Redeployment

The narrator, who is a man named Nathan, says that success is hard to measure in Iraq because there are no clear metrics. As a Foreign Services Officer with little experience, when he arrives at Camp Taji, he isn’t sure that he belongs. He had initially opposed the war but knows that the experience will help his career. He is worried that he will be seen as “a fraud and a war tourist” (78). A man named Bob picks him up when he arrives and says that he is in Iraq simply because he has never done anything like it before. He will also get $250,000 for his work. He tells Nathan that another colleague, Cindy, is a “true believer” (78), working on behalf of democracy and tolerance.

When Nathan meets Cindy, she has just learned how to use Google. She tells him that she is working on an agricultural initiative. She also says they are missing a team member named Steve, who hurt his ankle on the first day while jumping out of a helicopter, even though he hadn’t been in danger. Nathan starts trying to brainstorm with Bob about ideas for a water treatment center, but Bob interrupts him: “‘If you want to succeed, don’t do big ambitious things. This is Iraq. Teach widows to raise bees’” (82). He says that would give them a completed project, which would look good to their bosses. Nathan says he is going to focus on water, which means they need to get him to the plant at Istalquaal.

It takes six weeks for him to arrange the trip. The plant manager, a man named Kazemi, takes three weeks just to return his phone call. In the meantime, Cindy’s health initiative works well. The women’s clinic helps women pursue divorces, treats medical conditions, and shelters women who have reported their rapists. Cindy’s assistant is an Iraqi woman named Najdah.

Nathan travels to Istalquaal with a convoy. A soldier tells him that they are in danger and there are probably explosives in the road. On the way, a translator known as the Professor tells him that America has destroyed Iraq. The area around the plant is desolate. When they enter the plant, it is dark and empty. Nathan knows he has risked the soldiers’ lives by having them bring him there. The Professor tries to call Kazemi, who says that he is en route. When he arrives, Nathan asks Kazemi how to get the plant running. Kazemi says that the US military built the wrong pipes and failed to build machine gun towers to protect the plant. In any event, the Professor tells him, the local administrators will not turn on the water for Sunni Muslims.

Two days later, Nathan returns to Taji, where he speaks with Major Zima, the head of the Civil Affairs Company. Major Zima shows Nathan a box of fifty baseball uniforms that he can give to the Iraqis so they can play baseball because “Gene Goodwin thinks baseball is just the thing for Iraqis” (93). He describes Gene Goodwin as “the mattress king of northern Kansas” (93). Goodwin is a constituent of Representative Gordon, who wants to give Goodwin’s baseball plan a try. Nathan’s team will be responsible for teaching baseball to the Iraqis. The uniforms get stashed in Nathan’s office, where “I had to look at them all the time. It’s no surprise I snapped” (97). He calls his boss, Chris Roper, and yells at him about the baseball idea.

He receives an e-mail with the subject “IRAQ’S SOON TO BE NATIONAL PASTIME” from Gene Goodwin. It outlines Goodwin’s ideas about baseball as a force for democracy and analogizes it to his success in the mattress industry. Nathan feels that “[r]eading the e-mail was like getting an ice pick to the brain” (101). In a brief e-mail, Nathan replies that while Goodwin’s enthusiasm is appreciated, baseball is unlikely to catch on with the Iraqis. An hour later, he is cc’d on an e-mail to Representative Gordon. Also cc’d are numerous military and civilian personnel, including his boss, Chris Roper. Zima eventually intervenes in the lengthy e-mails that ensue and says that he has found a schoolteacher to teach the kids baseball. It is a lie, but it ends the discussion.

Zima tells Nathan that he is cleared to start raising funds for the water plant. Nathan is nervous, given that the wrong pipes were put in. If the water is turned on, it will explode the toilets in every household in the Sunni village. Zima says that one week before their group is scheduled to leave Iraq, he intends to send an e-mail to Sheikh Abu Bakr telling him that the pipes they built will make his house explode and then trust him to take care of the situation.

Nathan goes to see Abu Bakr about the beekeeping widows initiative. On the way, he sees several kids in baseball uniforms. The Professor translates while they talk inside Abu Bakr’s enormous mansion. He says that they will help fund the beekeeping, but the US military must pay for taxis to the training area, which is a dangerous place. He will also gather the widows for the project.

Nathan visits Istalquaal again and learns when he arrives that Kazemi is dead, killed by a suicide bomber. He sits by a soldier and asks why he is there in Iraq. The man doesn’t answer but asks him the same question. When Nathan says he doesn’t know, the man says, “‘That’s a shame’” (111).

Nathan returns and tells Zima about Kazemi and that funding is being cut for the women’s clinic. He asks Zima how he deals with the “bullshit” (112). Zima tells him that if he had been there two years ago, he would see that there has actually been progress. He says that their current set of problems is an improvement over the madness that there had been before.

As the story ends, Nathan is in the street with the Professor, watching a child swing a baseball bat. He swings it up and down, as if he is clubbing someone. Nathan approaches him and starts to teach him how to swing it as if he is trying to hit a baseball.