Yannis’s letter was not long: in it, he told me that his parents came to Canada shortly before he was born, when his sister was two years old. His mother, who was a very religious woman, chose a name for him related to Jesus. Not daring to call him Christos, she gave him the Baptizer’s name, Yannis. He grew up in Montreal, where his mother still lives when she is not back in Greece. After his father’s death from cancer, she started spending a lot of time in her native country. Yannis’s sister became a biology teacher and recently moved to the United States.
His family situation was clearly not very happy. What happened to the house when his mother was overseas? And where did he live when he was home on leave?
I spent a long time wondering if I should ask him this question. I was afraid he would take my feminine curiosity about domestic details badly. So I decided not to ask that question, and instead asked what he was doing in Afghanistan. This soon looked like an even worse idea.
His reply came right away.
Re: Question
What we do is fine drivers who park their cars badly. Sometimes we even stop Taliban who cross the street on a red light.
Y
As a soldier, Yannis was definitively heir to Achilles who, of all the warriors besieging the city of Troy, was the one most likely to lose his temper. Or maybe war sharpens the susceptibility in any combatant’s soul. The worst is when civilians doubt the services that an army carries out on behalf of their country. I did not know how to answer this letter: if I had hurt him, I did not care too much about it. A soldier, especially a Greek soldier, at my door was difficult for me to bear.
Half an hour later, I opened another message from Yannis, also in response to mine:
Re: Question
Irina,
I apologize for what I said. Despite the corpses that return home almost every day, in a way people imagine we’re here on a kind of holiday. They know soldiers die in Afghanistan, but not everyone steps on a mine, and generally the army is too well equipped – Internet, food, booze – for people to feel sorry for us. The question is: Do you really want to talk about what I am doing here? You will be sorry because what I am going to tell you is surely not what you want to hear. Your Afghanistan is a mirage, mine is a nightmare.
For example, someone said Kandahar , where I am posted, was once an earthly paradise. The vineyards and orchards of peach trees, fig trees and mulberry tree were famous all around the world. Images of Kandahar’s pomegranates embellished ancient Persian manuscripts. Before the war, Afghan trucks full of fruits traveled to Calcutta. Soviets destroyed the irrigation system and cut down the trees, as mujahedeen fighters hid amongst them. All that is left are the ruins of ancient orchards. Even today, these places are the most mined lands in the world. Local peasants who venture over there return blinded or with their legs blown off. And every new field cleared of mines is used for poppy culture. But as long as this kind of agriculture is so fruitful for the anemic local economy, even women are allowed to go and work in the fields.
I feel a little bit dizzy because of the high air pressure. The wind carries the dust everywhere, out of rocks, trellis walls, and muddy roads. The air is always dry and to filter it you need a nose as strong as a pump. We are getting used to breathing through this reddish flour, which floats in the air from dawn until sunset.
I have to stop. I’m leaving and hope to be back by evening.
Y
I waited a day for his letter, but it did not come. What did happen, though, was that I had a phone call from Henry. He had read the article about me when it was first published in Maclear’s, but it was not until the news was taken up again by the big newspapers that he became eager to see me again. Henry was in his third year of an undergraduate electrical engineering course at McGill University. His parents had returned to Hong Kong. After a period of fear and indecision, they decided that the Chinese Communist domination of Hong Kong was not that bad, as long as it permitted certain outlets. The older generation of refugees in Canada felt secure enough to go back and reopen their businesses as long as Chinese citizens from the mainland were kept at the border, needing a visa to enter Hong Kong.
Henry did not want to stay in Canada either. His parents’ experience had shown him that Chinese people did not succeed that well in this freezing country and also that Canadians’ business ventures in China ended in bankruptcy. There was a deep incompatibility between these two nations when it came to the language of money. Henry, advised or forced by his father, was going to return to a land where he would master a specific and ancestral code of trade. He was living in a tiny apartment on campus and had a part-time job with his father’s former partner, the Turk, who was now running the second-hand furniture store on Jean Talon.
It was strange to discover that in a country that changes its habits at an amazing speed, some people were still faithful to their trades. At present, the Turk was reigning over the dusty furniture empire. The only changes he had made, Henry told me, were the removal of the Buddhas, which he had replaced with Persian rugs and Ottoman hookahs.
The next day, Yannis came up with another letter about Afghanistan:
I wish I could tell you more about the real Afghanistan, but at present, as before, this country is just fiction. As you must know, to describe fiction takes more fiction. This may be the reason for our constant failure. We are trying to get together alongside two pieces of fiction that work in very different ways.
People used to call Afghanistan 200 years ago a buffer country between the British Empire, which was ruling India, and Tsarist Russia. And now? Which are the countries between which Afghanistan is the buffer? Iran and Pakistan on one side? The United States and China on the other? Who can say? What is obvious is that we cannot help them. They don’t want our help. Not in terms of our fiction. They want to be backed up on their own terms: that we make changes here and there, but nothing changes, that’s what they want. What kind of soldiers are we? And what are we doing here? Don’t hold your breath for answers from me because I don’t know. The saddest thing is that nobody knows. That we are still here is, probably, due to the shame of being so powerless.
