End of Manners

by Francesca Marciano

  We nodded again, obediently.

  “But here’s the point: Do you know which countries have the license to legally produce opium?”

  “No,” we said in unison.

  “France, Spain, India, the U.K. and Turkey, to name a few.”

  Imo was stunned. Her pen halted in midair, her eyes widened.

  “But that’s absurd! I mean, sorry, but why don’t they give the license to Afghanistan? Wouldn’t that make sense? That way they’d have found a solution to the whole—”

  Paul chuckled, as happy as a magician in front of children who pester him to find out where the bunny went.

  “Why don’t they? That’s entirely another issue. But actually, it’s the real heart of the problem.”

  He lit another cigarette, ready to start another round of question and answer.

  Imo was excited. She slipped her shoes off and tucked her feet under her on the chair.

  “No, I’m sorry, Paul, but I’d really like you to explain this to me. Would you like another beer? Maria, more tea? I’m having another gin and tonic.”

  Paul put up his hand to stop her. He wasn’t the kind of guy who lets a woman buy him a drink. He called the waiter and ordered another round.

  “I mean, this story about opium and licenses is incredible. This is actually something I’d like to research. What do you say, Maria?” She turned to Paul. “Please, Paul, explain why they give the license to France, of all places. How insane is that?”

  I chose this moment to stand up.

  “I’m sorry but I’m a bit tired. I’m going to bed.”

  I felt too weak to undergo another round of interrogation, and besides, the looks Paul was giving me were making me uneasy.

  “What, you’re going already? Sit down and have a drink.”

  He was pissed off that I dared to withdraw, that I wouldn’t have a drink, but mostly, I thought, because I didn’t have any questions for him.

  “No. I’m going to get some sleep,” I replied firmly.

  Imo blew me a kiss on her fingertips.

  “You go and rest, sweetie. Tomorrow’s going to be a big day.”

  Paul gave an imperceptible nod, the way killers do in movies when they’re in a crowd and realize it’s not the right moment to make the hit, but they let the victim know that although they have gotten away this time, they won’t the next.

  The morning after, at seven, General Dynamics—freshly shaved and corseted in another immaculate multipocket vest—was describing the performance of a particular kind of bullet when it hit armored concrete as he carefully scoured his bowl of yogurt and muesli. The South African and the German in his pseudo-Tyrolean outfit were listening like salt statues. The Dark One was eating his mound of Kabul-style huevos rancheros. The seat next to him was empty.

  “Good morning, everyone,” Imo intoned as she came down wrapped in a dark red shawl, flowing brown woolen pants and dangling Indian earrings. But no one replied. Only General Dynamics suspended the monotone flow of information for a fraction of a second, registering her presence with the slightest movement of his chin.

  Imo sat down next to me, smiling at the audience, sending out wafts of sandalwood, and leaned over to my side.

  “He got fired last night,” she whispered, indicating the empty seat.

  “Who, the Blond?”

  She nodded.

  “Paul told me.”

  “Did you go to bed late?”

  “Two, three, I have no idea,” she said offhandedly. “We had another four drinks each after you left. It kind of got a bit out of hand by the end.”

  She began to butter her toast.

  I looked at her questioningly. She laughed and shook her head.

  “No way, are you kidding? I just had to push him hard and slam the door on his face. Thank God he was so drunk he probably won’t even remember.”

  “Was it useful at least?”

  “He told me everything about what’s going on in this country at the moment: who’s in charge, who’s corrupt, who’s got money, who’s got arms, who’s got opium, who’s in bed with whom. All of it strictly in quiz form, of course. I thought my head was going to burst. God, is he exhausting. But he knows a lot of stuff, that guy.”

  “What did he tell you about the Blond?”

  “He says when you’re working in security at the level the Blond worked at, all it takes is a split second’s distraction and they send you home. Bang. Gone. Paul said he’s sorry they had to lose him. He liked him a lot.”

  “I wonder whose bodyguard he was. Did he tell you?”

