May 27, 2008

• Remembering Iraqi Widows and Cats & Dogs on Memorial Day

  
  Oreo, circa 1985

  Twenty years ago, my roommate Daniel and I were fresh out of college and living in a small house in Chicago.  We both worked at different banks and we had been sharing a car for a year and it was getting unmanageable.  One day the bank he was working for had a “repo” or repossessed car that they needed to sell to recoup the loan money.  The reason the bank had repossessed the car was that the car’s owner was dead.  Her name was Sarah, and she had committed suicide……IN THE CAR.

  Now, as creepy as that was, we were recent college graduates, sharing a car, and living in Chicago.  We really needed a 2nd car but couldn’t afford one.  The car that Sarah killed herself in was a Mercury Cougar in mint condition, save for the driver’s side window that had been broken to retrieve Sarah.  We were told her death was by carbon monoxide, but that’s really all we knew.  The bank offered us a deal; pay off the remainder of the $1000 loan and the car was ours.  So we split the money, (actually I lent Daniel his half), and picked up the car “as is”.  (By the way Daniel, you STILL owe me $500…I know you’re reading this too…so PAY UP, or your 4 kids won’t be getting anything from me for Christmas this year, LOL  )

  So, after obtaining a copy of Sarah’s death certificate (which I still have by the way, I’ll have to scan it one of these days), we picked up the car from the bank’s parking lot and drove it home.  We were both a little freaked out, because the windows still hadn’t been fixed, and all of Sarah’s things were still in it.  For whatever reason, no one took the time to clean it out.  So there we were, with Sarah’s Kleenex, Sarah’s lipstick,  and something else of Sarah’s, but more about that in a minute. 

  As soon as we got in the car, my dog Oreo started whining and wouldn’t stop.  As soon as we drove out of the parking lot, we heard a screeching noise coming from the right front wheel well.  We turned a corner and heard it again.  We had no idea what it was, but figured it was something wrong with the alignment and didn’t worry too much (what did we know?).  We were late for a movie or something, so we dropped Oreo off, drove to the theater, parked the car, and went in.  Two hours later we came out to a note on our windshield.  It read simply, “What kind of SICKO are you?  There’s a cat under your hood!!!”  (I think I still have that note somewhere too, LOL!)

  Sure enough, there was a cat, not under the hood, but in the wheel well between the tire and the hood.  We couldn’t see it, but we sure heard it every time we turned the wheel.  We took the car to the police, and they told us it was the damnedest thing they’d ever seen, but they couldn’t help us.  We took it to a mechanic, and they said it would cost us $200 to try to get it out (alive).  Finally we drove the car (with as few turns as possible) to Daniel’s brother in law, an amateur mechanic.  He spent 2 hours taking the front end of the car apart, and finally pulled out a full sized adult cat.  The first thing the cat did was go up to my dog Oreo and start playing with him.  Oreo loved cats, though they usually didn’t love him.  This cat was different though, and they got along splendidly.

  I wasn’t as allergic to cats then as I am now, so we decided to keep her.  We named the cat “Sarah” in honor of the car’s former owner.  Daniel’s last name was Herrera, so the cat was Sarah Herrera.   Where Sarah came from and how she got into such a “spot” we never knew.  We suspected she was a stray and found the car in the parking garage the morning we got it, after taking it out for a test drive.  It was a cold Chicago winter morning, and we think maybe Sarah climbed up into the wheel well to stay warm, and then somehow got stuck and couldn’t get out of the small opening.

  Of course the other theory was that the cat was really a reincarnation of the car’s owner, Sarah, and perhaps the human Sarah was a dog lover, and that’s why the feline Sarah and the canine Oreo got along so well.  Regardless, Sarah and Oreo had a great relationship.  Sarah died a year later of a kidney ailment.  She was the first and last cat I will ever have, but I have fond memories of her

  
  Daniel’s daughter Tori, a Sarah Herrera lookalike & Oreo – circa 1996
  

  I’ve told that story before, but was reminded of it this Memorial Day after reading this story recently about Iraqi war widows.  One of them, Sabriyah Hilal Abadi, now sleeps with an AK47 next to her bed to protect her children.  She says, she was optimistic during the days after the invasion. Her impressions of Americans, shaped largely by a news story she saw on television, gave her hope. The story was about an hours long effort to rescue a cat stuck in a sewage pipe.  “If those people are so good to the animals,” she said, “I was expecting good things.” 
  

  Nearly 1 million women in Iraq are widows or divorcees, or their husbands are missing, according to Samira al-Mosawi, a Shi’ite member of parliament who heads the women’s affairs committee.  Let’s not forget about them this Memorial Day.

  Also, here’s a link to Haider’s story on This American Life which was re-broadcast last week.  It’s poignant and worth your time.  Download the free podcast and listen the next time you’re stuck in traffic.

  When he was a teenager, Haider Hamza worked in the Iraqi Ministry of Information. He was specially trained to talk to visiting dignitaries and foreign reporters, and he loved his job. It was exciting, and he was treated like a celebrity. Then the war broke out, his family fled, his job disappeared, and Haider suddenly had to figure out what to do next: hide, like his father wanted, or jump into the fray—in one of the most dangerous ways possible. Gideon Yago tells the story. (28 minutes)

  Speaking of the catfights and war, this classic clip is worth watching again.    I’m posting it for Eva & Jessie, as we were discussing it this weekend.  It starts to get really good (and really bitchy) at about 4 minutes 20 seconds.  I hope everyone had a peaceful holiday.

  • 12:04 am
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