The Airfield Mosque

It was a beautiful Sunday morning when Captain Love opened his eyes to see the sun streaming in through his window.  Still thick from dreams he thought he was back home and rolled over to kiss his wife, but found himself alone in the small bed.  The light coming through the single window illuminated his flak jacket and shoulder holster with 9mm pistol hanging from a hook on the wall.  He pushed in firmly at his temples and then rubbed his shaved head vigorously to exorcise the disappointment and depression threatening to overwhelm him at finding himself once again in Iraq.

Eventually he rolled over and sat up clopping his boots to the ground and checked the cargo pocket of his combat fatigues for a pack of gum.  Years ago as an enlisted infantryman it would have been a pack of smokes to help clear the cobwebs from his brain.  Those were the years before he'd had a wife and small son to look after, when his health was something he'd taken for granted.  His back was sore from spending half the night under his bed as a spate of mortar fire had hit somewhere inside the base walls.  He rubbed at his lower back and was reminded of the title of a book he'd read in college "Things Fall Apart."

Several plastic bottles of what appeared to be Mountain Dew were sitting on the floor beside his bed.  Stumbling through pitch darkness to find the port-a-pot at night was an unpleasant and somewhat dangerous exercise in a war zone, so empty water bottles were saved throughout the day and served as temporary holding containers for a soldier's urine.  He had accumulated a good number of them over the course of the week and they were beginning to take up an inordinate amount of floor space in his small hooch.  There were certain advantages to being a male in an austere environment and this was certainly one of them.

It was his day off, the first in over a month.  His plan was to avoid the Combat Stress Clinic where he worked and stay away from his sleeping quarters as well to assure he stayed off and could enjoy his time in whatever way possible in this god-forsaken place.  The only way for them to find him would be to send the runner on duty to pick him up at his hooch.  A light rain suddenly began to fall and he could hear the drops tapping on the plastic coverings of the sandbags on his roof.  He stepped back inside and grabbed his wet weather gear as well as his small digital camera, tucking it into a waterproof inner pocket.

His practice of taking pictures during the day and downloading them to his laptop in the evening had become his go-to method for stress relief during this deployment.   He was always amazed at what beauty could be found in even so desolate a place if the eye and heart remained connected and attentive.  He was partial to shadows, his own included, as outlines on a variety of backdrops.  This was most effective during the golden hour of early evening and worked as a metaphor in his mind for his feelings of loneliness and insubstantiality brought on from being separated from his wife and son on the wrong side of an ocean.

Large sections of the base were a maze of concrete walls meant to isolate damage from incoming mortar fire, a regular source of things raining from the sky.  In comparison, Captain Love did not mind the watery kind.  It was a different kind of chill.  The base was on the outskirts of Mosul and used to be the city's airport before the US Army rolled in and took control of it.  Any possibilities of air travel rested solely with the foreign occupiers inside their walled compound.  Within those walls he'd seen a stone minaret beyond the Combat Support Hospital that had piqued his curiosity and promised to be a prime spot for taking pictures.

This was his opportunity to explore, but not before getting a cup of coffee to keep the chilly air at bay.  The Green Bean sat next to the Hospital just off of the flight line.  It was a modular room fronted by a covered patio with a random assortment of tables and chairs.  He recognized the music as "French Cafe", one of many Putumayo World Music CD's played in rotation and a favorite of his.  It was mid-morning and the line was uncharacteristically short.  The men working there were good-natured with strong accents and easy smiles, just a few of many foreign contractors working on the base from places like Pakistan and Somalia.

He did not linger as he was want to do.  The promise of the mosque beckoned him and he needed to keep moving to keep warm.  He walked in the general direction of the mosque hitting a dead end or two before finding the main road that got him to his destination.  The mosque was situated at a convergence of three roads and was surrounded by a stone wall about chest high.  The lone minaret was the commanding feature and looked to be leaning at a slight angle.  The road he was walking on split in two at the backside of the small mosque compound and he had to circle around, following the wall, to find access through the front gate.

Having spent time in Tikrit and now Mosul, Captain Love was often saddened by the lack of greenery.  In Tikrit there was a stand of symmetrically planted trees near his clinic that were either half dead or shattered from mortar fire.  There was still evidence of irrigation ditches between the rows and some rusted pipes sticking up above the dirt that had eroded away.  One evening, while walking on the road to the chow hall, the sun had just disappeared leaving a blaze of colors on the horizon.  He noticed one of the intact trees was forming a beautiful silhouette, so he ran back to the clinic to retrieve his camera to capture it.

