“So, little girl,” he said, “you want to go cover Afghanistan?”
“Yes. And don’t call me ‘little girl.’ ”
Little girl. What is it with these photo editors? I thought. I’d read Virginia Woolf and The Feminine Mystique. I’d marched in “Take Back the Night” rallies and participated in impromptu feminist consciousness-raising sessions, one of which involved sculpting Play-Doh models of our boyfriends’ penises as a means of subverting their power. Proud, torch-carrying, sanctimonious to a fault, I knew a sexist remark when I heard one. Unfortunately, in Paris, especially in the macho clubhouse of photojournalism, sexist remarks were practically all I ever heard.
“Why don’t you wear miniskirts more often?” a colleague once asked.
“A little makeup never hurt anyone,” said another, who then stared down at my Doc Martens and added, “And what’s with the clunky dyke shoes?”
And once, as I was leaning over a light table editing my intifadah photos from Israel, wearing a loose tank top to combat the heat from an overzealous radiator, yet another exclaimed, “Deborah, you have such lovely little breasts. You should wear tighter clothes so we can actually see them.”
Sure. I’ll get right on it.
Don’t get me wrong. I’ll wear a miniskirt or even some lipstick when the occasion calls for it. But when you’re running around shooting pictures for a living, the occasion rarely calls for anything beyond jeans, sturdy shoes with rubber soles and climate-sensible outerwear with lots of pockets. My colleagues knew this, but they were suspicious of me, suspicious of the little girl who wanted to join their fraternity. Thus, the hazing. When I told one of them I’d bought my plane ticket to Peshawar, he actually said, without so much as a wink to lessen the sting, “Afghanistan? Shouldn’t you be at home making babies?”
“No,” I said, indignant, “I shouldn’t.”
Of this I was certain. When I left college and moved to Paris, churning out babies was the furthest thing from my mind. All of my heroes in the world of photojournalism were, or had been, childless men—photographers like Robert Capa, Gilles Peress, Jim Nachtwey—and I knew if I wanted to devote the rest of my life, like them, to traipsing around the globe in search of conflicts, a family was out of the question. Babies, I knew, required love, patience, selflessness, maternal instinct and maturity, none of which I had in any abundance. How could I nurture a child? I hadn’t even begun to nurture myself. I needed to live, to learn, to observe, to create, and insofar as photography allowed me to do all four of these things, I was both smitten and satisfied.
I loved to go out and shoot in strange places, to talk to the types of people I’d never meet were it not for the excuse of the camera. I loved the heft of the black metal in my hands, the way it felt like a weapon. I loved to press the shutter, to freeze time, to turn little slices of life into rectangles rife with metaphor. I loved to collect the rectangles, like so many souvenir trinkets, to gaze at them, study them, find the one that best summarized a particular lived moment. I loved the smell of the black-and-white chemicals. Loved to dip a naked piece of white photographic paper into a bath of developer and watch the image miraculously materialize, watch life, a moment, reborn. Loved rescuing the ever-darkening image, saving it from blackness with my tongs, immersing it into the stop bath, then into the fixer, imagining all those silver crystals stopping, fixing, imagining my little rectangle living on forever.
The omnipotence of it all was overwhelming: you took chaos, threw in a camera, some film and a darkroom, and—voilà—you had order. It was like playing God. If an image looked too dark, you could just close down the aperture on the enlarger a stop or two. If the sky in a photograph was too bright, you could burn it in by cupping your hands and leaving a small hole to spill extra light wherever it was needed. If you felt there was too much empty space, you could just crop it out of the picture.
Try doing that with a baby.
Besides, I knew my limitations. I knew I loved collecting men almost as much as I loved collecting photographs. I could never choose a single photo, from all the images I’d ever shot, to hang on my wall at the expense of all others. So why should I be expected to choose a single man to share my bed for eternity?
