I heard a news report from somewhere that Harry S. Truman had died in an accident in Iraq and was to be buried there the weekend of Christmas. Naturally, the first thought through my head was: didn’t he only suffer minor injuries in that Jeep accident?
Naturally in real life I was referring to the November accident where Ike Skelton suffered minor neck injuries when a Jeep flipped over in Iraq, but then my brain had confused the two politicians in my head and decided to go with the one more geographically prevalent.
Because this was, in my dream, the week before my Christmas holiday, I bought a ticket and hopped a flight to Iraq, only wondering after I got there and looked upon the mountainous vista which resembled mountains near Cuernavaca, Mexico, of how exactly I managed to pass through security and even get a ticket to Iraq, much less rent a car.
The funeral site was in a large atrium resembling a barrel vault ceiling with thick marble blocks resembling a Greek temple but built over a narrow canyon. This particular mausoleum had a grassy atrium many feet below and a loft where Truman was to be laid to rest.
His casket, though I didn’t see a sign or the casket itself, appeared to be buried underneath a mound of dirt with a pathway leading into one side and a backhoe sitting idle in front of the entrance.
All I did was stand there and cry for a few minutes. I didn’t realize I had quite so many pent up feelings for Truman until that moment, and I still don’t know where those came from.
After seeing the funeral I drove across this Iraqi valley near a Saddam Hussein palace and the next thing I remember was waking up in a small car in a field facing the sea, a road, some small white Mediterranean-looking buildings and a flock of gently baaing sheep.
My first thought was “this looks like Italy.” So because I wasn’t going anywhere sitting in the field I decided to drive bumping over the field to the road and bear a left away from the buildings and came to a winding highway through dense forest.
After a little while I realized I really didn’t know where I was so I should probably find that out before driving off in a random direction. I went back to the buildings and learned I was in Beirut.
This made sense.
After all, Beirut is on the Persian Gulf and much closer to Iraq than Italy. That was particularly good because it’s a much shorter drive to Baghdad from Beirut than it is from Italy and I only had so much time before my round trip flight from Baghdad was scheduled to take me home to Joplin.
# posted by Solon : 1:22 AM
