Looking every inch a governor, the thickset Iraqi, in a pinstripe jacket, sits behind an imposing desk and glares at his American guest.
When he drove to work that morning, Bassam Kalasho informed the newly arrived Army colonel, he found the road full of American checkpoints and his office surrounded by American soldiers.
"It looks like you took over," he said, his voice growing louder with every word.
Sometimes he gets so worked up, he said later, he forgets that his "office" is on an Army base in California and that he is only pretending to be an Iraqi provincial governor.
At the National Training Center at Ft. Irwin, in the vastness of the Mojave Desert, fiction has a way of blurring into reality. When the Muslim call to prayer sounds across the sandy wilderness, villages fill with sights and sounds of distant lands. Robed men congregate in coffee shops. Vendors weave through narrow alleys, hawking fruit, flowers and cups of sugary tea. And helicopters streak across a pale pink sky.
This is one of the last stops for U.S. military brigades headed to Iraq. During two weeks of intensive role-playing, they practice dealing with bomb blasts, gunfights, angry demonstrations, corrupt officials and sectarian rifts. All of them fake.
The soldiers who run the huge Hollywood-style production compare it to a reality TV show or a multimillion-dollar game of laser tag. But for about 250 Iraqi immigrants, hired by the Army to play elected officials, security officers and traditional leaders, it is something more: a piece of home.
Many of them fill the center's showcase village: Medina Wasl -- Arabic for Junction City.
"I've been doing this so long, I'm a Medina Wasl citizen now," Kalasho, 54, said with a throaty chuckle.
He has a wife and son in San Diego, but for two weeks of most months, he lives in one of the converted shipping containers that make up Medina Wasl's homes and businesses. The main actors are given pages of information to learn about their characters, including their religious, tribal and political affiliations. Many seem to embrace their roles as extensions of themselves.
"I used to play the deputy mayor of Medina Wasl," Kalasho said. "In 2008, I got promoted. Now I like it more. . . . I have my bodyguards, my car. I am a powerful man over here."
