|
Rain in the Desert - Latest News from the War on
Terror
Steven is
a long-time CS member who's now on his second tour in Iraq.
This time he's not in an airplane but on the ground with a
rifle and body armor. Steven is an Arabic-speaking
Christian, so his perspective is unique. Here's his letter
for 8 November 2004:
Something
about this place - or the circumstances that brought me here
- has scrubbed away a layer or two of whatever experience
covers us with. I am more aware of emotion and more
susceptible to beauty than I have ever been. When I woke
this morning I turned on my radio, hoping for the news.
Instead, a Bach violin concerto filled my little room with
every note of sadness, joy, and longing appreciable by the
human ear. It so seized me that I had to quit making my bunk
so I could sit and listen.
And
yesterday as I waited at the gate to be admitted to the
compound in which I work, my eye perceived an abrupt
movement in what had been an empty sky. A small falcon
hovered. Pointed wingtips flashed against cerulean sky,
folded, plummeted, until the line of its descent carried it
behind tall concrete barriers. Somewhere on the other side a
lizard or mouse ceased to be.
Two days
ago I ran in early morning. The stars, normally profuse and
brilliant, were obscured by a thin layer of cloud. Later, on
the way to work, from my elevated position on the bus I saw
the desert mottled by cloud-cast shadows. These two
observations did not raise themselves to the level of
consciousness until later, when someone burst into our
office to announce that it was raining outside.
You could
not have cleared the area more quickly if there had been a
fire. To a man, we rushed outside and gaped at the fat
raindrops leaving dust-free circles on the ground. We
climbed a ramp and craned our necks to the north, where a
line of black cloud advanced like the onset of night.
Lightening brightened the bottom of the line and thunder
boomed in the distance. A towering cloud of dust raced
before the storm.
In no time
the dust passed over and the storm was upon us. We stood
with our heads thrown back, rain lashing our faces, and I
remembered a story about domestic turkeys. The story has it
that they must be kept out of the rain. Otherwise they stand
in stupid amazement, beaks open, staring up at the sky,
until their throats fill with water and they
drown.
We were
saved from that fate by a searing purple flash followed
immediately by a peal of thunder that seamed to rip the
fabric of the sky. The spell broken, we filed inside,
carrying with us the smell of rain.
On the way
in I caught sight of the general. His stern face was coursed
with raindrops. He was smiling.
Bach, a
bird, and a thunderstorm, each of which I've seen at other
times, in other places. Somehow here they fall on raw nerves
and seem more rare, more precious than they have ever been.
This leaves me oddly thankful for the chance to be
here.
I'm
thankful too for your many emails, your prayers for my
family, my brothers and sisters in arms, and me. Keep them
coming.
I'll write
again soon.
Steven
|
