Touchdown 1
September 7th, 2009 by rsm
I awoke from a dream that finally defined of what the sounds reminded me. Finally.
Sailing in a busy harbor.
I thought I had stored those memories away years ago, so when they started again, I was disturbed by the vaguely familiar footprints on the sand.
Throughout the day we hide in tents of one form or another, some large, some small, awaiting the next flight, hoping we can be on it like an extra in Casablanca. The heat outside is cliché as are complaints about it. Anyone who has taken a fresh tray of cookies out of a convection oven can relate to the heat in the middle of the day of this place.
Behind the heat is the wind stirring the sand and battering the outsides of these temporary structures. Individual air conditioning units keep the dark insides cool, deceiving us with comfort. Should one of them fail, it only takes minutes for the interior to begin baking in the desert sun. But the wind shakes the canvas, pulling at the ropes which groan in protest. This was what I remembered, shifting canvas and groaning ropes.
This tent city is temporary housing for a few hours to a few weeks for thousands of Soldiers, Marines, contractors, coalition forces, with a some Air Force and Navy guys thrown in. We don’t get to leave. For the most part, we don’t get to see outside the concrete barriers surrounding us. Connectivity to the outside is tenuous. There is some free Internet service available in the USO building, but with so many attempting to access it, it’s rare one can actually get on the network. There are pay-by-the-hour services as well, but even these are very slow connections, usually slower than dialup. At the very least, though, we can connect.
And we have food. Good food. For those who want a taste of home we even have miniature Pizza Hut, Subway, McDonald’s and KFCs to name a few.
So we wait, some like myself getting their first taste of a foreign desert.
And the waiting is part of the game. So many games but figuring out how to wait patiently while pushing forward is a skill to be nurtured.