Iraqi Dream Vacation, All Expenses Paid!
A little clip of American xenophobia . . . no matter how open minded you think you are, your subconscious always has other ideas.
My husband and I are walking around a dumpy-ass, dusty-ass town. It looks like a poor Florida town from 1973 crossed with the shadier parts of Tijuana, Mexico. I have a thick sense of foreboding.
We arrive at a run down flat-topped building. Looks like the outside is old, crumbly, white stucco. Suddenly we're inside the building in a room. I get the impression this is a motel room, a place where we're staying. There are two twin beds, complete with sagging in the middle. The bedspreads are olive green and look like scratchy Army blankets. The walls and ceilings are cracked. Everything is a muckledydun shade of off-white, beige with dirt in every crevice. There is one small window, with curtains circa 1973. They are brown, orange, and white - sort of a paisley pattern but not quite. They are thin with age and the harsh sun is streaming through them. They wave a bit in a breeze that I can't feel.
Husband & I leave the room - apparently we want to go swimming. At the end of the hallway where our room is situated, a group of men in turbans and white pajama-type clothing are standing around putting on a kind of play for each other. I realize that these men are Arab extremists - seriously, let's have a little moment of wtf here - and that they're making fun of Western society. One man holds up a knight's helment, complete with red plume! He puts it on his hand and trots around like he's riding a horse. All the men laugh. Another man imitates a French person, and they all laugh again. Another man says "I LOVE MCDONALD'S, LOOK AT ME I'M GOING TO MCDONALD'S!" Okay, typing this all out it is pretty funny, but in the dream I remember it just freaked me out and made me angry. I said to my husband, "You know, I don't get it. I just don't get it. Before these stupid wars I don't remember ever thinking badly about this part of this world. Shit, Americans were damn near mesmerized by it. Don't you remember how popular Aladdin was? What about the classics?! Arabian Nights, goddammit! Why are they being such assholes? " He agreed with my cracked-out logic.
We decided to go downstairs and try to find the beach, as it was hot and dry and we wanted a swim. Yeah, a beach in Iraq. Sure. I mean there's a little bit of coastline, near Kuwait, but seriously. The beach in Iraq?
So we're downstairs. The downstairs part of the building is dusty too, but very shady. Almost no sunlight is getting in. The room is old, greasy red tiles - think aging Pizza Hut that hasn't been mopped in 15 years. In the corner of the room we're in there's a seriously old game machine. Looks like Galaga or something. I notice that my husband and I are in bathing suits now. We go down a long hallway that has a door at the end with a dirty little window in it. It looks like a maintenance hallway, but it's the only way we can see to get outside.
My husband opens the door and steps outside first. We're on a little platform, and we're actually extremely close to the water. I can see to the right of us, a long strip of yellow sand. The water is actually quite beautiful and blue, but it's eerily calm. There is almost no one on the beach, and no one in bathing suits like us. Directly in front of us is some sort of barrier made of wet stones. There is a huge pipe running through this stone pile and I assume that it leads down into the ocean. It looks like it's full of some seriously ugly stuff, but I don't spend too long thinking about that. To the left, and just behind the stone barrier, we see some of the ocean water and a really small strip of beach. The water looks clear and beautiful, but not very comfortable for going wading. At the bottom of the water isn't sand like you'd expect, but large smooth rocks, almost like an English beach. Then I notice that all around the edge of the water, bobbing into the sand, are hundreds of dead fish. They don't smell, they are just dead. For some reason this freaks me out even more than I already am, and husband and I decide to forgo the beach idea and decide that we should just get the hell out of dodge.
We go back up to the motel room, and we are packing our things when I notice a small dish of toiletries that I hadn't seen before. I pick it up and it's got a little box of soap on it. I inspect the soap box, and notice that it has my face and my husband's face on it, all styleized and whatnot. I am wearing a bride's veil and you can see that he has a tux bowtie around his neck. We are in a loving embrace, and we're being used to hawk soap in Iraq and look glamorous and Western. The tagline on the soap says "Perfect quantity for couples or singles!" I felt proud to be on the box of soap and admired our images.
THE END D:
