by SAIMA WAHAB
There seemed to be a lot of importance attached to my answer.
“Yes,” I replied. “Jason thought it would be a good idea, too. It would only be a couple of hours. There’s limited space, so if you guys want to go, please go. I didn’t suggest it because I wanted to go; I just think that someone from our team should be involved.”
“Because he gave me the order to do a mission to Matun, and given the fact that he hasn’t been here very long, I wondered how he came up with the idea himself,” said Evan. He was bald, and his entire head was turning red.
“Yes, I might have suggested that as a good place to start to get to know his AO.”
Evan stood up, then closed and collected a few folders on the table. “If I were you, Saima, I’d be careful. Especially about visiting Colonel McAffee in his office.”
“You mean the one with the door wide open in the middle of the TOC?”
“Rumors spread quickly on an army installation.” Yet one more thing that Afghanistan and the U.S. Army cultures have in common, I thought.
I looked at Michael, who grimaced a little and shrugged.
I poured myself a cup of coffee, put on my headphones, and went to work. I tried not to fume. It seemed like I was always losing my temper. The sky had been cloudy all day, but suddenly it darkened, much like my mood. The light coming through the door was not enough to read by anymore. Even though it wasn’t yet 4:00 P.M. I turned on my desk lamp. The rain came down in sheets, as it tended to do in Afghanistan. Even the weather here was extremist, I thought, wishing I could tell this joke to Michael sitting across from me, but I didn’t feel like talking to him yet. Thunder shook the building.
There was a bright flash and a loud crack. I had three computers on my desk. One of them emitted a white flash, and then they all went dark.
“Whoa!” Michael shouted, leaping to his feet. Then Audrey stumbled in, soaking wet from the rain. The hood of her green windbreaker was up.
“We were struck by lightning!” she cried. “It hit one of our antennas, up on the roof!”
Everyone was talking, waiting for the next crash. I started to tremble. I knew what I looked like, pale and fearful. I folded my hands to stop their trembling.
“I think God must really be upset with you this time.” Michael had no idea he had voiced my inner terror by trying to make light of the situation.
“He is,” I replied. “He’s furious that I’m sitting here with you infidels.”
He grinned, and so did I. Humor. That is how you deal with fear and danger in a combat zone.
THIRTY
In early 2008 Khost was still considered a green province. For the most part the villagers got along with the people at Camp Salerno and with one another. The exception was the Sabari district, twenty-five minutes from the base by Humvee. From the highest point of the FOB you could see a mountain, behind which huddled the Zambar, a subtribe of the Sabari, who were furious at the world.
This was the site of one of the longest-lasting land disputes between the two subtribes of the region. Their feud had gone on for many generations, and the situation had gotten so bad that in 2005 the United Nations had been called in to mediate.
The U.N. sent a delegation from Kabul, headed by an Afghan, to try to patch things up. At the suggestion of perhaps a misguided cultural advisor, or maybe a CAT I local interpreter with a bias, the Khost PRT had also become involved in this effort to bring an end to the feud. Using shura, the preferred local means of dispute resolution, the U.N. delegation drew up a written agreement, which they claimed was accepted by both subtribes—so a celebration was ordered by the governor of Khost. An immediate cease-fire was announced by the governor on provincial TV, which the U.N. read as problem solved. In reality, this just offered each side a formal reprieve, so they could both regroup, waiting for the foreigners to leave.
The U.N. drew up the terms of the cease-fire, which included one tribe paying off the other for the rights to the trees in dispute. A meeting of the elders from both tribes was called to celebrate. Peace in the Sabari district! It was televised. There was dancing and roasting of lambs. The elders arrived in their snowy turbans and, since they were unable to write their names, pressed their inked thumbs on the dotted line. The U.N. returned to Kabul, feeling satisfied.
Then it was back to the Sabari against the rest of the world. Within days the fighting resumed, as if nothing had happened.
The U.N. was perplexed. What had gone wrong? Allegations flew. One of the negotiators had been bribed by the subtribe that had received the more favorable terms. The other tribe refused to accept them. The first subtribe, which had been accused of bribing the U.N. delegation, went to the governor, asking him to enforce the terms of the treaty. The governor then appealed to the PRT for help. The PRT refused; this was local business and Americans could not look like they were taking sides. This was the correct decision, but it came a little too late, in my opinion, for as soon as we were seen in the shura, we became a part of it, and the simple fact of our presence was proof enough that the United States did take sides. As Aziz said of the dispute, “This is life in the heart of Pashtunistan. No one can enforce anything there, not even in a time of peace, much less now.”
