Sunflowers In Iraq
Sunflowers grew in Iraq, too.
In Ireland, my chosen home, I drive past a bright cluster, and remember.
Sunflowers were the perkiest part of any convoy I drove on. Sometimes they were a blur of yellow, other times, I luxuriated in a longer glance. In Iraq, I could have gotten someone killed for tracking beauty instead of potential danger. Behind ballistic-grade sunglasses, I’d glimpse their sunshine petals and deep brown flesh. When their faces turned towards light and danced on the wind, my grin was tough to conceal. I did my best.
Smiling was frowned upon. As was joy. And those were the only two things I was ever any good at.
I pretended to be proficient at soldiering. My fear was that no one, especially not me, bought my act. I came from a land of greens and blues, golden light and malls that sprawled. Desert air wasn’t so different from the feel of summer in the suburbs. And without all of those Targets and Starbucks in the way, in Iraq, I had a better view of the horizon. Pinks, oranges, and purples stirred parts of me I had to re-stifle daily.
I hadn’t expected anything beyond desolation. How could the enemy live beneath such lush skies? Parched earth was the neutral backdrop of my musings. Or rather, a stage that showcased every violent contrast. I was told we were there to help. I was also trained to kill. Protectors or predators? At war, there was never time to reconcile such conflicts.
We remained coiled springs, tense and ready for release. But whenever mortar rounds were launched at our base, we did not fire back. We hunkered in bunkers, down, down, down, like ants. More like contained cockroaches, never free to scurry from the light of explosions. Why were we taught to fight if retaliation was unauthorized? And how could peace grow from such unstable soil?
No answers came from questions I dared not ask. Instead, I fixated on micro-battles within. I supressed a lilt in my heart whenever desert rain washed over us. Or when those defiant sunflowers brightened the beige landscape. My smile bloomed through the cracks in my Kevlar. You could send the California girl to war, but you couldn’t (fully) remove the song in her soul. I held on to the rhythm that sunrises, sunsets, and starry nights provided.
Cranes delivered more stacks of cement, placed around our sagging, mustard yellow tents. Unless their dusty roofs took a direct hit, we were “safe” because of those thick gray walls. Smooth on the sides and flat up top, we waited until the sky blackened, scaled them, then perched. The cool night air felt closer atop the barricades. A constant threat of death inspired the stars to twinkle with greater intensity. Or maybe, war had permanently altered my vision.
When I believed the enemy was everywhere, I was constantly rewarded with evidence. Blasts of bombs and color intermingled in my mind’s eye. A fiery sunrise as we started the day’s convoy foreshadowed the abandoned vehicle we drove past that afternoon. The scent of burning tire flesh clung to my clothes. How that green overturned truck came to be engulfed in flames was a mystery. Explanations were not handed down to low-level soldiers; confusion was part of the collateral damage.
The underbelly of patriotism was ignorance. I was blinded by mine. But I started asking myself silently, secretly, What am I doing here? Question marks in my heart twisted and rotated, then morphed into anchors.
And what about that roadside bomb, perfectly designed to harm from a distance? A few seconds delay in detonation meant that I was not converted into mist. Everything rattled as I drove through, but my HMMWV was only dusted with fine blue powder. Beyond the immediate gift of more time to exist, I craved clarity. Why did they want to kill me? Decades later, part of me still can’t help but take that IED personally.
Sometimes, I have reimagined the attack. Like the blast happened near a golden expanse of fields. No sunflowers were about that day. But in my reclamation, seconds before impact, their petaled faces have appeared. In slow motion. The explosion. Then, catapulted leafy green bodies. They rose. They hovered above the tan armor of my truck. They fell. Left to wilt on hot pavement after I drove away. Forever released from joyful wind dances.
No matter how far my mind wanders, fresh Irish fields, and the air they sweeten, bring me back. On Ireland’s rugged soil, I am grounded.
My California roots flourish in this soft rain, and the longer I’m here, the brighter I bloom. What has faded between war and now is my desperation for certainty. I could fill a thousand pages with all that I don’t understand. As unanswered questions remain in the ether, what matters most is that here, I am safe to ask them.
Then the greens, blues, and gentle light remind me to focus on what I can feel. Like warmth in my core that spreads to my limbs when I rest near an open turf fire. Or a grin that lingers on my lips long after I drive past a vibrant garden. Because I am free to savor this simple truth—sunflowers grow in Ireland, too.
