A Meal with an Iraqi Woman Named Yonita

By J. B. Stevens

There was a single gunshot in the distance and a thousand shots were a war and a single shot was a war crime. I wondered about the shot for a moment. Then I realized it didn’t matter and I didn’t care.
I stood outside the command tent, next to Sergeant Carver. She grunted often. I wasn’t sure if it was intentional—was trying to communicate? I didn’t say anything about the grunts because what can a person say about that?
The memory of Ramirez’s death came, and I tried to beat it back by focusing on the grunts, but I lost the fight. My soul was a homeless man in a blizzard. I wondered if everyone existed this way and were simply better actors than me. Or, maybe, the smart people went to college and their parents had money and they lived in nice houses and they didn’t have friends blow up in Iraq. Maybe they didn’t feel these things.
Then the heart squeeze came. I lived and he died and I’m feeling sorry for myself like a little bitch. I didn’t miss the others as much as Ramirez, and that made the pain worse. I should miss them equally and grieve them the same.
I looked around to distract myself. I watched Carver pull out a small white baggie. It said REDMAN on the side in bold crimson letters. There was a picture of an Indian with a feathered headdress. 
I wondered if the picture was racist. I wasn’t sure. I have a hard time deciphering that kind of thing.
Carver opened the pouch and pulled out a brown mass. The wad smelled earthy and sweet. It overpowered the shit-roast smell from the burn barrels, for a moment. She placed the stuff in her right cheek and worked her jaw.
I liked dip, ground-up tobacco, a pinch in my lip. I’d never tried long-cut chewing tobacco, and I was bored.
I pointed at Carver’s pocket. “That chew?”
Carver looked at me like I was the dumbest kid in summer school. “Yeah.”
I nodded. “Never tried chew…”
She shrugged and said nothing.
The Islamic Call To Prayer wailed from a loudspeaker outside our base and Carver said nothing.
“Not many women chew,” I said. “How’d you get into it?”
A helicopter beat across the sky and Carver said nothing.
“I like dip,” I said.
A bomb exploded somewhere far off and Carver said nothing.
I waited.
Carver ignored me, played a Gameboy, and spit brown juice into beige sand. 
I grew impatient. “Can I try some of your Redman chew?”
Carver lowered the Gameboy. “No.” She raised the Gameboy. She spit and clicked and ignored the world. I was jealous of her ability to zone out. I thought of Ramirez’s laugh.
I turned and glanced at the HMMVs in the motor pool, scarred and ragged. They were next to the Bradley Fighting Vehicles, sturdier, but their armor couldn’t stop the new explosively formed projectiles, so what’s the point? HMMWVs are more comfortable—smoother ride, better airflow. If I was going to die, I preferred to be comfortable.
I kind of wanted to die, go out in a blaze of glory, just to be done with it all… but not really… but maybe—I wasn’t sure. I didn’t want to die as much as not deal with it all.
I was very tired of being alive.
But then the sound of Carver spitting brought me back to the surface and I stared at her. Her skin was tanning bed orange and her hair was a dry bleached blonde and she reminded me of Daisy Duke if Daisy Duke dabbled in meth and frowned every time she saw me… Even though this was the first time we’d met.
I shrugged and closed my eyes and let the nothing drift in, welcome.

***

A hand shook my left arm, and I opened my eyes.
Carver leaned in. “You ready to eat?” She flicked her chin to her right, towards the entrance of the olive-green command tent. A tattoo-faced Iraqi woman stood there, her skin was smooth and her eyes were wide and her face was symmetrical.
I walked over and held out my hand. “Hi. I’m Sergeant Douglas.”
She shook her head, not my hand. She looked at me and smiled. “I’m Yonita.”
I felt Carver’s glare on me, but Yonita and I never broke eye contact.
Carver stood. “I got to go take care of some shit. Douglas, can you handle this?”
“Sure, what do you need me to do?”
“Lieutenant said to take her to get chow, and then the gate. She’s done with her debrief. Also, he said she speaks good English.”
“Got it,” I said.
Carver left. My stomach bubbled.

