Many Kurdish people were reportedly especially jubilant over the parliamentary elections because it is the first government installed in the last 30 years or more that wasn’t the outcome of a revolution or military maneuvering.
Many people were also passionate about the election because of the high toll of life that took place over the years to reach this point.
One Iraqi soldier at lunch today said he knows a man that was so thrilled, he cut his palm with a knife and used his blood to mark his ballot. “He said he paid for the election with blood, he was going to vote with blood,” the soldier said through an interpreter.
When U.S. soldiers go to an outpost or base of the Iraqi Army, conversation can run long and last until it’s time to share a meal. Lunch on Sunday included common lunch food; rice toped with a piece of chicken, Tomato soup with potatoes and onions, flat bread and sliced cucumbers and tomatoes, which the Iraqis like to generously salt. The food is basic, but tasty and filling.
I asked Sammy the interpreter if all the foods were common type lunch food for Iraqi soldiers. He said it was now, but didn’t always used to be. As Sammy was tucking into lunch, he said he used to be in the former Iraqi Army in the mid-1990s for 18 months.
He paid off his officer to let him return home because he couldn’t support his family on what the Army paid, when they actually paid. He also said the conditions of Army life, including food, were awful.
Sammy said the soldiers often only ate rice. His was usually cooked but many times he said, soldiers were given uncooked rice and sometime a potato or two they put in their pockets and tried to find a way to cook themselves.
He said when conditions got worse, he knew of soldiers who took bread out of the trash or sold their rifles for clothes and food.
Somehow, talk Sunday turned to what type of snakes are in northern Iraq. Army soldiers said there are several types, mostly venomous, that can get up to 7 feet long. Capt. Eberhart asked if Iraq had anything similar to the rattlesnake, which he told the soldiers was common in his home state of Nebraska.
They didn’t know what a rattlesnake was, but when Sammy the interpreter described the rattle on the end of the snake, they nodded and said they had something similar.
One soldier showed his hand where a snake had bitten him in 1994. He was reaching up for a branch in a tree when a snake that was coiled there bit him. He said he needed 75 shots of anti-venom to recover.
Sammy was impressed with the story. He showed the soldiers an all-too realistic rubber scorpion he keeps in his pocket to scare people, which the soldiers enjoyed.
Sammy said his favorite joke is to dangle or toss it into a shower stall and wait for the fireworks.
I couldn’t help but check under my bed when I got to my quarters, just for peace of mind.