  “Of course not. He just said he was very capable. That he doesn’t muck around.”

  I thought of the Blond’s milky body, his stiff prick bumping into me in the middle of the night on the landing. The brutal way he’d pushed me aside, the automatic weapon on his bedside table next to the mineral water. And then I remembered the desolate look on his face the night before as he pocketed the money from Paul, his head hanging low, his shoulders slack. He had morphed into some kid who’d been fired from his first job and had to start all over again.

  “But why was Paul paying him? Is he his boss?”

  “I think so. I don’t know. I don’t understand much about it. Around the third gin and tonic, I asked him, ‘Who are you? How come you know all this stuff?’ But he just laughed at me and asked another question.”

  Imo turned to the Dark One and said out loud, “Could you pass me the milk, please?”

  The Dark One ignored her.

  “Hallo? I’m talking to you,” Imo insisted, still smiling. The Dark One lifted his face from his eggs, stunned.

  “The milk,” Imo repeated. Even General Dynamics cut short. There was a silence.

  Imo held out her index finger, pointing decisively at the glass jug.

  “Could you please pass it to me?”

  The Dark One hesitated—all eyes were now on him—he picked up the jug, reluctantly, and held it suspended in midair for a second. Then he slowly passed it to Imo, while all the men at the table followed the trajectory with the same rapt expression, as if watching a penalty kick in slow motion that ends up going straight into the net.

  An hour later, on a bright morning swept clean by a freezing wind, we were gone.

  In the quiet of the early morning we left behind the dense cloud of dust and diesel fumes that hovered over Kabul like a deadly pall. Imo had insisted that I borrow a thick long coat from her and one of her Indian scarves instead of wearing my green parka, “for a better camouflage effect.” It felt good to be inside her expensive wools on such a cold day.

  After we passed the last checkpoint, everything suddenly spread out like a fan opening with a flick of the wrist. The air was crystal clear, sharp like the point of a diamond, and I could smell snow on the mountains that edged the horizon like lace. The beauty of the mountains loomed before me all at once, taking my breath away. Imo took my hand and squeezed it at exactly the same moment.

  “Look at that,” she murmured. I was grateful that she would allow me to participate in her surprise, for choosing not to take such beauty for granted.

  That morning Hanif had showed up in the hall of Babur’s Lodge in a shalwar kameez and pattu. I gathered that this attire was the sensible choice for a trip to a traditional village. He looked wretched and puffy-eyed, as if he hadn’t had the time to wash his face properly.

  “My wife was ill all night. She has pains and some bleeding. I took her to the hospital and the doctor said it’s better to keep her there for a day or two.”

  “Oh. I’m so sorry. Does she also have a cell phone so you can be in touch with her?” Imo said and pointed at his Nokia.

  “There’s no more signal beyond that hill,” said Hanif disconsolately.

  “But we’ve got the satellite phone for emergencies, haven’t we?” I whispered to Imo.

  “Ah, right, the satellite phone,” she said cautiously. And then she sighed.

  “You know, I forgot to recharge it. Actual
ly, I left it at Babur’s Lodge.”

  In Keith’s lesson on “personal safety,” rule number one was to travel with all the important numbers, like hospitals, emergency air rescue and embassy, memorized on the speed dial of your cell phone. If you were traveling where there was no signal, rule number two was to take a satellite phone with you at all times.

  “And the flak jackets?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “Did you leave those behind as well?”

  “Yeah. It completely slipped my mind. The first-aid kit too, by the way.”

  “Ah, I see.”

  She shrugged. “In any case, if anything happens to us, it won’t be bandages that’ll save our lives.”

  I would have liked to tell her that, after my repeated exposures to Obelix’s body, I felt I had a couple of tricks up my sleeve, but I let it slide.

  After all those classes, notes, slides and practical exercises, which had earned me a Training in Hostile Environments diploma, I was traveling in a battered Ford with no suspension, with a one-liter bottle of water for three people, no torch and no means of communicating with anyone. The only thing that I had remembered to bring along was a roll of toilet paper and some Advil.

