Code Name: Johnny Walker: The Extraordinary Story of the Iraqi Who Risked Everything to Fight with the U.S. Navy SEALs Read Free Page B

more violence.
    Not that I was philosophical as a child. Life was much more immediate and visceral. Truth was what you held in your hand—like my slingshot.
    I was pretty good with slingshots. I would carve them from wood I found, shaving them smooth and carving them until they felt just right gripped between my fingers. Then I would soak them in salt and water, which made them tougher—or at least that was our neighborhood theory. I got so good that I made slingshots for all my friends.
    I revived my slingshot skills years later while working with the SEALs. When we were operating in cities, we generally went on missions at night. Darkness helped conceal us and offered some protection. Streetlights were therefore an enemy. Rather than shooting them with guns, which of course made noise, I volunteered to ping them with a slingshot. With a little practice, my skills returned, and I was able to hit a lightbulb-sized target fairly regularly from thirty yards. The SEALs got me a high-tech slingshot made of metal, but the real secret to my success was the judicious choice of ammunition: only the roundest, most aerodynamic stones would do. I took to scouring the camps for them, and even naming my favorites. The SEALs may have had a chuckle, but “Fireball” and “Lightning” served them well.
     
    MY FATHER WAS a good man, solid, loving, not a hero and not exceptional. He was also a nice guy, who seemed to get along with everyone. He could be tough when he needed to be—he wasn’t soft—but mostly I remember him being kind to people. He wasn’t a big fan of tribal things, let alone government; he cared about his own wife and kids, and took care of us. If there was an average male in Mosul, he was it.
    I remember tagging along with him to his friends’ houses many times. He would show me off proudly, even though looking back I had no special talents. I guess he saw me through a father’s loving eyes.
    “Here is my son,” he would say. “Look at him—what a smart boy.”
    I was smart, though in all honesty you couldn’t prove it by my grades as I got older.
    In Iraq, children start elementary school at age six and spend six years there. Middle school and high school follow; usually students spend three years in each. At the end of high school, exams are held to see if you can qualify for college.
    Attitudes toward education were a lot different than they are in the United States. Not that school wasn’t considered important at all, but there certainly wasn’t the sort of emphasis on getting good grades and doing well that there is here.
    Even considering that context, my own attitude was not very good. I surely did not value my education as much as I could and should have. Because of this, I spent four years in middle school and another five in high school. Lack of effort, not intelligence, held me back as a young teenager.
    And yet I remember high school as an exciting time for learning. I liked science and math, and on my own studied a wide range of subjects from American history to Karl Marx. It was during this time that I began learning about America. I remember reading The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway—a book I can still recall and occasionally cite to my friends.
    Hemingway was a genius. He moves you, from emotion to emotion—wave to wave. The Old Man and the Sea has no fat, no wasted words or parts; everything works together to construct a perfect story of a fisherman fighting against the elements—of a simple man fighting to survive against all odds, of a people triumphing just by breathing.
    I wish I could write like that.
    I read Hemingway in English, but many Western writers’ works were translated into Arabic, which is where I encountered most of them. I still remember a handful of teachers who influenced me, mostly for the better. Ziad, who taught English, and Waad, who instructed Arabic and literature, were the sort of teachers every student should have. Waad in particular was a very