Magic Bus

by Rory Maclean

  Thirty minutes later, an UNHAS Beechcraft joins us on the slipway. Kabul’s runway clearly isn’t yet open.

  After an hour, we are allowed out to stretch our legs under the supervision of a Reservist lieutenant. ‘Do not step off the hard surface,’ he instructs us. ‘Do not approach any American personnel.’ Underfoot is new concrete. Bullet casings flash on the gritty earth. On the other side of the runway, the shell of a huge Antonov cargo plane lies where it was downed by a rocket, now spray-painted with American graffiti. ‘Welcome to Armor Geddon… Ali Baba was here… call me Terminator.’ Beyond it, ruined cinder-block houses are daubed with red paint to warn of UXOs – unexploded ordnance.

  The aid workers greet associates from the Beechcraft, gathering in the shade under its wings. Their mobile phone calls bring conflicting news: that a bus has been sent from town, that the Médicin Sans Frontières LandCruiser has been stopped at the outer ‘Afghan’ gate, that Kabul airport will be closed for a week. Only one fact is certain. Kabul is a daylight-only operation. No landings can take place after dark. We have to get away from Bagram before dusk. Above a sandbagged look-out, the stars-and-stripes flutters against the Hindu Kush.

  ‘It’s an awesome sight when the sun sets over those mountains,’ volunteers the lieutenant, following my eye-line. ‘I’m a sucker for sunsets.’

  A wiry, wide-mouthed FAA air-traffic controller, he’s as bored as the aid workers are agitated. He is from Washington state, mid thirties, divorced, still unused to the heat after two tours of duty. Sweat dries on his forehead, in his dark curly hair. He had just sat down to dinner when the order came for him to supervise us. In jest, I apologize for interrupting his meal, suggesting that we could eat together if we remain stranded at Bagram. The Coalition could lay on an international barbecue – Texan prime rib, Yorkshire pudding, Belgian frites, jalapeno peppers – to celebrate, say, common Western values.

  ‘Sir, let me assure you that the CO wants you gone. He swears he’ll stick his butt in the middle of that runway next time the UN asks to land.’

  The others passengers don’t relish the idea of a Free World knees-up either.

  ‘We, too, would prefer to be on our way,’ says the doctor.

  The Irishman is late for a conference. The Danish MP has missed her flight back to Europe. The Kuwaiti was due to host a birthday party. Our disrupted journey spreads gloom over the passengers.

  In order to ‘win over Afghan hearts and minds’, the US Army recently started drilling wells and building schools, blurring the distinction between soldiers and aid workers. As a result, aid agencies are now targets. Most are pulling out of the south, leaving some provinces deprived of humanitarian assistance. Still the military juggernaut thunders on, distributing Pop Tarts after Search-and-Destroy missions, opening health clinics while lobbing 1,000-lb Joint Direct Attack Munitions hither and thither. Yet without it, without the helicopter gunships, Humvees and the 82nd Airborne bulked up in body armour, the whole country would still be a feudal state, and many more of its women would be shackled, its minorities persecuted.

  ‘You American?’ the lieutenant asks me.

  I shake my head.

  ‘What’s Kabul like?’

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ I say to him. ‘Haven’t you been into town?’

  ‘Never been outside the wire. We’re spoilt with facilities. But I’m kinda curious. The countryside looks amazing from the air.’

  As we talk, the light seeps out of the day, drawing our options with it. The Frenchman stubs out his last cigarette. The stewardess runs out of bottled water. The pilot looks at his watch and says, ‘I could have been sipping a beer in… uh… Dubai now.’ AC-17 transport casts long evening shadows over the hills. Kabul’s runway remains closed.

  The lieutenant’s walkie-talkie comes to life. ‘The CO is laying on a bus,’ he tells us.

  ‘I am never riding in an American bus,’ says the doctor, starting the mutiny.

  ‘Nor me,’ adds the Nigerian. ‘It’s not safe.’

  ‘I won’t sleep in my seat,’ argues the MP.

  We can’t be left in the aircraft. We refuse to be sent away. No suitable civilian airfield is open in Afghanistan.

  ‘Anyone ready for a drink?’ asks the Kuwaiti, pulling a bottle of Uzbek vodka from his bag and leaning back against the Fokker’s tyre. ‘If it causes no offence, akhi?’ he says to an Arab Aid employee.

  ‘I’ll join you,’ says the Irish poet-cum-vet.

  ‘Did you say there’s a Burger King on the base?’ the CARE worker asks the lieutenant.

