August 29, 2005
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Victor Romero/Associated Press
Soldiers on a carefully supervised dhow cruise offered by Camp As Sayliyah in Qatar.
August 28, 2005
War Relief
By JIM LEWIS
There was a soldier playing a fly-fishing video game in a room in Building 109. Outside, there was a black flag whipping in the wind to warn that the heat was rising toward 115. Past that there were the other buildings that make up Camp As Sayliyah, then a ring of concrete bomb-blast barriers and armed guards; past that was Doha, Qatar, a little U.S.-friendly thumb of a country sticking up into the Persian Gulf from Saudi Arabia, and then the desert, Iraq a few hours northwest, Afghanistan a few hours northeast.
But there in Building 109, it was air-conditioned and clean, and the soldier, a black kid with a shaved head and eyeglasses, was casting his fly again and again, the alpha waves in his brain slowly rolling as the electronic water rippled and little splashes came out of the speakers. To his left and his right, there were other soldiers, like him brought down to As Sayliyah for R. and R., playing combat games with names like MechAssault and Men of Valor — kids taken out of war for four days, who spend them playing war games on television. But this soldier had wandered into the Xbox room and found this fishing game, so that’s what he was doing. He didn’t want to talk to anyone; he just wanted to fish in a simulated Rocky Mountain lake.
R. and R. is different these days. It is no longer the staging ground for legendary benders, as it once was in, say, Manila or even in San Diego. As recently as Bosnia, one soldier told me wistfully, military personnel could take their leaves in Budapest. ”They dropped you off at a hotel and you were on your own,” he said. But this is a different war, a different Army and, above all, a different host country. Qatar is an anomaly in the region: relatively open and relatively progressive. Nevertheless, traditional vices are simply unavailable. There is apparently no prostitution — and no alcohol except in Western hotels, and the hotels are off limits to soldiers. Muslims generally find an excessive display of skin offensive, and soldiers are forbidden from going off base in sleeveless shirts. Moreover, security is an overwhelming concern. Trips on the town, to go shopping in one of Doha’s large Western-style malls or a little sea cruise on a dhow, are carefully planned and supervised; even so, sign-up lists fill quickly, and not every soldier gets to go.
Troops aren’t supposed to drink off base, and on base — in a loud campus-style hall called the Oasis — they’re limited to beer and wine, and only three servings of those. They aren’t so happy about that, but judging from the rowdiness at the Oasis at night, at least some find a way around the system. (Three tickets are issued per soldier; ”the Mormons are very popular around the Oasis,” a sergeant told me.) Still, it’s all very controlled, almost sanitized, and calibrated to maximize the troops’ enjoyment while minimizing offense to the host nation.
This year, about 35,000 troops will come to As Sayliyah on a four-day R.-and-R. pass, plucked out of Falluja or Bagram or wherever they may be and flown in on C-130′s. They come wearing combat fatigues and Oakley wraparounds, looking exhausted and dazed. They are issued linens and bunks, and for the first 24 hours most of them just decompress, flopping down on big couches to watch movies on TV or checking their e-mail on the banks of terminals in the main hall.
Some of them never leave the camp at all. In various buildings around As Sayliyah, the Army has built a kind of simulated Little America, with a Chili’s restaurant serving burgers to soldiers while country music plays over the sound system and a Burger King and an Orange Julius, gyms and a swimming pool, telephones for calls home and a day spa, where troops can get massages and haircuts, manicures and pedicures.
There are women in this Army, after all — not an enormous number, but about 10 percent of the soldiers who come through As Sayliyah are female. Whether they’re looking for something different from the men on their four days off is hard to say. Most of the men say the women like to shop more; most of the women say there isn’t any difference at all.
In fact, as many men use the spa as women. One afternoon, I found a pair of marines at a table outside — young, quiet, polite and unassuming: Lance Cpl. Miguel Torres from Del Rio, Tex., and Cpl. Ricorda Randall from Camilla, Ga. They both worked in information technology, but Torres wanted to be a filmmaker; he spoke admiringly of Almodovar, Wes Anderson and Gael Garcia Bernal. He was tattooed all over his torso and arms, work he had had done in Japan, but he was sweet-tempered and self-mocking. Randall was a big guy, with a twin brother in the Corps somewhere and an infant back in the States. They had just come in from Al Asad Air Base in Iraq; they’d been buddies since boot camp. I saw the two of them later in the spa, sheepishly getting manicures, their calluses buffed away, nails cleaned and cuticles cut back. ”I don’t think I like this,” Torres said.
”I think I’m losing macho points here,” Randall said.
If nothing else, R. and R. is a chance to try something new. That night, I went out on a chaperoned trip with a couple of corporals. They were 21; it was their first time in an Arab nation that they weren’t occupying; and they were wide-eyed and full of questions. What’s the difference between the veiled women and the unveiled? (It’s a choice.) Where does the emir live? (In a palace.) How many wives does he have? (Three.) In the gold souk they bought pearl necklaces to send back to their mothers. In the restaurant of the Marriott (the rules about visiting hotels are somewhat bendable), one nervously ordered sushi for the first time, the other a glass of wine.
It can take some time for troops to adjust to a land where the locals aren’t automatically under suspicion. The next day, a marine who had come down from Falluja took me aside: he had just been on a drive through town, and he was having a little trouble adjusting to the Qatari habit of tailgating — it reminded him of car bombers. ”It just sends the hairs up on the back of my neck,” he said, and then, regaining his nonchalance: ”It’s a little irritating.”
Nonetheless, he and his buddies seemed happy to be there — happy to be anywhere other than Ramadi or Kabul or Baghdad, at least for a few days, happy to be kicking back in this curious re-creation of America, with its fast-food outlets and Ping-Pong tables, its hair salon and excursions. A break is a break, and you ease your mind however you can. Three or four hours after I first happened upon him, I wandered back into the Xbox room and saw the same soldier, still sitting there playing the same electronic angling game, using the controller to cast the little fly, zoning out as the line whirred and the water rippled. Up north there was a war; down here he was gone fishin’, and nothing was going to keep him from enjoying it.
Jim Lewis is a writer who lives in Austin, Tex. His latest novel is ”The King is Dead.”
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