New Arrivals

In 2003, the Erbil airstrip abutted pastureland. The only flight in was on a Beechcraft operated by Airserv, which spiralled down to a bumpy landing and rolled up to a temporary trailer that served as customs, immigration, and flight operations rolled together. Your security team would hang out at a little tea cafe just outside the perimeter, awaiting the buzz of the inbound engine before roaring up in a boil of dust to meet you. Erbil now sports a brand-new, shiny, international airport, "the world's gateway to Kurdistan," with all mod cons, professional staff, and regular flights from Munich, Istanbul, Amman, and Dubai. And, thankfully, frigid air conditioning.  Royal Jordanian still arrives from Amman at the ungodly hour of  3:00 a.m.; the crisp arrival is a wakeful blessing. The second blessing is the automatic 10-day visa granted all Americans on landing. The third is the low traffic volume at that hour: dashing to passport control, we realize that we needn't have bothered. We were it, and it took, well, as long as it took for two passport agents to scan and stamp us on our merry way. Tea?

Outies Takes Iraq Out of This World

I thought about the post-war (or was it still war?) period of 2003-2004 for a good long time after returning home. Of the many things I thought about, one was war fiction, and especially military science fiction. War books have compelling plots, generally along the lines of : there are good guys; there are bad guys. Sometimes some bad guys, that is, guys who were individually bad, redeem themselves and become heroic good guys. Anyway, the good guys win, or die valiantly trying. War's over. The End.

But nothing I saw in Iraq was ever that cut-and-dried. On any given day, it was hard to tell if, when & where we were having a war. It was generally impossible to tell good guys from bad guys - and there were many shades of both, on both sides.

Outies is science fiction, set a millenium hence, on a fictional planet. A lot of this blog makes it into the backstory. (Plus a lot more: See Kris Hirst's review in About.com,  where she discusses Outies as Social Science Fiction.)

Takeoffs and Landings

Any Takeoff

What makes a thing worth doing? An unpleasant thing; a thing of minimal import, a thing hardly guaranteed of success?

I start this, my third trip to Baghdad, with profoundly mixed feelings as always. Trepidation. Excitement. Ennui. Here at Marka Airport, Air Serv's operations are approaching the routine. Approaching. There is still a funny little pre-check stand out side, with a young clerk and clipboard verifying names—she then locked in long and serious negotiation with a missionary manager in sweat-stained suit, his Dutch sibilants excoriating poor communications between the back office and this operations shed. He has paid. No, he has not. Yes he has, and he can prove it. Sir, that is no receipt. It is a receipt, or what should pass for one. No. Yes. On and on this drones, a bizarre riff on a muzak background hum. I sip tea and contemplate the meager selection of snack foods: they are a crossroads mix of stale imports from around the world. I pass on Chinese salted fish and plums; contemplate Middle Eastern—are they cheese?—puffs; settle for baked Pringles in the mini-can: a reliable bit of anti-nausea salt and savory for the corkscrew landing to come.


Any Landing
The Beechcraft Air King wheels left, in a deft spiral anchored along its left wing tip. Like a gull, a large cheeky seagull, eyeing a tourist sandwich and oblivious to its own acrobatic feats, it flashes over ruined palaces; water gardens turned turquoise by a bloom of blue-green algae; oblong fields stretching from Tigris to Euphrates; heliports; tent cities; graveled lots shimmering white in the summer heat; green slashes of reed cane choking disused canals; bomb craters; tank traps; rows of military aircraft, ranks of armored vehicles; passing cross-wise to the runway in a blur of screaming propellers, to drop deftly onto the taxiway.