Cultural Vexations And Martial Frustrations

Okay, that thing I said a couple of posts back about Riverbend being contemptous of Green Zone Iraqis was a tad off-base of me. I went back to try and find the part in her blog where I remembered her saying that, and apparently I'm an even bigger idiot than normal in this matter. What she actually said was that the only Iraqis whom the Americans seem to consider civilians rather than insurgents are those that work in the IZ. So actually she's just nailing us on stupidity and favoritism, not Uncle Tom Iraqis. Heh, I guess it got a bit garbled in my head there. Sorry, Riverbend. You rule.
The other thing I'd like to add is that many of the Iraqis working in the IZ and elsewhere are employed in menial capacities, and I think that Riverbend comments on that also somewhere, but we'll leave her out of it this time until I actually know what I'm talking about. But it's a little messed up... I've had some very educated Iraqis working for me from time to time, mopping floors or emptying trash cans. That's another thing that makes me really uncomfortable. Older men with families and degrees in engineering, working for me, an uneducated white boy. They always make it a point to tell me that immediately upon meeting them, and I can understand why. What they're saying to me is: "Hello mister. I will mop floors for you because I need to feed my family and you gringoes pay good flüss, but I want you to know I am smarter, more educated, and more experienced in the ways of men than you are."
Yikes. But they're right.
Of course, I've had my fair share of ne'er-do-wells working for me, also, and Arabs invented that concept, I think. In order to give a more balanced picture, I think I have to tell you about an Iraqi trait which is probably the most major cause of misunderstandings with Americans. Apparently, it is considered a great shame to admit to not knowing or understanding something, even if I'm saying it in english and they speak about 3 words of english. They would rather die than admit they have no freaking idea what you're saying, and that very trait has made alot of westerners believe that Arabs are generally stupid and lazy. Granted, a lot of them are, but you know what? There are equal amounts of stupid and lazy Americans; it's just that they're AMERICANS, and speak english, and of course we understand each other's motivations better than the Arab's, so we tend to not think about that when dealing with them.
Here's an example: One day one of our vehicle batteries died. We asked the guy who takes care of our vehicles if he had jumper cables. We of course had to use a bit of mime, but he said "yes mister, no problem," and we left him with the car as there were other things to attend to. We came back an hour later, and the battery was sitting on the ground, wires were sticking up out of the engine block everywhere, and he was busy trying to put a truck battery 2 sizes too large into the car. Much yelling and hand waving ensued. It turns out that he had had no idea what we were saying to him, and through trial and error figured out that the battery was dead on his own and only had a truck battery available. Apparently he'd never seen battery charger cables before... but instead of asking to have our translator come over and tell him what we were saying, he would rather have figured it out on his own. And the bit about the too-large battery was because of this: having already told us he could fix the car before he knew what the problem was because he didn't want the shame of not understanding english, but then realizing he didn't have the correct size battery once he did understand the problem, it was imperative that he get the car running no matter if he had to stuff a battery the size of an elephant in the thing to avoid the shame of not being able to fix it! I mean sure, we could have just had S. tell him what we needed in arabic in the first place, but it seemed like such a simple thing that it didn't seem necessary to bring him over. Just a misunderstanding, but if there had been any rednecks involved, they would have been calling this poor guy a total moron all over the place. As it was, I was certainly thinking it until we figured it all out. We got him a set of jumper cables, explained to him how they worked, and had a good laugh.
This whole shame for no good reason thing does seem stupid to Americans, and believe me, any premature gray hairs I have can be traced directly back to dealing with these sorts of cultural differences, but it is a cultural thing, not a personal intelligence quotient thing, and when in Baghdad, learn about the shame factor. Many Americans here are too stupid and short-sighted to bother.
Oh, and on a final note; If you think that Iraqi cultural differences seem strange, try dealing with the U.S. military! Good lord those people are infuriating. Every time you try to do something, there are new rules, and soldiers will never ever admit that those rules were not in place yesterday. For instance, every day you might drive through a checkpoint with an Iraqi in your car who has a Ginsea (Iraqi photo ID) and as long as you have an escort badge, they'll wave you through. Then, one day, the soldier there makes you both get out of the car, walk half a mile to some desk you've never seen before and sign in the Iraqi, and he has to leave his Ginsea there, forcing you to come back later and walk the half mile again in order to retreive it. When you try and tell the soldier that you come through here every day and you've never had to do this before, and why the rule change?, he'll get mad and tell you that this has always been the rule, you've never come through my checkpoint without signing an Iraqi in before, now shut the hell up and do it! And that's pretty much the blueprint for all things military. There are loads of other pointless procedures which I could tell you about, but I'm kind of getting angry just thinking about it, and it'd only bore you anyway. Maybe they have good reasons, but I'm having more trouble figuring those out than I do understanding Iraqis! And that's really saying something.