Crossing the Wire

by AnnaMaria Cardinalli

  This I promised to do, and to this day I wear a silver ring from Afghanistan on my thumb, just to remind me of the real wisdom of the gypsies—the loving way in which they relate to one another—and the hope I will always bear for the fate of their whole country.

  Afghanistan + One

  I am writing from a Dublin pub, a Guiness on one side, and something deep-fried and delicious on the other. I am wearing the clean clothes I just bought. They give no indication of where I might have come from.

  I hope, in fact, my cute new Irish cap makes me fit in. Most likely, I look like the silly tourist that I am. The tourist I’m thrilled to be.

  The fact that I find myself here, of all places, is as surreal as it sounds, but I am simply on a stopover, waiting for the “Freedom Bird” to continue its journey. Everyone dreams about the Freedom Bird. The way home.

  Months away from a deployment ending, talk at lunch tables will turn to the Freedom Bird. The flight is the diametrical opposite of the trip with the cargo in the C-130 that brings us in.

  “It’s just like first class!” everyone says excitedly. “There are big seats, and flight attendants to serve you drinks. Maybe you might get wine with your meal—and even though it’s airplane food, it’s got to be ten times better than the chow hall—and you get fancy hot towels that smell like lemon to wash your hands!”

  Each of these simple things sounded like unimaginable luxuries worth longing for. I remember my Freedom Bird out of Iraq, and because it was chartered by the FBI, it felt like international first class all the way. I couldn’t help yearn with everyone else for the joy of the indulgence.

  Once I boarded, though, I had an experience even sweeter. The seats were small and tight, and the rows were seven across. I was in the center seat, preparing myself for what promised to be a very long flight after all.

  “Wow! Hi, Ma’am,” said the two young infantrymen, just perhaps out of their teens, on either side of me. “What are you doing here?”

  It had likely been a long time since either of them had sat next to a female. They told me about going home. They told me about Tennessee and Wisconsin. They told me about parents and little sisters and sweethearts who waited for them.

  Their excited smiles stayed on their faces as they fell asleep. Their heads came to rest on my shoulders. The flight attendant finally came by and waved for me to choose a meal, to take one of the nice little hot washcloths.

  I winked and gently shook my head. I was the perfect pillow. I wasn’t moving.

  Sitting here in Dublin, I think now with all affection about each soldier on my shoulder whose name I didn’t know. I think with all affection about the people I knew who worked so hard for peace: the kind Afghan schoolteacher, the gypsies who danced and loved in spite of it all, the Pashtun family who shared their grain with others, and the gentle children who waved and smiled. All of them fought, and they won their small victories every day by what they did. I am going home now, but may God grant that they not be abandoned in that fight.

  __________________________________________

  [45] There were hardly any conceivable legitimate reasons for driving so close—within an arm’s reach—to a military vehicle. Locals not involved with the Taliban, as well as anyone with common sense, knew not to approach military vehicles too closely, but instead to wait for them to stop or signal them to stop before attempting to talk with any of the occupants. American and allied forces even invested in massive public awareness campaigns to drive home this safety message.

  Chapter 21

  Afghanistan, Againistan

  Afghanistan + Three

  I realize that my diary begins in a new way now, but it certainly doesn’t end. As much as I might want to put it from my mind, there is no way that an experience like the one I just had ever finishes. I saw that, more vividly than I could have realized, today.

  I wore a rose in my hair today for the first time in a year. I walked out in red and black lace and, to the applause of an audience, played my flamenco. I was in the U.S. I was myself. And yet somehow I was neither.

  I can’t really imagine who thought this was a good idea in terms of scheduling, but it reminded me of the Carmen I sang immediately after returning from Iraq. I am jet-lagged. I need sleep. But perhaps what I need most is my music.

  Still, I had the strangest experience of being in two places at one time. I was playing. I was in my safest, happiest place. And I was terrified. I saw the crowd and I saw the high places and close walls and I wondered how anyone was safe.

  I knew the fears I had weren’t relevant here, but I also couldn’t imagine why they weren’t. Did anyone realize what an easy possibility violence would be? America and Afghanistan seemed inseparably crossed in my mind.

  It is true that I was frightened, and yet my thought wasn’t illogical. In fact, I am just coming to realize that my strange bit of involvement in this long war may only point to the fact that all of us, as Americans, are caught up in a battle for our own survival, which is inexorably linked to the people and culture of southern Afghanistan (among myriad other places).

  I understand so clearly now that the prosperity and safety of those places means our own. In the same way, a festering wound of abuse and violence left unaddressed, like the one of which I became profoundly aware, can not but impact our security—as we already have so vividly been shown. Whether we are willing or conscious participants in this battle or not, the fact remains that it is, most definitely and unpleasantly, upon us.

  I played. At intermission I shook with tears. I fixed my makeup, and I played again.

  I couldn’t imagine that I might be compelled to write in this diary, a diary that was solely a chronicle of war, tonight, in my own bed. It feels “right,” though, to express and examine my thoughts. It’s occurring to me that perhaps the reality of war never really, truly ever ends.

