War Stories: A Paralyzed Field

It was a beautiful sunny day when we first walked in “the field” in Baghdad. It was a hot day, around 58 c’ degrees outside. The kids brought a soccer ball as the groups started cussing at each other before we played the “championship” match. The field was a huge soccer field project that took around 6 years to build due to financial problems. We, the kids of that neighborhood, used to make a soccer league and play in the street. My team made it to the finals, and since we won the champion ship, we got to play in “the field” whenever we wanted, and little by little it became a place we would hang out at every day.
As the war began, we weren’t allowed to leave our houses. I remember going up on the roof and jumping the walls that separate the roofs of others to get to a friend’s house, until one day a laser beam was pointed straight at my eye and two soldiers on top of a tank around a quarter mile away pointed at me to walk down. That was the last time I was on the roof.

Our next league never started. After almost a year of war, everyone was used to the shootings and bombings already, and we believed that if God gave you a life, he’d choose whether you get shot or survive. It never went by luck. It was faith. I remember the first time we got to see the field after many months of not even taking a look at it from outside. The fences were gone, the grass was no longer green, and the walls of the buildings around it were no longer the clean white buildings. Everything became brown or black. There were no older people playing backgammon on the side and eating seeds. There were no longer women hanging clothes on their balconies in the surrounding buildings. The field became empty, silent, and a smelly place. I didn’t even feel like walking on that field as it no longer was the field it used to be. Dead street dogs were lying around with bunch of flies flying over them. Empty bullet and rocket caps lay scattered on the ground. Later on the field became a small base for the American troops, and our parents decided that we weren’t allowed to go there anymore.

A rocket was launched at American troops who were walking around with no shelter or driving around with their Humvees. Going near an American soldier was like committing suicide, since you knew a random rocket might end your life there and then by an Iraqi whether trying to kill the American soldier or thinking that you’re a spy betraying your country. Having that as our life formula, our parents no longer let us visit our field, trapped between the two sides thinking that an American soldier might use the Iraqi kids as a defensive plan, or an Iraqi might shoot us for the reasons I mentioned previously. Days passed and every time I looked at the field it seemed like it had more tanks and soldiers in it than before, with concrete walls being installed around it, and an American flag flying over the corner. Our field was no longer the green grass field with all our neighborhood people hanging out and playing at; it had become a place we were afraid of. Some of the kids thought otherwise, however, and said that the field is still the same, but the troops destroyed it. Many of those kids joined terrorist militias, without even their families knowing, and committed suicide, taking other soldiers’ lives with them. We didn’t know anything until it happened. We no longer knew each other the way we used to. Random kids from our neighborhood used to brainwash themselves and would bomb a tank up.
Hassan, my teammate, my neighbor, and almost my brother, decided to visit the field in late 2004. I remember sitting home and thinking about how I let him go when he asked me to come and I yelled at him and said, “I’m not going and neither are you.” At the same time as I was thinking about him, we heard very close American gun shots going on. Nobody ever saw Hassan again. Later, a statement sent to his parents said that the soldiers thought that the bottle of water in Hassan’s hand looked like a grenade, and that they were sorry for missing such a thing. That bottle of water turned Hassan into hundreds of pieces with the 50 caliber machine gun bullets. Nobody was allowed to go get his body, not even his own father, who committed suicide after receiving the statement which came weeks after Hassan’s death.
My last day at the field was the night we were leaving Baghdad, Iraq to go to Amman, Jordan. It was 2 o’clock AM, while everyone was sleeping, and as nobody knew that we were leaving the country, I walked a couple blocks down to the field with my hands raised, teary eyes, and asked if I could just see the field one more time before leaving. A soldier I talked to awhile back had said no. I told him that I was going to L.A., and I remember him saying “California is the shit,” not knowing the difference and knowing that “shit” is a bad word from the movie-translations, I said “I’m not going to California, I’m going to Los Angeles, sorry for my English.” He laughed and explained it in a way that I would understand. He said, “You said you’re going to Baghdad, and I said Iraq is beautiful.” I laughed without really understanding how a big city has a big city inside of it. He told me to go to Disneyland because he never did and he regrets not being able to take his son there.
After nearly five minutes of talking I asked him again if I could go to the field, and he said he’s not allowed to but he’d let me in if I told him the reason. I told him, while still crying, that the field was the place I grew up on. He laughed and let me in after a fast metal detecting check up. The field was no longer there. A huge concrete block like a parking lot for tanks was there instead. I looked around for a moment thinking that it must be only an entrance, but he explained how they needed the space, and so on.
Three hours later our car came to pick us up and take us through the desert to Jordan.
Many people lost their lives over that field, whether trying to be “freedom fighters” as their terrorist militias called it, or by a blind bullet being directed by a street dog to kill his own people.
I miss the field.
I sometimes smell a weird smell that reminds me of the same smell that we breathed and felt back in the field. It just hits me hard as I wake up into reality. It’s been long, and although impossible, but I hope I get to see the field one more time before I die, and maybe get to kick a soccer ball one more time in honor of the team.

Apo Avedissian