Oasis

Every once in a while there were almost sublime moments of beauty.

They are the moments, when I'm flailing about in my mind trying to make sense of it all, to which I can grasp to keep myself grounded.

They were few and far between...but their very rarity makes them all the more precious.

There was the soccer game I watched...played by children in a refugee camp at the Saudi/Iraq border. The fact that the kids had energy enough to play meant we were doing our jobs effectively and keeping them alive and fed well. The fact they wanted to play at all meant they were getting past the trauma.

The tomato plant growing through the asphalt outside the warehouse we lived in...growing against all odds where no plant had a right to be. I made sure to check it every morning on my way to the latrine...willing it on to grow...to live. I sometimes wonder if it continued to flourish after we moved away and into the deep desert.

Watching the goofy looking new kid, who joined us after we had already deployed, quietly pray at night. The deep solemnity of his visage was enough to get us to stop busting his balls for a little while.

The Bedouin we passed while driving in a convoy one day. People in robes and headwraps riding camels with all their possessions strapped on to the animals. It was something straight out of Lawrence of Arabia. It was what I thought in my insular way what the desert should look like. It was so alien...so foreign to me that I watched their procession with the giddy awe usually reserved for children at the zoo.

The day one of the various homeless dogs... who roamed the camp and were adopted by various units...had puppies and for days lines formed as everyone wanted to spend time just watching the puppies sleep or feed or to bring blankets and towels and other things to wrap this new family in.

Watching my friend lay on his bunk and read a letter from his girlfriend. He was 19 and crazily, enthusiastically in love in only the way teenagers new to the experience ever seem to be. He would sack out, one his side with one arm thrown over his head and read and reread every letter. She'd spray perfume on them...and he'd pass them around for us to smell. Of course, the letters took so long to get from the USA to Saudi Arabia that the scent had long dissipated. But he'd swear it was still there as he lay down, smiling dreamily, to read them again. Really...he was just remembering the way she smelled.

The day I saw a baby being born for the first time. One of the few happy moments from the second, sad part of our mission: spending eight months traveling from refugee camp to refugee camp along the Saudi/Iraq/Kuwait border region providing medical care and food assistance until people could be resettled or returned home. Having seen footage of birth during training..and schooled in basic birth assistance...I thought I was prepared. I was not. The emotion that swept over everyone involved...mother, father, we medics...was unexpected. I guess after all the death, the taking of life...the presence of new life brought into the world stood out starkly. It felt good. And it was beautiful.


These memories I treasure.