"It's good, very good," the mother of four said. "We knew you all were going to do something for us."
Then she hit him up for a new home or, at the least, a raise in her $67-a-month salary.
A U.S. soldier provides security at a Sadr City gas station while Iraqis wait in line. Residents say militiamen loyal to anti-American cleric Moqtada Sadr were organizing such lines until the U.S. military forced them to leave.
(Reuters)
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"I need some wasta," she said -- an in, or connections. "I need help. I'm begging you -- not for me, but for my children."
Holmes promised that a city official would visit soon. Then the colonel returned to message, words that he reiterated at each stop, in between Arabic salutations that he and the other soldiers in the unit had picked up in a cultural awareness course.
"As long as the fighting has stopped," he said, "we're going to continue to move forward and build throughout Sadr City."
Judging the 'Atmospherics'
Holmes and Andrysiak have a word for sentiments in the streets of Sadr City. They call it "atmospherics" -- their sense of the place from what they see and what they hear. From inside a Humvee, the atmospherics seem better -- the cold, hard stares are fewer than they were a few months ago, and smiling children sprint toward the vehicles, shouting, waving or flashing a thumbs up.
"Everyone's tired of the fighting, and they just want it to stop," Holmes said. Inside his hole-in-the-wall workshop, his hands blackened with grease, Ziad Khalaf is among those tired of the war and weary of a life that he believes holds little promise. The mechanic stood over a trunk-size generator that he was repairing and looked out at Urfuli Street, a main thoroughfare in the neighborhood being newly paved by Iraqi crews at American expense.
"We've suffered for a lot of years," Khalaf said, "and we cannot endure any more suffering."
On his wall were representations of Shiite saints, a poster of Mecca and six portraits of Moqtada Sadr and his father.
"Until now," he added grimly, "we haven't seen anything from the Americans."
If he works "morning to night," he said, he makes 5,000 dinars a day (about $3). With an ongoing fuel shortage, and persistent blackouts, he spends 3,500 of that for kerosene to heat his home. That price is more than double what it was a few months ago. A small can of powdered milk for his 3-month-old son, Nur, costs 4,000 dinars, 20 times its price before the war.
"He likes to drink a lot of milk," Khalaf said with a laugh.
Over the course of the occupation, the perception of American ability has taken more twists than the Hollywood B-movies popular on pirated CDs in Baghdad: from awe at technological prowess, to frustration at unanswered promises, to suspicion of U.S. intentions, to conspiracies meant to explain a life that has remained so bleak. The fuel shortage in Baghdad is the latest crisis with too few answers. The government blames persistent sabotage by insurgents and corruption so systemic as to be routine.
But to men like Khalaf, even that falls short of explanation.
