Midnight Wanderer

“Transport is here,” thundered a service personnel decked in U.S. Army fatigues while standing in the doorway of the makeshift waiting lounge. There were about fifteen of us in that enclosure – all men; a few were soldiers and the rest were Department of Defense contractors like me. Some were reading or filling out papers; the least concerned among us used their Government-issued backpacks as pillows. It was well past midnight, probably around one o’clock. Most of us were there for extended hours and people had grown tired of waiting. In this part of the world, transportation was not guaranteed. This was a battlefield.

A day earlier, I had taken a flight out of Kuwait City to arrive at Camp Victory. A part of Baghdad International Airport was carved up to house five U.S. military camps that served the Green Zone. From here, I would be flying north, to Tikrit – Saddam Hussain’s hometown. I had left home, in New Jersey, soon after Labor Day to get here. The night outside was warm in this early part of September. “Remember to keep yourself hydrated,” cautioned the security officer when I was checking into the Green Zone, “it is hundred-and-ten degrees (°F) during daytime.” Two weeks earlier, the mercury was hitting 120°F (49°C). Needless to say, we drank water like fish. Water bottles were stacked up throughout the facility.

“Those who want to go to Camp Speicher – the transport is here,” repeated the soldier. I quickly grabbed the steel-plated protective vest and Kevlar helmet from underneath my seat. Without those armors, one would not be allowed on the “transport.” A race ensued to slap on the gears – one would easily be a good thirty-pound heavier with them – and falling in a line. The ‘courtesy’ transport was on a first-come-first-serve basis, and oh, the soldiers were bumped ahead of the contractors. I learnt it the hard way on the previous night. By the time I ensured that my helmet was secured before getting into the line, there were a dozen people ahead of me. Each transport, a UH-60 Black Hawk, could ferry about eleven troops.

No room inside the transport meant I had to look for an accommodation outside.  Fortunately, I was traveling with two other team members from the same project, one of whom was a Government employee. He was conversant with the military lingo and could find out the directions to our “hotel.” We hailed a “courtesy” taxi to ferry us. On our way, we passed one of Saddam Hussein’s several palaces. Our driver, who was doubling as a tour guide, told us that that opulent structure featured gold-trimmed toilets! As fate would have been, the erstwhile owner of that place was resting six feet under, while the visitors swapped stories about his excesses.

Our overnight accommodation turned out to be a “tent city” with rows of empty cots under each roof. “I can sleep anywhere,” I thought and so did my companions. In our sprawling tent, cold air was being pumped through a maze of ducts. We soon found out, picking a cot that was optimally positioned with respect to these ducts, was a challenge. Too close to the ducts, one would freeze to death; too far out, the sweltering heat would overpower. Eventually, we ended up huddling in a tight spot.

I looked at my watch; its hands had struck two o’clock. That would be nine o’clock in Baghdad time. It had been a couple of hours since we landed with the setting sun on our back. In the rush to avail a transport to our final destination, we had overlooked the dinner. “Should we look for a place to eat,” I inquired my fellowmen. By that time, I was no longer certain of the outcome of such an effort.

The Ugandan soldiers guarding the camp (outsourcing had hit the US military too!) informed us that the dining facility was closed for the night. There were a few take-out places that might be open, like Subway, Pizza Hut, etc. “I’m in a mood for fried chicken,” declared one of my companions. Lo and behold, we found a KFC place that was open, or so we thought.

As we approached the kiosk, the sight and sound were familiar. There were three young men conversing in Bengali. I went straight to the point. “Are you from Dhaka,” I asked in Bengali. They were a bit startled; clearly they were not used to seeing a person from their ethnic background among the visitors. I went on conversing in Bengali to the bewilderment of my colleagues. The place had closed up for the night, but I resolved the situation in our favor. I did not want to be a loser for a second time on that day.

I beckoned my party to follow me to a picnic table in the quadrangle. Very soon, the three lads arrived with a large bucket of fried chicken, a container of coleslaw and several biscuits. We continued chatting in Bengali for a little longer, after which they left without even collecting the money. I explained to my companions how those men took pity on us and gave away their share of dinner. Perhaps, our common ethnicity had helped me to broker the conversation. However, that was not the first time I had seen humanity to prevail over all other considerations and it would not be the last.

“Please have your paperwork ready,” reminded the soldier as we filed past him into the open field adjacent to the waiting enclosure. There were ten people in front of me. Would I be fortunate enough to bag a ride on this night? I looked behind where my co-travelers were standing; they put their thumbs up. Nobody seemed as anxious to catch a ride as I was.

My eyes were fixated on a pair of bright dots in the distant horizon. As they grew bigger, the whirring of rotor blades became more distinct. The Black Hawks mostly flew in pair, but never alone. Soon the beams illuminated the whole field and the aerial transports gently landed kicking up moon dust. We were wearing protective glasses for no small reason. I could feel sweat dripping from underneath the helmet and down my cheeks. The steel-plated vest seemed heavier with every breath.

