My Terp

December 31, 2007

We are all assigned our own interpreters. Usually there is one “Terp” for every two advisers. My partner, Scott, and I are assigned a kid who I’ll call “Kevin”. His real name is something else I can’t pronounce, but I wouldn’t write it down for public consumption anyway because of the possible threat to his life.

There are many interpreters living on and off the FOB. They are local men and women who have decided to take their lives into their hands and work for us. Some Terps work for the military and they are the ones who live here on the FOB. They dress in Army uniforms, hang out and eat with their units, and go out on combat patrols with them too. The Terps that work for us live in Baghdad and ride a bus into the prison every day. It’s a dangerous job for both of these groups of Terps, each set facing their own local threats. Many of them have been kidnapped and tortured and killed because they work for Americans. But I feel like the ones working for us take more of a chance because they have to go home every night. They lie to their neighbors, and sometimes their immediate families, about what it is they do for work. Kevin’s family knows what he does, but he tells his neighbors that he works at the Ministry of Interior, (which is the big building looming over the prison and FOB.)

Kevin is 27 years old and is married, and he has a 2 year old child. He’s Sunni but told me today that he doesn’t believe heavily in Sunni theology, nor does he regularly practice their religion. I have never seen him pray, and he told me he rarely does it accept during Ramadan. He’s a very insightful young man. He’s got a college education, is well dressed, and looks every bit as “Western” as any young Arab you’d see in the US. He worked for the US military as a Terp for a few years but found that to be too dangerous so he came to work for us. He said that going out on patrol and getting blown up and shot at all the time just wasn’t worth it. I guess taking the chance of getting kidnapped and tortured just doesn’t strike him as risky. He and his family live with his parents in the same house he grew up in. His older brother and family, and younger brother, (who’s still in college), live there as well. This is customary in his culture and he told me he doesn’t know when he’ll move his family out. He didn’t seem in any hurry that I could tell. He’s well respected by the ICO staff and gets along very well with all the wardens. All the Advisers seem to know him and never hesitate to ask him to come interpret for them if he’s around.

Ed told me before he left that he used to give Kevin little gifts like pre-paid phone cards, or food, or even money from time to time if a particular instance called for it. I had a chance to have a long conversation with Kevin today and found out he only makes $800 per month, so I now understand why showing appreciation by giving a gift or two makes gracious sense. He’s never asked for anything that I’ve seen, so I don’t consider him a “beggar”, like a lot of the ICO’s and wardens I’ve come across. I’ve offered to bring him food from our chow hall, (we drop him off in an office and he waits for us while we drive back to the FOB for lunch), but he’s never accepted. My respect level for this kid is growing by the day.

During this conversation today I asked him a bunch of questions about the Sunni/Shia problem. To my surprise he explained that the problem really only exists in the media. There are the hard liners, of course. But by his account these two groups generally live and co-exist with little problems. In fact, he is Sunni but lives in a Shia neighborhood. His older brother, who is also Sunni, is married to a Shia woman. And his father is Sunni but his mother is Shia. When I asked him then why the heck they were blowing each other up all over town he said it was mainly because of money. This isn’t the story we see and read about in the US media, so I was again surprised. He said foreign fighters, (Palestinians, Iranians, Egyptians, but mostly Saudi’s), come to Baghdad for the “Jihad” and pay lots of money for people to blow themselves up for the cause. Or, they kidnap a family and rape and kill the man’s wife in front of him and threaten to do the same to his daughter if he doesn’t drive a car bomb into the center of town and blow himself up. But he said money was the real cause of it all. No one in this country has it, but they all want it and will do stupid things to get it. I also asked him what America’s reputation was in Iraq before the war. He said that when he was 10 years old he remembered the first Gulf War and how much his family was disappointed that America didn’t come into Iraq and kick Saddam Hussein out. He said Saddam spent 30 years preaching that the US was evil and that we were all devils. But after the first Gulf War people stopped believing it. He said living under Saddam was brutal. He told me of a time that Hussein went on TV and told all government supervisors that if they wanted to steal to go ahead and do so but to do it in secret, because if they were caught they’d be busted. He made this point to me incredulously, emphasizing that the corruption in the Iraq government for the last 30 years came straight from Saddam. I asked him pointedly what it was like to live under Saddam and he said, “Let me tell you Mr. Jim…when the body has a cancer it must be cut out before it kills everything. After it’s gone the body will have to take some time to heal. Saddam was Iraq’s cancer, and America came and cut it out. Now we need time to heal, and that’s going to take while.” He then put out his hands, palms up, looked at them and said, “Not all fingers are the same. Your fingers are different than mine, and mine are different than his, (he looked at Scott.) But once we put our hands together no one can tell the difference between our fingers, and then we can accomplish anything.”

After we were done talking I went to the truck and took out my notebook to write down his “fingers” comment. I wanted to remember it so I could write it down for you. I wanted to convey what this young man said to everyone I know. I think I know what he was saying, but you’ll have to come to your own conclusions.
I like Kevin and sincerely hope he stays safe.

-Jim Franks