I wrote this story/essay in 2003, during a semester abroad in Australia. The Iraq War was in its early stages, and the rest of the world was still trying to figure out what to think about the U.S.‘s reaction to 9/11. When I thought about contributing to this series, there were other pieces that embarrassed me more, but I chose this one as something in between. I guess one thing I’m not embarrassed about is that I used to write more politically. I used to think about things on a larger scale, thematically, and now I’m more interested in smaller heartbreaks, the turn of a sentence, for example. There is just as much meaning, it seems to me now, in the turn of a sentence, as in the turn of a political tide. But maybe that is only a certain hopeful kind of cynicism. Maybe I wish to write politically again. What would have turned me off of this piece had I gotten it in my submissions box, though, is the voice. It’s the typical MFA voice, that cadenced, softly introspective voice of the outsider making sense of the world he seems apart from. This even before I did my MFA. There may be a place for that voice, but it’s not my voice. This is not my nonfiction anymore.
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In Wollongong, dust falls from Victoria, the news flashes, and the Australians go to war. Being an American down under becomes a little bit harder. In the kebab shop on Main Street, Ahmed is hassled by two skull-capped blokes, and it is all I can do to stand in the corner and reassure myself that he understands that times are tougher. They don’t listen when he tells them he is Iranian. It doesn’t matter to them. Either way it strikes me that it should matter only that he is Australian.
I order a doner kebab and Ahmed gives me a deal on it. I tell him not to worry about things; I tell him we came all the way across town for his kebabs. Jared studies the giant gold-rimmed map hanging on the shop’s wall. I catch him tracing the distance from Australia to Iraq, then America to Australia, in increments of thumb to pinky, thumb to pinky, halfway across the world. We sit down in front of the Iranian television program and devour the kebabs in gulps. When I am almost through with mine, I notice he is staring again at the map and his wrap is only half-finished. He turns to me and there is a pleased, curious look in his eye. “How much do you think I could get that map for?”
“The map?” I say, confused. But it occurs to me that I don’t think of it as a foolish idea. Maps seem to mean more now than they have ever meant. Now that we can point to one and say I lived here, instead of I live here.
“There’s a peace rally this afternoon,” I tell him. Jared comes from Oklahoma, and from the information he leaks about his state’s politics, I am given the impression that it is a very conservative, middle of the country state.
“I’m going,” he says. He starts to take a bit of his kebab but pauses again. “Do you remember — when you were younger — spinning globes to predict where you would live?”
I say sometimes we would spin globes for hopeful vacations or secret adventures.
“Never wars,” he says. His brother is in the Air Force. Iraq won’t be very dangerous, he says, but there’s always bad luck.
Bad luck when we were children spinning globes was a finger in the Pacific Ocean.
Stepping outside, the gray is overwhelming. It covers everything, smothering all color in a steel monotony. It feels like a black and white photo — it feels like the fifties. The surroundings, too, seem to take on the drabness of the sky: people, buildings, and foliage all seem more dead, more hopeless. Everything is drugged.
We walk back to college, a long, slow march. I can hardly see the outline of Mt. Kiera in the background. When we get in, many of the Australians are crowded around the television in the common room, sprawled over couches and armchairs and standing around the pool table. Rohan calls the eight ball in the far left corner, but it deflects from the bumpers into the right pocket. Bush comes on the television and John Howard follows. Hardly anybody is outside.
I say goodbye to Jared and walk back to my room for my books. I check the weather online, but it says nothing of the dust. It must not be programmed for more than rain, clouds, and sun.
The dust, my professor tells us, is from some enraged storm in Victoria — it has floated into New South Wales on the wind and is worse here than at its origin. Here it is a steel wall. The peace rally is going on but I have class, though protestors have abandoned most of the seats. The lesson is boring and degenerates quickly into war discussion. I am the only American student.
The maps we’ve always had have been overly U.S.-centric. The states situate themselves in left center stage and the upper and lower margins of the map have made Greenland and Africa disproportionate. On these maps we can never tell that Australia is as large as the contiguous states. On these maps the U.S. is big enough to point out my tiny home state of Connecticut.
I keep quiet for the most part, except to let the Australians know that I find it almost impossible to support this war. I do know people who can make a strong case, and theirs reminds me that politics is always rightly a two-sided issue. I wonder, as I imagine people always have, if there has ever been a genuine and correct side.
As we discuss the issue, my own government is thousands of miles away dictating foreign policy. It is difficult to keep up with, more difficult to espouse. The situation with Iraq puts pressure on Americans here from both sides. It is like landing somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, in limbo between the two countries.
When class is almost ended, the remaining students rumble in with a loud aura of protest. A few of them have had drinks and the environment becomes uncomfortable to both sides. They force the issue and demand advocacy. The ones who haven’t look embarrassed at the representation of their cause. I think we all fear that politics never brings peace, even domestically, even at Uni.
As I’m leaving the Creative Arts building, one of my classmates stops me and asks why I didn’t go to the peace rally.
“Why didn’t you?” I ask.
“I didn’t know about it until just now,” she says, waiting expectantly on my answer.
I say, “I thought everybody would be in class,” but I wonder suddenly whether the real reason was that I was worried about being criticized for my nationality. Two days ago one of my American friends was assaulted over a piece of pizza. Some places, some nights, accents have created raised tensions.
She offers me a ride back and I take it. In the car, I ask her whether she has traveled much, and she answers with a list of Asian countries and New Zealand. “And I want to go to America one day,” she adds. She sounds sincere.
“You should,” I say, hoping that I am.
She tells me that the Australian people generally do not support their Prime Minister in his continued adoption of Bush’s politics. Outside the dust makes it look like we’re driving into an endless gray.
I have learned that there are some remarkable similarities between Australia and America. The history of oppression. Looking at the map in Ahmed’s, the two countries seemed so far apart. Cynically, I am disposed to think of all politics as a timeline of oppression: or, similarities and differences. I know that the war in Iraq is supposed to be different. The United States is stopping Saddam Hussein from oppressing his nation’s people. But I wonder, do all countries oppress on the way to transformation? When will we transform?
The dusty air sticks to my clothing like a sweltering heat. It comes from Victoria, maybe somewhere around Melbourne. It trickled over here, I tell myself, and it will pass on somewhere else.
I drop off my books and wander upstairs to Jared’s room. “How was the rally?” I ask him.
“Enlightening. Good.” He says he wants to go back to Ahmed’s and I agree to go with him.
Ahmed greets us with and gives us the usual; he looks happy to see us, and hardly charges for the kebabs. Encouraged by this, I suppose, Jared asks him directly how much he would want for the map. Ahmed grins and shakes his head as if we are crazy Americans. “Fifty dollars,” he says. I know it is worth much more than this amount.
“Fifty dollars?” Jared asks. He seems as surprised as I am.
“Yes, fifty dollars,” Ahmed says. “You are good Americans.”
Jared pays him, and we eat outside as the sun sets. As we are finishing, Ahmed comes out and hands us the map; he has rolled it up neatly into a hollow column. We thank him and walk back in the dark that is half-dust, half-dusk, carrying the map like giant torch, lighting the way home.