July 27, 2015 It is Monday morning in Baghdad.  In less than 24-hours I should be on a plane headed out of  Iraq as the last lap of this journey comes into view.  For the past 36-hours I’ve been in an  apartment provided for me by my host along with others who use this place as a kind of  “transit hotel” while working in Baghdad.  I was afforded all hospitality while preparing my  final entries about this journey.  I have spent  these past two days catching up on my  writings while at the same time thinking about  all the things I forgot to do or just ran out of  time to do.  Sometimes, I feel like a failure.  I  had wanted to get into some specific combat  areas yet it was not possible given the  constraints of travel restrictions that would  endanger my hosts.  I just could not do it all  this time.  Who knows if there will ever be a  “next time”.  Perhaps I will leave that for  someone else who is much younger than me to  follow in some of the footsteps I have blazed a  trail for.  I feel a little like Brett Farve, the  former American football player who just  didn’t know when to retire.  I’ve done what I  could with the minimal resources I had  available to me over the years.  If one is going  to “fly by the seat of his pants” then one has to  accept that going it alone on one’s own dime  does in fact have logistical restrictions.  I  remember nearly 30-years ago having this  same feeling.  It is like a fisherman who never  catches that one fish he continually  seeks.   He’s left to talk about the one that got away.  I am content with what I’ve done in the realm I was forced to operate in and among.  Some  would say “it’s not enough” while others would say, “kaafe” which translates to, “enough”.   Like in Italian, they say, “basta”.  I am forced to mentally agree that “enough is enough”.  I   believe that no matter what I do in the places I go, I will always feel that I could have done  better.  I am at peace however in my being that I did for the most part the best I could with  what I had available to me at any given time.  There is no memoir to write.  There is no legacy  to promote.  There is no “Brian Williams type story” to fabricate.  I was and remain an  independent freelance war historian-photographer-type of journalist who pulled off the  impossible without any big budget from a major news organization to fund my passion for  having wanted to go to the “other side of the hill” just to see what there was to see.  I just  went.  I saw.  I left.  And now, like the  people of Dholoyia, I just move on.   Period.    Before I left Dholoyia, one of the last  things I did was to visit a distribution of  materials to those that became homeless  that lost everything due to the battle for  Dholoyia.  My hosts’ youngest brother,  Nektal, who is also an IP (Iraqi Policeman)  came to get me and told me to come with  him.  Through some hand signs and very  limited English words and my very limited  Arabic words, I figured out to just go with  him and see where we would end up.    We drove into town at a quick clip, but I have come to know that all younger folks around the  world do indeed have a heavy foot on the gas pedal.  We stopped to pick up a friend named,  Waleed, who speaks fairly sufficient English and volunteered to tag along for my benefit.  We  arrived at a place that looked like a large enclosed tennis court area that was fenced well over  20-feet high.  There was a massive amount of people cramming to gain entrance inside where  the items for distribution were held.  By this time in the morning it was well over 100-degrees.  The humidity has been on the rise this time of year so all of this took place in what felt like a  roasting oven.    There was basically chaos all over the  place.  They had a system in place that had  the names of those who would receive the  supplies.  But the lists did not have  everyone’s name on it of course.  It became  apparent that not all would receive what  they had come for.  Remember, they have  nothing left, they are living in abandoned  dwellings in the area but are not allowed to  return to their own homes just across the  river.  That is controlled by the Popular  Mobilization Forces, (Shia militias) and the  squeeze play of sorts making life hell for  those Sunnis who are at the bottom rung of  the ladder suffer the most and are the ones once again before my eyes as I watch them through  the viewfinder of my camera.   The scene became even more chaotic when the gate would open and let someone in, such as  me and the two guys with me.  We got in because Nektal is one of the policemen and knows  the crew working this event.  It was Nektal’s day off but he forfeited it for my benefit so I  could have the opportunity to see this. The  late morning sun was now totally intense  and the light was not what I like to shoot  in.  