"The mountains are my friends." (an Iraqi-Kurdish saying) Up until the point of writing this journal, I would have characterized my life as not being particularly interesting, unless you happened to be in the computer programming profession like me. Don’t get me wrong. I have no complaints about my life. It is just that I have had a certain degree of difficulty in persuading other people that what I do is interesting. I w...

 about 1600 words     James  Happiness Happens by James Foley  Martin Trent remembered crashing that Iraqi stone farmhouse—past midnight, March 2016. Inside, tapestries draped those stone walls. Four men: two at a table and two on a beat-up green sofa. Rifles? Low-voiced preparations for rocket-grenade strikes against Government forces? Like that?No, it shouldn’t have been like that. This was supposedly a routine patrol....

Suddenly, the warning of the tribal elder and Wasad’s explanation came rushing back to us. The entire, horrible truth came crashing down upon me in a rush. I realized that the body we had seen in the hole was indeed a ghoul. The images we had seen of the torture and execution were not an attempt by the Republican Guard to execute an innocent man, but an attempt to rid themselves of a scourge. We also came to the sickening...

Once packed, we had nothing else to do but hurry up and wait. Sam and I were conflicted about leaving. We felt that it was wrong that we were leaving Chris, but we had searched all over for him, the grunts had searched for him, but there was absolutely no trace. We kept hoping against hope that he would show up by random chance one day, but as the days went by and there was no Chris, we began to lose hope. Finally, the da...

At around 5 o'clock the next morning, I was awakened by Sam shaking my shoulder. “Dave, you need to get up,” he said. “What? What? Why? What's happening? What’s going on?” was my reply. “It's Chris,” Sam said. “He's missing; he's not here.” “What do you mean he’s missing,” I asked, sitting up. I wiped the sleep from my eyes, and I saw that Sam was speaking the truth. There was no sign of Chris. We hadn’t had any equipment...

Chris and I both groaned. We knew Sam was one to go a little bit too far, but this was too much. “That’s absolutely disgusting,” I said. “That used to be a person. That is so disrespectful. You’re unbelievable. How would you feel if someone pissed on you when you were dead?” “I wouldn’t care,” Sam called back over his shoulder as he finished up. “I’d be dead. Plus, I already told you this country and these people cost me...

Chris jumped in after Sam got out, and, on our signal, he mashed the accelerator down, and he was off. As we watched him race around the track, I considered asked Sam if he had felt uneasy in the warehouse like I had, but decided against it. Sam was a good friend, but he could be brutal and borderline cruel if you were acting, in his opinion, like anything other than a man. I turned my attention back to Chris as he raced...

The Ghoul The following happened about ten years ago. There are times that I still wake up in the middle of the night, sweating in the grips of a nightmare. When this occurs, I know that getting back to sleep will be a losing proposition, so I instead get up and make a pot of coffee. As time has passed, the nightmares have lessened, but like a virus, they have never truly left. I will have a good couple weeks, maybe even...

I remember the barking and howling of the dogs. Not the average, neighborhood dog that barks at the mailman and has somehow gotten off of its chain, but wild, feral dogs. Never seen, only heard. Dark town and villages with no lights on anywhere; clouds in front of the moon making it so I literally cannot see my hand an inch in front of my face. The sand blowing in my nose and mouth, making breathing hard and smells imposs...

“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...