The doors of the Black Hawks opened to unload their human cargo. A group of soldiers and civilians, twenty in my count, streamed past us. I heaved a sigh of relief. We were asked to file against the rear of the birds to avoid being sucked into the rotating blades. The men ahead of me got into one, while I waited for my turn. A soldier motioned me to climb into the front. Front? I was bewildered for a moment. He again pointed towards the cockpit. Carrying two backpacks and clutching the helmet and the glasses – boy, did I move fast – I stepped into a Black Hawk, a machinery made famous by Mark Bowden’s book Black Hawk Down, for the first time in my life!

The dim cabin light had made the interior mystic. The two pilots were listening to radio communications, while the two gunners on either side adjusted their night goggles. Before I could overcome my bewilderment, the doors of front and rear cabins were slammed shut. I was still struggling to secure the seatbelt – the buckle on that contraption was very different from the familiar ones – when the helicopter took off, executing its typical gyrations. I glanced at the soldier sitting next to me. He was taking a nap with the M-16 carefully tucked between his legs, a sight reminiscent of the daily passengers on local trains in India. I held on to the seatbelt tightly as the pull of the gravity became apparent.

The helicopter continued to climb up and then pushed forward; piercing the envelope of darkness, it headed for a destination in an unknown land. The final leg of my journey had begun. A blast of warm air greeted us. The outside view, through the windows where the gunners stood, looked very familiar. It was as if I was peering at rural India with its dimly lit roads and scattered clusters of homes. The young gunners craned their necks to spot muzzle flash as the helicopter leveled off at a low altitude.

A train of thoughts wrecked my mind. How predictable was a war zone? Would I reach my destination that night? I heard from a colleague in New Jersey about his difficulties to get out of this place when he did his tour several years ago. He kept getting bumped off flights, which were ferrying wounded soldiers, at the height of the Iraq War. Eventually, he could secure a ride after five days of wait in Balad.

What would happen if the helicopter came under fire? Would the two young gunners be able to hold their firepower? I was reminded of the scene in Black Hawk Down in which Black Hawk Super Six-One was hit by an RPG and crashed inside Mogadishu. Before coming on this tour, I had to spend an entire week in Ft. Benning, Georgia, undergoing basic training. We learned how to apply tourniquet to stem the flow of blood when a solder got hurt. We trained our sights to spot a suicide bomber or a buried IED amidst unfamiliar settings. However, we weren’t briefed on our options if the helicopter had crash landed. I couldn’t close my eyes; the worries kept me peering into the darkness.

Suddenly, the vehicle jerked and started to descend. One can imagine how I reacted to that. I looked around and saw tranquility – I was assured of my survival. I glanced at my watch; it indicated that we had been airborne for about forty-five minutes. We were in Speicher already, I pondered. That couldn’t be possible as we were told that the journey would last several hours. So, what else could be the reason of the descent? By then, I was certain that the helicopter was not hit by artillery fire. Eventually, we came to rest on the tarmac. We were asked to disembark without our belongings and walk towards a waiting area. We obliged while moving away from the rotating blades quickly. I had become conversant with the etiquette of the battlefield. 

After a short while, we were summoned to return to our transport. My travel companions were seated in the main compartment with a few soldiers and several civilians. They had found out that “essential” goods were being delivered to that post on the outskirts of Baghdad. After we were reseated, I asked my co-passenger: “Sir, if you won’t mind, can you kindly show me how to buckle up?” “This is how I do it,” demonstrated the soldier with his seatbelt. “Tango Mike,” I could not resist the temptation to demonstrate my newly-acquired military lingo skills to the Good Samaritan. All of a sudden, I felt that my desperation had evaporated. I was firmly buckled as the Black Hawks lifted off for Tikrit.

The helicopters quickly ascended into the night sky. I learned from my soldier friend, James, the rotorcraft had to stay beyond the range of small arms and light weapons fire. We were in hostile territories north of Baghdad. He also informed me that the flight path would take us over Balad, but we would not be landing at that military base. Instead, we would fly close to Tigris River on our journey north into Tikrit.

James was on his second tour of Iraq and was from Modesto, California. His current assignment would last for another four months. He hoped to be home for Christmas, to enjoy his “R&R” with his two young daughters. Our short exchanges ended soon as James drifted off to slumber. He and his unit were returning to Camp Speicher after a week-long mission around Baghdad.

The interior of the air vehicle had become eerily quiet. It was dark already; the dim lights were switched off as soon as we were airborne. The whirring of the rotor was the only lingering sound disrupting the otherwise still night. As I stared into the darkness, I suddenly faced that eternal question – who was I in this grand cosmos? What was I doing at that very moment in a place literally ‘foreign’ to me? Yes, I was on this post-midnight mission to fulfill my contractual obligation towards the U.S. Government – deliver new force protection technologies. However, my true contribution towards the grand scheme of the universe extending all around me was utterly insignificant; and so were those of James, who by then was in deep sleep, and his comrades. In fact, no one in the whole wide world at that very moment could have claimed to impact, beyond personal confines, any event with far reaching consequences.