The grounds of the mosque within the walls was overgrown.  Bushes were bulging upwards and outwards, losing their symmetry and crowding the main walkway.  Lamp posts sat askew with shattered glass panes and broken light bulbs.  Birds were everywhere flitting from roof to tree to wall, fully aware of the importance of this patch of green to their ecosystem.  There were no signs forbidding entrance to the grounds and so he entered the forgotten place and forgot himself, becoming the eye of a camera taking pictures and fighting the temptation to enter the minaret which he knew could be dangerous and might get him reprimanded.

The mosque itself was small and in the shape of an octagon, constructed of white stone blocks with painted line patterns embellishing it.  The top of the dome was bare of the faded and peeling green paint that still clung to its rounded base.  He approached the front door and found a padlock dangling from a broken clasp that had been used to secure the door.  He was hidden from view on the mosque porch due to the overgrown bushes which emboldened him to grasp the door handle and give it a tug.  It opened with a creak and a sigh.  He thought he heard a scurrying sound from within which froze him to the spot, unsure of what to do.

It's not like he had a choice, yet he did have a choice though it didn't feel that way.  He felt drawn into the roundish room though he was not Muslim and did not feel like he belonged in this place, let alone in this country.  He could see light slanting downwards from the high windows illuminating swaths of the gloomy interior.  Thoughts of taking off his boots crossed his mind, but was dismissed as impractical if not foolish in this unknown place.  A flash of shadows and dark shapes startled him and had him reflexively reaching for his sidearm.  The movements were frantic, but then settled into shadows of birds landing on the outside window sills.

This was more than enough excitement for one day for Captain Love.  He scanned the room once more before leaving, but caught sight of a slight movement across the room.  This time he did pull out his sidearm and pointed it towards the interior of the building.  On the opposite side of the room was a niche that he had not seen before his eyes had adjusted to the mix of light and dark.  It was within that recessed space that he'd seen something move.  He did not know of any animals on the base beyond a dog that one of the units kept as a mascot.  He was most concerned for the possibility of an enemy combatant holing up in the place to evade detection.

It was a quandary.  If he left to get help the presumed person could escape and make mischief of some sort or other.  If he checked it out himself there would be no backup if something went wrong.  He decided to proceed with caution and called out to the dark shape.  There was no answer and so he advanced with his sidearm thrust in front of him, flipping off the safety.  Halfway across the room he could see it was, in fact, a huddled human form in the niche but smaller than he expected.  He remembered he had a small tactical flashlight clipped to his flak jacket and trained it on the spot.  Two impossibly large eyes stared intensely back at him.

It was a boy of no more than six years of age, the same age as his son.  His hair stuck out from his head and had bits of dirt and leaves stuck in it.  Captain Love crouched down to his level and laid his flashlight down where it could illuminate them both.  "Hey little guy, where'd you come from?"  The boy continued to stare, frozen in place.  He holstered his gun and removed his flak jacket to try and look less intimidating, more human.  He removed his hat as well and continued to talk in a voice he used to soothe his son.  The boy was starting to shiver and Captain Love resisted the temptation to pull the child into a hug.

He patted his various pockets feeling for something he could offer the boy to eat.  He found some candy that he'd stashed from an old MRE and held out the brightly colored pieces to the boy.  The boy's eyes flicked from the officer to the candy and back, still frozen in his crouched position.  Captain Love leaned in further which triggered the boy to spring forward, knocking the candy from his hand and causing him to fall back on his butt.  The sensation he felt was as if he were a balloon that someone had popped.  He watched in slow motion as the candies hit the floor and scattered in the beam of light.  His hand found a small knife protruding from between his ribs.

The boy was running for the door while the Captain's hand reached out to assure him he was not angry, even as he fell over onto the floor and sent the flashlight spinning.  He felt a wetness covering his hand and it suddenly became very hard to breathe.  The room was now spinning like a top and he tried to yell out for help, but he could not get any air to go out through his voice box.  He saw the silhouette of the boy standing in the doorway for a moment and then it was gone.  His only thought was for the boy's safety.  He did not blame him for what was his own intrusion into this place where he did not belong.  Blackness blanketed his mind.

Captain Love found himself back home in his bed and rolled over to see the silhouette of his son standing in their bedroom doorway through bleary eyes.  He did not yet have command of his voice, still caught between the worlds of sleep and wakefulness, so he gestured for the boy to come and lay with him.  The boy snuggled into his Dad's side and they watched the paddles of the ceiling fan rotate in silence above them.  His thoughts roamed through memories of shared moments like this until he noticed the ceiling slowing becoming transparent and gray skies beginning to form above the whirling blades of a helicopter.  He felt himself being lifted off the ground.