Be Good Not Bad by Brian Warren

This Article was written by Aaron Orr, Watchtan’s part-time contributer.

I am set to leave Iraq in less than 24 hours. The weather for the last 36 has been cold, rain and wind, with almost no exception.

I spent the last two nights crammed into a new Eureka! brand tent the Army saw bid low enough to purchase with 14 other guys. All night this large, floppy thing that I would be ashamed to stamp my brand name on flops, leans and flaps, while the three main metal poles supporting it threaten to lay down and rest also. They create such a racket I begin to imagine this is what my ancestors may have felt like when they crossed the Atlantic in tiny wooden ships. The creaking and groaning, the dampness and feeling of, “If this thing comes apart there is nothing we can do but struggle against the cold until our bodies become lifeless.” Okay, so it’s not THAT bad here, but I’ve never heard such a cacauphony from a tent.

It helps not that these tents are anchored in sand, or rather, what used to be sand. It is now a super-glue-like clay that adheres instantly and mercilessly to everything. Everything except the stakes that hold down the guy lines supporting this enourmous plastic flag under which we try to sleep.

Every five minutes or so the liner inside, soaked with the exhalations of our lungs and perhaps some of the rain as well, is snapped like a beach towel being shaken violently. This snapping, while not any louder than the rest of the audacious noises around us sends cold drops of water into the air. They splatter our faces, the only skin exposed by our mummy bags, waking us up.

Yesterday I passed a section of camp that is currently uninhabited, though it was covered with these new tents. At least half of them lay in various states of collapse, some completely flat in the mud. It looks like the haji version of a trailer park after a tornado.

I look forward to living in a hard-sided, roofed dwelling that does not leak and flap in the wind. See you soon.