NINE PALMS

There’s something simple and healing about trees. There is a lot we can learn from them if we learn how to listen to them speak.

Before I left for Iraq recently, I had an image of what the place would look like. The picture in my mind was of group of palms—as in an oasis.

It wasn’t until I’d been in Baghdad awhile, and we were leaving—racing at high speed in a mad dash for the Jordanian border—that I snapped this picture that was very much the picture I had of the place.