potrero view

September 2008

Coming Home from War

By David Matsuda

I opened the door to the Human Terrain Team trailer and walked to the countdown board to erase the one day left under my name and replace it with a zero.  A young soldier had written over my dry erase marker numeral with a permanent ink Sharpie; I couldn’t erase my way out of Iraq.  I returned the favor by writing “Enjoy the rest of your stay” in non-erasable letters, closed and locked the trailer door, donned my ruck-sack, duffle bag, helmet and bullet proof vest, and headed towards the passenger terminal.   

Trudging across Camp Taji with too much gear and in too much heat, I reflected on the Iraqi people and cultures I’d come to know over the past year. A study in contrasts, Iraqis are fiercely independent in spite of centuries of living under near continuous occupation.  Civilization’s birthplace, Iraq can’t seem to create a future based on its original legacy.   And Iraqis, with a culture that’s deeply hospitable, often get caught up in petty jealousy and spiraling blood feuds.

At the terminal I was instructed to fall in line with the rest of the passengers at the helipad gate.  When our names were called we ran onto the tarmac, through the scalding temperatures rising off the blacktop, and onto a waiting helicopter.  Before liftoff the Army and Iraq were all there ever was, and all there ever would be.  As the helicopter clawed its way skyward my thoughts turned to home and family.  By that afternoon I was out of fatigues for the first time in a year, on a transport plane from Baghdad to Kuwait City, and into a cab bound for beach-side accommodations.

Like its neighbor Saudi Arabia, Kuwait is a highly Westernized country.  In between morning runs and afternoon walks I ate at Subway, the Hard Rock Café, and TGI Fridays – none of which, with the exception of Subway, I’ve ever visited in the United States –and chatted with Bangladeshi, Filipino, Palestinian, and Chinese laborers.  The Kuwaitis I met were highly educated and well traveled.  We had long conversations on a range of topics until, steeped in their own brand of Islamic gender relations, they expressed shock and dismay when I told them that my wife handled the money in our house, a situation which, for them, called into question both my sanity and manhood.

I slept through 14 of the 20 hours of flight time from Kuwait through Washington, DC to San Francisco.  After a tearful airport reunion I returned home to find that much had changed in my absence.  My wife had redecorated the entire house.  My oldest daughter, Katie, was now a socialite and uber literate text messenger.  And my 10-year-old daughter, Kimi, would be flying solo to Hawaii and Boston over the summer.  I took every chance to remind myself of how lucky I was to be home and to be loved.  

In the days that followed Iraq began to fade from my consciousness.  Until one morning National Public Radio reported that a suicide bomber had killed two Department of Defense (DoD) civilians and members of an embedded Provincial Reconstruction Team (ePRT) at a District Advisory Council meeting in Sadr City.  I turned to a friend and said, “You know, that is exactly where I would be and exactly who I would be with were I still in Iraq.”  The next day’s email struck me like a body blow.  One of those dead DoD civilians was my replacement, and the deceased ePRT member was a good friend.  

I now realize that in times of conflict the old adage “You can never come home” is true even for temporary visitors to places in which war continues to be waged.

Texas Street resident David Matsuda, PhD spent roughly one year in Iraq advising Coalition Forces on how to improve cultural interactions.

 Subscribe to The Potrero View

All rights reserved. Copyright © 2006 The Potrero View.

Content on this site may not be archived, retransmitted, saved in a database, or used for any commercial purpose without the express written permission of The Potrero View or its Publishers.