My awareness of where I actually had travelled to became acutely precise when we all finally disembarked from the shuttle bus and walked into the customs section of the airport.
The heat smacked at us in all directions, sucking the breath out of us as well.
It was a really small room, and there were three armed officers standing in wait.
A part of me, that really young part that still hadn't been able to feel comfortable in the adult world, became instantly afraid and I could feel my shoulders life up of their own accord to solidify into tense little mountains.
These soldiers were American, as American as the ones I have seen on the television screen, dressed in dusty fatigues and projecting a lot of loud energy out, two Caucasian men and one Black American female. Fit and fully aware of what their role was and how to perform it. Filled with confidence, which I immediately interpreted as bordering on the side of pure arrogance.
I became more silent, and held onto the black chador I had put on earlier on in the bathroom in the airport.
Every bag was checked thrice with various security equipment.
One of the party asked them a few questions, which they answered in a self assured manner. I again walked silently past, which is not usually my nature in airports. The reason for this deathly silence was due to the fact that seeing and listening to these US Army soldiers was a first for me, and had unwittingly ignited in me a ferocious rage that consumed me entire body, which travelled as a unforgiving fire and reached to my very fingertips.
It also made me very aware that we, as people in other countries, always forget the realities of war if we are in a bubble and living in a large city that has a lot of things functioning.
I still had some experience of difficulties and what war looks like and feels like. I had lived in Karachi, Pakistan during the time the US was bombing the northern parts of Pakistan, the Pakhtoon areas, as well as the entirety of Afghanistan during those very long and terrifying years.
I know the dread of hearing drone airplanes flying over, and the sinking realisation that they will be decimating more innocent people who had absolutely no control over their geography, economic status and colour of their skin, or the language they spoke.
I remember watching daily news reports with an obsessive vigour, and hearing the standard reportage of how many men, women and children had their lives torn away from them by the falling of American bombs trying to end terrorism and psychopathic, brainwashed individuals - through violent means.
It is this experience that triggered in me so much anger and hatred in me, as I passed the American soldiers in Baghdad International Airport. I couldn't think of anything else, couldn't find any sort of common humanity between myself and those individuals in that moment. To me, they were brain washed tyrants, devoid of conscience.
I told myself to calm down and to recall the reasons for why I was actually in Baghdad in the first place. This was not my final destination.
We exited the airport, having successfully gone through customs and the heat smacked us like a sheet of invisible glass all over again. The sweat sprung to the surface of my skin and began to be absorbed by the scratchy cotton of my shirt and jeans.
We were finally here, in Baghdad, on our way to the holy city of Najaf.
I felt stressed as we finally packed all the bags into a large and long coach that had been pre-arranged for us to travel on. It would take us an hour to reach Najaf, and as we passed more people, and more Iraqi soldiers speaking in Arabic dialects as well as English, I began to really feel as though I had left London and started a new adventure.
On the way there, we whizzed past desolate half-bombed buildings, and desolate areas of sand and beige dirt that just screamed out the barrenness and pointlessness of what had been going on in the country for decades.
The similarities of the landscape in transit from Baghdad to Najaf were strikingly similar to those I had passed by in on a single car trip from Karachi to Hyderabad many years ago.
Although I didn't see any black crows, I knew there would be dozens flying around in the large expansive blue sky. This is the desert, the unrelenting part of the planet whereby God has not only provided scarce natural resources such as water, vegetation and easily cultivable land - yet has provided copious amounts of rich, sticky black oil that was the entire motivation for the destruction of a great civilisation. Crows come as part of the package, a sort of harbinger of news. You are now in the desert, the rules are different here. The heat fries the brain-cells, for one thing.
This solemn mood was difficult to maintain in a coach filled with really loud and excited companions. Their presence was starting to become a unique test for my reserves in patience and goodwill towards humanity, mainly because they were older members of my community and had not really an understanding of the grand scheme of things, the geopolitics and the utter evil of war and destruction that was occurring in this very same land, even as we travelled in relative safety in an air conditioned coach.
I felt a bit better when we finally reached Najaf.
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