The Watch

by Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya

  I get up from my cot and drink some water. It’s unpleasantly warm, and I feel no better after I’ve finished drinking. My skin burns, my face itches: I’m covered with bites from sand fleas. It’s stifling inside this hut. A cry from some night bird drifts off slowly into the silence. Dave’s imaginary presence moves around in the darkness, and I catch a fleeting glimpse of his face—or perhaps it’s Brian’s? All night I will hear their voices in my head.

  NIGHT.

  So I’ve been going over the battle over and over in my mind. Could I have done things differently?—maybe moved the platoon through the mountains faster so we could’ve reached Hendricks and his men earlier on? And even after we reached them, it was touch and go; the enemy seemed everywhere, but maybe I could have deployed the platoon differently? In the end, it was like we were fighting blind. We couldn’t save Dave and Brian.

  EARLY MORNING.

  No sleep last night. No one slept. We kept expecting an attack on the base, which, fortunately, didn’t happen.

  MORNING.

  I feel devastated. I can’t seem to focus on anything.

  I wish there was somewhere I could go and simply scream my lungs out.

  Gotta hold it all in, boy, you’re a platoon leader.

  Yo

  u

  ’re

  a

  Fir

  st Lieutenant. Christ, I was pressing down so hard with the pen, I tore right through the paper. That’s a first. All right, Nick, get a grip on yourself.

  NOON.

  Lunch today was fried chicken, and it smelled better than I could ever recall. I felt guilty eating, but I was famished. I sat at the table staring at my plate and wondering what was the point of it all. Across from me, the place where Hendricks used to sit was, of course, empty. I felt sick with grief and hungry all at once.

  In the end, I ate with a gigantic appetite.

  But then, on the way back to my hooch, I threw it all up.

  EVENING.

  I’ve retreated to my hooch with my iPod. I know exactly what I want to listen to. Mozart’s “Requiem” comes on:

  Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine:

  Et lux perpetua luceat eis. Te decet

  Hymnus, Deus, in Sion, et tibi reddetur

  Votum in Jerusalem: exaudi orationem

  Meam, ad te omnis caro veniet. Requiem

  Aeternam dona eis, Domine et

  Lux perpetua luceat eis.

  Kyrie eleison.

  Christe eleison.

  Kyrie eleison.

  When the CD ends, I press “play” again.

  Eternal rest grant to them, O Lord; and

  Let perpetual light shine upon them. A

  Hymn becometh Thee, O God, in Sion:

  And a vow shall be paid to Thee in Jerusalem.

  O hear my prayer: all flesh shall come to Thee.

  Eternal rest grant to them, O Lord; and perpetual

  Light shine upon them.

  Lord have mercy on us.

  Christ have mercy on us.

  Lord have mercy on us.

  When the CD ends, I press “play” again …

  Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi:

  Dona eis requiem.

  Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi:

  Dona eis requiem sempiternam.

  And again …

  Lamb of God, who takest away the sins

  Of the world, grant them rest.

  Lamb of God, who takest away the sins

  Of the world, grant them eternal rest.

  And again, when the CD ends, I press “play” …

  I press “play” again. And again. And again. And again. And again …

  NIGHT.

  Oh God, oh God, I know we’re all going to go one day, but if it’s my fate to die in this strange and hostile land, dear God please make it quick.

  NIGHT.

  I swore off writing, but here I am again, and why not, it’s a necessary refuge. I write to try to make sense of things before I go completely off the rails. I cannot let myself succumb to the illusion that there is no larger meaning to this war, no essential truths, nothing transcendental that’s bigger than the day-to-day. And yet, there’s no peace after hard-earned victory, no rest, and no locus of reality—only blank spaces in place of friends; poisoned air; and vast, dark silences.

  DAY.

  Daybreak begins with little flakes of light. It’s already hot, and the sun has barely breached the mountains. The desert takes on its familiar colors: four shades of gray, five of brown, nine each of buff and beige. I squint up at the jagged peaks, their slopes still shadowy with night. Very soon we’re going to have to take the fight into those mountains. Either that, or we remain cooped up in here, day after day, stuck on a cramped little desert island. We have to break out and set up those outposts. It’s only a matter of time. Of waiting for the right moment.

  War is the only real connection we have with the people of this country.

  They know it; we know it. We understand each other. We have an agreement.

  We each have our code of retaliation; they call theirs badal; we call ours payback.

  It’s the age-old spiral of attack and revenge.

  The only difference between us—and it is significant—is that we’re visitors to this place. We don’t belong here; we’re not trapped by its ragged history, its chronicle of failures, its uncertain future. That makes it all the more critical for us to do what we need to do, do it quickly, and get out. Get out before we become part of the cycle of failure and violence. Get out before we become just another failed tribe.

  DAY.

  The men stand silently in full battle dress in the late afternoon sun, their red-rimmed eyes focused on the two pairs of boots and the rifles stuck muzzle-first into the ground. The chaplain from Battalion drones on and on but merely succeeds in adding to the air of unreality. Soon we’re drenched with sweat, and our uniforms are encrusted with white salt stains. Connolly stands some distance away from me, his eyes shadowed beneath a booney hat. My own throat is parched, my mouth dry and sticky. When it’s my turn to speak, I recall Lieutenant Hendricks and Sergeant Castro from our time together in Khost province, and keep it short. I would have liked to have said more, but I simply don’t have it in me.

