His Heart in His Eyes

Tommi works through translators in her day-in-day-out duty world. These men are her teachers in language, and though it may conflict with a rigid “mission focus,” they are becoming her friends. Wisam and Mustafa are brothers about whom I have gained release from Tommi to write, though she encourages me to exercise necessary precautions for the sake of their lives. “For the sake of their lives” is an idea still outside the reach of what I am really able to understand, but she uses the phrase so deliberately and so often that I have learned to respect the meaning with which she invests it.

Wisam is a university student hoping to complete his degree in electrical engineering within the year, continuing conflict being the determining factor. Mustafa finished his degree in EE last year. The brothers live in Baghdad and work for the Americans – they are at the gate each day alongside Tommi. She tells me of probing conversations – they wanting to know about her life at home and she interrogating the moral justifications of an American military presence in Iraq.

Tommi says of Wisam, “His heart is in his eyes,” and goes on to relate his stories as proof of a compassionate heart and a gentle spirit. I believe her when she speaks in this way – Tommi reads people like others read a good book. She sees in Wisam reflections of her brother, Abe, a man dedicated to the family he loves and truth as he understands it. And she tells me again, “His heart is in his eyes.”

Wisam wants to study in America, he says, and I imagine his aspiration underwrites the risk he is willing to take with his life each day. I read from River today that recent elections in Iraq have produced new lists of those targeted as wanted, and she adds “dead, not alive.”

At 9:30 this morning the instant message box opens on the screen in front of me, and the words “mom, mom, mom” shout for my attention. Of course every “mom” knows a moment like this, knows the catalog of considerations through which a mind rifles in preparation for the coming text. There is time enough only for a single “?” on the page before Tommi writes again: “Wisam wasn’t at work today.”

The (real)ities we live are so very different now, and “shared vocabulary” rarely carries common understanding. Tommi knows that a day of missed work means her friend could be dead, and the woman within the soldier wrestles with decision until at last she asks, “What do I do with all these feelings, Mom?”

It is difficult to pause in a moment like that, difficult to stop time long enough to know – to find an answer worth owning when the next moment comes. “Feel them,” I said. “Keep feeling them. Be wise, but don’t stop feeling.”

“I know,” she wrote after a pause of her own. “I won’t, but it’s hard. Pray for them, ok, Mom?”

Maybe an hour passes before I hear from Tommi again. Email has arrived to confirm the safety of the interpreter/brothers - friends. Her relief is evident, but she doesn’t talk much more about it. There are meetings to attend and reports to be filed. Life goes on.