Chris Jodice of Weehawken stopped the SUV on the muddy street and looked into the dark rubble of an Iraqi home. He got out and opened the trunk, searching for something to give away.
PHOTO: Chris Jodice, of Weehawken, interacts with local Iraqi children.
"I have a few bottles of Gatorade," said Jodice, an Air Force policeman under the command of the New Jersey National Guard here in Baghdad’s "Green Zone."
While the Green Zone is considered a somewhat safe bubble in Baghdad, the area still has problems. Nearly six years after the beginning of the war, large pockets are still bombed out.
Like many of his comrades, Jodice wants to help make things better, even in small ways. So, the 22-year-old senior airman often finds himself steering his military police SUV down a darkened lane near the Tigris River.
"I like to check on this family," he says.
PHOTO: A local Iraqi girl hold another child in front of her bombed out house. Despite the house being bombed out, several children live in the complex.
Jodice peers silently into the rubble. A boy’s face appears. Then a girl’s.
"Hey, buddy," Jodice yells.
The boy and girl break into wide smiles and step past a broken stove, a discarded crib, a broken toilet and walk through a series of puddles to reach Jodice.
Then another boy appears. Then another girl and more children.
Two families live in this rubble, a former house that was hit by an errant explosive during the early days of the war. The mother of five of the children opens a corrugated steel door, held on hinges with strands of clothes line.
"My name is Sadia," she says in broken English.
She points to the collapsed flat concrete roof, lying like the wing of a broken bird atop the bedrooms of what once was a spacious home.
"American bombs," she says.
"No one was killed," she adds.
It could have been a wayward American bomb. Or, possibly, an Iraqi anti-aircraft shell that fell on Sadia’s street. No one knows for sure.
But to Chris Jodice and others who work with the New Jersey National Guard, it doesn’t matter.
"We love this family," says Areeg Farug, one of the Guard’s Iraqi translators. "We try to visit as often as we can. They have no where else to go."
Chris Jodice is schedule to depart Iraq today. His tour will be over.
"I just wanted to visit," he says, adding that he may not have another chance before he flies home to Weehawken. "These kids are wonderful. I wanted to tell them I wouldn’t see them again."
He bends over and hugs a boy and a girl.
"I wish I had more Gatorade to give them," he says.
-- Mike Kelly
MIKE KELLY has reported from such far-away spots as Belfast, Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza City, Malaysia, Kenya and the detention camps at Guantanamo Bay. The Record columnist is featured regularly on radio and TV and is the author of two books.
TYSON TRISH covers all kinds of assignments for The Record and logs hundreds of miles each week traversing Bergen and Passaic counties. He was born in Colorado, raised in California, schooled in Washington, D.C., and now calls the Garden State home.
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Posted by: photo booth wedding3 | 06/02/2011 at 03:46 AM