Brian Turner

And he was a lieutenant, so the officers, they could do something like that.

Myself, I could carry one or two books, but not much more than that.

And so I had a book the whole way through, which was Iraqi Poetry Today.

It was out of King's College London, actually.

And that was in a great anthology.

It is a wonderful anthology.

And I was able to meet a lot of Iraqi poets through those pages as I was there.

And that influenced much of it.

And I'd read a translated into English version of the Koran

Back when I was in college, not for college, but during that period, just to try to educate myself.

And then I reread it prior to going over because I wanted to have that in mind and to try to understand as much as possible the space I was going to.

I mean, I could die there.

So, like, what is this space I'm going to?

Yeah, yeah.

And different soldiers dealt with that in different ways.

Many of them would try to learn... When we got there, we would try to pick up phrases and...

you know, Arabic sort of phrases.

So you learn how to say hello and good morning and how are you doing and how's it going?

A little more slang.

In Baghdad, I think it's shakumaku, which is like, what's up?