As-Salaam Alaiykum

Good evening.

I landed about an hour ago. It was cloudy over the Gulf and most of the peninsula, so the views weren't as good today. But we did fly right over Kuwait at FL230 during the day which yielded a nice view of more Arabian skyscrapers, but I couldn't find the Towers which was a disappointment. I'll know where to look next time.

I enjoy flying over Basra, Iraq. You can see the Shatt Al-Arab, which is the river that forms from the merging of the Tigris and Eurphrates. You can follow both rivers northwest; and at night you can distinguish the rivers by the steady stream of lights along both with the stark contrast of dark desert between. Basra is currently getting fucked over by Turkey (who isn't right now?) because they've been stealing a major portion of the water from both rivers upstream of the Syrian border. Now the filtration infrastructure that was built in Iraq during the restoration period are no longer sufficient to keep up with the trash-to-fresh-water ratio, and by the time it gets to Basra it's all dry and toxic. And Basra's a pretty big city, with like two MILLION people. So that'd be like if New Orleans could no longer use the Mississippi delta for their water source. This is all in the news, just not in America (it's an election year that isn't 2004, no one gives a shit about Basra...)

I brushed up on my Arabic last night. I've been saying shuk'ran to the dining staff when they get me my meals, but they never seem to really respond to it. I couldn't tell if I remembered it wrong and have been mispronouncing it, or if the "local" workers are not actually Qatari, and actually from Bangladesh or Myanmar or somewhere that doesn't speak Arabic. I looked it up. I've been saying it perfectly. Then I remembered - it's Qatar, of course the minimum wage workers aren't GCC citizens.

For local languages, I like to learn "thank you" and "cheers" at a bare minimum. I already knew "shuk'ran", and they don't drink in the Muslim world, so "cheers" is N/A. But since I've been flying, I've picked up the habit of learning "thanks have a good day" or something similar for all countries I fly over, so I can say my sign off on the radio in the local dialect. This is very important to me. Well, Qatar and Bahrain and Kuwait and Dubai and Saudi, like a proper GCC territory, import all of their controllers from the UK or Australia, so I've just been saying "cheers have a g'nite mayte" and that's pretty much covered me locally. But once I get a little further out, as expected, it gets a little more ethnic.

For Baghdad Control, sometimes Kuwait, I've been saying "as-salaam"; which is literally saying "PEACE!" and changing freqs, but more religious. "As-Salaam alaiykum" is the religious and standard greeting in Muslim countries, Arabic for "peace be unto you"; and the response is "Wa-alaiykum salam" for "and unto you peace". So it's basically a Catholic Mass every time you run into someone. In radio brevity, "as-salaam" is what they say, so it's what I say.

I imagine some people may think it's odd that anyone in the US military would take the time to wish an Iraqi Muslim "peace be unto you" over the radio. Something about flirting with the enemy seems to be from where the uncomfortability stems. But Iraq and Islam aren't the bad guys, ISIS and Al-Qaeda are, and it's a lot safer and quicker to get through Iraq's airspace with their assistance, so there's really no logical reason saying "as-salaam" over the radio while on a USAF callsign would be weird or frowned upon. Quite the contrary, it's in our best interest in reality.

When we went into the intel vault for our daily intelligence brief today they asked us, "oh you guys were on Python XX flying to XXXXX the other night weren't you?" We said yes. "You guys had flags on the flight, we need you to sign the certificates. There are a lot of them." They handed us a clipboard filled with a stack of diploma-esque military certificates, with the crew's name typed out below a blank signature line on each. My name was in the middle of the three, "1st Lieutenant William D Loyd - Copilot".

I asked what I'm supposed to do with it. "Just harness your inner Lebron James, and sign them all." So I did. There were a lot of them so it took me a few minutes to get through them all. Each one had a different family's name: "In honor of... The Smith Family... this hereby certifies that this flag was flown into combat in Operation Inherent Resolve, witnessed and acknowledged by the following crew...etc".

I asked about it. It's considered an honor to receive a flag flown on a US Air Force aircraft on an actual combat mission. So for Gold Star families, or families affected by the war, or local businesses that show significant support for deployed troops (the list goes on but you get the point), we fly with a bunch of American flags somewhere on the jet (usually in the boom pod or somewhere that it can be seen by people during the mission) and then send it to those families with the certificate signed by the crew. So my name's on the mantel of a dozen or so families somewhere.

Well, that sums up about everything I can talk about. Until next time, as-salaam alaiykum...