  I will write less, perhaps. I imagine my need to do so will fade. But sometimes, just sometimes, the bit of the war that was mine—the work I did with and about the people—will still require my reflection, I am sure.

  That’s what goes here now. Not my daily life, not my daily thoughts. Just those, in the pages I have left, that bind me still to Afghanistan.

  Difficult to forget.

  Afghanistan + Seven

  My dog—my big, beautiful, fluffy Angelo—who I adored and missed so terribly while I was gone, passed away today. Even while I was so far away, he was my guard dog. He kept me and my Marines safe because he showed me how to treat his doggie cousins across the world.

  No dog, there or anywhere, is half the dog he was, though. A gentle shepherd and a proud and true defender. I’ll never get over him.

  Afghanistan + 28

  I once traded my leopard print for a grey suit, and a grey suit for camouflage. It feels so good to trade my camouflage for leopard again. Fashion aside, I am returning to normal work in the few arenas in which I do well. So, in addition to resuming a recital tour schedule, I obtained my PI license.

  PI work can usually keep me close to New Mexico, where I prefer to be, and I found recently that I possess the somewhat unique qualifications to obtain a full PI business license in the state. My Mom, possessing similar inclinations, soon joined the firm, as did a range of other unusually talented individuals.

  The license requires a firearms qualification, and today I visited the range. With the reassuring kindness of one of the most amazing firearms instructors I know, I shot a perfect score on a tactical qual. I took a deep, calming breath and re-holstered my prized new Glock.

  The comfort of the pistol at my side, the absence of which had caused me such terror, finally allowed me a realization. I was home. I was safe. I was whole.

  Afghanistan + 62

  The State Department called today. That’s almost a funny sentence to write. The business phone rang early, my Mom answered, and called out in her inimitable way, “Oh Chica, this very pleasant lady from the State Department would like to talk to you!”

/>   The woman who called thanked me for my report. She asked if I would give permission for it to be included in the department’s training curriculum for employees assigned to Afghanistan. I told her that the report was unclassified and not my property, but that of the U.S. government. Therefore, there was no reason she couldn’t use it, and I was personally happy that it might be of some help to her program.

  She asked if they might seek my advice or further research in the future, and I said I’d be happy to contribute how I could. Then I went back to my coffee, still wearing my fuzzy morning slippers. That was weird.

  Afghanistan + 68

  This morning, my Mom, the phone in one hand, greeted me with “Oh, Chica. This gentleman from the Department of the Air Force would like to talk to you.” The questions from him were almost the same.

  I was certain, though, when I came into the office this afternoon, that my Mom was teasing me when she handed me two messages—one from the Australian Army and one from the Swedish government. I tend to laugh like a horse when I think something is really funny. I did so.

  She looked at me with concern, offered me some tea, and then suggested I return the calls.

  Afghanistan + 90

  Okay, clearly it’s not just me who’s still thinking about the abuse problem in Afghanistan. Besides the phone calls, I still find reactions to my work from military members in my inbox, and I’m not deployed anymore. Whenever I did extensive reports for HTT, I tended to include my email address in case a reader had further questions. I almost never got one.

  Now, however, it appears that the report on Pashtun sexuality has been uploaded on a variety of government systems and is being widely distributed—further than HTT work typically reaches. The interesting thing is the fact that besides reaching whatever bigwigs have called, the report is also reaching individual troops on the ground.

  It’s their reactions that matter to me most. Most just write to ask me if they can have a copy of the report for themselves. Many write with simple relief that there is some recognition of the phenomenon they felt they had been witnessing. Usually, these service members ask me not to share their stories, because they feel that speaking openly of this phenomenon is taboo and against our efforts to show respect toward Afghan culture.

  I do not believe the open revelation of this phenomenon is disrespectful to the noble Pashtun culture but to a practice that is a criminal plague in any culture or context. I also do not believe that sweeping uncomfortable information under a rug is conducive to our efforts to effectively engage with the situation at hand. Therefore, I appreciate the seriousness with which the government and military community has begun to examine and incorporate this information.

  One soldier, however, informed me with particular vehemence that I had not described the problem in terms of nearly the prevalence and cruelty with which he’s seen it to exist. I thought of my work as rather extreme and explicit, so I can’t imagine what he means. I’m not sure I want to know.

  Still, I wrote to ask him to explain. He went silent. Now, I really do wonder what he witnessed.

  Afghanistan + 163

  “Snowmageddon,” President Obama has called it. They say this is the largest snowfall DC has seen in well over 100 years. I write only because I am trapped in a motel room, and there truly isn’t much else I can possibly do.

  After I started getting questions about my research, my PI firm eventually expanded into a government consulting/contracting agency. That’s how I ended up here. Now the TV is out, the phones are out, and the snow reaches past all but the very top of my first-floor window. I couldn’t possibly open the door if I had to.

