“Missus. Missus. Missus.” said the Iraqi teenaged boy.

I looked up. The sound “Missus.” Had become like a bird call, a constant background sound that came from the boys on the other side of the wire.

“What?” I said. They giggled.

“Jiggi-jiggi.” I shrugged and looked away.

“Jiggi-jiggi . . . Jiggi-jiggi . . . Jiggi-jiggi . . . Jiggi-jiggi . . . Jiggi-jiggi. . . Missus . . . Jiggi-jiggi . . .Missus . . . Jiggi-jiggi.” this call continued for an hour.

“Jiggi-jiggi?” I said. I inwardly congratulated myself because I had finally learned some of their language, a new word.

“Blah-ha-Ha-ha-haaa” the boys laughed and dropped their shorts and did the hoola with their hips on the other side of the fence.

I had felt like a mouse in a terrarium the whole time I’d been on guard duty. They watched me like I was a stripper, albeit one with a Kevlar helmet and uniform, flack vest, and twenty pounds of other gear on. There were a few things that made the leering worse. When I’m afraid, or nervous, I tend to smile. In this part of the world, people don’t smile. It would be like walking up to someone and kissing them on the lips here in the western world. Yet here I was walking around with this big goofy grin on my face. They stared intently.

After two hours of listening to the “Jiggi-jiggi” birds, Sargent Colvin came and told me that it was time to rotate. There were six guard nests, and to alleviate the tedium, we only sat in each one for a two hour stretch during our twelve hour day.

My new spot overlooked the river. I saw boys swimming. I saw women carrying large rectangular bags in the distance. There were palm trees and fields.

“Missus. Missus. Buy Pepsi….slurrup….Aghhh….Pepsi very very very good….Missus.” The boy selling the soda played his part well. I didn’t have any cash. I wish I did. It was over a hundred degrees, and the way the army dressed me, I’d be comfortable in fifty degree weather.

The boys on this side of the water treatment pump, that pulled drinking water from the Euphraties river for us, well, these boys were cleaner and better mannered than their neighbors. They wore clean white robes and scull caps instead of t-shirts and shorts. These boys never said “Jiggi-jiggi.”

“Do you go to school?” I asked a white robed boy.

“Yes. In Bagdad.” he said.

“What are you going to be when you grow up?” I asked.

“I study Islam.” he said.

“Missus . . .buy a knife . . . Missus, Missus, Missus, buy knife.” came the call of another boy from across the wire. I walked up to the wire and looked at the knives that he had for sale. While walking back to my nest I saw a small flashlight. "Give me flashlight. Knife for flashlight." They pestered me for the flashlight, but I coveted it. I felt guilty for keeping it. Many Iraqis are good at begging, their hunger is a powerful emotional force. My flashlights were dollar-store lights that burned through batteries. This was a six inch Maglite. It was hard mental battle for me, to keep the flashlight.

On the far side of the site were a group of about fifteen men, and little motorcycle roared up. A handsome young man joined the group. It seemed like there were Iraqis on the opposite side of the wire guarding us at the same time that we were guarding from them. It makes sense.

My two hours next to the river passed, and it was time to rotate again. My new nest was overlooking a road and a house.

“Missus . . . Missus . . . Missus . . . hungry.” said an ugly dirty little kid with hair all copped of in uneven splotches. I only had two MREs for the twelve hours. Eating was something that could be used to fill the time.

“Missus . . . candy.” The kid said. I had some mints. I passed my whole bag over the fence.

“Pew. . .yuck . . .too hot . . .burn my mouth. . . you give me better candy.” The kid said.

A cleaner handsomer boy wandered over.

“This is my brother.” Said the ugly kid.

“How many brothers and sisters do you have?” I asked.

“I have ten brothers, and I live there.” The kid pointed at a large two story, square white house.

“How many sisters do you have?” I asked again.

“I have ten brothers.” The other boy wandered away.

We sat quietly and I read a Louis Lamour western.

I examined the sixty-caliber gun that was mounted over my fighting position. I hadn’t fired one since basic training, but I’d had a few lectures on how to use them. I looked for a safety switch, and I lightly touched the little flippers that you push down with your thumbs instead of pulling a trigger. I shrugged and sat back down in my steal chair.

I heard a sixty-caliber rattle in the distance, and an echo. I heard a helicopter, a larger one . . . then I saw a black hawk fly down the river corridor. It moved faster than normal.

