicopter was
attacked? Would the two young gunners be able to hold their firepower? I was
reminded of the scene in Black Hawk Down
in which Black Hawk Super Six-One was hit by an RPG and crashed inside
Mogadishu. Before coming on this tour, I had spent an entire week in Ft.
Benning, Georgia, undergoing basic training. We learnt how to apply tourniquet
to stem the flow of blood when a solder got hurt. We had trained our sights to
spot a suicide bomber or a buried IED amidst unfamiliar settings. We weren’t
briefed, however, on our options if the helicopter had crash-landed. I couldn’t
close my eyes; the worries kept me peering into the darkness.
Suddenly, the vehicle jerked and
started to descend. My heart leapt to my throat; I clutched the unbuckled
seatbelt tightly as if a drowning person was holding onto a straw. Looking
around I saw tranquility – my survival was assured. According to my watch, we were
airborne for about forty-five minutes. Could we be in Speicher already, I
pondered. That seemed impossible as we were told that the journey would last
several hours. So, what else could be the reason of the descent? By then, I was
certain that the helicopter was not hit by artillery fire. Once on the tarmac, we
were asked to disembark without our belongings and walk towards a waiting area.
We obliged and moved away from the rotating blades quickly. I had become
conversant with the etiquette of the battlefield.
Not long after that we were summoned back
to our vehicles. My travel companions were seated in the main compartment with a
few soldiers and several civilians. They had found out that “essential” goods
were being delivered to that post on the outskirts of Baghdad. After we were
reseated, I asked my co-passenger: “Sir, if you won’t mind, can you kindly show
me how to buckle up?” “This is how I do it,” demonstrated the soldier with his
seatbelt. “Tango Mike,” I could not resist the temptation to show-off my
newly-acquired military lingo skills to the Good Samaritan. All of a sudden, I
felt immensely relieved. This time I was firmly buckled as the Black Hawks
lifted off for Tikrit.
The helicopters quickly ascended into
the night sky. I learned from my soldier friend, James, the rotorcraft had to
stay beyond IDF or the range of small arms and light weapons fire. We were in
hostile territories north of Baghdad. He also informed me that the flight path
would take us over Balad, but we would not land at that military base. Instead,
we would fly close to Tigris River on our journey north, into Tikrit.
James was on his second tour of Iraq
and was from Modesto, California. His current assignment would last for another
four months. He hoped to be home for Christmas, to enjoy his R&R with his
two young daughters. Our short exchanges ended soon as James racked out. He and
his unit were returning to Camp Speicher after a week-long mission around
Baghdad.
The interior of the air vehicle had
become eerily quiet. It was dark already; the dim lights were switched off as
soon as we were airborne. The whirring of the rotor was the only lingering
sound disrupting the otherwise still night. As I stared into the darkness, I
suddenly faced that eternal question – who was I in this grand cosmos? What was
I doing at that very moment in a place literally foreign to me?
Yes, I was on this post-midnight
mission to fulfill my contractual obligation towards the U.S. Government, to
deliver new force protection technologies. However, my true contribution into
the grand scheme of the universe extending all around me was utterly insignificant;
and so were those of James, who by then was in deep sleep, and his comrades. In
fact, no one in the whole wide world at that very moment could have claimed to
impact, beyond personal confines, any event with far reaching consequences.
Below me extended a dark carpet that
was the land of Iraq, embroidered with scattered lights. The bright clusters
signified military bases and outposts; the dim lights shone from the homes of
ordinary citizens, mostly along Tigris River. Who would be burning midnight oil
in those homes? Could it be a young student preparing for exams, a housewife
winding up her day’s work or a family taking turns to guard the front door
fearful of it being knocked down in the middle of the night? A despot and a
prolonged war must have had profound effects on the psyche of the population; but
I, being where I was, would never encounter these inhabitants or find the right
answer.
There is perhaps no better display of
self-interest than in a war. The Iraq War was in its eighth year by then and
was on the way to joining the Afghan War as the longest U.S. engagements
militarily. I could barely account for a handful of the great wars that were influential in changing the course of history.
Wars are like waves in a vast ocean; they flow and ebb in the expanse of
humanity without leaving any trace.
