Can you do my taxes, Mr. Kalashnikov?

War defines Iraq. Here in Irbil, gunfire is rare, sporadic. Suicide bombers find fallow land for sympathy. But every morning, when we get a security update, we hear about the rest of the country. How half of Baghdad is being held by the insurgency, how many people were killed or captured (or set free), what our own little threat level is for the day. If we go anywhere (which is rare), we are guarded.

But the definition of our guards is fuzzy. Our accountant, who is known colloquially as "Ahmed Kalashnikov," was a guard, until someone found out that he was a CPA, in another life. I can't help but wonder who else's identity has been altered by the need to carry a gun.

The weirdest part is not that our guys carry guns, but that no one seems to think it's strange. Like Ahmed Kalashnikov, the Kurdish provinces have defined themselves in a context of defense. And the people my age, here - how many of them were lost during the genocide? One of our guards looks like he could have been my year in college - what does he think of the fact that he's still here, when his cohort was decimated? I don't think it's a question I could ask, even if I spoke Kurdish.

My Arabic skills, limited though they are, do come in a bit handy here. People don't generally speak it, but if you're talking about food, or need to get a simple point across with someone who doesn't speak English, it works okay. And everyone seems delighted that I speak it. My little bit of Spanish is coming in handy, too, as quite a few of our staff are Bolivian. One of them asked me today how long I had been taking Spanish classes. Since the answer is "never," I'll take that as a compliment.

Now, if only I could learn some more Kurdish and talk to that cute guard. Apparently, my type is not, as we had thought "tall, dark, and arrogant," but "tall, dark, and arrogant oppressed people who carry guns." Right.

Oh, and by the way, don't bother watching CNN. We come home every day and heckle whoever's talking and getting the facts wrong. Last night, they even got the TIME wrong in Iraq. That doesn't inspire much confidence in their powers of investigative journalism.