One day in my life- Bey Hassan, Iraq (January, 2004)

I can’t remember the reason that I drove from Mosul to Kirkuk, Iraq that day, but I did, in an SUV with my partner, Sarah, and a Kurdish interpreter, Said. The route was 50–60 miles, if I remember correctly, on a two-lane highway (Iraqi highway 80). Usually, no Americans drove this road. Sarah and I had previously driven it, only to find numerous trucks with machine guns mounted in their beds storming past us, luckily not realizing that the car they just passed contained two Americans. Armed insurgents, however, were not the most dangerous part of this road. On either side were lands which, to the untrained and uncharitable eye, looked like endless stretches of dirt. More charitably, they might be called ‘farmlands’. Cars and trucks drove on and off the highway from these farmlands continuously. During the baking summers in Iraq, this might have produced dust. In the wet winter, however, these jaunts coated the highway with wet, muddy clay. After 30 minutes on the road, we had to stop to refill the windshield wiper fluid, as we had already used a gallon of fluid to keep the mud off the windshield. The entire highway was coated in slick mud.

We had previously visited a small village on the north side of this highway, built around some oil wells. We wanted to revisit this place to see what had changed since our last trip. So, when we came to the left turn to Bey Hassan, we left the muddy highway and cranked up a small ridge. Bey Hassan lay in the valley north of the ridge. (http://www.maplandia.com/iraq/at-tamim/bay-hasan/).

Said was a wild man. He was an Iraqi Kurd, who fought in a resistance movement against Saddam Hussein long before Americans had heard of Kurdish people. He eventually immigrated to the US, where he managed Chicago liquor stores, before eventually owning a 7–11 in San Diego. He was utterly fearless. Five months earlier, when one of our safehouses was hit with a car bomb, while he was taking an afternoon nap in a different house, he grabbed a pistol and ran through town in his underwear to defend against the attack.

Sarah was an Army reservist assigned to help me on my mission. During my 4 tours in Iraq working with reservists, I lucked out three out of four times. Sarah was a postal worker, back when that meant something threatening- the old ‘going postal’ days. She was also a professional bass fisherman, which seems to add some machismo. I always felt secure with her as my partner.

So, I drove the three of us up to the ridgeline south of Bey Hassan. Everything was completely uneventful, until the second we crossed the rocky ridge. On my left, as we crested the hill, an almost elderly Iraqi stood up from behind a pile of rocks. We had all spent enough time in Iraq that we instantly saw him and assessed that he was probably a scout/guard looking out for the valley toward which we were now descending. He didn’t display any weapons, but we were quite alarmed. There was no reason for someone to hike up the ridge to just sit amongst the rocks.

We quickly plunged down the road into the town, which Sarah and I had seen a month prior. Now, however, the first shack-like dwelling in town (8 by 8 foot walls), had the Arabic words “Saddam Taj Al-Arab” painted on it. This translates in English to “Saddam is the crown of the Arabs”. Saddam Hussein had only been captured the month before and he no longer ruled Iraq. Perhaps Iraqi Q-Anon had gotten to these folks. Anyone who still admired him was suspect. A month ago, no one in this village felt protected/confident enough to cover a wall of their house with such a screed. But, it was immediately obvious that the village now endorsed this and felt no risk in declaring it. This wasn’t a good sign.

As soon as I read the words, I decided to skip any further investigation of the town. We had already been made by their lookout above and we now saw a very clear declaration of Bey Hassan’s collective take on the war. I passed the shack and began to turn around to aim us back up the ridge toward the lookout, fearing and assuming he was armed and would attack us.

The attack, however, came much sooner. As soon as I had driven around the back of the shack, some 60-year old wild man burst through the shack door, armed with a pickax and began swinging toward our SUV. Said, naturally (for a Kurd) raised his rifle to shoot this Arab. I reached my left hand back behind my seat, grabbed the barrel of Said’s rifle and kept it pressed low, so he couldn’t shoot the old man, while trying to drive back to the ridge road, and trying to dodge the old-guys enthusiastic ax-slams on our vehicle. I exerted far more effort trying to keep Said’s rifle down than I did trying to dodge the ax.

Though it seemed to take minutes, we quickly left ax man and sped up the road to the ridgeline, back to highway 80. Sarah and Said had weapons ready in case the lookout had picked up his AK from behind some rock. But the lookout ducked away and we crested the hill uneventfully, driving on to Kirkuk laughing about being attacked with a pickax.

Of all the weapons used against me during my deployments, the pickax was, by far, the most enjoyable.