Below me extended a dark carpet that was the land of Iraq, embroidered with scattered lights. The bright clusters signified military bases and outposts; the dim lights shone from the homes of ordinary citizens, mostly along Tigris River. Who would be burning midnight oil in those homes? Could it be a young student preparing for exams, a housewife winding up her day’s work or a family taking turns to guard the front door fearful of it being knocked down in the middle of the night? A despot and a prolonged war must have had profound effects on the psyche of the population; but I, being where I was, would never encounter these inhabitants or find the right answer.

There is perhaps no better display of self-interest than in a war. The Iraq War was in its eighth year by then and was on the way to joining the Afghan War as the longest U.S. engagements militarily. I could barely account for a handful of the ‘great’ wars that were influential in changing the course of history. Wars are like waves in a vast ocean; they flow and ebb in the expanse of humanity without leaving any trace.

As I sat motionless in my seat, I started to feel the weight of the vest. It was probably the longest time that I had worn the armor. According to the regulation, I was supposed to retain it as well as the helmet throughout my flight. I glanced at James; he seemed to be at ease in his gear. The two gunners were still at their stations, peering into the darkness through their night vision goggles. I loosened the straps of my helmet and unbuckled the vest; I inhaled the warm air circulating inside the cabin.

Words penned in another century came rushing to me:

“The last sun of the century sets amidst the blood-red clouds of the West and the whirlwind of hatred.

The naked passion of self-love of Nations, in its drunken delirium of greed, is dancing to the clash of steel and the howling verses of vengeance.”

I could not shake off Rabindranath Tagore at that hour in the most unlikely of places – inside a Black Hawk flying over a battle-scarred land. Then I remembered Wilfred Owen, the famous trench poet of World War I. He found solace in the beauty of Tagore’s words in the midst of a war that caused widespread suffering among civilians as the Allies pursued the retreating Germans through French villages in the summer and fall of 1918.

Owen perished while crossing the Sambre–Oise Canal, exactly one week before the signing of the Armistice. After the death of her son, Owen's mother retrieved his personal possessions. In his pocketbook, she found Poem 96 of Tagore’s Gitanjali (“Song Offerings”) that Owen recited in his farewell address to his mother. "When I go from hence, let this be my parting word, that what I have seen is unsurpassable," reads the opening line.

I wondered if Owen felt the same way as I did, arriving on the battlefield for the first time. He certainly had a much longer tenure and saw the horrors of war up-close. Unlike Owen, I was not in a position to exchange farewell with anybody. My life’s journey was far from over. However, between my excitement of stepping onto a Black Hawk and my apprehension of surviving the nearly three-hour flight in a battlefield, I could say my experience of that night had been “unsurpassable.”

Tagore’s premonition in the closing hours of the 19th century about the hubris of jingoistic pride embodied in the model of the modern nation-state, reverberated in the darkened cabin of the Black Hawk. Each of us was representing our self-interest to preserve that model in one way or the other; so did Owen, through his participation in the war. Yet he found refuge from the crass materialism engulfing his world in Tagore's poems, which encapsulated a simple faith in man and divinity.

A cloak of silence was draped all around me, except for the sound of the rotors. I gazed straight ahead, past the pilots, out through the cockpit window. As far as my eyes could see, darkness extended to the horizon. We should be following the course of Tigris River as James had explained, but apparently we did not. I looked up – the canopy was decorated with twinkling stars. We must be above the smoke and dust layers that quite often obliterated the majestic view, I thought.

Thousands of miles removed from my comfort zone and my familiar world, the crammed, dark, hot interior of the Black Hawk felt apocalyptic. At the same time, it served as a protective enclosure from unknown forces. Did Owen also find his trenches, his fox holes, to be such dichotomies when bullets whizzed and shells exploded overhead? And did he peer at the star-filled sky from his vantage point and feel the infinitely bigger presence embracing him? If indeed he did, he probably had arrived at the same conclusion as I – humankind is not in control of its destiny.

Our behavior is predicated on limited knowledge about our world. We can go only so far guided by our own actions before those of others force us to re-strategize. These snippets of activities when spliced create the trail of our journey through space and time. A successful completion of my journey that night rested on the actions of many – the pilots, the gunners and even James - who were busy ensuring that my chosen plan ran its course.

Would I safely return to my comfort zone, would I ever encounter a night like this in another place – answers to those questions rested on our collective actions in the future. All I could feel at that very moment, thundering across the starry sky, was being an awestruck wanderer in the grand universe. Raising my voice above the hum of the rotors, I sang to myself:

“In this Universe, space and eternity

I, the mortal, alone I wander, wander in awe.”