MUQDADIYAH, Iraq – You don’t have to look to the sky to know a sandstorm has moved in. The tell-tale markings settle on everyone’s rears.
Unless you want to stand all day, there’s no escaping it, and everyone’s cheeks sport a khaki covering.
It creeps into everything, outdoors and inside, coating throats, clogging nostrils, covering every surface in a delicate layer of moon dust. It clings to hair and skin, giving everyone a ghostly quality, like they’ve been mothballed for a few years and just stumbled out of the cellar. During particularly bad storms, a haze will hang in offices, chow halls, and gyms for days.
The sunlight that does filter through reflects a deep, sinister orange, framing the desert in an unnatural sepia tone.
Patrols are more risky (no medevac chopper to come get you) and if you need to get anywhere by air, tough (it’s day six for me at the Warhorse passenger terminal).
It’s called the shamal, and it’s that extra bit of misery a country that already has one of the hottest summers on Earth, not to mention grinding poverty and regular suicide bombings, doesn’t really need. But several times a month the wind kicks up, the sun recedes, and the sand takes over.
The grunts curse it laughingly, smoking, shooting hoops, and patrolling right through it like nothing’s changed. Officers berate privates manning passenger terminal desks – “The weather looks fine to me, why the fuck aren’t they flying?” – as if the poor kid has a special M-16 that seeds clouds and brings sand-defeating rain.
If he does have one of those special rifles, I hope he uses it soon – I’m running out of books, just squeezed my last drop of shampoo and shelves at the PX are bare, supplies no doubt grounded, like me, by the sand.
Unless you want to stand all day, there’s no escaping it, and everyone’s cheeks sport a khaki covering.
It creeps into everything, outdoors and inside, coating throats, clogging nostrils, covering every surface in a delicate layer of moon dust. It clings to hair and skin, giving everyone a ghostly quality, like they’ve been mothballed for a few years and just stumbled out of the cellar. During particularly bad storms, a haze will hang in offices, chow halls, and gyms for days.
The sunlight that does filter through reflects a deep, sinister orange, framing the desert in an unnatural sepia tone.
Patrols are more risky (no medevac chopper to come get you) and if you need to get anywhere by air, tough (it’s day six for me at the Warhorse passenger terminal).
It’s called the shamal, and it’s that extra bit of misery a country that already has one of the hottest summers on Earth, not to mention grinding poverty and regular suicide bombings, doesn’t really need. But several times a month the wind kicks up, the sun recedes, and the sand takes over.
The grunts curse it laughingly, smoking, shooting hoops, and patrolling right through it like nothing’s changed. Officers berate privates manning passenger terminal desks – “The weather looks fine to me, why the fuck aren’t they flying?” – as if the poor kid has a special M-16 that seeds clouds and brings sand-defeating rain.
If he does have one of those special rifles, I hope he uses it soon – I’m running out of books, just squeezed my last drop of shampoo and shelves at the PX are bare, supplies no doubt grounded, like me, by the sand.
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