Read You Know When the Men Are Gone for Free Online Page B

faces, just shadowy abayaas floating like dark, nunnish ghosts down the streets of Baghdad, the occasional American female reporter in a bulky Kevlar vest and surrounded by security, sometimes an older Iraqi woman with a colorful hijab scarf over her head in the Green Zone.

    Their first mission with Raneen was an easy one: there was a new girls’ school on the outskirts of Dora. The headmistress had written a halting letter to the base’s battalion commander asking for school supplies and a generator. Moge and his men had a few boxes of pencils and crayons, spiral notebooks and soccer balls, a case of water bottles, six cans of peanut butter, saltine crackers, and apples stolen from the mess hall—if a school was overtly asking for aid from the Americans, it had to be in desperate need.
    It was quiet in Moge’s Humvee, none of Khaled’s incessant questions about why Americans prefer college football to soccer, why Britney Spears was viewed as more beautiful than the resplendent Catherine Zeta-Jones, why Americans look so fat on television but the soldiers were so skinny.
    “Hey, sister!” one of the men shouted from the back of the truck. Moge looked down the line, catching Specialist Brodis Dupont elbow Crawford.
    “Welcome to the Boom Boom Room,” Dupont continued. Trapped laughter hissed from behind the hands of the soldiers next to him.
    “That’s ‘Boom Boom’ Dupont,” Moge said to Raneen. “He’s survived three IEDs, two of them in this same Humvee.” Moge tapped the soft wall for emphasis. “He’s first platoon’s very own living, breathing lucky charm.”
    The soldiers high-fived and then Dupont, never one to let the attention of a woman pass him by, called out again, “Lady, maybe you can settle something we’ve been debating since we got to this upstanding country.” He hesitated theatrically. “Do you all eat pork?”
    “Cut it out,” Moge said. Dupont was a good soldier and a bright kid, had been a third-string tight end at LSU until he ran out of money, blasted gangsta rap through his headphones but smeared sunblock on his cherrywood-dark skin every morning, and called his momma in Baton Rouge once a week. Moge suspected he also had some serious PTSD, that he was the kind of guy who would have a difficult time staying out of trouble back at home when there wasn’t a sergeant looking over his shoulder all the time.
    “What, Sar’nt? I’m just trying to broaden our ‘Moos-lim’ cultural awareness. Everybody wants to know if a Muslim can eat hot dogs but nobody asks. Has she ever had the distinct pleasure of biting into a plump, dirty-water dog on a hot summer day? Or maybe a spicy, thick hunk of good ol’ Louisiana andouille sausage? This is something we are very eager to know.” All the soldiers were laughing by now, heads lowered into the stiff padding of their Kevlar vests, their rifles knocking into their helmets, leaning into one another and shaking their heads.
    Raneen had been looking out a window but now she slowly turned and directed her gaze at Dupont. She didn’t say anything, just stared, the laughter drying up, the men glancing away, until even Dupont lost his grin, finally shrugged, and bent over to tie the already perfectly tied lace of his boot.
    Moge rubbed his chin against his shoulder to hide a smile. So this chick might be okay, he thought. Raneen went back to looking out the dust-spattered window, her face emotionless.

    Two of the Humvees pulled security around the school, guns out, creating a half-moon of camouflage against the dilapidated building. It had been hit by a mortar to the left of the entrance, the concrete still crumbled and loose, but someone had stuck fake flowers into the rubble and it almost looked cheerful. A tall woman in a headscarf stood in the doorway wringing her hands, glancing around at the Humvees and soldiers with their guns, looking at the blank windows of the buildings surrounding the school.
    The woman spoke to Raneen and Raneen