If nothing else, Miss Teen South Carolina 2007 would be pleased. I had helped The Iraq with their education system and had also helped with their fashion sense. Never judge a person until you have walked a mile in her shoes. Or, if you have more than enough of your own shoes, let the person walk a mile in the shoes you donated. That’s a lesser-known idiom, sure, but just as true.
One of my students had once said to me, “Teacher, I must know how you think about Kurdistan? What you think of the city, the people, the place?” It was sort of unfair for me to truthfully answer a question like that. I had seen some astoundingly spectacular things. According to the “Where I’ve Been” feature on Facebook, I had been to over 182 cities in 41 countries, now including Turkey, Greece, and The Rest of Europe. I could say I loved the mountains or that the city was…sprawling? Or that the place was exotic-ish? I could say I found the mosques beautiful, or the markets entertaining, but the physical aspect of Kurdistan was not what had most impressed me. What most impressed me was the people. Their sense of community, their resiliency, their collective sense of humor, and their capacity not to take anything too seriously. While they seemed frustratingly lazy or apathetic at times, the silver lining of that was an admirable carefree attitude that corresponded to a preferred coping strategy for tougher times. Everything will work out, inshallah.
My initial impressions of the Middle East were not far from the mark. It is a completely male-dominated society, and what I found most disconcerting was how deeply the sexism was ingrained. Women are not respected and have centuries of cultural conditioning to overcome. What was encouraging was seeing potential for change and the desire to balance tradition with an ever-changing world. What I found interesting on a personal level was how easy I thought it would be to dislike the men for their aggregate misogyny, but I found that my students, like anyone else, were human. Some of the women were shy and tentative, but others were surprisingly bold, passionate, and brilliant. More than one of them thanked me for teaching them “so much more” than just English, and I was glad to have done that, however unwittingly. Many of the men exhibited textbook sexism toward their female classmates, and usually when speaking of women in general, but at the same time they treated me, their female teacher, with the utmost respect. The overall experience was exhausting, enlightening, frustrating, rewarding, and best of all, really fun. They were my kids, and I felt endlessly grateful for having had the opportunity to teach them and to know them.
It was rather poetic that my last semester class was composed of only two men. Just two. It ended as it began. Adel and Idres both worked as drivers for one of the Western companies in English Village. Adel (the tall one) and Idres (the portly one) were very eager but very elementary Level 1 learners. The Level 1 book was even too advanced for them at times, and we plodded through some challenging classes. When I told them I was leaving to return to the United States, both fiercely protested. Idres even went so far as to say he was “very angry” with this new development, and shook his head in obvious disgust. Adel generously offered to drive me to the airport. At first I brushed him off, saying, “Oh no, that is really nice, thank you but no.” When he protested, I thought, “Why not?” and he seemed so pleased and so proud to be able to take me.
After all my things had been packed into Adel’s SUV, and we were on our way to the airport, he said, “Miss Gretchen, thank you so much for your teaching. I am happy to learn more English!” As he was effusing, his cell phone rang, and he answered in Kurdish, then handed the phone to me. It was Idres, calling to say good-bye and wish me (and my family) well. When I said, “Hello?” he immediately crowed, “Miss Gretchen! What are you wearing?” I burst out laughing at the absurdity of the question, which, if overheard by an innocent eavesdropper, might have seemed racily inappropriate, but one of our last lessons had been articles of clothing and describing them. I informed Idres I was wearing a brown sweater and blue jeans, then let him talk some more while my eyes welled up with tears.
Crying a little, yes, but no longer sobbing into my apron. Having survived more than a year in The Iraq, and having paid off over $40,000 of debt, I was leaving. And while I had told Idres I was wearing a brown sweater and jeans, in my head I was triumphantly clad in my chain-mail tunic, fierce metallic headband, and my green Marc Jacobs platform sandals, dragging my overweight suitcases in a long, slow-motion walk up to the airport check-in counter; the luggage scale just sitting there, waiting for me. It would be worth it, though. My mom promised BLTs for lunch upon my return.
Epilogue
I managed to make it home, in spite of one airline canceling a leg of my flight. I managed to receive the stupid hockey bag I had shipped home, despite the shipping company trying to extort more money from me after I had paid them and left my precious cargo in their care. I’m sure it was just my karma coming back from the ski-bag incident. And, finally, I managed to spend some time reflecting on my experience and my astounding accomplishments in The Iraq:
Grand total spent on overweight luggage: $4,880
The shipping company charged me $1,010 to ship one stupid hockey bag home. All things considered, $5,000 was a small price to pay to have the comforts of home with me.
Debt eliminated: $41,745
All of it. All the debt was gone. There would be no mocking credit card statements waiting for me in the mailbox. And, more importantly, Suze Orman would be proud. I even had enough left over to send my parents to Europe, first class.
Countries traveled: 9
Austria, France, Croatia, Greece, Turkey, Sweden, Italy, Jordan, Oman. It was an amazing, fulfilling potpourri of cultures, languages, food, and, of course, shoes.
Pairs of shoes purchased: 20
This seems excessive; however, since I donated nine pairs, and gave two pairs to my sisters, I really only purchased nine for myself, right? Or is that creative shoe math?
Soul mates met: 0
My “great, big, core-connecting, fate-fulfilling, gotta-have-it earthquake love” was not to be found in Iraq. However, Psychic Sahar assured me I would have one in this lifetime. Inshallah.
