I Have Iraq in My Shoe (21 page)

In June, we finished the semester, and class was over. Dalzar took Adam and me out to dinner as a thank you, which was sweet of him. It didn’t help him pass his TOEFL exam, on which he received a score of 483 out of 550, but it was still a thoughtful gesture.

I was suddenly free, for the next six weeks, to traipse around The Rest of Europe and visit family back home in the United States before returning to Iraq in August. I was looking forward to summer vacation but also looking forward to returning to Erbil. I loved teaching the students, and I had finally made friends and settled in. Erbil actually felt like home. Although the honeymoon was over, it looked like this marriage had some promise.

    
ASTOUNDING
    
ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF PART 3

Running total spent on overweight luggage: $2,920 (I do feel it is an accomplishment that this has not increased).

Debt eliminated: $14,063—SUPEHSTAH!

Countries traveled: 2—still just Austria and France from last time. I’m getting antsy.

Pairs of shoes purchased: 3—aren’t you proud of me? Still only three at this point.

Soul mates met: 0

Cultural tolerance level: 9—it was pretty easy to focus on the positive when heading into a six-week vacation.

The first three weeks of my summer freedom were spent in Austria, Croatia, and Greece, and I didn’t bother with a budget. I had never been granted the luxury of doing that before; I always had to pay attention to how much meals cost, how much transportation cost, how much shoes cost.

It was good that I was excited to go back to Erbil, though, because
not
returning was not an option; so said the credit card bills. When you allow yourself the luxury of indulging in the carefree, money-is-no-object vacation, you must continue to bring in those tax-free paychecks. Yes, I had eliminated much of the crushing debt, but not all, and my savings account was still empty. Plus, all my stuff was still in Erbil. I liked my stuff. But even more rewarding than having stuff was the sense of accomplishment that came from teaching my kids. I give you my Yahoo inbox:

I received that last email on my birthday, and it was one of the best birthday gifts ever. One of my kids was using his English and successfully living in the United States.

I landed at Dallas–Fort Worth on July 11 and practically French kissed the customs agent, I was so thrilled to be back in the United States. I didn’t even mind the four-hour layover, where I sat at TGI Friday’s, gorging on American milkshakes and American cheeseburgers, before finally flying to Portland to stay with my parents. I entered the house and made a beeline for Herb, who looked startled. I hadn’t seen him in four months, and he had definitely put on weight. As I lifted up his fat body and pressed my face into his furry belly, I gave my mom a reproachful look. “He is fat, Mom!” Overindulgent grandparents, feeding him table scraps. Hmph. I could tell he was a little fussy and wanted to punish me for being gone so long, but he didn’t try to jump out of my arms, and I hugged him tight and swayed back and forth singing, “Her-bie, Herrrrrrrrrr-bie.”

Once in the comfort and quiet of my parents’ living room, after everyone had gone to bed, I read through Renas’s emails and got a little teary-eyed. I quickly responded with some encouragement, and thank-yous, apologized for the delayed response, and told him to keep in touch.

I basked in the sunshine of Renas’s accomplishment and thought about how this experience was turning out to be pretty satisfying. I was as surprised as anyone, and I sat with my laptop thinking about how weird it was that I was really looking forward to going back to Iraq.

Then I saw Jill’s email.

Warren had hired Jill as his deputy director, to eventually succeed him as director of CED when his contract was finished and he left Iraq (although knowing him, he’d leave before his contract was up). I had only met Jill once or twice, but my snap judgment upon meeting her was that I really liked her. She was a cheery, friendly, short-haired, blond Canadian, a few years older than I, who had spent time teaching English in Dubai and had the dubious distinction of having been Warren’s baby-sitter when he was little.

Her email did not give me the same warm and fuzzy feeling that Renas’s email had given me.

NOOOOOOOOOO!
The blood drained from my face. This was not a good birthday present. I did not want to move to Suli! Erbil was my home away from home now! I decided I did not like Jill anymore. She wasn’t the boss of me! Once we had gotten past his petty threatening, Warren had promised me I would be teaching in Erbil for the entire duration of my contract. Where was he? Oh yes, he was on his summer vacation. Stupid Warren, on his stupid vacation. He wasn’t due back in Iraq until September and did not take time out of his stupid vacation to respond to my desperate emailed pleas for clemency.

I immediately began to freak out. Things were different in Suli. No one likes change. Never mind that I would be thrust into the belly of the university beast, with its dramatics and bureaucratic confusion and inappropriate-theory-concocting chancellor; there were no microwaves in the Suli villas. How would I cook? Okay, not cook, but how would I heat things up?

I really would be like poor, downtrodden Scarlett, forced to yank cold vegetables out of the ground and eat them raw. And even worse, the commute between home and school required coordinating with other teachers and drivers, not just walking down the stairs of the villa. My shoes! They were in danger! This was serious. There were also no Progressive Dinners, no Bakery & More, no J&K Women’s Fitness Center & Spa, and no paddling-pool Real Housewives time at Katherine’s villa.

Wow, I sounded spoiled.

Once again, I found myself sobbing into my metaphorical apron. “I can’t think about that right now. If I do I’ll go crazy. I’ll think about that tomorrow.” I’m pretty sure Scarlett would have been pissed if she had gotten that news on
her
birthday. I’m also pretty sure she would have marched straight to her closet, whipped open the doors, and proceeded to console herself by ripping open the myriad boxes from YOOX, Zappos, and Barneys that had been waiting for her. There is always solace to be found in Jimmy Choo gladiator sandals.

My Portland-Dallas-London flight went smoothly. My two nights in London went smoothly. I accidentally bought a pair of Christian Louboutin suede fringe booties in London, but because they were on sale for half price, that purchase went smoothly. The London-Vienna flight went smoothly. Everything went smoothly until I had to check in at the Austrian Airlines counter for my Vienna-Erbil flight.

The counter may as well have been covered in prickly stucco, it so interrupted all the beautiful smoothness.

While I was home for summer, my friend Christine had gotten me the most awesome and practical birthday gift ever: the Balanzza. The Balanzza is a handheld luggage scale, which has been featured in such lauded publications as the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog and SkyMall. You attach the sturdy strap to the handle of your bag, then hold the scale in your hand and lift. Balanzza would tell you what your luggage weighed in both pounds and kilos. It was totally bilingual. Never again would there be a need to pay extra luggage fees! I had carefully weighed both of my suitcases, and both were at precisely twenty kilos (or forty-four American pounds). I was a packing genius.

The Austrian Airlines representative at the counter did not agree with my self-appointed label of packing genius and harshly informed me that my limit was twenty kilos. Total. Period.

My insides went molten.
Not per bag
. This was for an international flight. Twenty kilos?
Total?
I attempted to explain to the counter representative that she must have been mistaken and that I was permitted
two
twenty-kilo bags, on the
same
airline, Austrian Airlines, flying the
same
route (just in reverse) from Erbil to Vienna, a mere month ago. Her very unsympathetic response was, “Well, you were lucky.”

That was not the way I wanted to start my day, nor my return trip to The Iraq. Five hundred fifty euros later (around $800), both twenty-kilo bags were checked, and I defeatedly whimpered through the terminal toward my gate.