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Thursday, March 22, 2007
A mother’s mentality
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
At the war’s midpoint, Kathy Barnes saw a snake’s corpse and took it as a sign.
Will my son die in Baghdad?
A few weeks later, she saw two Canada geese soaring over treetops near her Blue Ridge mountain home.
My son will come back from Iraq to be with his wife.
A rational mind plays this game in wartime. A thunderclap becomes a herald, a bird’s song a prophecy. Looking for omens doesn’t necessarily evidence lack of faith as much as it acknowledges that we really can’t foreknow anything. All we can do is hope.
This war is putting Barnes’ training and faith to the test.
As a therapist in Tiger she helps others deal with fear, both irrational and real. But what of her own fear? Especially when it comes to her son, Edward Berg?
Berg is an Army captain in the 4th Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division out of Fort Stewart. He’s a 34-year-old prosecutor who, in the military, is a judge advocate general officer. During his first deployment to Iraq in 2005 he was stationed at Camp Liberty. His job was to train Iraqis in international law. Barnes took this to be an early good sign.
He’s not in direct combat, so that means he might be a little bit safer.
Then Barnes discovered that her son’s job required flying for 10 months from city to city in a Blackhawk helicopter.
What if his helicopter is shot down? What if a bomb explodes? How will his wife cope alone with two children? What will I do if I lose him?
Much as Barnes tried to stifle her questions, they would creep up anyway. Each day as the body count of dead American soldiers rose, she wondered if she’d get a knock on the door. She’d wake up crying in the middle of the night, her thin frame shaking. Then she’d get angry that her son enlisted in the military in the first place back in graduate school. He didn’t grow up in a duty-to-country family. But then Barnes would remind herself that his personality is to be loyal to a cause.
So Barnes followed the advice she gave her clients and wrote her feelings down, in journals and poems.
Doing it taught Barnes what her clients knew: Seeing your fears in black and white doesn’t make them disappear.
Her husband, Travis, an ordained minister, told her that being in the clergy and being in the Army were a lot alike: You’re giving your life over to a higher power.
That helped.
Barnes kept writing but she also kept praying. She pulled together a group of other military families who were going through what she was. They’d meet and talk, laugh and cry. She told herself, “Feel, Kathy; feel all the way.” Barnes accepted that she couldn’t control her son’s safety, that she’d just have to let go and trust.
A year ago last January, Berg came home with a bronze medal.
With her son’s return, Barnes’ support meetings waned. The mood of the country shifted against the war. Barnes stopped looking for signs.
Then came the troop surge early this year and a call from her son saying it looked like he’d be going back to Iraq. This time he will serve as a chief justice at Camp Victory near Baghdad. He’s not sure whether his deployment will be four months or 10 months.
One day, not long after the call, two military jets roared through the sky above Barnes’ home, rumbling the house and the valley below. Barnes looked upward, as if searching for another sign.
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Gateway to Iraq
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Rabbiyah, Iraq - One this side of the entry point is an arched concrete slab that welcomes newcomers to Rabbiyah, the “gateway to Iraq.”
On the other is a similar structure glorifying Hafez al-Asad, the late dictator of Syria, with a gaudy painted portrait. It resembles those that Saddam Hussein erected in his honor and used to dot all of Iraq before they were defaced or torn down in 2003.
The border slices Rabbiyah in two - one half sits in Syria; the other half exemplifies Iraq. Open fields are strewn with trash, streets are pock-marked, houses only half-constructed and there’s no evidence of a drainage system.
The city council wants the central government in Baghdad to fund a “beautification program” that includes garbage cleanup and planting trees. Officials here are proud their city is the first glimpse of Iraq for foreigners entering the country.
Ironically, a cleanup now would only end up offering a better last view to transient Iraqis who pass through Rabbiyah, although the last thing on their mind is the greenery on the main thoroughfare.
Droves of frantic people leave the troubled nation through this border point every day. The only other official point of entry in the region is farther north in Kurdish territory.
Iraq, a nation of about 27 million, is losing citizens who are escaping the violence and climate of fear. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that at least 700,000 Iraqis have crossed over into Syria and an equal number have fled to Jordan. Many crossed through this chaotic entry point.
Others, like Evan Mallalah Khalid of Mosul, among the millions of Iraqis who are unemployed, walk across the border in hopes of earning money.
On this day, the lines are long at passport control and customs. A desperate family from Baghdad traipses back through thick mud and pools of water after being turned back by Syrian border forces.
Ziad Abdul Razak, a Kurdish doctor from Baghdad, is trying to join his wife and children, whom he sent to Syria months ago. He is among thousands of professionals who have given up their careers and are trying to make another life for themselves away from bombs, bullets and the constant threat of abduction.
Razak says he will travel to the Syrian capital Damascus to find his family. Not that he wants to surrender Iraq for good. He wants to return to Erbil, under Kurdish control, and resettle there.
But it’s hard to plan anything in Iraq these days. Razak’s future will be where destiny takes him, he says. “I just want a better life for my family,” he says.
Capt. Gregory Lee, of Apache Troop, 3-4 Cavalry Regiment, says the entry point used to be far more open and disorderly. He says U.S. Border Training Teams have been working with the Iraqi Border Police to help control the entry point.
The Iraqis now have 20 designated lanes for commercial trucks, divided by the kind of goods they are carrying — wood, produce, fuel. Special vehicles with X-ray machines scan the contents of the trucks before they are approved entry.
Lee says 14,000 gallons of smuggled fuel was confiscated here recently. “That’s how bad the fuel situation is in Iraq,” he says.
Last month, Iraq temporarily closed its official border points with Syria and Iran to stave off spiraling sectarian conflict.
The United States accuses Iran and Syria of allowing the flow of foreign fighters and weapons into Iraq. The two nations deny the charge.
Farther south, Georgia Army National Guard soldiers of Company H, 121st Infantry (ABN)(LRS) routinely send teams out to the wide open borders, separated only by sand berms, to catch people who bypass the official entry point.
The Georgians have interdicted illegal crossers carrying fuel, cigarettes and other items that are potentially sold in exchange for weaponry.
Today at the Rabbiyah entry point, there is a “Tourism Trail” bus sitting in the makeshift parking lot. One day, perhaps, that bus will go unnoticed among others waiting to enter Iraq.
But on this March morning, when the threat of death remains omnipresent in Iraq, the tourist bus, like the efforts to cleanup this gateway, represents but a dream. One that could take a long time to realize.
