I Have Iraq in My Shoe (30 page)

Andy had been told, by Warren apparently, to give interested Kurds who stopped by inquiring about classes a spiel about the classes, as well as a tour of the classrooms. These, of course, happened to be in my villa. Andy would call and text, asking me to unlock the door in order for him to conduct his tour. I would typically oblige.

One night, around 7:30 p.m., Andy called with the usual request. It was dark outside, I had PMS and was cranky, and had gotten into my pajamas for the evening. We had never had a visitor show up this late before. I was so fed up with the lack of privacy, and the possibility of a potential student seeing me in my jammies, that I told Andy no. “It is too late for someone to just be showing up for a tour,” I said.

Andy became aggressive on the phone and growled, “Well, you’d better be the one to tell Warren then!” I responded, “Okay, I’ll send him an email.” God, it was ridiculous how terrified some of these people were of the Wrath of Warren. Honestly.

I sent Warren this email:

Andy took it upon himself to send Warren an email of his own, and copied me:

He crapped on about how detailed and diligent he was in his recruiting and talked about how he showed prospective students the “students supplies, computer lab, fresh painted walls, a beautiful deck, umbrellas, tea and coffee room, projectors” and then continued on about the problems he was having with my reluctance to cooperate with him, despite the fact that he and Steve were there “for protection.” The email was very long, very annoying, and very full of brown-nosing, and if Andy really thought I would consider a self-medicated loon “protective,” he needed another Xanax. He signed the email:

Oh, for crying out loud. That last part was actually part of his standard email signature; the “working overtime 9–4 Sunday” part. I was so over Andy and his psychotic brown-nosing. In my PMS-addled state, I just wanted to fire flaming tampon missiles at his window.

I responded, only to Warren:

Warren responded:

Warren was fresh off vacation, much more relaxed. We hadn’t seen much of each other since my performance review, and things felt distantly calm between us. We worked out a compromise with the villa tours, and Andy apologized for going ballistic on me. I mentioned my concerns about Andy, and his self-medicating, to Warren, and he said he’d “keep an eye on it.”

I probably should have been self-medicating. The Awat situation was skewing my sense of reality. I had emailed him on the Sunday he would be starting his new English class. He was a little apprehensive about having a new teacher, and I wanted to see how his first day of class had gone. I did not receive a response. Hmmm, that was odd. Monday passed, then Tuesday, then Wednesday, then Thursday, and no email from him.

I emailed Ellen:

It might have been him calling, but it also might not.

Ellen responded that she hadn’t seen him on campus that week, and maybe he was out of town. I responded:

Ellen was supposed to be the voice of reason, given her disdain for Muslim boyfriends, but she was in the throes of her own romance with Johnny, the Lebanese Canadian director of general services, and was definitely in a state of “Love can conquer all” because she said, “A man that cooks is a keeper! I say keep it going.”

I had read
He’s Just Not That into You
, cover to cover. Several times. It was one of my favorite books. If you emailed the object of your affection on a Sunday, and he didn’t respond for a week, and you knew he didn’t have a job and was probably just playing PlayStation in his living room… He’s Just Not That Into You.

When Awat finally did send a casual email, saying he had been “busy,” I didn’t bother responding. I was too old for this crap. I was not one of his typical clueless giggling “girlfriends” who would wear his favorite color every day and beg him to go do bad things on the mountain. I was a grown-up! I had standards! I had a surprising lack of red clothing! What I had mistakenly thought was a special connection quickly dissolved into a typical disappointment in a matter of minutes. You should always, always listen to your gut. Your gut, and lame, careless emails. “Busy.” Busy with what, Alpha Protocol? Chaotic Shadow Warriors?

All that next week I berated myself for being stupid. How totally embarrassing that I actually thought this might be a real relationship. He was twenty-four! He was Kurdish! Ridiculous. I felt completely humiliated but also relieved that I hadn’t told anyone but Ellen, Jen, and Katherine about it. My shame increases in direct proportion to the number of people who are privy to my pathetic grasps at romance.

By the end of the week, Erbil had wrapped itself around me in a forgiving hug, and I was feeling back to my normal self again. I had my microwave and my blender and the J&K gym and spa, and my old Erbil life. Thank God for “out of sight, out of mind.”