  There are two, in fact, as well as a Pizza Hut, an Outback Steakhouse and half a dozen convenience stores. Also a sports centre, a prayer-book full of chaplains and a thousand computer terminals linked by eighty miles of blue Cat 5 cable. Over the radio, the CO points out that Bagram isn’t a Holiday Inn. Alcohol is forbidden on the base and there is no fucking room service. But concessions are made. Four tents are vacated for us in the North Engineer Camp. A female maintenance officer is detailed to chaperone the women. Half-a-dozen turbo-charged Gator golf carts collect us but not our luggage. Bags are to remain under guard in the aircraft hold. We’ll be issued with toothbrushes, compliments of the US military.

  I sit in the lead Gator with the lieutenant, the Kuwaiti and the Irish vet. ‘I suppose our arrival is the most exciting thing that’s happened here today,’ he shouts to the lieutenant.

  ‘Well, sir, one of the towers volleyed some shots this morning. That was pretty interesting,’ he says, refusing the offer of a drink. ‘And last night an RPG hit the AirCom Camp. I wasn’t too happy to have to sit in a shelter without air conditioning. At least the view of the mountains was nice.’

  We drive into the metropolis of green tents, turning at the crossroads of ‘Exxon Boulevard’ and ‘Chevron Street’. Beyond a rank of double trailer units, off-duty soldiers play softball, hang out their laundry, zero their M-16s at the rifle range. Under bleached tarpaulins, an army bus unloads new recruits, their clean boots and duffels dropping into the red dirt. In a single, unpainted wooden office block is the headquarters of the Afghan Air Force which, unfortunately, no longer has any aircraft.

  The lieutenant suggests the Kuwaiti hide his vodka under his jellaba. We are given ten minutes to wash, then directed to the food-services compound, edging our trays along the stainless-steel tubing. After Whoppers and Personal Pan Pizzas, the lieutenant shepherds us like school children to the AAFES base exchange to collect our toothbrushes. My two months on the road leaves me in awe of the bounty of consumable Americana: Reeces’ Peanut Butter Cups, Hostess Twinkies, flash-frozen Omaha T-bone steaks, Pearl Jam compilation CDs. A fortysomething volunteer behind the cash desk notices my wide-eyed look. ‘I can see from your face how much your favourite soda means to you, too,’ she says. Her Kevlar flak jacket is draped over the back of the chair.

  ‘What’s a sports drink?’ the Nigerian asks her.

  We aren’t in the US, but we sure as hell are nowhere near Afghanistan.

  Next the lieutenant tries to pack us off to bed. All that’s missing are mugs of hot chocolate and leg irons. It isn’t even 8 p.m., aircraft are thundering off the runway, and no one is ready for sleep.

  ‘Do you not have a café?’ asks the Frenchman.

  ‘There’s the Cat’s Meow MWR tent,’ reveals the lieutenant with reluctance. ‘But the beer’s non-alcoholic.’

  ‘How respectful,’ I say, yet the irony was missed.

  Another walkie-talkie discussion, another pissed-off dressing-down from the CO, and we are given permission to sample Bagram’s night life.

  Under escort, two dozen aid workers and I troop across the North Camp to the Cat’s Meow. We open a screen door and step into Cheers. Stools surround the central bar. Guys shoot pool and drink giant cups of malted milk. In a private booth, a detail of female engineers discusses I, Lucifer, their book of the week. Clouds of cigarette smoke hover over the laminated tables. There is a Wurlitzer, a dance floor, a glowing Miche
lob sign and the acrid smell of spilt beer and dank fries. The bartender’s T-shirt reads ‘(There is no) Hard Rock Café, Kabul.’ A poster announces Robin Williams’ upcoming USO show. Only three elements would be out of place in Boston: the general sobriety, the weary Special Forces commandos watching Star Trek and the terrarium full of scorpions.

  ‘I keep goldfish myself,’ says the stewardess.

  ‘Can I offer you all a drink?’ asks the lieutenant.

  He produces jugs of non-alcoholic beer, which the Kuwaiti spikes with vodka. Our pilot opts for a Coke. ‘I’m… uh… driving,’ he explains. The Frenchman sits apart with the Dane.

  ‘When I first arrived, there was hope and optimism,’ I overhear the CARE worker tell the Nigerian. She is sincere, passionate and from Charleston. ‘People would open the doors of our cars just to shake our hands.’

