Discover if you can that all the Iraqis in this village are in cahoots with the militia.  In the 
imam’s classroom, there is a blackboard with drawings of planes sizzling into the free 
world.

These are the codes and clues but I can follow nothing.  It is night and outside
the quadrant are the black roads circling 

back into the base, whichever one you take.  I have not eaten in a long time, and one
of the soldiers hands me a Clementine, and the juice dribbles over my notes.  I hear four

rooms at once.  To my left, grapes strewn in the café, his face at sea.  To my right, they 
are undone quite accidentally. Across the hall, the wasp clicks in the R-mute air.   Square

of murmurs square of cries.  Square of falling and rising, falling then rising.  Climb 
in climb out of the little black square no matter what you encountered there.  The soldiers

are trying to befriend the imam and crack the code.  Afterwards, the imam
chides them: you should have shaken my hand.  Their Commander reminds them

to use rapport to get to the main point. The culture stuff is a segue to whatever is the main
point.  Drink tea with them for an hour; at the very end, maybe you will get what you 

need.  I am learning how to be an anthropologist, and the anthropologists are furious and 
want culture back.  Every day, I drink tea, fragrant and black and wait very slowly for 

them to open, and for me to open; it is a green ache and it is nothing if not need.