“Missus. . . Missus. . . hungry . . .baby hungry. . .food.” the ugly kid sat down in a pile of dust and kicked and screamed. “Whaaa. . .Whaaa . . . baby need food.” The ugly kid said.

I gave in and gave her my MRE. The kid worked for a while trying to tear it open. The kid showed me a package of peanuts.

“What do you call these? In Arabic they are afoolasodane.” the kid said.

“Peanuts . . . afoolasodane. . .afool-a-so-da-knee.” I said.

“Plllibbt. . .Dees no good.” The kid took the heater packet and threw it away. It is a chemical thing used to heat up the bagged meals. Some of the soldiers had shown the Iraqis how to put the heater packet chemical into a water bottle, add water, maybe a dash of hot sauce, and make a harmless but loud bomb out of it. Now the night watch was terrorized by their own device all night long.

“I like dese.” The kid said while scarfing down the package of skittles that was in the MRE.

Once she had eaten the peanuts and the skittles she buried the rest of the MRE in the dust and sat down.

I saw four black robed figures swirl around the side of the house, very suspiciously. I moved to the sixty-caliber machine gun and waited nervously. They seemed like ninja bad guys to me. When I described them to the other guys they bolstered my fears of black-ops supper soldiers who act really suspicious. Now I know that they were women.

A thin middle aged man walked up to my site and stood next to the girl, looking at me.

“This is my dad, Noah.” said the kid, that I had worked out . . . was a girl, although I thought she was a boy for quite awhile. . .and Noah did a peculiar thing. He threw me a pomegranate. I went and picked it up because, I love pomegranates and I opened it up and ate. It was green inside, not quite ripe. What I didn’t understand about this interaction, is that Noah wasn’t being nice or kind. He was saying “Jiggi-jiggi.” Pomegranates are called the “forbidden fruit,” there what Persephone ate in the underworld that caused her to be held captive by Hades. They represent sex. To eat one that is given, is to accept a marriage proposal. I’m guessing the four women I saw were Noah’s four wives, so I’m thinking that I’m not wife five though. Being culturally unaware is worse than a drunken trip to Vegas.

The ugly little girl sat with me for most of the four hours. Toward the end of my shift she stood up and said “I’m going home, bye.” She walked a few feet to a ditch and picked up a stack of MREs. There were too many for her to carry and she dropped them a few times before she managed to get them stacked just right. She staggered home. The ache in my stomach told me what a fool I’d been to give her my lunch.

I did a four hour shift overlooking the house because I’d begged my Sargent not to put me across the wire from the group of men. Sargent Colvin didn’t understand, and took it as a sign of weakness and fear. I just saw how much more disrespectful the little boys were to me, than to anyone else . . .that I knew that the men would be wretched.

My next guard spot was at the front gate. A howitzer tank sat on the other side of the lane. Dogs played around the track.

“We feed them, and they bark at the ragheads. The Arabs think of dogs the same way we think of rats, they don’t like em.” A sandy haired young guy dropped down out of the howitzer and played with the dogs.

“I’d like to take them back to camp with us, but they won’t let me. They say that they need shots.” The tanker said.

“Missus . . . Missus . . . Missus . . . Jiggi-jiggi . . .JIggi-jiggi for cigarette? . . . Missus . . .Missus.” boys called at me and started throwing little rocks at my Kevlar helmet. I tried to ignore them. The sun was setting and shadows were growing longer. I heard the Imam’s call to prayer from a mosque across the river. It filled the air with a sacred energy that made me want to cry with reverence. It made me feel guilty for being affected, because I was a very devout Christian. It made the beauty around me feel more vibrant. The Arab men on the other side of the wire milled about and chatted casually during this powerful moment of prayer. I guess they were used to it and didn’t really hear it anymore. They say that people in the middle-east are very devout about observing prayer, but that isn’t what I saw.

Tick . . . tick . . . tick . . . “Jiggi-jiggi . . . Missus . . .jiggi-jiggi.” Tick . . .tick . . .tick. They were throwing little rocks at me.

I lost my temper and grabbed a handful of gravel from the road and swirled around with a red face.

“KUFF.” Which means “stop.” I didn’t throw my handful of rocks. I held them, and went back to the box at the gate. The harassment continued.

Sargent Colvin walked up while they were throwing rocks at me and saying Jiggi-jiggi.

“Jiggi-jiggi.” Sargent Colvin said in his deep base voice. The boy’s eyes got wide. They squealed and ran away. He laughed.

My day of guard duty was over.