Baghdad is a city of 6 to 7 million souls, from what they tell me. Flying over it in a helicopter gave me the sense that it is an endless sea of humanity. In a city of such a size one person can never record all that happens. One person can only see and hear a small part of the whole in a megapolis, at least from a personal standpoint.
My small part of the whole has been marked by patterns and routines since my arrival. Those have recently changed. The meaning of the change is not clear to me, but the pattern of the sounds of war to which I have become accustomed has shifted. I rarely hear explosions during the day anymore, now, they happen at night. We have not been attacked on our compound recently. The evil and the fury seem to have shifted elsewhere for now. I think that Iraqis are mortaring one another, but for all I know it could be a bombmaker or seven blowing himself up in the wee hours due to an error of concentration. I am behind concrete walls and layers upon layers of men with guns large and small, so the sources of those disturbing noises are a mostly a mystery to me.
What I’m almost sure of is that every explosion means people are dying somewhere nearby. I wonder if they know what they’re dying for. I wonder if, in their last moment, they curse those of us who remain behind to continue the battle or whether they are simply glad to be given a chance to escape the madness and darkness that hovers like a menacing storm cloud over much of the city.
There are so many challenges ahead. The road is steep and rocky. I remain optimistic because, by God, Iraq needs optimism. There is nothing civil about killing another man, and I hope that Iraq can learn to trade the gun for the pen as the primary tool for solving the problems of generations to come.