Unfortunately, in this calculation of a desired life—a childless, adventure-filled, orgasmic photographic extravaganza—I left out a thorny variable. Namely my extra X, as in chromosome. Even though I’d come of age at the dawn of a revolution, even though my generation of girls was told by our bra-burning forebears we could do any job we pleased, choose any lifestyle we wanted, little had actually changed in terms of traditional male attitudes. Especially in places like Paris. Especially in microcosms like photojournalism. In fact, despite the great cultural strides of twentieth-century feminism, in the eyes of most of my colleagues, in the eyes even of some of my female friends, I was a freak. A little girl gone woefully astray, trying to live her life like a man.
Michel apologized for the slight. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean to call you a little girl. I just meant that Afghanistan’s a scary place and a scary war, and those mujahideen are not going to want to cart around a woman. Especially a woman who looks so much like a child.”
He had a point. I’m five foot two on a good day, and with my long hair constantly pulled back into a single braid down my back, I could have passed for fourteen. In my mind I was a six-foot-tall Amazon woman, swathed from head to toe in black leather. But my body, petite, impish and swathed in Lilliputian Levi’s and T-shirts, betrayed me.
Surprisingly, despite the stature problem and despite the very real odds against my success, Michel agreed to let Gamma represent me. He was short, too. And, with all of his usual war photographers wimping out, kind of desperate. For the next four hours he gave me a truncated history lesson and explained the lay of the land.
Peshawar, in westernmost Pakistan, he told me, was the seat of the ousted Afghani government. It won that distinction by default. It lay just outside the border of Afghanistan at the end of the dusty Khyber Pass, which was the most direct route to the mountains encircling Kabul, the Afghani capital. There, since their invasion ten years earlier in 1979, the Soviets had set up a puppet regime. And ever since, the mujahideen—freedom fighters in a holy war who were factionalized into fifteen distinct groups, eight Sunni, seven Shiite—had been running back and forth along that road, climbing up those steep mountains and bombing the shit out of Kabul. And sometimes, for variety, out of each other. Best of all, the Americans, whom the Afghanis didn’t even seem to like very much, had given these mountain boys the most exciting toys: Stinger missiles. A Stinger, Michel explained, was a portable death machine the size of an average suitcase. Worn on the shoulder, it could pluck down Soviet planes from the sky like so many clay pigeons. “Pow!” he said, firing off an invisible Stinger. “Just like that.”
Michel explained that I’d have to find a group in Peshawar to take me “inside,” into the interior of Afghanistan, and be my tour guide. He actually said “tour guide,” as if there were going to be a big bus with blue upholstered seats and serviettes on the headrests and a polyestered man holding a microphone shouting, “And on your left folks, the remains of a thriving mountain village! And just up there on the right, dead bodies!”
“Oh, and make sure you have really good hiking shoes,” urged Michel. “You’ll be walking a lot, maybe for days on end. Bring a down sleeping bag, because those caves can get pretty cold at night. Bring medicine for the dysentery you’ll probably get, bring as many Snickers bars as you can carry, bring toilet paper, bring a canteen and load it up with snow every morning before you hike . . .” (Tampons, I thought, don’t forget tampons.) “bring a Zippo and a flashlight—one of those little Mag-Lites are best—get your shots before you go, bring a big bottle of rubbing alcohol to ward off infection in case you’re wounded, and, for God’s sake, do not, under any circumstance, travel alone.”
By now, just about every mujahed is sniffing around, trying to figure out where the stench of alcohol is coming from. “My bag. Alcohol. Alcohol broke. Sorry,” I say, but the ragged men just look at me like I’m crazy. “Alcohol, you know, pee-yew! Smelly!” I’m holding my nose now, trying to make them understand me. Hashim suddenly realizes what he’s done.
“Oh, Miss Deborah. Sorry. Sorry.” He gets up off the squashed backpack, unzips the side pocket and throws the offending bottle over the side of the truck. Then, sheepishly, he hands me the soaked, crushed box of tampons. I bring it under my burka and shine my brand-new Mag-Lite on it to examine it. The box looks like a hydroponic garden grown amok, the cotton swollen to at least four times its normal size. The tampons have burst through their cardboard applicators, through their paper wrappers and through and beyond the top of the box itself, where they droop over the sides like soggy dead flowers. Not a single one can be saved. I turn off my flashlight in defeat and hand the box back to Hashim. “Sorry,” he says once again, tossing the sodden mess over his shoulder, along with a few alcohol-soaked rolls of toilet paper. Only one roll of toilet paper has been spared. It will be put to good use.