As I sat motionless in my seat, I
started to feel the weight of the vest. It was probably the longest time that I
had worn the armor. According to the regulation, I was supposed to retain it as
well as the helmet throughout my flight. I glanced at James; he seemed to be at
ease in his gear. The two gunners were still at their stations, scanning the
darkness with their night vision goggles. I loosened the straps of my helmet
and unbuckled the vest; I inhaled the warm air circulating inside the cabin and
closed my eyes.
“The last sun of the century sets amidst the
blood-red clouds of the West and the whirlwind of hatred.
The naked passion of self-love of Nations, in its drunken
delirium of greed, is dancing to the clash of steel and the howling verses of
vengeance.”
The words penned by Rabindranath
Tagore broke my train of thoughts – Rabindranath, seriously? I could not shake
off of this man – one who has become synonymous with most Bengalis’ existence –
at that very moment, in the most unlikely of places – inside a Black Hawk flying
over a battle-scarred land.
I could hear swoosh of the steel
blades beating against the wind with vengeance to keep us afloat. Tagore’s
premonition in the closing hours of the 19th century about the hubris of
jingoistic pride embodied in the model of the modern nation-state, reverberated
in the darkened cabin of the Black Hawk. Each of us was representing our
self-interest to preserve that model in one way or the other.
“What passing-bells for these who die
as cattle?” I recalled the words of Wilfred Owen, the famous trench poet of
World War I. The smiling face of a young man decked in British Army
lieutenant’s uniform loomed over me. Unlike much of the generation that had
been conscripted in that Great War and had gone on to write about it, Owen
desisted from glorifying the killing and destruction. He wrote in gritty style,
infused with the memory of the horrors he had witnessed in the trenches. I
wondered if Owen felt the same way as I did, arriving on the battlefield for
the first time.
At some point during his tenure on
the battlefield, Owen sought refuge from the crass materialism engulfing his
world in Tagore's poems – poems which encapsulated a simple faith in man and
divinity. Owen perished while crossing the Sambre-Oise Canal, exactly one week prior
to the signing of the Armistice. After the death of her son, Owen's mother
retrieved his personal possessions. In his pocketbook, she found Poem 96 of
Tagore’s Gitanjali (“Song Offerings”) that Owen recited in his farewell address
to his mother. "When I go from hence, let this be my parting word, that
what I have seen is unsurpassable," read the opening line.
Unlike Owen, I was not in a position
to exchange farewell with anybody. My life’s journey was far from over.
However, between the excitement of stepping onto a Black Hawk and the
apprehension of surviving nearly three-hour flight in a battlefield, I could
say that my experience of that night had been “unsurpassable.”
A cloak of silence was draped all
around me, except for the sound of the rotors chopping away the stillness of
the night. I gazed straight ahead, past the pilots, out through the cockpit
window. As far as my eyes could see, darkness extended to the horizon. We
should be following the course of Tigris River as James had explained, but
apparently we did not. I looked up – the canopy was decorated with twinkling
stars. We must be above the smoke and dust layers that quite often obliterated
the majestic view, I thought.
Thousands of miles removed from my
comfort zone and my familiar world, the crammed, dark, hot interior of the
Black Hawk felt apocalyptic. At the same time, it served as a protective
enclosure from unknown forces. Did Owen also find his trenches, his fox holes,
to be such dichotomies when bullets whizzed and shells exploded overhead? Did
he gaze upon the star-filled sky from his vantage point and feel the infinitely
bigger presence embracing him? If indeed he did, he probably had arrived at the
same conclusion as I – humankind is not in control of its destiny.
Our behavior is predicated on limited
knowledge about our world. We can go only so far guided by our own actions
before those of others force us to re-strategize. These snippets of activities
when spliced create the trail of our journey through space and time. A
successful completion of my journey that night rested on the actions of many –
the pilots, the gunners and even James – who were busy ensuring that my chosen
plan ran its course.
Would I safely return to my comfort
zone, would I ever encounter a night like this in another place – answers to
those questions rested on our collective actions in the future. All I could
feel at that very moment, thundering across the starry sky, was the sensation
of an awestruck wanderer in the grand cosmos. My insignificant presence seemed
appropriate for a change. Raising my voice above the hum of the rotors, I sang
to myself:
“In this Universe,
space and eternity
I, the mortal, alone
I wander, wander in awe.”
(A
husband and a wife are conversing over mobile phones. The husband has gotten
off a flight.)