  Connolly speaks at the end, and his voice is strained. He begins by saying that he sees no point in giving the men a canned explanation that will sound lame even to him. He tells them that if it were up to us, we’d straighten out this place in no time at all. The U.S. Army knows how to do its job and do it right. But that isn’t the way things have been set up here, and we have an obligation to the Afghan people—the ordinary men and women and children—not to abandon them in their time of need. That is the litmus test, he says, and, even as we grieve for our fallen, we will do well to remember it. It’s hardly an adequate summing up for our losses, but it’s all that we have to make them bearable. We are a people of honor, sent here to set an example to those looking up to us.

  He ends by saying that we’ve been entrusted with a task and a responsibility, and we’ll do what it takes to accomplish it.

  As I walk away, I wonder how many of the men from Second Platoon blame us for the deaths of their leaders. It’s the cross that every infantry commander has to learn to live with, because it’s the one thing in war that doesn’t get any easier with experience. I feel sick to the pit of my stomach, and, on my way back to my hut, I overhear Pfc. Lawson speaking to someone, and what he says gives words to my sentiments: It’s like I got this wound deep inside me, and it’s always hurtin’. Always, always …

  I decide to stop by Connolly’s hut. He’s listening on his shortwave radio to the news of the latest efforts by the regime that we are propping up to reconcile with an enemy bent on our extermination. He turns to me and says: It makes me want to puke. Will someone please tell the suits running the show in D.C. that the Taliban and Al Qaeda are not interested in a bite of the pie; they want the whole damn thing? They’re co
mmitted to an all-or-nothing strategy, and we’re the thin red line standing between them and their clearly stated target: Western civilization.

  At a certain point in the report, he begins yelling at the radio: For Christ’s sake, we’re talking about folks who consider beheading their opponents just punishment, not followers of the goddamn Geneva Conventions!

  He switches off the radio in disgust while I walk over to the arsenal captured from the insurgents. It’s a motley collection of RPG7s, Kalashnikov variants, Chinese machine guns, RR82 mms, American-made M-16s, bolt-action Lee-Enfield and Mosin-Nagant rifles, and even one snub-nosed antiaircraft gun. The pile of weaponry takes up an entire corner of the hut. One of the M-16s has a series of Arabic letters and numerals etched on its plastic handguard. I translate it haltingly. It reads: “Gift to the inspired warriors of the Amir ul Momineen, 1996.”

  In other words, already in the early years of Taliban rule, their leader, the functionally illiterate one-eyed Mullah Omar, was claiming the mantle of Umar, the seventh-century caliph of the nascent Muslim community and its second leader after the death of the Prophet Mohammed. So much for the modesty of aspirations of the erstwhile preacher of Sanghisar, a small village an hour’s drive north of Kandahar.

  NIGHT.

  I’m rereading the de Vigny, which I like very much, and I come across this passage, which I must have glossed over the first time around: “War seemed to us so very natural a state for our country, that when, freed from the classroom, we poured ourselves into the army along the familiar course of the torrent of days, we found ourselves unable to believe in a lasting calm of peace.”

  When I go over the passage again, it’s as if I can hear Emily reading it to me, and I experience a distinctly uncomfortable sensation, almost like guilt.

  NIGHT.

  We crouch next to the road, then sprint across it in single file. There’s a thick fog, but I know this place well. We run past the darkened houses, taking cover in the shadow of the trees. By the time I reach the backyard, the platoon’s all there. I signal to Tanner, and he leads the charge to the porch door and slams it down with his shoulder. Moments later, the boys are dragging out a bedraggled Emily with my little Jack in tow. I grab my son from her. Tanner spreadeagles her on the ground and ties her wrists behind her back. She whimpers with shock. I plant my revolver on the back of her head. As I pull the trigger, I hear myself yelling: You took a vow. You made a promise!

  I wake up choking. My hands are clenched. I feel enervated, displaced.

  The hooch is cool from the night. Outside, the sky is black, and all it is, is darkness.

  Husband. Promise and commitment. And me—burning inside.

  Displaced.

  DAY.

  This afternoon, Spc. Simonis, one of our snipers, asks me if he can examine the cache of captured weapons. He selects one of the heavy, long-barreled Lee-Enfields. Manufactured by the British Crown, it has a stamp from the government rifle factory in Ishapore, India; its date is 1916. In other words, we were attacked with a ninety-four-year-old weapon captured from earlier invaders.

  I watch Simonis disassemble the rifle. It’s beautifully maintained and oiled, the simplicity of its design ensuring both reliability and ease of use by the conscript soldiers of the Taliban. Simonis also points out how the firing mechanism increases accuracy since the shooter has to work the bolt to unload a used bullet and cycle the next bullet in the internal magazine into place, which allows him to hone in on the target. Coupled with this accuracy is power: each bullet is designed to kill in a single shot at ranges of 500 to 700 meters or more. In comparison, our units seldom engage outside of 350 meters. It just makes me glad the enemy doesn’t have the M1, M2, or 03A3, the Springfields used by U.S. snipers in Korea.

