FOR MOST OF THE CENTURY: WHAT! ANOTHER WAR? (PART 59)

Jean Bell Mosley's new autobiography, "For Most of the Century," is only available in serialized form in the Southeast Missourian. Return each week for her continuing story.

WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, and now Iraq? Old purple Persia where the irises grew so tall? I was weary of wars.

In the days following my "heart affair," I found it pleasant to go and sit on a bench at the top of the many stairs leading up to our old courthouse and watch the Father of Waters roll on to the sea. Tow boats rode quietly on its surface. Traffic moved lazily on Spanish, Main and Water Streets below me, continuing the slant of the land to the river. Pedestrians walked even slower along sidewalks, stopping at mid-block or on corners to talk to each other. It was a kaleidoscope of a community at peace.

Sometimes someone would have left a newspaper on the bench, and just merely giving it a glance would reveal a headline about Saddam Hussein; Saddam Hussein of Iraq, hinting to Arab Nations that America was tired after the Vietnam War, the Iran-Contra affair, the terror of bombing of the marine barracks in Beirut and that the time was ripe for someone (read Saddam Hussein of Iraq) to unify the Arab nations and remove what many of them saw as the thorn of Israel; Saddam Hussein ordering his much acclaimed army to the borders of Kuwait; Saddam Hussein, invading Kuwait as the first step in unification of the Arab nations.

The newspaper headlines were like upturned tacks left on the bench to bring one to stark reality.

Kuwait? Where in the world was Kuwait? I don't remember it being on the old Loughboro school globe. But I soon found out. There were pictures of Kuwait and smoking, exploding bombs coming right out of the Zenith across from the old green couch.

My January 15, 1991 daily journal entry reads thus:

Jan. 15, 1991 -- No movement in Saudi Arabia war zone.

Virginia Goodwin will be over this morning with some PEO material.

Made orange slice cookies.

At 5:50 p.m. United Nations (mostly U.S.) opened war against Iraq as they had warned they would. Tuned to CNN, I heard and saw the first bombs dropped on Baghdad. Bernie Shaw, John Holliman and Peter Arnett, stationed at the Al Rashid Hotel in Baghdad started the broadcast for CNN. I listened and watched all night. Maybe napped after 3:00 a.m. but not much.

Such stark contrast -- making cookies in the morning, watching America at high-tech war by eventide.

Indeed it was high-tech. The night sky over Baghdad was lit up by exploding smart bombs, so-called "smart" because they could, more than ever before, precisely hit their targets. Anti-aircraft fire with what seamstresses would call a running stitch of light, tried to sew the exploding night skies together, but it was a futile effort. If ever air superiority was on display it was that night.

The three broadcasters took turns at describing the events. At one point Bernie Shaw described what to him was to be an unforgettable experience. In a momentart lull in the sounds of war, he heard a rooster crowing. Bernie's account was to be unforgettable for me, too. It prompted me to write:

A Rooster Crowed in Sinbad's Old Baghdad*

When Bernie Shaw of CNN was broadcasting from Baghdad the Wednesday night (our time) the Desert Storm started, during a lull in the busting bombs and anti craft racket, he picked out the sound of a rooster crowing. He said it was a sound he would never forget.

Hearing that rooster myself, vicariously of course, I think it is a sound I'll never forget either. The sounds of war in that distant country, coming to me clearly via TV were deafening, speaking of bloody death and fiery destructions. I shuddered. My eyes were misty, but when Bernie described the sound of that rooster crowing in the midst of devastating war, I'm sure I smiled and blinked away any tears.

The juxtaposition of that so innocent call from that rooster was like, well, to get poetic, was like balm on a searing wound, hand on a fevered brow, rain on a parched desert.

The sound was reassuring that life goes on. Roosters crow when it gets light, even light from bursting bombs although in black night.

It was humorous in a way. What was a rooster doing in the metropolis of Baghdad? And amongst all the noise? I imagine that all the barking dogs, meowing cats, braying donkeys and whining camels roundabout were silent.

I mentally pictured a big Rhode Island Red sitting on a roost in some little hen house in a back alley. The artificial light reached his sleepy head and to antropomorphize him, he said to himself, "Hey. Short night." He shook his head, red comb flapping, and looked around at his harem. "Well, another day. Get up, hens." The light from bursting bombs glistened on his burnished tail feathers. He reared back proudly and proclaimed a new day, a sound heard 'round the world via Shaw's dramatic and touching description.

I thought, too, of the rooster St. Peter heard three times before the Crucifixion. Those roosters in the Middle East! They're bright red punctuation marks in the midst of world shaking events ...

While mulling over Shaw's rooster, I tried to bring up in my mind the exact location of Baghdad. I knew, vaguely, that it was on the Tigris River. It couldn't have been historic Babylon could it, where a lot of other trouble started?

I went to my big wall map. Yep, there is was, straddling the Tigris River but about sixty miles up river from old biblical Tigris! So that put it practically in Genesis' Garden of Eden where once all was well.

Alas, if we could only go back. But it wasn't in THE PLAN. So, we have battle sounds echoing through ancient Eden, but a rooster crowing there, too, to keep us from sinking into despair.

A memorable sight, caught instantaneously by the TV camera during the air war was a cruise missile flying over Baghdad in daylight. Some people on the ground were pointing at it as if to call others' attention. It reminded me of those old days when, if anyone saw an airplane going over, he would rush outside and yell, "Airplane, airplane!" to alert others to the highly unusual sight.

The ground war in the desert shortly after the first air bombardment of Baghdad. Under the direction of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin Powell, and General Norman Schwarzkopt, the war to liberate Kuwait was quickly won. Cease fire, duly noted in my journal, took effect on February 28, 1991.

While things were building up to the war, and during the war, the ladies of my church circle undertook the making of a quilt which we called "Desert Storm." Members were given blocks to be cross-stitched in two shades of pale yellow to represent the desert sand.

So here I was again, embroidering to get over a bad time. I made each stitch meticulously as if each one would help some soldier far away from home. Although unspoken, the circle members silently understood that while we were making our stitches we would pray for peace. The quilt would be sold at our bazaar and most of the proceeds would go for missions promoting world peace.

World peace? "Some day, God? Some day?" I silently queried one day when I used a quilt block to wipe away a tear.

I looked outside and saw, through misty eyes, the dull colors of late winter. But there! Around the bird feeder! A flock of bright yellow goldfinch were feeding. The bright yellow ones seldom came in winter. They gave me the relayed answer. "Yes, some day. In the meantime there is that other kind of peace."

"I know about that, God. Thank you."

*First printed in the Southeast Missourian, February 1991

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime resident of Cape Girardeau.