With an ache for normalcy, I dared to go swimming in the abandoned pool at the Sheraton where excited locals regularly shot up the glass dome ceiling of our location in celebration and sometimes took aim at each other in our fancy lobby that once entertained high society.

FORBES: Remembering the Road to Baghdad

But now and again I would go out to the old swimming hole, the place everybody called the Twenty Two, and spend half an hour or so in the water, not really swimming so much as hanging there, suspended in the rumor of coolness that rose from the depths below.

NEWYORKER: Something Like Happy