***

We got to the chow tent. I pointed at the hole in the side. “A rocket made that.”
Yonita peaked up, nodded, and her face went back down.
I pointed at the restroom. “Do you need to use the facilities? Wash up? I’ll wait outside.”
“Yes.” She walked in and I waited.
After she came out, I led us to the trays. Lots of other Soldiers cut their eyes at us. The chow hall always had civilian women—American contractors, and Filipina cleaning ladies, and European reporters. No locals, ever.
Yonita raised her eyes to me. “They’re staring.”
“Yeah… Sorry.”
She looked back down. I tried to death-eye the gawkers, but it didn’t work and I gave up.
I grabbed a tray and handed it to her. “Do you like American food or Bangladeshi?”
“I know American… What do Bangladeshis eat?”
I pointed at the other chow line. “That.”
The corners of her eyes were crinkled. “You want to try it together?”
“I do.” My throat tightened.
I turned to Yonita. “You keep halal?”
She shook her head. “I’m Christian.”
“Why’d the terp say you’re Muslim?”
“He assumed.”
We stepped forward in the line. I felt their eyes but I didn’t care.
“Oh,” I said. “That guy you live with… He your dad?”
“No, my parents… My family is gone. That man is my father’s friend. He takes care of me.”
“Oh.”
“Yes,” Yonita said. “It is a hard place, a hard time.”
“I feel alone too,” I said. 
“I didn’t say I felt alone.”
“I know… I shouldn’t assume.”
“But, I do.” She shrugged.
My stomach tightened and my neck warmed. I hurt because a few friends died, and a woman cheated on me—her family was murdered by terrorists. My parents still existed, and that didn’t seem fair.
Yonita grinned and my heart filled. We got to the front. The server said something in his language. Yonita and I glanced at one another and laughed, for some reason it was hilarious. The server pointed a ladle at the different items.
“Do you know what you want?” I asked.
She shrugged and pointed at a yellow stew. I pointed at a brown one. The server smiled and said more words that I didn’t understand. Then he said, “Don’t worry, you like.”
He loaded our plates and put rice and flatbread next to the stews.
We took the meals and got cups of water. We sat at a table by ourselves.
I ate a spoonful of the brown stew. It was good, but I couldn’t place the flavor. 
“So why’d you come to the base?” I asked.
“I wanted to tell your officer about the bombs,” She said. “The one from the shirt factory.”
My heart rate jumped and thought of Ramirez’s death. “You know about them?”
“Everyone does,” Yonita said. “No one talks because they’re afraid.”
“Are you scared?”
“Yes. I am afraid.” Yonita took a bite of the yellow stew. “This is good.”
“If you’re frightened, why did you come?”
“The people that took my family are turning Iraq into something she is not. Have you seen photos of Baghdad in the 70s?”
“No… I don’t think I’ve ever seen a photo of Baghdad, not even a modern one.”
She frowned. “See, you don’t care, and the bombmakers from Iran don’t care. The only people that care are the people stuck here, and we will still be here when you all leave.”
Her frown cut my heart. “I care. How’d you learn English?”
“Films.” She looked at me. 
We made eye contact and my soul shifted.
We stopped talking about the empty things and I moved to the surface things, which are secretly the more important things because they distract from the pain. 
“Have you seen Caddyshack?” I asked. “That is the most honest movie about American society.”
“No, never,” Yonita said.
“What about Dazed and Confused?”
“Yes.”
“That’s accurate, but real Americans are uglier and sadder. Hollywood makes everything appear better than it really is.”
“How?”
“In real America, no regular person has enough money, and everyone works all the time just to keep their health insurance. Then you retire at sixty-seven and have two or three good, restful years, and then you die.”
“Here you die at twenty, from a bullet…” Yonita said.
“Tell me about your life.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “You want to know?”
“That’s why I asked.”
“My mother and father are gone. I don’t know where—I don’t know what happened. One day they existed and the next they were a memory. Our neighbor took me in.”
“That’s good.”
“We are Assyrian Christians and I suppose that is why my parents disappeared. I pretend to be Sunni now.”
“What about the old man and living with him?”
Her eyes narrowed. “What about it?”
My neck got hot, and my arms pricked up. “Nothing. What do you call a three-humped camel?”
Her eyes relaxed. “What?”
“Pregnant.”
She laughed and a candle lit in my belly and I turned warm all over.

***

After we ate, I took her to the gate. The air still smelled of burn barrels roasting human refuse, but I didn’t mind. We stood in the shade of a guard tower. Yonita pulled out a phone and made a call.
After she hung up, she turned to me. “I have to go now.”
Care was still in my heart. “Okay.”
I wanted to hug her, but that wasn’t how the Iraqis did things, so I nodded.
She looked at me. “I hope I see you again.”
There was an explosion, but it was in my gut. “Me too.”
She left. I walked back to my housing unit and got in bed. I still missed Ramirez and my cheating ex. But the pain was dulled. 
Cotton wrapped my hurt and it was warm but soft, and that was better, and that was different.

****

J.B. Stevens lives in the Southeastern United States with his wife and daughter. His short story collection A Therapeutic Death is a 2022 release from Shotgun Honey. His pop poetry collection The Best of America Cannot Be Seen is available from Alien Buddha Press.
Stevens was a finalist for the Claymore Award for crime fiction and the Colonel Darron L. Wright award for poetry. He was nominated for the Pushcart Prize for poetry. He won Mystery Tribune’s inaugural micro-fiction contest.
Before his writing career, J.B. was a United States Army Infantry Officer. He served in Iraq and earned a Bronze Star. He is an undefeated Mixed Martial Arts Fighter and a Black Belt in Brazilian Jiujitsu. He graduated from The Citadel.