Syrian Dreams

I sit alone in some filth. My hot water is out and
consequently I haven’t showered in a couple of days. I cannot
stomach luke warm or cold showers. The memories of Sinjar come
flooding back to me. Sinjar was a desolate place, nestled tightly
against a rocky mountain range. The winds blew down off the ridge
and into out base. We were at least sixty miles from nowhere. Syria
was closer than our main body of troops. Syria was an unknown. It
happened that quite a few of the weapons, bombs, snipers and
insurgents were funneled across the border from Syria. I cannot
speculate on the true origin of those items, but it was quite hard
to stem the flow. Our unit would sit across the border, looking out
over the no man’s land. The dirt before us was covered with buried
land mines looking just witting for an errant foot to trigger a
devastating explosion. The desert between the nations was lifeless.
Along the border, there were patrols driving along the imaginary
line through the sand. The Syrian border guards drove trucks not
unlike their Iraqi counterparts. Rough men stood watch over the
sands from the back of white pickups, clutching machine
guns.