Legal Village

On personal hygiene, the Red Sox Nation and the art of war

Posted 10/04/2008 by Ben Hallman

I left my shampoo in Kuwait. I know what you’re thinking - who hasn't left their shampoo in Kuwait at one point or another? Anyway, I tried to buy a bottle at the PX yesterday but they were sold out of everything but a product for “women of color”. Me: a man of very little color.

So this morning I washed my hair with hand soap. My hair subsequently dried into weird shapes. It’s got a cubist vibe about it. Also, my clothes look like they were rolled into a ball and stuffed into a hot backpack for a week - which, of course, they were. And today, for the first time in my professional career, I conducted an office interview dressed in running shoes. I’m really letting myself go.

I’m staying at the Combined Press Information Center. My host is a Massachusetts National Guard unit. There’s a giant Red Sox 2007 World Series banner next to one of the entrances. So far, they’ve gone easy on me for being from New York, but I’m keeping my Yankees hat in my backpack. I don’t want to push my luck.

'Home' here, by the way, is a large room with a few computers, two couches, three bunk beds and a refrigerator stocked with all the Gatorade, soda and water the soldiers and reporters can drink. It is part of a large structure compartmentalised into a series of rooms and further divided by row after row of little trailers. Some contain offices, others bathroom facilities. There’s a radio station and a film-editing room here, as well as a place to hold press conferences. It was built under a parking garage, so there are several welcome feet of concrete above our heads.

Yesterday a rocket landed close enough to make the building shake and pieces of shrapnel landed in the parking lot outside. I woke up from a nap when it hit but promptly fell back to sleep. I’m acclimatising, it seems. Once a round hits, there’s nothing much to do about it anyway.

The good news (knock on wood) is that incoming fire from Sadr City has diminished precipitously in the last few days. My newest roommate is a New York war artist named Steve Mumford. His most recent embed was last year, with the 28th Combat Support Hospital. He works with ink on a big sketch pad, documenting what he sees.