Sunrise Over Fallujah Chapter 9 Summary

  • Ríos gets a huge package. The only package he was expecting was a tiny toy monkey he'd bid on Ebay. (When he was a kid, he had a monkey figurine that his abuela said would bring him luck.) It turns out the Ebay seller sent him a huge taxidermied monkey.
  • Marla takes the monkey and names it Sergeant Yossarian, a Catch-22 reference.
  • Some members of Civil Affairs are sent to a village where civilians were killed. Captain Miller complains that women are always sent to clean up the messes the army made.
  • When they reach the village, there's already military there. Another Civil Affairs unit, the 422nd, are repairing the water supply. They say the villagers want nothing to do with them.
  • Miller takes off her helmet to show that she's a woman. She talks to Iraqi women and gets them invited to tea. Birdy, Miller, Marla, and some medics go into the woman's house.
  • The hostess, Halima, speaks English. Over tea, she explains that she studied at the University of Washington.
  • Halima tells them that Ba'athists (Saddam's party) had come to their village and told the men that it was their duty to fight for their country. They piled the men into a truck and started driving away, with the children watching.
  • Then, an American plane flew overhead and one of the Ba'athists shot at it. The plane dropped a bomb on the truck and everyone died, with their children watching.
  • Birdy and the women try to apologize and leave Halima's house.
  • Birdy sees a boy kicking a soccer ball and motions to it, and soon, they get a soccer game going: village kids against the soldiers.
  • The village kids win by a landslide. Then the soldiers give the families water and leave.