 Arab
Country
It had been very dark and very cold, but the nose
slowly swung open, upward, and heat shot into the C-5 as from a blowtorch.
The light was staggering, but we loosened the chains and drove the converted
Chevvies onto the tarmac, then collapsed under a canopy surrounded by cases
of bottled water. Hot bottled water, which we drank anyway.
It was October, and 102 degrees Farenheit. In the shade. What
shade there was.
The next couple days are something of a blur.
I can't really recall where we were, but we were acclimatizing. We
stayed in a large tent with the sides rolled up, stretched out on cots,
wearing as little as possible, with wet cloths tied around our heads.
I think that must have been Cement City, an industrial location outside
Dhahran. I know were there later, in more coherent times, as the
image of the communal shower facility slides into mind, its hours divided
into male and female portions of the day. Our stay there was temporary,
which is thankful. I hear it became a most crowded and unhygenic
place not long after.
Our next home was across the road, and called Superleg
City, because most of the people staying there were not Airborne, and damned
glad about it. It also had been a concrete production facility, but
now was swarmed with Americaan soldiers, living in quarters that had previously
belonged to the cement plant's workers. These were shipping containers,
wood paneled on the inside and joined together to make houses of sorts.
No bathroom. At regular intervals were common restrooms, featuring
those delightful seatless toilets. These amounted to porcelain-lined
holes in the floor, with grippy surfaces on either side for your feet.
We had quite a lot of trouble squatting like this, so we fashioned something
with a bucket and a toilet seat. Flushing the toilet paper was a
no-no, because the plumbing couldn't handle it. Apparently the usual
occupants spray off to get clean, because each stall had a sprayer much
like those we have in our kitchens.
The stay at Superleg City was a pretty happy one,
for various reasons, but also brief. We moved onto the airbase.
We pitched our modular tents in a lot behind a MASH
unit, which most of us considered a very good thing because we were getting
sick. Our intestines were writhing knots of pain, and there were
nights when I just took my pillow with me down the road to the latrine
and stayed there, sleeping propped against the wall, still sitting on the
toilet seat. It made the most sense; if I left, I'd just be back
about 8 minutes later.
Showering was fun, sorta. We had this plywood
shower stall - one of our very own! - at the end of our string of modular
tents, and there was this big green plastic tank on the top which was filled
everyday by the traveling water truck. The sun warmed the water,
and at the end of the duty day, it was a race to get everyone showered
before the sun went down and that chill breeze went knifing through the
stall. There was a tarp canopy between the end of the last tent and
the shower, made a kind of a porch where we did our laundry, scrubbing
on a washboard.
It was nice, cozy. Yeah some who know me would
say of course I'd be thrilled to live in a tent with a bunch of
guys and no privacy whatsoever. But it wasn't like that. For
the most part, we considered ourselves a family, and that pretty much brought
up the taboos that come with family. And King Fahd had said all the
soldiers were male, regardless of what they look like, in order to put
at ease those who didn't want women driving and parading about unenshrouded
in abayas. So for the first and only time in my life I was
a guy. A guy among guys. It was comfortable. Course,
I didn't always have to be a guy. More on that next time.
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