  I have no food, and I can’t get delivery. This is a terrifying thought to an Italian. What if I survived Iraq and Afghanistan just to have my last diary entry written in the motel room where I perished from starvation?

  I’m sorry. I tend to get dramatic when I’m hungry. I also tend to joke when I’m troubled by something serious.

  Here, I have nothing but time to think, and my mind returns endlessly to the abuse issue. At first, the subject of the sexual exploitation of children in southern Afghanistan may seem a somewhat obscure topic—tragic, but of significantly less importance to our security concerns than, say, the opium and arms trades that financially support the violence of extremist terror groups like al Qa’ida. At this point, though, crazy as it may sound, I’m beginning to think that this issue might be of equal if not greater weight.

  There’s an aspect of the problem that my paper didn’t address in any depth for its intended tactical and operational readership on the ground. However, now that the paper is unexpectedly being absorbed by numerous agencies on perhaps a strategic level, I think there are some additional global implications that need to be taken into account.

  Foremost among these is the large-scale commercial aspect of the sex trade—particularly trafficking in women and children—that is prevalent throughout Southeast Asia and the lands surrounding, as well as in far too many countries closer to home. The pressures of Afghanistan’s crumbled economy, coupled with some apparent acceptance of the use of children as sexual objects and women as expendable laborers, compel some families to do what seems unimaginable to us: sell off some of their unwanted or burdensome children to new “owners” or to traffickers. The 2010 Trafficking in Persons Report from the U.S. State Department manages to put this in sickeningly mild diplomatic language, stating that Afghan families “sometimes make cost-benefit analyses” regarding their “tradable family members.”

  Human trafficking and sexual exploitation presents a lucrative illicit trade comparable to that in arms or drugs, and just like these more well-known crimes, its proceeds very often ultimately fund terrorism. Unlike arms or drugs, a single prostitute can be sold to generate income over and over, and human trafficking offers simpler logistics to criminals, who can couch their operations in more easily explained guises. Well-established networks exist worldwide, typically originating in particularly disaster- or war-ridden areas where government control is weak, to funnel modern slaves into waiting and hungry markets. The U.S. is one of these markets, as is much of Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and Latin America.

  Most sources consider human trafficking to be the third largest and fastest-growing source of criminal income worldwide, generating an estimated $9. 5 billion per year. The 2011 State Department Trafficking in Persons Report states, “According to UNICEF, as many as two million children are subjected to prostitution in the global commercial sex trade.” As this phenomenon is so easily hidden, it is reasonable to consider these estimates are conservative.

  There is no way to think of the abuse issue in Afghanistan as small, or as irrelevant to our efforts against terrorism, or as lacking impact on a global scale. Sh*t. It’s a much larger problem than I originally imagined.

  Afghanistan + 215

  Once again, the Pashtun Sexuality discussion is inescapable. It was revisited today when two friends from work (with too much time to browse the internet) pointed out that my investigation has found some unexpected resonance with the American media. My report has been referenced, but without mention of its authorship or origin, in both a PBS Documentary and a story for Fox News. Public awareness of the issue is certainly a good thing, and I am grateful to have my name left out!

  The investigation by the PBS series Frontline titled “The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan” was conducted by the very brave and highly respected Afghan reporter Najibullah Quraishi. At the beginning of the show, it is explained that Quraishi was motivated to “investigate reports that Afghan boys are vulnerable to being sexually abused by powerful men who have brought back an ancient practice.” My reaction to this television program is slightly mixed.

  On one hand, it sheds desperately needed light on the phenomenon of child prostitution in Afghanistan, and it has begun to bring mainstream American awareness to the issue. The exotic and unforgettable images of the boys, who were bought from their families specifically to work
as entertainers and prostitutes, have enormous shock value. This ensures that Americans are likely to remember the story, which is critically necessary. On the other hand, the impact of this report is almost to make it seem that the only danger of exploitation that an Afghan child might face is to become a “Dancing Boy” of the bacha bazi tradition. In fact, while worthy of our awareness and action, this is a relatively rare phenomenon.

  Far more common, and unaddressed, is the fate of the child who is simply abused in his home village, in the service the police, the military, or local warlords, or in the hands of the human traffickers to whom he is sold. This fate is far more mundane compared to the colorful yet horrific world of the Dancing Boys. Because of this, I fear it may fail to receive the full attention of the media, which may negatively impact the assistance that these children so desperately deserve.

  If I had mixed feelings regarding the Frontline documentary, which was at least extremely thoughtfully produced and primarily concerned with the safety of Afghan children, I was somewhat shocked by the Fox News story, dated January 28, 2010. It focused on the sexual issues of Afghan men to almost the exclusion of any concern for abused children or the implications of the behavior reported for the treatment of women. While using my own words, it somehow framed the issue of concern as a “sexual identity crisis” among Afghan men.

  Is this, I wonder—this tiny bit of salacious intrigue regarding foreign sexual “confusion”—all that can be understood of my work? Have I done anything at all to improve the tragic situation I witnessed? At the moment, it seems not.

  Chapter 22