  ‘In our education programme, we had former Taliban fighters studying Grade 3 maths alongside eight-year-olds,’ he replies.

  I lean over the back of the bench and tell them of my visit to Maslakh.

  ‘A month back, we organized a focus group in Lowgar,’ says the woman. Her area of expertise is family planning. ‘The average rural couple have ten children: men gain status with each new birth; women know that after their seventh child their chance of survival drops to 50:50. A week later, the Marines flew in a couple of medics for the day, the insurgents tar us with the same brush and “off” the policemen who’d been our guards.’

  ‘More pretzels?’ offers the lieutenant.

  ‘The lieutenant here does his job and we end up hiding behind barbed wire, unable to do ours.’

  ‘Ma’am, I joined the National Guard after 9/11 to protect America,’ he replies, ‘and I banked on my duty amounting to little more than two weeks a year.’ He has been stationed at Bagram for eighteen months.

  Soldiers play cards, drop quarters into the jukebox, look at each other and smile when they think we aren’t looking. Their civility brings to mind blue-collar shift-workers more than fighting men and women. None of them seems scarred by war, except for the commandos in their beards and Afghan patou scarves. Their eyes, dim with exhaustion, never flicker from the widescreen television.

  I’m jotting in my notebook when the lieutenant asks me, ‘You aren’t an aid worker, are you?’

  I tell him what I do and, around me, the conversation stops.

  ‘You’re a what?’ asks the Danish MP.

  ‘A travel writer,’ I repeat.

  I half-expect to be asked to leave by the back gate. Or to be marched away by a dozen angry humanitarians for misuse of the UNHAS. But, instead, the vet says, ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘Most of Europe and America,’ I reply. It’s the usual question. ‘Australia and the Pacific, south-east Asia, Burma…’ I tend to mention the places which will interest an audience.

  ‘Burma,’ gushes the MP.

  ‘I bet Burma was amazing,’ says the vet.

  ‘It’s a military dictatorship,’ I remind him.

  ‘What a perfect job,’ says the CARE worker. ‘Any room for me in your suitcase?’

  Serious discussions about appeasing hatred, ‘frag’ wounds and the balancing of US military power with European altruism are forgotten. All the politician wants to know about is cruises on the Irrawaddy River. The vet asks me to recommend a bargain Manhattan hotel. The Nigerian has a dozen questions about air miles. I tell them what I’m writing about.

  ‘The hippie trail?’ laughs the MP, moving to our table. ‘I wouldn’t be here now if I hadn’t hitched to India in 1967.’

  ‘My older brother did it too,’ cuts in the captain. ‘I was so jealous of him.’

  Even the Frenchman takes an interest. ‘The sixties was the journey from innocence to experience.’

  ‘Another beer?’ asks the lieutenant, a great grin spreading across his face.

  Then someone selects the 5th Dimension on the Wurlitzer.

  ‘We had a sixties evening last month,’ one of the book-club engineers calls above the music.

  ‘The junk’s still back here,’ says the bartender.

  The vet stands up to take the cardboard box and unfolds a tangled web of beads, bells and Beatles wigs. He puts on a pair of John Lennon granny glasses. The MP joins him, talking of Big Dreams and a broken-down Peace bus, stretching a plastic flower headband over her coiffed head. Then an engineer pulls a leopard-spot mini-skirt up over her work overalls. I can’t imagine how all this stuff reached Afghanistan again, except aboard a USAF C-130, but suddenly everyone is at the bar wearing buckskin, paisley shirts and brocade Carnaby Street waistcoats. Even the commandos look towards us, though they keep themselves apart. But like burnt-out rock ‘n’ roll veterans, they fit right in too, especially in their Afghan chapans.

  ‘When the moon is in the Seventh House, and Jupiter aligns with Mars, then peace will guide the planets…’

  In the box, the vet finds two volumes of poetry by Richard Brautigan – that joyous and skewed American original – and, sitting Buddha-like on a tabletop, starts reading from ‘The Galilee Hitch-Hiker’ and ‘Karma Repair Kit: Items 1–4’. He skips to ‘Our Beautiful West Coast Thing’ ‘… listening to The Mamas and the Papas… singing a song about breaking somebody’s heart… I think I’ll get up and dance around the room. Here I go!’

  And he does. The vet gets up and starts to dance. The CARE worker and Kiwi stewardess join him, as do a couple of the engineers. The Dane takes the Frenchman’s hand and swings him on to the floor. The Kuwaiti boogies into the throng. I start strumming an air guitar. It all happens in a second. The pilot claims he’s having an acid flashback. The Nigerian leans over to shout at me, only half in jest, ‘Good vibes, man.’

