I Have Iraq in My Shoe Read Online Free

often sit around my apartment, in pajamas or sweats, wearing various pairs of fancy high heels, occasionally holding them out to Herb for appraisal.
    The obsession extended beyond shoes. I admittedly had a problem/issue/fixation with all kinds of clothing. I blamed this on my mom, who littered our home with issues of
Vogue, Bazaar
, and
Glamour
when I was growing up. Don’t give girls fashion magazines in their formative years if you expect them to wear sensible shoes.
    In high school I used to make lists of every outfit I wore (if Excel spreadsheets had been around in the ’80s I would have been in
heaven
), and I would then review those lists to ensure I did not duplicate an outfit more than once in a month.
Why? That’s ridiculous. Who would notice? Or care?
Me. I would notice
and
care. Variety is the spice of life. It is also the spice of wardrobe. That’s a lesser-known idiom, sure, but just as true.
    Different people have different passions for indulgence: video games, Cuban cigars, subwoofers, television sets the size of billboards, first-edition books, Fabergé eggs, art. My passion was fashion. Judge if you must.
    Since I was going to The Iraq and
would
be making a substantial salary, I thought it would be okay to buy a new pair of boots. What?! They were on sale! I doubted that I would be able to do any shoe or boot shopping at all once I moved, and part of my mental preparation was making a point to do all the things I would have to give up. I went to Starbucks, I got together with my friends at the wine bars, I went out for sushi, and I bought new boots. They were Diane von Furstenberg tall, red suede boots with a two-and-a-half-inch heel, which almost made them sensible. They were my Wonder Woman boots, and I loved them so much. My mom did not. “Suede boots? Those will be practical in Iraq” was her official position. I packed them anyway.

    There were other phone conversations with Warren leading up to my departure, during one of which he excitedly informed me that he had “hooked me up” with a unique situation. The main university was located in Suli (the lazy Western abbreviation for Sulaimani). However, Warren had opened up a sort of satellite campus, three hours north of Suli, in a city called Erbil.
    Warren practically gushed about Erbil and went on and on about how all the other teachers would donate a dominant limb to be up there. “Seriously, Gerts, it’s way more of an actual city. There’s a German restaurant, with
real
German beer—they serve it in steins. There are all kinds of restaurants and places to go out and there are two five-star hotels on either side of the compound where you’ll be living.”
    Me: Really? Five-star hotels?
    I tried to picture a giant, shiny high-rise with a doorman welcoming me, but it didn’t really work.
    Warren: Yeah, one’s a Kempinski. You’ve heard of Kempinski, right? The German hotels? And the other one’s…well, I can’t remember the other one right now.
    Me: So, they might even have a good brunch I could go to!
    Warren paused a second and then said, “Sure!”
    This new development called for a readjustment of my expectations. I would no longer be at the main university, and I had to ask Warren an entirely new set of questions about what to expect in Erbil. He was, as usual, vague and unconcerned with details, which crippled my ability to create any type of visual to help me picture my upcoming life there. It was just a blurry unknown,
Erbil
. Meh, Iraq was Iraq. If Erbil was moderately fancier, with German restaurants and five-star hotels, all the better.

    While packing I came across an article I had saved from Oprah’s
O
magazine (October 2005). I had been single for a long time. Yes, yes, quite possibly due to the combination of control issues, self-diagnosed claustrophobia, the shoe obsession, and the cat. There had been a couple of longish relationships in my early twenties, and then a handful of shortish dalliances into my early