However, I changed the ISO setting  and adjusted for the light intensity so as to  try to get better image results.    We spent about two hours there and by the  time we left I can say I truly had enough of  the place.  It was not easy to be there.  It  was sad and ugly at the same time.  It is  what war leaves behind.  And the heat  intensified the scene the more so.  I was  glad I went, but I was also glad I could  leave and return to my hosts abode.  Nektal  took us on a little drive out in the country  and we stopped in to see one of the officers in charge of a check point and had good  conversation with him.  We drank cold water and talked for a while.  He had been a media  officer in the Army while stationed in Mosul but had been transferred back to his hometown  area of Dholoyia.  He was not able to do the job anymore that he was trained for and it  bothered him.  We left after about 45-minutes and returned home.  This would be the last event  I would report on in Dholoyia.  Later that evening, as I have written about prior, I went to  dinner and then returned home.  To Baghdad  On the evening I left Dholoyia it was arranged that we would go in a two car  convoy leaving at about 8:00 pm.  We would cross the way I came into Dholoyia  over a wooden bridge that is used to get across the Tigris River because the main  bridge had been blown up last year by ISiS and still remains closed.  The concern  among my hosts was the check points.  Travel is restricted and limited. Especially  for Sunnis.  We passed through without too much of a hitch.  There were times that  it was questionable whether we would be granted passage or not, but the lead  vehicle in our two vehicle convoy made sure we got through. The driver of that  vehicle said all the right things.    As we left the area we passed in close proximity to where I was stationed for two  years at Camp Anaconda.  I thought back to my time a decade prior and now was  experiencing things on the other side of the looking glass, again.  I was leaving this  area, again.  I seem to go and come from here and there if one looks back over the  years.  After a couple of hours, we ended up in Baghdad.  It is not that far distance  wise, but there are scores of checkpoints all along the way and the traffic volume  becomes increasingly noticeable to where things just come to a halt.    Eventually we got to the outskirts of Baghdad and before long the traffic was jam  packed.  Bumper to bumper.  We headed for a place that is a main gathering site in  the very heart of the central part of Baghdad. It was now late at night but the place  was lit up and  had wall to wall people everywhere.  We found a particular parking  spot and we all exited our vehicles.  We were now in the center of the center of the  big city, Iraqi style.  We were at a place that was brimming with customers.  It  translates to, “Penguin” in English.  The lights are bright and it seems like  everyone in Iraq is here.  This place serves the most phenomenal ice cream I have  ever had.  One of the folks with us is a good, good friend of the owner, who  happens to have three of these locations in Baghdad.  We were all given ice cream  at no cost and frozen fruit drinks if we so desired.    The moment I tasted the ice cream, I was hooked.  The folks around were all doing  the same thing I was doing.  Enjoying their night out in the middle of summer in  downtown Baghdad while eating the best ice cream I’ve ever seen or tasted.  The  crowd was a city crowd.  I changed settings on my camera and was able to shoot under  the available light and get a few clear shots of things.  The people were all dressed in  western attire which kind of took me back a bit, having been out in the country so to speak  for the past couple of weeks.  There were families all around with both husbands and wives  and children all enjoying the night.  I was amazed at how many people were taking cell phone  photos of the night.  I just could not get over how everyone kept doing this.  It made me laugh.    It was hard to imagine that just 25-miles away is Fallujah, a place I have been to where   currently hell fire and brimstone is raining down upon the land at this very moment.  It struck  me as bizarre.  Once again I just don’t get it. I know it is a disaster just down the road so to  speak that all the world hears about daily.  The region is consumed by the turmoil that is only a  hop, skip and a jump away from where I am indulging myself with excellent ice cream here in  central Baghdad.  These kind of things weigh heavily on me and it makes me want to go there  and see.  But, that was not to be the case this journey.  I’ve been there before.  