Layers of truth and life in Iraq

He handed back my documents, but not before jotting down my personal details and obtaining the name and address of the hotel we'd be staying at in Najaf. I had survived yet another close call, and would hear Delphine's voice again that night.

*

I am out of Iraq right now, but I keep having to remind myself that there's no countdown anymore before my next trip to Baghdad. Getting ready for the next stint "in country" was always so hard. I could rarely sleep the nights before I left.

It's getting better now. I am learning again to appreciate quiet breakfasts with my wife and boisterous games of soccer with friends. But readjusting to ordinary life is hard. I miss the action.

I still daydream about my last helicopter ride to go north of Baghdad. I stuffed in earplugs and strapped on a flak jacket.

I thrilled as the Black Hawk lifted up, swinging over the Green Zone across the homes of the brawny, good-humored British, South African and American security contractors. We skirted past the mosque of the wily Shiite cleric who venomously ripped into his enemies during Friday prayers, but politely offered visitors tea and sweets.

We passed over a marketplace, where teens in plastic slippers pushed around wooden gurneys while shopkeepers worked their prayer beads. Young women stood in the courtyard of a school, perhaps recounting the woes that befell loved ones. Farmers outside the city limits worked ancient fields of barley and wheat. Boys and girls dressed in colorful robes of pink and purple walking on a dirt road waved up to us.

I imagined reaching my hand out and grasping them, drawing them all into my heart.

All of them.

*

daragahi@latimes.com

Daragahi is currently in Cairo and moving to a new assignment in Beirut.