  The tarmac ended a few kilometers outside of Kabul. We had been traveling for an hour on a narrow gravel track, which then gave way to dirt and finally turned into just a faint trace on the plain. I’d begun to notice green specks fluttering all over the open, inexorably brown space we were crossing.

  “They are flags,” Hanif explained, “for the mujahideen, you know.”

  I wasn’t sure I understood. I looked at Imo.

  “They mark the spot where they’ve fallen in combat,” she said. “Every flag a dead warrior.”

  I shivered. Cruising amid the flailing of hundreds and hundreds of flags, we were, in actual fact, crossing an endless graveyard.

  Children sitting on mud-brick walls enclosing the houses waved at us with the tips of their rifles. Old men, their heads wrapped in rags, urging mules along the path, waved, rifles slung over their shoulders. Young men reclining under straw awnings waved, raising their guns at us, smiling. Turbaned men in the distance were praying on shawls laid out across the bare earth, next to their guns. The guns seemed just an extension of the arm, an everyday object—a cane, a broomstick—that had lost its meaning. And yet for some reason this constant presence of death—whether flapping in the wind or flourishing in the greetings—didn’t feel menacing, or even all that sad somehow.

  Or maybe it was just me, getting used to seeing it.

  I saw a small hill. It would be easy to climb and from its top I could shoot the hundreds of flickering flags which drew the map of the dead. The morning light was still good. It could be the first really meaningful picture of the trip. I felt a surge of excitement.

  When I asked Hanif to stop, he pointed at the stones marked in red on the side of the road. I remembered what the red paint stood for—we had been given a lengthy lesson with slides by the Defenders. Red paint marked mined fields. It was a reminder that there was no getting used to anything, that there was no lowering one’s guard.

  Back in the car I took my worn-out chamois out of the bag and started painstakingly wiping each lens. Touching my equipment eased my frustration—at least it gave me a sense that I was going to do something with all this equipment sooner or later. I took each camera body out and blew the dust off the sensor, the eyepiece, the mirror, then methodically put each piece back.

  “Don’t worry,” I heard Imo say. I’d thought she was asleep, but she had been watching me.

  “About what?”

  “You’ll take your pictures.” Her large brown eyes were intent on me.

  “Oh, that. I know. It’s just that—”

  “It’s not easy, here. One doesn’t have the freedom to move. But when we get to the village you’ll have all the time in the world.”

  I felt grateful that she would act so relaxed just when I was about to get into a frenzy. She leaned with her head on the window, looking out, and remained silent for a while.

  Then she said, “Pierre said it would be hard to persuade you to accept this assignment. That you had decided you didn’t want to do reportage anymore. Why is that?”

  “Oh…I’ve had a sort of, how should I say…I think it was a kind of a…”

  I stumbled. I couldn’t find a word that wouldn’t embarrass me.

  “Yes, Pierre did mention something like a nervous breakdown,” Imo said idly, still looking out of the window.

  It surprised me that Pierre would actually phrase it like that. That he would talk about it to people who didn’t know me.

  “Oh. Did he?”

  “Yes. But he wants you very much to get back into photojournalism. He thinks very highly of you. Your work, I mean.”

  “Yeah, well…I wouldn’t call it a breakdown. The thing is, I’m just no longer sure that photojournalism agrees with my personality.”

  “But why? I don’t understand,” she insisted.

  “I don’t know, really.” I paused. Imo scanned me with those big eyes of hers. She was prodding me and wasn’t going to let go. I decided to be honest about it.

  “I think what happened to me was more like depression. I also went through a very bad breakup. That too, I think.”

  I was aware of how pathetic it sounded. In that particular moment, in that car, in that country.

  “I couldn’t handle the pressure, the people. You know, the writers, the editors, the deadlines. I only wanted to shut myself off. Needed a comfort zone. That’s why I do what I do now. I got into the details.”

