The Heat

The iron grip of the Iraqi summer finally seems to have broken. Looking back, it was the day of that dreadful sand storm, the worst I experienced while in Iraq, that was the turning point. After that day, the daily highs dropped and hovered just above 100F. It was a palpable difference from the seemingly endless 120F days of high summer. Slowly, there were other signs: early morning and late evening weren't oppressively hot, the cold water tap wasn't hot anymore, I had to actually start using the hot water while taking a shower.

Last Sunday, when I returned from my TDY to Qatar, walking around BIAP and Camp Victory wasn't that uncomfortable, even while wearing body armor and lugging around my assault pack. I later found out the high for that day was actually below 100F.

This week, the highs have been been all below 100F. It's the first time we've enjoyed double-digit temperatures since spring, it seems. It feels wonderful. We've taken to eating lunch and dinner outside now and marvel in the simple pleasure of not sweating.

Dust...again

The dust is back with a vengeance. Up until today, it had been enough just to blot out the blue sky. This afternoon, I went to my trailer to get some cold medicine at around 1700. By 1730 it looked like this:

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It’s the darkest, reddest, strangest day I’ve seen here yet. Back in April, we would have called this rocket weather since the insurgents preferred to launch rockets in bad weather to reduce their vulnerability to air attack. Thankfully, the security gains since then have held. Today was dark, and even a bit spooky, but not dangerous.

Relativity

A strange weather pattern blew through central Iraq over the last two days which abruptly dropped the temperature from 120F to about 100F. It’s strange to say, but 100F feels absolutely cool. Walking to and from work in the morning and late evening it dips into the low 80sF. It feels absolutely pleasant and foreign given the last, oh, 100+ days of searing heat. Who would have thought not sweating was so nice?

There are other, subtle signs time is moving forward, that the Iraqi summer’s iron vice is slowly easing up: the sun is no longer so high in the sky, it's getting darker earlier. Today, in the late afternoon, I took a shower after coming back from the gym and actually had to turn on a little of the hot water in my shower (there is no “cold” water in summer here).

I am in a restless mood. I have less than thirty days left in Iraq and I’m finding it hard to concentrate at work. I have finished training a co-worker to take over my projects and feel confident she will do a fine job. At this point, I want to just turnover responsibility completely but it’s hard to let go with just under a month left here.

Meanwhile, I’m looking at the detritus, books, DVDs, and toiletries collecting in my trailer and thinking about how to purge everything and start packing for the trek home. It will involve stops in Baghdad (Camp Stryker), the dreaded Passenger Terminal at Baghdad International Airport, a week in Kuwait, a stop in Germany, the east coast of the U.S., a week in San Diego, and then home by late October. Nevertheless, the psychological barrier is the start of that journey, in less than month.

I remember a year ago thinking, well, I’ll have the entire month of September to spend time with my family before I would have to leave home in October. Now, I want that same fall month to speed by so I can start the trip home.

It’s all relative.

The Weather

The weather has gotten better. That is to say, we've received a respite from the all encroaching dust. Everyone is in a better mood.

We also had a blessedly quiet fourth of July (no "rockets red glare" in the International Zone).

Still sucks

If you can believe it, today was even dustier and more orange than yesterday. The whole orange thing peaked in the late afternoon. The morning was pleasant enough and we even saw some sunshine during a promotion ceremony for one of my co-workers held on an inner embassy patio.

Unfortunately, today involved a lot time walking outside in the orange-ness. We had three new arrivals in my office: two short term visitors from Victory Base who are here for a series of meetings and a new team member who will be here for a year. Unfortunately, they all arrived at different times which required going to out to the Rhino staging area to meet them. Even a short walk resulted in lots of dust inhaled. Third state smog alerts in Los Angeles during the early 1980s weren't this bad.

I live on Mars

When I was kid, the Viking 1 and 2 landers landed on Mars and transmitted the first color pictures of that planet back to earth. Being a geek, a obtained a poster of one of the Martian views and put it up in my bedroom. I marveled at the rust colored rocks and orange sky in the picture which looked so alien. The vista was suitably exotic given my suburban existence at the time.

Now I live on Mars, or so it seems given the color of the sky over the last few days -- orange. The choking dust is back with a vengeance. It was clear enough in the morning but by mid-morning the dust covered the sky making everything sand colored (which is about the only color here). In the late afternoon, I went to the gym. While seated on the rowing machine, I saw the color of the sky gradually turn orange through a window on a nearby door as I made my way through the 5000 virtual meters I was rowing.

All I could think of when I left the gym was, “I’m on Mars.” It’s a lot hotter than Mars, sure, but it looks like Mars. I even saw dust devils swirling around the pavement augmented by the blowing sand. In these conditions even the slightest breeze is a hair dryer and I was surprised how much dust gets into your eyes.

The Peruvian security guards, who patrol the inner International Zone, have neck gators pulled up over their nostrils and wear sun glasses with wide brim hats. They look like Sand People, the deadly nomads who live on Luke Skywalker’s home planet of Tatooine from “Star Wars.”

This really sucks.

Hot & Dusty

Growing up in southern California, I am accustomed to hot, dry summers and smog (these were the days before catalytic converters on automobiles). Although we had some hot days here in Baghdad before I went on leave, those don’t compare to the consistent 109F heat we are experiencing now. And it’s not even summer yet. I’ve heard the horror stories of the 130F heat of the high summer here. Interestingly, I was told by someone who has been year two years (!) -- a linguist contractor -- that there is not much difference between 110F and 130F; both are equally uncomfortable. And, with the daily, inexorable increase of temperature, people here adjust accordingly. If you’ve ever heard the term, “boiling frog,” you’ll know what I mean. Since my return from leave, the daily high as hovered consistently around 109F with one or two days hitting as high as 111F.

But there is no escaping the dust. In addition to the heat, we are beset by nearly daily periods of heavy dust in the air accompanied by a strong, hot wind. When outside, the result is a new twist on the familiar Hair Dryer phenomena: a Hair Dryer blowing very fine sand particles into your eyes. There is no respite, even indoors: the long hallways of the Embassy have a fine cloud of dust hanging in the air that is more visceral and visible. You can see it if you look far down the hall but it’s not immediately visible around you.

The dust, we are told, is a result of Baghdad’s dry and colder than average winter. With not enough rain to irrigate farm land, the summer winds regularly lift fine Iraqi sand into the air where it stays for hours on end. There is sometimes relief from it in the evening when the winds eventually die down. Back in April, such days were looked on with dread as insurgents used the low visibility to launch rocket attacks on the International Zone. However, in a testament to the steadily improving security situation, we have not experienced any rocket attacks since my return.

Dust

Today we had our first really dusty day since my arrival last November. Although the weather forecast had warned about the possibility of "blowing dust" it didn't hit me until I left my trailer early this morning. Winter days here usually have been characterized by clear or somewhat cloudy skies and cold temperatures. This has been one of the coldest winters in Baghdad in recent memory; it even snowed lightly one morning last month.

Not so this morning; when I left the trailer the sky was uniformly light brown and it just got progressively worse. By late afternoon the sky was positively dark. I took the picture accompanying this entry just before 5:30 PM today. When I left the office around 10:00 PM everything looked foggy in the lamp lights around the embassy compound -- only the fog was just more dust. During the short walk back to my trailer, my eyes were irritated.

Yet this wasn't the typically desert Haboob or Sirocco, both of which feature high winds. This dust just slowly settled in over Baghdad and grew in density. In fact, I don't recall much of a breeze at all.