Sunrise Over Fallujah Visions of Iraq Quotes

We rode deep into the night and into the early morning. The Kuwaiti desert, in spots, was beautiful. The rising sun spread like a brilliant egg flattening out. A distance away, we could see small dust storms changing the colors that played along the edge of the horizon. (3.110)

The sandstorm blew nearer and the sky suddenly darkened. The sand, swirling through the hot air, blocked out everything. (4.28)

Iraq is weird—kind of an odd mix with old stuff and new. Some of the cities look as if everything was built a few months ago, but other places could be directly out of the Old Testament. I guess that sounds silly because I don't know what the world looked like during the Old Testament, but it's what I imagine. (5.230)

Baghdad is a trip. It's a beautiful city with wide, clean streets and modern cars zipping down the highways. The sky is low and huge and so blue it's almost purple. The Tigris River has a mix of vessels, some large, some small with one or two people. There is a feeling of peace about the place most of the time, but then there is the distant chatter of an automatic weapon or a dark silhouette of one of our planes streaking across the sky and once again you're reminded that there is a war going on. (6.8)

Ba'qubah looked like Greek villages I had seen on National Geographic TV. The people were thin, old-looking. That was a funny thing in Iraq. You could tell who the important people were by how fat they were. Most people were thin, but all the muck-a-mucks looked heavy. (6.186)

I didn't know how anybody could live in such a desolate area. Signs of war were everywhere: burned-out vehicles, spent shells, tress that had been hit by bombs and now seemed to twist their way out of the pockmarked earth. The most impressive thing around was a huge terraced mound that looked like something from another world. We stopped to take a closer look at it. I heard Ahmed calling it a ziggurat; the redbrick mound seemed almost to shimmer in the bright sunlight.

"The ancient Mesopotamians built shrines on top of them," Ahmed said. "Read that in the guidebook." (8.42-43)

The houses usually had a courtyard behind a fence. The fence was locked with either a deadbolt or a bar across the entire door and if you had to bust through, you woke up the entire neighborhood. Once you broke through the fence, if you couldn't climb over it, you had to find the door. That would be a tough mother to crack as well.

"They act as if they're living in New York City!" Jonesy had said.

I didn't have a comeback for that. (10.58-60)

"A poor man in Iraq may never speak to a doctor," Jamil said. "In the West you complain about the cost in dollars. In Iraq your life is always in Allah's palm." (11.35)

Outside the air was clear and crisp, already warm. The sky was slowly turning from a quiet predawn gray to the brilliance of the morning. In the distance the bright reddish gold of the Iraqi sunrise began to spread over the horizon. Dark silhouettes brightened into sprawling fields and square squat structures. The foul smell of the Euphrates River mixed with sweet odors rising from the sands along its banks, adding texture to the rising sun, like a chorus of strings backing up a sad saxophone. (13.139)

Sometimes, when the weather was clear and it wasn't so hot you thought you were baking, Iraq seemed like the most beautiful place in the world. It seemed huge, with wide open spaces that stretched into forever. When you got away from the rivers it was mostly desert, especially as you went north from Baghdad. You could ride for mile after endless mile and then come across three camels and a donkey going about their business as if there wasn't any war, or any occupation. Guys would stop to take photos and the Iraqis would wave or just stop and look at us the way we were stopping to look at them. (14.17)