This country could be thought of as being like Borat’s Kazakhstan. Any Western comedian can joke about this country, without censure, saying that rape is a national hobby. We can attribute the cruellest intentions to these people, the strangest sexual behavior, but we will never know the truth about them. War is designed in such a way that defeated people are never right. What is good for us is not good for them, that’s what a good soldier ends up understanding.
I suspect the name of this country fills your heart with wonder. For many of us, though, the thrill has gone. And this gloomy feeling turns us away from the rightness and beauty of their cause, if any. We no longer know anything about it because this country changes its multiple faces so fast. What seems today a wise apathy in the attitude of our real or imaginary adversaries could instantly turn tomorrow into the cruelest torture. Within this mixture of hate, threat and loneliness you just need clear-sightedness to perceive the beauty of these places, the purity that spontaneously comes out of the filth. Behind its usual dryness and dull colours, one autumn morning the desert thrills your heart with a fresh and amazing face.
Right now, I can see my friend Rasul riding his donkey, stuffed hemp knapsacks dangling on either side of the animal, and I know that we will always aim next to the target, not at it. I know what he is trafficking in these bags but I have no authority to interfere. In their eyes you can read the accusation that we have destroyed their homeland. They think that, because of us, the magnificent cities of yesteryear get uglier from one day to the next, and their streets are nothing more than dangerous back alleys.
My computer time is up, I have to give up my place.
Y
Henry has asked me to go out with him to have a coffee or see a movie.
&nbs
p; This kind of activity is for teenagers on a first date who don’t know how to fill the hours before going to bed and making love. It amused me, but I suddenly realized on the phone that behind my amusement I was feeling contempt for my former lover. Why had he waited so long before inviting me for coffee? Did my unexpected celebrity status change his perception of me?
Henry said no, but I knew it did. Everyone tries hard to hang out with celebrities, for we are taught from childhood that successful people have their faces in the newspaper. Money is worth nothing compared to a small article in an insignificant magazine.
Henry’s surfacing did not therefore stop my flow of questions on the war Yannis was waging in Afghanistan. I simply asked him if he agreed with it. His answer came very quickly, which made me think that he was hanging around the garrison waiting for a new mission.
Re: Soldier.
I no longer ask myself that. When you’re a soldier, this question doesn’t exist anymore. Being a soldier is an identity in itself, and the war is his identity, a transnational identity. At war, soldiers act in the same way, everywhere, at any time. The hardest thing is when he starts asking himself what you are asking me right now.
As for my own reasons for being here, the country always has stronger reasons than an individual. We get used to being right or wrong along with our country. And a soldier is always only on one side. That is the law. I am neither a criminal nor a hero, I am a soldier. A soldier is in turn a criminal and a hero, depending on many things. What matters is that since I face death every day, I understand how fast things can change in a man’s life, and I greatly appreciate that this life still exists. I accept any change as long as I am still here.
Our conflict is bigger than weapons, if you understand me. We have nothing to defend here if not the entire West, everything we have created and maintained for such a long time. This is nothing more than a matter of pride. We cannot go back before getting proof that we did something worthwhile here. And the longer we stay, the harder this is to bear, as change is not noticeable at all.
Don’t listen to what people say on TV, as everyone is embarrassed to have sent us to such an old country where spirits are still ruling over people. These places are legendary because of centuries of crime and guerrilla warfare. Even obscurity has a secret life here, and we feel eyes spying on us from every corner and even from the branches of trees.
I know people say we are waging a war against barbarians, but the barbarians they talk about are simply afraid to long for things they are taught to despise. While staring at us, their eyes reflect hate and nostalgia at the same time. They don’t forget that if nowadays the desert covers their country, this land once was Eden, filled with flourishing cities, golden bridges and towers, wooden-paved streets, and magnificent gardens. They are survivors of a legendary past that is as real as their ruined present.
As for their life, the majority of them are living in the Middle Ages, ruled by secret laws which teach them to distrust anything that comes from the outside world. They never trust things that don’t fit their rules. They particularly doubt what comes through us, as they know it would never be possible for them to match our teachings with their way of life. The dust, the desert, the closeness to their animals make their existence look crude, but on the other hand their ability to survive is unequalled. I am jealous of their will to survive and I think that, well equipped and armed to the teeth as we are, we have nothing to envy. We don’t inquire any more about the rightness or the morality of their acts. Once you get here, you learn how worthless all this moral crap is. The problem with war is that people forget the troops and the ideals that inspire each camp.
Everything that has a concrete meaning for us turns into a symbolic message for them. And due to this sibylline thinking they see through us as you might see through a plastic bag. No words can ever reveal their secrets to us. We trust numbers and maps; they only trust their instinct. Their intuition is their own and it’s their best weapon. Their human skin is just a thin layer that hardly hides their terrible ancient being, ready at any moment to come out. Sometimes, I think even deaf and blind people feel our presence. We are woven out of doubt; they are woven out of passion. They teach us that what makes the body suffer turns all the soul’s troubles into insignificant nonsense.
