How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
A guy from the 3rd, a big, thick-necked sergeant, was holding up a tube. It was an RPG launcher. "Ask them who this belongs to!" the sergeant barked at me. Did I look Iraqi to him? (4.93-94)
Way to assume, sergeant. He thinks Birdy is Iraqi because he has dark skin.
Quote #2
Ahmed, the interpreter, found us. He had been around but not hanging out with the regular troops. He was thin, dark-haired but light-skinned. He could have been Latino. He shook hands all around and Jonesy asked him how he learned Arabic.
"My family is from Lebanon," he said with a shrug. "My grandmother made me learn it." (4.72-73)
Ahmed is given an interpreter, middle-man type role because his family is Lebanese. But it's clear that he's pretty removed from the Middle East—he spent his whole life in the U.S.
Quote #3
"It's good to have a slave," Pendleton from Third Squad said.
I didn't dig that too much and neither did Jonesy. We didn't say anything but Pendleton caught our attitude. (6.15-16)
Pendleton's statement is not cool anyway, but it makes sense that it would bother Birdy and Jonesy more than the others, considering the history of slavery in the United States.
Quote #4
The Italians came over. They shook hands all around. One of them asked in English if I was an Iraqi. He knew I wasn't. I guess they thought that was funny. (6.91)
Kind of a weird joke to make, isn't it? Assuming a racial identity just because of the color of Birdy's skin?
Quote #5
"Hey, Captain Coles!" Marla was on the intercom.
"What?"
"You think Birdy is an Iraqi?"
"Could be," Captain Coles answered. "He's very dark." (6.101-104)
Marla's just messing with Birdy here, and Captain Coles is playing along. But they're pointing out that Birdy looks more like their opponents in the war than he looks like them. What do you think that would feel like?
Quote #6
"Tell this guy to remember whose side he's on," he said.
"He's American," Jonesy spoke up. "You didn't know that, sir?"
The lieutenant looked Ahmed up and down and then walked away. Creep. (6.178-180)
The lieutenant had no reason to say that to Ahmed. He said it, totally unprompted. Maybe a little bit of racism coming out?
Quote #7
"They came and said everybody in the village had to fight against the invaders. The fedayeen knew the villagers were mostly from minor tribes and they didn't care about them being killed. Everybody who refused to fight would be shot. They even gave the children guns. (6.206)
Coming into Iraq, Birdy thought of the Iraqis as one people, but that's not how they always think of each other. The villagers' lives didn't matter to the fedayeen just because of what tribe they're from.
Quote #8
I also didn't like searching people. I had been stopped on 136th Street once, just outside the Countee Cullen Library, by two plainclothes cops who had searched me. I knew what it felt like. Embarrassed that I had to stand there with my hands in the air while strangers patted me down and went through my pockets, humiliated because they were assuming power over me and I couldn't do a thing about it. I felt I knew how the Iraqi men felt while I searched them. (10.87)
There are complicated reasons beyond racial profiling for the squad to search the Iraqis, but having been profiled makes Birdy feel connected to the people he has to search. It must be an uncomfortable feeling.
Quote #9
We got back just in time for supper. Jonesy started interviewing Marla again, holding his spoon up as a mike.
"Yo, Miss White Lady, how do you feel rescuing a poor little Racki boy?" (11.99-100)
Their whole squad worked together to find Muhammed, but Marla was the one interviewed for it. When Jonesy calls her Miss White Lady, he suggests that her skin color might've been a factor in why the media chose to interview her afterward.
Quote #10
"And what do you want?" The guy speaking was my complexion, at least he looked brownish in the dim light, and maybe a hundred years old.
"We understand you have some detonators that interest us," Coles said.
The old man shrugged and spoke to the others. They all shrugged. It reminded me of hanging out in the barbershop on Saturday and the old dudes wanted to mess with the young bloods. (14.365-367)
It's interesting how even in the moments when he's most scared, Birdy can relate to the other side. He notices the old man has his complexion, and his mind goes to hanging out in barbershops in Harlem.