Then on Friday I was checking my email and saw Awat’s name pop up in my inbox, with the subject line “complain.” God, that was so typical. He didn’t email me for a week, and then just wanted to complain about how he didn’t like his new English teacher or whatever.

It was unbelievable how unconcerned I was with poor punctuation and creative spelling when it came to him. My stomach flipped. Stupid involuntary nervous system response.

I thought about the situation for the rest of the afternoon and finally arrived at a conclusion. My common sense had fixed itself and was no longer broken. Absolutely not. I was too old to be playing ridiculous pretend relationship games with someone who was completely inappropriate in the first place. I needed to cut this off, with a proverbial sharp Ginsu knife. This relationship was the aluminum can that needed to be sawed in half.

What could I say to him to clearly break off all communication? In Dating Land, what was the quickest, surest way to get rid of a guy? Tell him you love him. Rita Rudner famously said, “Sometimes they leave skidmarks.” My common sense might have still been a little bit broken, because I decided I would tell Awat I was in love with him, and he would be so freaked out that he would not respond, and I could go back to being a happy spinster. Ninety-nine percent of me wanted that to happen, and the foolish 1 percent secretly hoped he would respond with a declaration of undying love. (The percentage was probably closer to 80/20, but the foolish part of the percentage was really the minority.)

I did not receive a response for five days. With each day that passed I thought with relief, “Okay, good, that was the right thing to do.” On the fifth day I received this:

Ouch. I flashed back to that romantic West Life song he had recited to me and how he had made such a big deal out of not wanting to say good-bye. This “good-bye” stung.

I went to great lengths to overanalyze and read too much into the email, aside from the lack of adequate spacing and proper use of capital letters:

• He respected my opinion—that was a good thing.
  

• He wished in his heart that he did not make any mistakes—was that a good thing or a bad thing?
  

• Did he mean that he made a mistake and gave me the wrong impression? Or did he mean that he hoped he hadn’t done anything to make me cut off the communication?
  

See why this was hard? But if he had
really
liked me, he would have fought a little harder to keep up the communication. If someone cares for you enough, they will ignore all reasonable suggestions and recommendations and just make it happen. But nothing was happening, and I found myself swimming in more humiliating rejection.

To make things worse, I had given my phone number to Ashton, one of the Australian security guys, at the Progressive Dinner, and he had been calling repeatedly, despite that I never answered his calls. He was a perfectly nice, attractive, funny guy, who was unhappily married. He insisted on walking me back to my villa after the late-late after-party of one Progressive Dinner.

In typical drunken fashion, I thought I could solve his marital problems by counseling him while we walked. I had seen photos of his wife, and she was a stunning Russian woman whom Ashton had gotten pregnant, then married and settled down with in Australia. Yes, yes, oh, poor you. Stuck with a beautiful wife and healthy baby waiting for you at home. But he continued to lament his self-imposed station in life, and I continued to drunkenly discharge advice, explaining that if he was so unhappy, he could get a divorce but still support the child, blah blah blah. Just call me Oprah.

I was able to keep him at arm’s length at the door, thanked him for the gallant walk home, and when he insisted I give him my phone number, I said, “No.” He persisted. Finally I was like, “Oh, okay, fine.” It was easier to just give him the number than continue arguing with him.

So, instead of receiving calls from Awat, I was receiving calls from Married Ashton, and when I refused to answer any of them, he would send texts:

He must not have had PlayStation. Maybe if he hadn’t been married—distraction is always the best way to cope with the crushing disappointment of rejection. TV would help. TV always helped.

TV did not help this time, because the universe decided that, on one of only five English language channels for me to choose from, it would be comical to repeatedly show the movie
Prime
, where a forty-something Uma Thurman hooks up with a hot, twentysomething guy. When I tried the other four channels, my options were
Monster Garage
, a couple of nondescript ’90s movies where it’s dark and gray and there are a lot of explosions, or
Flirting with Forty
. Fortysomething Heather Locklear goes to Hawaii and hooks up with hot, twentysomething guy. Who was in charge of Middle East programming?

My iPod was the only safe place for entertainment. I could pick and choose my episodes of
30 Rock
, and decided to skip the one titled “Cougars.”
30 Rock
and
Family Guy
were my empathetic, consoling, hilariously distracting best friends, and I watched them over and over and over, laughing until I cried, then crying until I laughed again.