On waiting.

"I fucking love waiting!"

Everybody's wait ends here. No exceptions.

     As much as one would like to believe that time spent in a warzone is a non-stop hail of gunfire, explosions and adrenaline, ninety percent or more of your time is spent waiting. "Hurry up and wait" is the soldier's motto. From Shadadee till the start of Manbij,  most of our time was spent hanging around. We went to Qamishlo and a few other places--we only fought once in Qamishlo--, but our trips to Seluk and back to Qamishlo were basically as a show of force, or as extra security after attacks. We spent months waiting.

     During this time, two more volunteers joined our Tabor, Zinar, a sixty-something world traveler and English teacher who had decided in his autumn years that it was time to experience war.

Note the Grateful Dead Patch. If anybody has this guys contact info, let me know.

     Also joining us was Firaz Kardo (Now Shaheed Firaz), an Egyptian born Kurd with a knack for fixing broken electronics, and a desire to make every space he occupied as luxurious as possible. He installed WIFI and a ceiling fan in our Nokta and insisted on regular trips to Tel Tamar to eat at the Christian restaurant and pick up assorted goodies. I wasn't complaining. He spoke at least five languages, and as a young man joined the Iraqi Communist party to fight Saddam after his father was killed by the regime. Quite the life.

"If we don't do this, WHO WILL?" Miss you, Brother.

     At any rate, for some months, waiting became our lives. Waiting for the Manbij operation, that was to come at any time. We bullshited, argued, made friends with our Kurdish Hevals, cooked food, complained, and generally made the best of things. We went to the local ice cream shop and figured out that sheep ice cream is the best stuff in existence. We watched Band of Brothers on laptop. Good times. Towards the end of May, we noticed American made Chinook helicopters flying low from a Northern meeting area to a southern base on a nightly basis. We were told that American Special Operations Soldiers and higher ups were meeting with YPG officials about the impending Manbij liberation. It wouldn't be long now.