  “Food stuff, right?” Imo asked a bit icily.

  “Yes. Big close-ups. Gastro-porn shots,” I said, trying to make it sound light and self-deprecating.

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Two years? Two and a half now, actually.”

  “I see. But one has to get over that, don’t you think? As they say in those American new age books, ‘It’s time you reclaimed your power.’”

  I looked at the awesome vista before us. I could still make out the green specks, the red dots in the distance. The indelible marks that the history of violence in this country had inflicted on the terrain.

  “Besides”—Imo turned to the big view out the window and sighed—“God may very well be in the details, but don’t we still need to look at the bigger picture to make sense of what’s going on? Isn’t this what our job is about?”

  Something had happened to Hanif.

  I could tell from the silent, brooding way he was driving; he appeared melancholic and distracted. I knew it must be because of his wife’s being in hospital. Imo, who was sitting next to him, probably felt this might be the right time to find out more details about her, to help him cheer up but also to extract some truths about relationships between the sexes. Half an hour of silence had gone by in the car before she launched into an interview.

  When did they meet? Three years earlier. Was it an arranged marriage? Yes, she was the daughter of a neighbor in Peshawar. Did his wife work? Yes, she’d worked as a secretary for a few months, but she’d left the job as soon as she learned she was pregnant. Would he let his wife work again once the baby was born? Why not, if she wanted to he’d be happy to let her. I watched Hanif slowly brighten, as if just talking about his wife was enough to buck him up.

  Imo insisted we stop at the bottom of the hill, before we lost the signal, so Hanif could make his last call and get news from the hospital. We got out of the car while Hanif paced back and forth, hunched over his cell, screaming against the biting wind, his index finger closing the other ear, in that familiar pose anyone, anywhere in the world, assumes when the reception comes and goes.

  Kabul was already a faded, dense cloud behind us. Ahead lay only empty space, mountain peaks cutting white into the lapis sky.

  “I’m sorry to make him spend the night away from home when his wife’s so unwell, but what else could we do? All we have is t
his week,” said Imo, quickly applying a dab of lip balm, which she had gotten out of a small makeup pouch. She pondered.

  “It doesn’t sound good, does it? Bleeding in the seventh month?”

  “Perhaps we could try and get back tonight,” I suggested. “Maybe we don’t need to spend the night in the village. Besides, everyone has warned us not to.”

  I didn’t want my voice to sound overeager; by now I knew that was the worst way to convince Imo of anything.

  “We’ll see. Want some?” Imo offered me the lip balm. “I doubt very much we can make it to the village and back in one day.”

  Hanif motioned that he was done and we could go on.

  “Well?” asked Imo.

  “It’s all right. My wife’s neighbor is there. She says there’s fever and pain, but the doctor’s coming soon and then we’ll see.”

  “The hemorrhage?”

  “Yes, it’s still there,” he admitted.

  “Ah.”

  “But the doctor is coming,” he added quickly.

  I detected an uneasiness in his eyes, which I could see in the rearview mirror. I began to sense that he didn’t feel comfortable discussing his wife’s condition with the two of us. Almost as if the question of his wife’s being unwell was too private a matter, too personal and too intimate to be shared so openly with foreigners. Western women, on top of it, who obviously hadn’t grasped fundamental nuances of his culture.

  “That’s good,” I said.

  “Yes, that’s good.” He paused and then turned the ignition key. “Let’s get going.”

  Absolutely nothing had been resolved, but the phone call had had the power of calming all three of us. As we pushed farther into this landscape strewn with shells and rusty tank carcasses, where signals, telecommunications, electric generators ceased and the tribal lands began, the idea that Hanif’s wife lay in a hospital bed where at any moment a doctor was going to show up perhaps seemed in comparison a condition of great security.

  The road was magnificent. It cut a straight line through a never-ending plateau, surrounded by three-thousand-meter-high peaks glittering with snow. Along the roadsides we passed the remains of numerous half-destroyed villages, built with the same packed earth they were standing on.