The Mall of America
I didn’t realize it until now—how early we were.
Back then, I never bothered to look at the dates. I just knew we got orders in October 2003 and we were in Iraq by January 2004. I didn’t know the war had only started in March 2003.
We weren’t the second wave or the third wave. We weren’t arriving into a stabilized, organized war with routines and infrastructure and a rhythm people had already figured out. We were stepping into something that was still forming its shape. Everything was improvised. Everything felt temporary. Even the bases looked like they were held together by generator noise and hope.
That explains so much—the warehouse we slept in, the 82nd Airborne rotating out as we rotated in, the pool table wedged into a concrete corner to trick us into thinking we had a “rec room.” The microwave that survived a war better than some of us. The empty dust lots that doubled as football fields. The guitar I carried around because that was cheaper than losing my mind.
It explains Abu Ghraib, too.
By the time we escorted MI personnel out there in mid-to-late 2004, the scandal had already detonated. The world was screaming about it, but the place itself was silent—dead, like something drained of air. The vibe changed the second we staged there. When we parked, it felt like we’d pulled into a funeral.
We were early. Earlier than I ever realized. And sometimes that’s the part that hits the hardest—the fact that I lived through something at the beginning and didn’t know it until years later. When the commissary and Subway finally arrived days before we left Iraq, it felt as if the Mall of America had appeared. I couldn’t help but laugh out loud.