We left Peshawar in this truck two days ago, crossing the checkpoints at the Afghani border with relative ease. I saw next to nothing, however, because as usual I was stuck under the stupid burka, with only a tiny blue mesh screen through which to view the world. Peripheral vision in this thing is nonexistent, and the top often slips down, which makes me blind. Not the most ideal conditions for anyone, let alone a photojournalist.
The male journalists, as usual, have it much easier. They arrive in Peshawar, grow a beard, buy their shalwar chemises (the pajamalike outfits worn by Afghanis), their pakuls (cuffed wool caps), their blankets and their army jackets. In their new clothing, with their new beards, they blend right in with the mujahideen. I assumed I’d be able to do the same, that I could dress like a man, pass for a man like Rosalind in As You Like It, but I neglected to consider the facial hair problem. Or the fact that mujahideen don’t come in the 108-pound, five-foot-two dwarf variety.
Since leaving Peshawar, the only time I was allowed to remove my burka was at the safe house where we spent our first night, after I was led by the arm, still under the burka, through a labyrinth of winding alleyways and up a flight of stairs. The room, where all forty-eight of us were crammed together on a bare and dirty floor to sleep, was cold and musty, with a tiny space heater in the corner and three pictures of the Ayatollah Khomeini (444 days, Reagan’s inauguration . . .) staring down from the lime-green walls. Still, it was a room, with four walls, a ceiling, and a floor. And, relieved of my burka for those eight hours, I was happy just to look at it without a screen covering my eyes.
I have no idea where we’ll sleep tonight, let alone when we’ll sleep tonight, but I bet, wherever it is and whenever we get there, it won’t be half as luxurious.
The camel, still not budging, starts to spit on the truck’s windshield, then on us. The driver, now annoyed, turns the ignition key, perhaps to scare him, perhaps to try to drive around him, but now the motor won’t turn over. He tries again. Then again. The motor is dead. The battery must be working, however, because I can still hear the manic cacophony of Islamic fundamentalist music coming from the cab section of the truck. I turn to Hashim. “What’s that music?” I ask him, trying to make conversation.
“Huh?”
“Music, music!” I shout. I’m gesturing like an idiot, pretending to air guitar. “La la la la, you know, music!”
“Oh, music. Yes. Famous American man. Now he Muslim, go on jihad. Cat Stevens. You know him?”
I start to laugh. “Yes, I know him,” I say.
How appropriate. Mr. Peace Train. On a stalled war truck.
I WASN’T ABLE to get a ticket to Peshawar on the same plane as Pascal, so I flew alone, arriving at the Pearl Continental Hotel a day after he did. The layover in Karachi lasted an excruciating fourteen hours, and I was exhausted, sweaty and jet-lagged by the time I hauled my bags through the revolving doors of the hotel. Pascal was nowhere to be found, so I grabbed a seat in the linoleum-floored, vinyl-upholstered lobby, a lobby like any other Third World hotel lobby, and waited. The plan we had hatched on the telephone back in Paris was fairly simple: since he had most of his journey paid for with assignments from various French and German magazines, and I, the ingenue just starting out, had zero in the way of assignments, I would take advantage of his free hotel room (and, it was understood, his warm body) before finding a group of mujahideen to take us inside. Then, after a brief honeymoon, after offering ourselves up to the almighty Eros, we’d saunter off together, hand in hand, into the heart of Afghanistan, to bear witness to the atrocities of war. Or something like that.