The longer I stay here, the deeper the desert kills any nostalgia. We start distrusting our past and we avoid more and more taking refuge in the good times in our memories. The contact with them should cure us of nostalgia and uproot our soul’s neurosis. We should learn how to start a new life, without useless desires.
Y
Do you think, like me, that horrors need few words to be spoken? Pain is impossible to bear even when you describe it. Compare the number of words we use describing nonsense.
This letter convinced me to refuse Henry. I no longer wanted to meet him again. I did not want to see anybody, as the Canadian soldier had caught me. I despised myself for the ease with which I let myself be trapped. I wanted to be his prey. Suddenly, I realized that Yannis was in danger from morning till night, and that every single one of his steps was unsafe. Damn the Phanariot regime in Romania. We are only responsible for our own deeds.
Yannis was fighting a war that his ancestors started under the rule of Alexander the Great. The Macedonian’s brave soldiers were charmed by the promises made by the young King. They left Greece to stop the Persian threat and to kill Darius. After the Persian army was defeated and Darius stabbed by one of his own generals, Alexander changed the aim of his campaign: from that point, he was leading a war to punish the traitor and avenge Darius.
Once the Persian general had been killed, Alexander once again changed his target. From that point on, he wanted nothing more than to travel, to reach the Indus shore and then return to Greece from the other end of the world, for his teacher Aristotle had taught him that the Earth is round, not flat. His soldiers therefore became explorers. They reached Caucasus, the land of the terrible turbaned dwellers. Due to the cold weather, the dust and the continuous harassment of the guerilla warriors, however, they started doubting what they were doing in that Afghan valley. After years and years of war in the desert lands where Yannis was now fighting, the Greek army said no to Alexander’s desire to move forward. Soldiers usually obey orders until the day they have had enough and take the outcome of the battle into their own hands.
Were there any souvenirs in Yannis’s secret memory of this ancient participation in the first big conquest? If there were, then he might appreciate Alexander’s reasons for invading other people’s lands, which were much more decent than the new ones, which consisted of just a few oil wells and a gas pipeline.
What prompted him to enter the army? The pay? Money certainly plays an important role in men’s decision to fight, as war has always been the most profitable career of all. I think, though, that for many, at least for Yannis, money was not the strongest argument. Men remain the biggest travelers in this world, spurred on by the taste for adventure. What are the dreams that haunt their souls?
I asked Yannis what he feared most.
Re: Fear
I fear their faith, as its first law is terror. For them, only blood exorcises evil, and that really scares me. I fear this religion that is no longer founded on rituals but on terror.
Y
My message left instantly, as for the first time I realized I shared the same religion with Yannis, which we never question. The West is so preoccupied by the conflict with Muslim people that we have lost sight of what we represent.
His message came back right away, as if Yannis had guessed my doubts. I was so happy that he also understood that we kept on talking about everything else in the world just to avoid talking about ourselves. Our meeting through intermediaries was so embarrassing. The public voice that had thrown us into each other’s arms imposed a certain chastity on us. We became what others expected of us, somet
hing other than ourselves.
Re: What about us?
Irina, you ask me weird questions, which prompt me to respond with what I suppose must be annoying answers. Would it be possible, one day, to speak about ourselves?
To answer you: when I was a small boy, my mother often took me to church. She was not a fanatical believer, just a practicing Christian as a result of tradition; many Orthodox people are for the same reasons. What astonished me at that time, as we had some mandatory religion classes in school, was the uniqueness of our God in our Orthodox religion. We did not share our love for God either with his son, poor Jesus, or with the Apostles who nevertheless did the toughest job among the unbelievers. We don’t know how to be grateful to those who do the hard work and who died in unenviable ways.
Our religion gives priority to a profound divinity, far from our soul, which is severe, selfish, vengeful, and jealous. There are too many prohibitions and too little freedom. I understand now how Communism could arise in an Orthodox country, in Rasputin’s mystical Russia. People were already used to a powerful and authoritarian divinity. The more restrictive and tyrannical he was with his own people, the more they loved him. Above anything else, our religion believes in repentance, in endless abstinence and in self-criticism. We are used to believing that happiness lies in asceticism, in complexes, in the fear of wishing. Everything can get in the way of our salvation: too much food, too many words, the wind, sights, clothes, books, trips, friends. Everything that could make our life nicer is a threat to our eternal being. The example of Jesus Christ who was punished without being guilty smashed any hope when I was a child. If he died in this unjust manner, then we have no chance of resurrection either. But what about people from other religions: Catholics, Jews, Muslims? Are they happier with their God than we are? Why does anyone ask people to make so many sacrifices? Why is it all about surrender?
The Darling of Kandahar Page 8