Cultural tolerance level: 5
My initial rating remained true. I won’t sugarcoat it. While there were definitely things I could appreciate about the Middle East, the glaring inequities between men and women were too great to ignore. Five is average. It’s not the murky bottom, but it leaves plenty of room for improvement. Girls should not be thought of as “guests” in their own families. Women should be allowed to roam about as freely as men, without chaperone or the threat of being labeled a whore. Coffee shops and restaurants should not be gender restricted. The menstrual cycle, while annoying and mostly inconvenient, is not a “hurt” or a “pollution.” And Virginity Soap will always be bullshit.
After returning to the United States, I had a serious “aha!” moment, which, no offense to Oprah, I would really prefer to call my “holy shit” moment. In watching an HBO documentary on Gloria Steinem, I saw what I thought were shocking examples of widespread and generally accepted sexism in the United States. From hideous newscaster opinions to vitriolic sign-carrying protesters, to a Chicago restaurant that had a men-only section—and this was only forty years ago. Chicago! That’s where I grew up! How could it betray me like that? I was thankfully born too late and was too busy reading Free To Be You And Me and Our Bodies, Ourselves to have experienced any of it firsthand, which makes it near-impossible to believe it happened. Like when I try to explain to teenagers that cursive writing is not a pretend language I made up myself, and it really used to be taught in school. My mom confirmed that some things had, indeed, been a little grim for women. That documentary both horrified me and made me reassess my somewhat harsh perspective on the Middle East. Maybe it’s just a matter of time…
I am now older, wiser, and completely debt-free. While Warren and I have gone our separate ways, I am still grateful for the crazy opportunity he provided. I am also grateful for the experience, which proved to me that people ar
e just people, no matter where you go.
At the end of Gone with the Wind, Scarlett O’Hara was alone and jobless too, but did she wallow? Did she whine? No, she did not. She focused on the comforting and encouraging thoughts of home and the future, and the new boxes from YOOX waiting in the closet. Herb, purring loudly, winds his way around the open hockey bag as I sit on the hardwood floor unpacking in the spare room at my parents’ house. I reach into the bag and pull out one red suede Wonder Woman boot, and a clump of red Iraqi dirt, not unlike the red clay of Tara, falls off one of the soles. Snickering to myself, I pick up the clump, raise it triumphantly in the air, and boldly declare aloud, “Tomorrow is another day!” Herb is startled at the outburst and looks momentarily confused, before resuming his purring and nuzzling the hockey bag that is being, finally, unpacked. The bag, it seems, has a familiar smell.
Acknowledgments
Gracias, Obrigado, Merci, Danke schoen, Tack, Grazi, Efcharisto, Spassiba, Spass, Shukran, Didi mad lo ba, Domo arigato, Kamsa hamnida, multsumesk, kap kun kaa, and thank you to:
Scooter-Pooter McCoubrey, who loaned me Wade Rouse’s hilarious At Least in the City, Someone Would Hear Me Scream, where I stalked his agent from his acknowledgments page.
All my other Iraq friends and coworkers, whom I am reluctant to name for fear of inadvertently leaving someone out, like in an Academy Awards speech, and then everyone would just be talking about it for weeks and weeks, and we’d probably get divorced over it.
Wendy Sherman (stalked agent), for helping me whip the book proposal into shape, and for just ignoring any of the offensive language she asked me to tone down, that may or may not have made it into the book.
Shana Drehs for humoring me throughout all the edits, and for trying to understand why I hate footnotes.*
Kerry Rupp, the first person to pay me for writing.
All my other friends who encouraged my writing (just not with money).
Piers Drysdale, for letting me stay in his villa after being kicked out of mine in The Iraq.
Piers’s mum, Mrs. Drysdale, for letting me stay in the flat in Notting Hill, London, on my way home.
My step-class teachers: Dan J., Casey, Michelle D., and Nancy at the Portland, Oregon, Hollywood 24-Hour Fitness for keeping me sane, and fitting into my pants, while I was living with my parents and finishing the book. I was the one in the back row who consistently refused to do squats and jumping jacks.
All the people whose names I’ve changed in the book, for not taking it too personally. You’re all three-dimensional people, and I probably just experienced one of the dimensions.
My family: Little Nolan, Ellie, Pete, Jessie, Dad, and especially Mom, who did her own bit of editing in between yelling encouragement into the megaphone and waving the pom-poms.
Tina Fey and Seth MacFarlane.
Mrs. Gentry, my eleventh-grade typing teacher, for the most worthwhile class I’ve ever taken. “A, a, a, space, a, a, a, space, a, a, a, space, return.”
* I mean, it’s just a nuisance. There you are, happily reading along when you hit a footnote, and you have to leave your current, comfortable paragraph and drag your eyes all the way down to the bottom of the page, and when you’ve finished reading the footnote, you have to drag your eyes back up to try to find the place where you left off. I’m exhausted just talking about it.
About the Author
Photo credit: Gretchen’s mom.
Gretchen Berg is an award-wanting writer with a bachelor’s degree in something completely unrelated to writing. She has read articles for Vogue, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, Allure, The New Yorker, Newsweek, and The Economist (once when the TV wasn’t working).
She is a Cancer, with Scorpio rising, who was born and raised.
She wishes people dressed up more. She discusses such important concerns at www.GretchenBerg Books.com.
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