I must have dozed off in the lobby, because the next thing I knew Pascal was leaning over me, kissing my neck, handing me a steaming cup of tea, and purring his greeting, “Bienvenue à Peshawar. Bienvenue à la guerre”—“Welcome to Peshawar. Welcome to war.” After some niceties (how was your trip fine a little long you look tired no I’m fine are you sure yes really I’m sure it’s just a little jet lag I’m sure good glad to hear it yeah well), we got down to business. Sitting down next to me, notebook and pen in hand, he circled the name Abdul Haq on a piece of ruled paper and whispered, “We’re in luck. I’ve just secured a meeting with Haq’s people this afternoon. If all goes well, we should be able to go inside in a couple of days.” He looked around the lobby to make sure none of the other journalists, all sporting the exact same Banana Republic vests, all running around chasing their tails and whispering to one another, all wearing expressions that screamed I have a scoop! even though they probably didn’t, were listening to him. I was just happy I’d studied up enough to know who Abdul Haq was.
Abdul Haq was the chief commander of a group of mujahideen, called the Hezbi Islami-Khalis group—Khalis group, for short—who became infamous for dragging Dan Rather and his CBS crews around the Afghani countryside during the height of the war in the mid-eighties. Rather, dressed from head to toe in the latest rebel wear, seemed to really get off on the cowboy-at-war thing. Of course, that could also be said about every journalist in the Pearl Continental’s lobby, myself included. In any case, everyone covering the story knew that Haq was smart, media savvy and had the kind of soldiers who, if they could be trusted in the mountains to guard a million-dollar ass like Dan Rather’s, could probably be trusted to guard their own bargain-basement butts. Moreover, because of all that favorable CBS coverage, the U.S. had given the Khalis group many Stingers. Pascal, true to his boy nature, wanted to be with the kids with the best toys.
“Haq, huh,” I said. “Good work.” I said I needed a shower. Pascal, with a sly wink, said he’d like to clean me. Blushing, I picked up my heavy backpack off the floor, but before I could fling it over my right shoulder, Pascal tsk-tsked me and slipped it onto his own with little apparent effort. Then, with his free hand, he grabbed my camera bag, hoisted it onto the same shoulder as the backpack, and slowly wrapped his unencumbered arm around my waist, letting his fingers fall just inside the waistband of my jeans. Every hair on my neck stood at attention. “Après toi,” he said. After you.
The moment we walked into the hotel room our clothes were on the floor. Toward the end, toward the climax of his gyrations, he yelled out his girlfriend’s name. “Élodie!” he cried, which set him back a minute, but only a minute, before he collapsed in a heap on my chest. “Sor
ry,” he said, caressing my hair, reaching down to make amends.
“No problem,” I said, and I meant it. I didn’t mind playing second fiddle. In fact, I kind of preferred it. In Israel I’d had two lovers: one whose girlfriend once waited for him, sipping a coffee in the outdoor courtyard of the American Colony Hotel, while we had a quickie upstairs in my room; the other whose girlfriend was waiting for him in their shared apartment back home while we sat in his hotel bathtub rubbing fragrant oils over each other’s bodies. In Paris, I seduced one conquest in the stairwell of my apartment building and another on the dance floor at Les Bains Douche, both of whom afterwards returned home to live-in lovers. In college, I practically majored in the sport.
I did draw one arbitrary moral line: no married men, never. It seemed too messy, complicated and fraught—not to mention stupid—what with those binding contracts and all. But in my little universe of arbitrary morals, the quasi-attached men, especially the ones with the wandering eyes, were fair game. Why? Because the system seemed to work. I kept my mouth shut, the girlfriends never found out, the men got off on the illicitness and adventure of the stolen moment, and I got off on the no-strings guarantees afterwards, the fact that neither party had any pretensions that what we were engaging in was anything other than sex for sex’s sake. The minute a man dared to mention the L word, or even skirted around it by discussing some nebulous stable future together, I lost interest. I had no desire to be tied down; I’d known the pain and aching misery of actually falling in—then out—of love, and it was a place I did not want to visit again any time soon. Especially with a roving-eyed, strutting peacock like Pascal.
Pascal finished me off with dexterity and grace. Immediately afterwards he said, “I feel a little guilty.”
“Sure you do,” I said. You couldn’t give me five minutes to enjoy the aftershocks?
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