I can only  imagine what this night has in store for the residents down the road a piece in Fallujah.    I kept eating my ice cream.  It was really good !  We stayed there a while until after midnight.   Then we drove through all kinds of back  streets for quite some time and ended up near  the IZ (international zone) across the street  from the MOF (Ministry of Foreign Affairs). I  am now in the heart of the political world in  Iraq, staying in an apartment that looks like  any other place in the area that serves its’  purpose functionally well.  I am surrounded by  scores of apartment buildings that all are  occupied.  I am in a room that the folks I am  among use as a “transit hotel” while they work  their jobs in Baghdad.  Many from Dholoyia  have jobs here in Baghdad and they have made  a way of surviving “Jubur style” in the big  city.    The nights at the apartment are alive with  folks all carrying on discussions about things  going on in Iraq nationwide while sipping chi  and smoking cigarettes.  I have been brought  into their fold and have become a part of their  daily lives which includes Baghdad from afar.   It is like going on the road to work and coming  home at the end of the work week in the US.  This is what a lot of people, especially those  with good education, do in Iraq.  Yet I still kept thinking about the war the whole world hears  about at the moment just a little “over the hill and not that far away”!  So that brings me to right now, finally.  I’ve done the journey and yet there is still a ways to go  before I get home.  Anything can happen.  But, it looks like I’m on my way home now.  At  least that is the plan in the next 18-hours.  I remember coming to Baghdad with my wife in  2005 as honored guests of the United States Marine Corps for a birthday celebration that  November 10th.  We both were working at Camp Anaconda and a Marine public affairs officer  took note of the work my wife was doing and contacted me eventually.  He had heard about  our story and that we had lost a son who was a Marine.  It took all kinds of string pulling to get  our employers at the time, KBR, to agree to let the Marines fly us to the palace in Baghdad as  honored guests.  Somehow, we pulled it off.  So as I look over the brown hazy sky today in  Baghdad, Iraq I think back to a time when my wife and I visited via helicopter as guests of the  USMC during a time when war was raging all around us.  It was a lot of yesterdays ago.  I am  thankful we got to do that.    Over a decade later, I am once again in Baghdad.  At this very moment, there are “friends” of  mine who are from New Mexico in helicopters somewhere nearby where I am.  Before I left  home on this journey I inquired with those “above my pay grade” as to the possibility of  “hooking up” with these “friends” of mine.  I even inquired as to the possibility of tagging  along with the group and doing what I do for the audience back home.  A decade later, after  having been flown from Camp Anaconda to Baghdad via helicopter ten years earlier at the  behest of the USMC, this time I was shown the door by an Air Force General from New  Mexico and told, “You’re on your own Mr. Spiri.  We are not going to help you on your  journey”.    That is the same thing Air Force generals in New Mexico told me fourteen years earlier when  they refused treatment for my son Jesse, the Marine whose life was fading before my very  eyes.  I have a lot of experience in “going it alone” compliments of people “way above my  pay grade”.  The funny thing is I pay these guys to treat me and my family like this.  Recently  a man in Utah who is aware of things I’ve done in my life asked me this question: “Jim, if they  (the folks that closed doors on me) had made it easier for you, do you think you would have  had such profound experiences in the journeys you’ve gone on”?    That question is the one thing I ponder all  the time as I come to the end of this  journey. I have suffered a lot in life and  complained most of the time through the  hard times.  Yet as I discovered among the  people of Dholoyia who have suffered  more than most all I’ve ever met, and have  suffered more than me, I can honestly  answer my friend’s question from Utah  now.   I say, “Maybe”.  The truth be known, I have been blessed by  my Lord in all things and in all  circumstances, no matter what obstacles  were placed in my path.  I always had a  thought that would make things logistically easier for me to accomplish the vision I have as I  go here and there to do this or that.  In the end, I always end up re-learning what “keeping the  faith” really means.   This I learned from my son Jesse. “Sempre Fi”  Jim Spiri, July 2015, Iraq     

This is what I do, July 2015, Iraq