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My buddies and I were on the Nell, my BMW convertible,cruisin’ the highway like we

always do. We were four in all. I was driving and Billy and Andrew, who were hardcore surfers,

were debating over how to pronounce the word tomato: “Dude, its toe-maht-toe not whatever you

say…” Oh, and there was also Trung, who had just come back from the Iraq War. My buddy

Trung was the kind of guy who had a lot going on in his mind, but chose tokeep his thoughts to

himself.

Our destination –no where in particular.

The sun was slowly sinking down behind the golden hills and night was beginning to

settle in. Everyone hushed into an eerie silence. That was when Trungdecided it was the right

time to utter his first words since we began the ride. “Ahem…” We all stared at him. “Ahem…”

We waited for several minutes. “Ahem…”

“Just say what you wanna say, man!” Andrew howled.

“Well, you all know that I just came back from the War in Iraq. And I don’t want to rub it

in, but I also won two purple hearts,” Trung said.

“Awww, man not that story again!” Billy, who is also Trung’s cousin, exclaimed.

Trung punched Billy in the arm and began his story.

“I was thinking of very old times, like when we were in high school and had that one

wacky teacher…what was her name?...ah, yes…Mordrigal…remember when she gave us that

creative writing assignment? Well, I really didn’t know what to write for that assignment. I was

really stressed out because if I didn’t get in the essay I wouldn’t be able to ‘walk the stage’. So

the day the assignment was due, I had a brilliant idea.I went to the NJROTC building and signed

up for the army.

‘Can you believe my luck!? That very day, we had army recruits visiting our campus!

Anyway, they took me in right away and I got to sit in this cool camouflaged Hummer. They
dropped me off at boot camp and in less than no time I found myself in Iraq. I was dropped off in

the outskirts of Mosul and told to travel due southin order to reach the station. I trudged along the

barren landscape and met a dilapidated truck on my way there. Its right wheel was off. I kept

walking and met a scrawny boy looking for something in the ground. He looked up at me with

these strange, bulbous eyes. I reached in my knapsack and gave him my last bag of Doritos. I

know my mom would have been proud of me. Just when I had passed the city gates, a small

bomb went off. I could have sworn that it was meant for me. I made a run for the station and

bumped into a man in a tux.

‘Hey watch it!’ he exclaimed. I stared at him openmouthed. He was tall, dark, and

muscular. ‘You could have ruined my tux’ he continued. I looked like a glazed donut as I

unblinkingly stared at him in awe. How could he be wearing a tux in the midst of such a place!

Just then, another bomb went off. I screamed and hid behind him.

‘I see… you must be that new private who is supposed to fetch Colonel Harold. Our

previous soldier who was given this assignment was killed in a suicide bomb attack. You must go

down the Tigris to retrieve Colonel Harold in Baghdad’

‘By now, I had recovered from the shock of the bomb and was sent to kitchens for lunch.

I met many soldiers that day and learned of their stories. I noticed that Colonel Harold was

mentioned numerous times in their conversations. The next day, I met with the Man in the Tux

and asked him to tell me something about the Colonel. I was told that the Colonel believed that

each army station should be like a beacon on the road towards better things, a center for warfare

of course, but also for humanizing, improving, instructing.’

He paused and popped an orange-flavored Tic-tac in his mouth.

‘That afternoon, I was going down the Tigris heading for Baghdadwith a few soldiers and

Iraqi men. The trip was running smoothly until the third day when were nearing Baghdad. I was
observing how our boat was creating ripples on the water and reflecting over what I could have

written for Mordrigal’s essaywhen BAM! We found ourselves engaged in a combat and our

fellow soldiers fired their machine guns every which way. We had only one casualty, the Iraqi

steersman, who died from a bullet wound in the stomach. I will never forget the blank, empty

look in his eyes.

‘When we had anchored the boat and got off, I looked around, and I don’t know why, but I

assure you that never, never before, did this land, this river, this waste, the very arch of this

blazing sky, appear to me so hopeless and so dark, so impenetrable to human thought, so pitiless

to human weakness.’

It was dark now. We could see the small blinking lights of the cars passing by.

Billypretended to gag, “Lay off with the philosophy!” Trung ignored him and continued.

‘I told the man who had met us at the dock totake me to Colonel Harold. It turned out that

he was well acquainted with the Colonel and he talked of him at length. He pointed towards an

absurdly large marble palace, which was the Colonel’s lodging for now. ‘The Colonel brought

democracy to lots of villages,’ he said, looking away. ‘To speak plainly, he raided them,’ I said as

the large marble palace loomed closer. ‘What can you expect?’ he burst out; he came here with

tanks and nuclear bombs, you know- and they had never seen anything like it –and very terrible.

He could be very terrible. You can’t judge Colonel Harold as you would an ordinary man.’

‘We entered the cool threshold of the palace and were ushered into a larger room by a

group of servants. Colonel Harold was seated as if he were an Ottoman pasha. I didn’t know

what to say, but I managed to say, ‘Under the orders of the General, I have come to get you.’

Colonel Harold glared at me and furiously declined my offer. ‘Do you know who I am? It is my

job to democratize this area. Leave!’ I was perplexed and passed the night in my boat.
‘The next day, I talked with my men and asked them what our next move should be. One

of our men, who had studied Arabic, told us what he had caught from conversations he had

overhead. Apparently, Colonel Harold was involved in the black market and sold valuable

antique artifacts to outsiders. We decided to abduct the Colonel from his palace at night. The

abduction was a success. Once we brought Colonel Harold into the ship, we took off. On our trip

back to Mosul the Colonel’s health declined. He gave me a packet of personal documents,

including a persuasive pamphlet on democratizing the Iraqis which ended with a scrawled

message that said, “Exterminate the Iraqis!”

‘We reached Mosul on time. I went under the decks where we kept the Colonel and heard

him say, “I am lying here in the dark waiting for death.”

‘I walked closer to him and it seemed as if the colonel was experiencing a profound

vision; the look on his face forced me to stop. And then he whimpered– twice, a whimper which

was merely a breath:

“The horror! The horror!”

‘I joined the soldiers outside, not wanting to see the colonel die. A moment later, an Iraqi

soldier, named Koushik, came in and said:

“Colonel Harold—he dead.”

Everything was quiet once more. Billy and Andrew were fast asleep. I drove back home

sharing the silence with Trung.

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