  Suddenly, we are intoxicated. Because of our anxiety, because of the day’s frustrations and, especially, because of Uzbek vodka, the group relaxes, lets down their hair – at least those who still have hair – and allows wide-eyed, youthful exuberance to sweep aside our suspicions.

  ‘… No more falsehoods or derisions…’

  Do-gooders and door gunners spin on tiptoes. Aid managers and Sergeants First Class sing along to ‘Aquarius’. Our gestures become animated, our conversations flow. A commando holds a single plastic flower in his fist. A PsychOps corporal with cinnamon-brown skin tells me, ‘Actually, I’m a Capricorn.’ The poems, lyrics and gracious ideals are seductive and hypnotic, deluded and naive. The words move our hearts and for an exquisite moment keep at bay our rational scepticism.

  ‘… Golden living dreams of visions…’

  ‘I have this recurring dream,’ the Nigerian yells at me, as he drums on the Formica bar. ‘I’m in the mountains, caught in an avalanche. I touch a warm body. I grab it, then see I’m balanced on a precipice, holding a Taliban fighter. If I let go of him, he’ll tumble to his death. If I keep hold of him, he might kill me.’

  ‘What do you do?’

  ‘I hold on to him, of course. I hold on.’

  Then, four minutes and forty-eight seconds after it began, the song ends. The music stops. We stand self-consciously at the centre of the tent, arms raised to the canvas roof or held out at our sides. We slip off the wigs and rose-tinted glasses and retreat to our tables. I hang up my imaginary Stratocaster. Beyond the screen door, the 455th Air Expeditionary Group launches an A-10 Thunderbolt II patrol into the dusk.

  *

  Not much later, the party breaks up. The lieutenant asks if I want to walk with him out to the perimeter. ‘It’s truly amazing how many stars you can see even when the moon is out,’ he says. ‘I counted four comets yesterday alone.’

  The handmaiden of the stars sends me a single comet that night. At first light, our white UNHAS Fokker lifts off the scorched runway for the five-minute flight to Kabul.

  17. What a Day for a Daydream

  The white Fokker circles a sprawling, ruined world. Rolling streets of shattered tarmac skirt cruise-missile craters fifty feet deep. UNHCR plastic sacking wraps khaki compounds which have
‘eaten a rocket’. Skeletons of civil aircraft serve as temporary shelters for refugees. Early in the twentieth century, King Aman-ullah instructed his architects to create a ‘monumental’ new capital. Italian villas, formal gardens, a narrow-gauge railroad and the vast white Dar-ul Aman Palace were built. When the first Intrepids reached Kabul, pausing at Siggi’s for a puff on a hookah and a glass of his amazing mint tea, they wondered if they’d found paradise. Of those buildings and days nothing remains now save a monumental sense of loss. Our wheels touch the tarmac and I realize with a shiver that I want the security of a guidebook.

  In the translucent, powdered morning light, I blag a ride into town with three others from the flight.

  ‘They were executed on the Kandahar road,’ says the tall Norwegian, turning around to tell me and the other passengers. CAR-IAS’s Kabul chief has an exaggerated facial tic, his mouth puckering as if to make a lonely, one-sided kiss. His news of yesterday’s killing of two Afghan aid workers didn’t reach us at Bagram. ‘The Taliban made them kneel on the road and shot them.’

  Around us, every tenth vehicle seems to be another NGO LandCruiser. UN Toyotas jostle with Shelter for Life pick-ups. Arab Aid trucks negotiate pot-holes the size of garden ponds. A six-wheeled ISAF armed personnel carrier pulls out of a side road and pushes into the traffic behind us. The front gunner smokes a Gauloise beneath the French tricouleur.

  ‘Let him pass,’ the Norwegian orders our driver. ‘He’s the target, not us.’

  Pedestrians – in battle fatigues, in lilac burquas, shouldering Kalashnikovs – cover their mouths against the dust. Bicycles clatter between karaatchiwaan handcarts. Savvy, Mister-One-Dollar beggars circle us waving smoking tin cans of incense. Pedlars sell petrol at the kerbside, decanting it by hand into one-litre cans. Behind them, metal shipping containers have been turned into barber shops and greengrocers. An old man washes his face in the drain outside the Hospital for War-Wounded. A legless veteran levers his crude cart forward, propelling himself with a stone in each hand to save his knuckles.