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The chapel of Forward Operating Base Falcon was packed; the pews were full of soldiers, from generals to privates, and more men stood alongside the walls and in the back. At the front, on a chancel made of plywood, was an assault rifle, mounted vertically, a helmet on its stock, and tan desert boots at its base. From the weapon hung dog tags — the dog tags of Staff Sergeant Karl Soto-Pinedo, who was killed by an insurgent last week in Baghdad. The memorial ceremony began precisely at seven-thirty, as planned.

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Five speakers took their turns at a lectern next to Soto-Pinedo’s memorial stand. One by one they extolled the virtues of battlefield bravery and of Soto-Pinedo’s drive and initiative in particular. Raised in Puerto Rico, Soto-Pinedo needed to take an English proficiency course as soon as he joined the Army in October 2002, just out of high school. He was good with people and obviously well-liked; a slideshow of snapshots projected on a screen showed him arm and arm with his buddies, many of them now sitting red-eyed in this room. He towered over most of them; his nickname was Big Soto. He’d just been promoted to Staff Sergeant two months ago.

After the speakers were finished, an Army chaplain said a prayer. Then, suddenly, there was the Last Roll Call: a gruff-voiced First Sergeant somewhere in the crowd bellowed out the name of one of his men; that soldier called back in a sharp retort. The sergeant called another man; he called back instantly. Then the sergeant called out “Sgt. Soto!”.

The room was quiet.

“Staff Sgt. Soto!”

More silence.

“Staff Sergeant Karl Soto-Pinedo!”

Absolute quiet, inside and out. Iraq, the land of constant cacophony, seemed to hold its breath in tribute.

Then, piercing the stillness like the sudden shot that felled Soto, three volleys of gunfire from outside the chapel. A trumpeter, also outside, played Taps, legato, hushed.

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Finally, in pairs, the officers in the room approached the memorial stand. They saluted in unison. Major General Fils, the commander of Soto’s First Infantry Division, reached out and touched the helmet, gently, as if it were a newborn baby’s cheek. More officers followed; many were crying. Then the enlisted men approached, more informally; they stood sometimes six or seven abreast; saluting slowly, not always in sync. Several of them grabbed Soto’s dog tags, pulling the chain taught, and prayed or wept or both.

Karl Soto-Pinedo was killed last Tuesday, felled by a bullet during a routine patrol in Baghdad. He was 22.

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The other day I had a meeting downtown, so one of our drivers, who I’ll call Wadeen, and I found ourselves wading through some of Baghdad’s famously mind-numbing traffic jams.

I like Wadeen; he just started working for us last year, as a back up driver, but since he has been promoted to full-time. He’s stockily built and a bit of a dandy, always dressed well in slacks and loafers. He used to often wear thick glasses, though he hasn’t been lately, and his English isn’t bad. Wadeen lives in one of Baghdad’s most dangerous neighborhoods. It’s not unusual for him to be a little late to work and say, “Sorry, there was a big battle in my neighborhood today,” in the same tone that a New Yorker might mumble about the vagaries of the F train.

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When we drive around in Baghdad, I sit in the front, and stroke my beard and generally do my best to look as typically Iraqi as I can. (We have a little ritual we do before we leave the hotel compound where I spin around like a runway model and ask, “Do I look Iraqi today?” and Wadeen will cock his head, shrug and reply “Sure, you look Kurdish.”)

I don’t wear my glasses when I ride around in Baghdad - too foreign looking. But my contacts were dirty and not sitting right in my eyes, so I tried to fix them in the visor mirror.

“Your eyes are broken?” Wadeen asked. “You should have them fixed.”
“I suppose so,” I said, squinting into the small glass.

Wadeen drove on. We were stuck in traffic and slowly passed the wreckage of a building, destroyed recently by some bomb or another.

“I fix mine, last year with laser.”

“Mmmmm,” I replied, absent-mindedly. I flipped the visor back up. Iraqi women shrouded in black were crossing the street between all of the standstill cars. “Wait - you had laser eye surgery?”

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“Yes, last year,” Wadeen said beaming.

“How? Hey, watch this convoy, slow down.”

A series of Iraqi police trucks burst out of a side street onto our road, men in ski masks hanging off of the sides, pointing their AK-47s around wildly. Metal plates had been crudely wdlded to the doors, as some measure of protection against roadside bombs. A car didn’t back up fast enough; the men in the back screamed throatily and pointed their weapons at the old man driving it. One fired a burst of bullets into the road; asphalt and smoke kicked up. The man jumped in his seat and put his hands in the air like he was being robbed. The police finally cleared the traffic and took off the wrong way down the opposite street.

“Anyway,” Wadeen said as we started inching forward again, “I save my money a long, long time, I buy a ticket to Jordan, on Iraqi Airways. I call a Jordan man who is a doctor for eyes — he did it. All my life, I have glasses, very bad eyes. And then, you know how long it take to fix?”

“No.”

“Twenty minutes!” he thundered. “I will give you his number and he can fix yours too. He does it for one thousand dollars.”

“No thanks man, I’ll stick with…one eye for one thousand?”

“Both eyes one thousand. Very cheap! He trained in London, the doctor, he speaks very good English. I will give you his number.”

“And can you see okay?”

“I can see everything!”

We finally made it through the jam and onto one of Baghdad’s main boulevards. Traffic was moving well until we came to an Iraqi checkpoint, several tan military vehicles were blocking the road. But the street beyond was clear so Wadeen waved his press pass out the window to get by. That often works, but in this case the Iraqi shook his head emphatically and had a brief, shouted exchange with Wadeen. Wadeen frowned and turned the car around and started looking for a side street.

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“We can’t go that way?” I asked.

“No, they find a big bomb on that road. But I think we can go this way.”

“Maybe try the river road?” I volunteered.

“No, the river road has too many checkpoints, bad traffic right now. It’s rush hour time.”

“But it’s noon.”

“Yes, that is rush hour.”

He found a side street and cut through a rather pastoral neighborhood, stately stone houses in the Arab modernist style, with squared off edges and vaulted roofs. It was the old embassy neighborhood, which I’d been through before. We passed by the building that used to be the United States embassy in Iraq right up until Saddam invaded Kuwait, in 1990. It’s a handsome, large house right on the road and unprotected save for a low wall. Everytime I pass it, I marvel at the ease and naivete that was the norm of our diplomatic relations, not that long ago.

Finally, we emerged from the neighborhood, crossed a bridge over the Tigris and went through several checkpoints. The downtown hotel where I had my appointment loomed ahead. Their own security stopped us far short of the building, but they had been given my name and were told to expect me. We were allowed in after a thorough search of the car. Wadeen stayed in the parking lot while I went inside for my meeting.

My colleague was waiting in the lobby of the once-ornate hotel, now run down. “Thanks for coming,” he said. “How was it out there?”

“The usual. Hey, did you know you can get laser eye surgery in Jordan for a thousand bucks?”