  NIGHT.

  I am haunted by the image of one of the Taliban fighters. He was tall and young, and there was an air of the invincible about him. He seemed totally unconcerned about his safety as he strolled—and I use that word deliberately—through the rain of bullets, firing his Kalashnikov at our positions. I recall being baffled, and then awed, by his insouciance. If this was the caliber of the men we were fighting, driven as they were by a hankering for heaven, then all of our vaunted training amounted to nothing. Even I, with my intellect and education, had nothing that matched up to that kind of belief.

  Later, when the smoke from the JDAM had cleared, I saw him trying to crawl up a rocky slope with his right arm and leg sheered away by the blast. My men whooped, but I found myself unable to share in their jubilation. Eventually someone shot him through the head and put him out of his misery. It was like killing a young lion in a slaughterhouse, an act without grace or dignity. This is not why I’d signed up to fight this war. The way he died made me feel angry and ashamed.

  DAY.

  Shame.

  The ancient Greeks lived and died by a code of honor—lived in the sense that the forces sustaining their existence, their most fundamental self-image—depended on being perceived and judged as meeting that code. And shame was honor’s polar opposite, so that when a Homeric warrior like Ajax enacted a shameful act, the result was an abrupt and complete collapse of personality.

  This reminds me of the Pashtuns. Their codes are alien to me—I loathe their bloodlust and misogyny—but I think I understand, and sympathize with, the clarity of their honor–shame dichotomy.

  During our stint in Khost province, I asked a captured Taliban, who couldn’t have been more than sixteen, why he had fought with such blatant disregard for self-preservation. I asked him if he wasn’t afraid of dying, and I can still remember his reply word for word: Why should I be afraid? One day time will consume you as surely as it will me. It’s a question of how long one is willing to wait. Meanwhile, to permit you to terrorize our land is a matter of shame, a dishonor greater than death.

  Homer couldn’t have put it better.

  NIGHT.

  A bizarre thing happened to me today. While cleaning one of the old Victorian-era bolt-action rifles captured from the Taliban, I stuck my ring finger accidentally into a knothole in its wooden stock. The more I tried to free my finger, the more it got wedged there. It was a blazing hot day: I must have spaced out for a moment. I felt myself becoming one with the stock, the gun, the ground, the field outside, the mountains. A branch whipped across my face. Sand spilled out of my knees; the sun scorched my gray stone head. All around me were shards of broken glass.

  I freaked out and wrenched my finger free. The nail almost came off. But the joy of returning to reality was enough to overcome the pain. I almost sobbed with relief. I had to go to Doc to borrow a pair of tweezers to take out the splinters. He said my finger looked like a toothbrush. It took me an hour to extricate all the tiny, jagged slivers. The gun smelled of cordite, as did my finger.

  DAY.

  In response to the news report that’s obviously been nagging him ever since he listened to it a week ago, Connolly’s printed out a useful list of some of the things forbidden by the Taliban when they were in power. He has copies of the list distributed to every member of the company, along with a handwritten note that reads: I want this to serve as a reminder, if one is needed, of the kind of people we’re up against.

  1. No woman allowed outside the home unless accompanied by a mahram (close male relative such as a father, brother, or husband).

  2. Women not allowed to buy from male shopkeepers.

  3. Women must be covered by the burqa at all times.

  4. Any woman showing her ankles must be whipped.

  5. Women must not talk or shake hands with men. No stranger should hear a woman’s voice.

  6. Ban on laughing in public.

  7. Ban on women wearing shoes with heels, as no stranger should hear a woman’s footsteps.

  8. Ban on cosmetics. Any woman with painted nails should have her fingers chopped off.

  9. No woman allowed to play sports or enter a sports club.

  10. Ban on women’s clothes in “sexually attrac
ting colors.”

  11. Ban on women washing clothes in rivers or any public places.

  12. Ban on women appearing on the balconies of their houses. All windows to be painted over so that women cannot be seen from the outside.

  13. Any street or place bearing a woman’s name or any female reference to be changed.

  14. No one allowed to listen to music. No television or videos allowed.

  15. No playing of cards or chess; no flying of kites.

  16. No keeping of birds—any bird-keepers to be imprisoned and the birds killed.

  17. Ban on all pictures in books and houses.

  18. Anyone carrying un-Islamic books to be executed.

  19. All people to have Islamic names.

  20. All men, including boys, to wear Islamic clothes and cover their heads with caps or turbans. Shirts with collars banned.

  21. Men must not shave or trim their beards, which should grow long enough to protrude from a fist clasped at the point of the chin.

  22. Any non-Muslim must wear a yellow cloth stitched onto their clothes to differentiate them from believers.

  I consider sending a copy to Emily to remind her why her ex-husband is fighting in Afghanistan, but then I decide against it as so much wasted effort. She’s gone, and I have to come to terms with it.

  DAY.