We at the HTT were fascinated by this dispute. Before we designed the mission to Sabari, we knew none of the history. All we knew was that the district was close to where we lived and worked and there was always trouble brewing. We couldn’t figure out why the Sabari were so unhappy and why the two subtribes were constantly at odds.
The cause of the tribal dispute had nothing to do with the insurgency, but the instability and the power vacuum it created was certainly being used by the insurgents to make the insecurity worse. Whenever the government in Kabul failed the people, the insurgency moved in and said, “Karzai’s government is a puppet of the foreigners. They’re not interested in helping you, but we are. We are fighting to get this country back to you people, if you help us.”
The research design of the Sabari mission was simple: We would do an initial mission into the district, just to chat, to see if anyone would tell us anything, and then we would bring the data back and analyze it to come up with an informed overview of the situation. Then we could go back and dig a little deeper. In the process, we’d convey to the tribes of the region our genuine interest and let them know that we would return to build on the relationship.
Of course the army preferred missions that had a clear objective. Although this mission was not that, Jason still liked it, and he ordered the mission.
Not everyone on the team could go. Between the soldiers who had been tasked with patrolling the area and the soldiers pulling security, there wasn’t much room for civilians. Tom and Michael were near the end of their contracts, and even though Audrey and I desperately wanted to be included, at the end it wasn’t up to me. I made myself feel better by saying that there would be plenty of good missions in the future.
On the morning Michael and Tom left for Sabari, Audrey and I walked them to their Humvee. It would become part of our team tradition. It was early, but you could tell the day was going to be roasting. Tom and Michael were dressed like the rest of the company, in desert fatigues, IBA vests, heavy boots, and helmets. Audrey gave them each a hug. I didn’t hug either of them—it’s not something the Pashtun in me would allow me to do out in the open where the local Pashtun laborers seemed to be watching my every move.
Besides those laborers, I’d made it a personal rule not to hug soldiers or even touch them, except for the occasional handshake. I didn’t think I could lecture them about the rigid brand of respect they were required to show Afghan women and then hug them. It was confusing enough for me to juggle the two different cultures that made me whole; I didn’t want to send mixed messages to the soldiers as well. Audrey, who had the softest heart of anyone I knew, gave her hugs warmly and easily, in the American way. I was envious of how free she was to express her emotions. I simply couldn’t.
“Did you call you
r mom?” I asked Michael, in lieu of a hug.
“Ah, no. I didn’t want to worry her.”
“I think she’s probably already worried.”
Michael and I had talked before about our mothers, how despite the fact that one was a white American from Southern California and the other a Pashtun from a village in Afghanistan, their worries were identical. All mothers are the same, we agreed.
“How about, I don’t want to worry her even more than I already have. She doesn’t need to know I’m going on this mission. I’ll be back in a week and will call her then.”
“True. Still, you never know what’s going to happen.”
Later, whenever I went on my own missions, I would give Audrey these instructions in case I never came back: My lotions, shampoo, and perfume were to be given to the female soldiers on the FOB. My laptop was to go to our CAT I interpreter. My clothes should be given to any civilian on the FOB who wanted them. Nothing was to be shipped to my mother or my siblings because I didn’t want them to suffer the anguish of going through my belongings after I was gone. Plus, I knew my mom would save all my stuff for as long as she lived, and I didn’t want Khalid and Najiba to have to see my things in the garage every day.
“I’ll give her a call when I get there,” Michael said.
We both knew there were no phones or computers where he was going. I shook his hand. He gave a little salute, then winked at his silliness and climbed into the Humvee after Tom.
The mission to Sabari was a week long. I went about my business, reading reports, attending several meetings every day. I went to the gym and walked on the StairMaster in the evenings. I was anxious for the team to return, to see what they had discovered. Before he left I’d given Michael a list of suggested questions to ask the elders, and he had seemed willing to entertain them.
On one side of the bakery Aziz had built a screened porch, where every day he served a simple lunch. Usually it was okra or eggplant and rice. On days when Audrey and I simply couldn’t face another bite of overcooked steak or corn bread, we’d have lunch at Aziz’s.
We were sitting across from each other on his porch one day, flies buzzing against the screen, when we heard the blast. At this point we’d learned to read the language of explosions. When it was the result of outgoing fire, we’d feel the earth shake, then hear the sound. This time we heard the sound first, then felt a slight tremor. That meant it was not us causing it. It was them.
Audrey and I looked at each other. She was one of the bravest people I knew, but she looked afraid. “That was close.”
Later, we confessed that we’d both thought of Tom and Michael at that moment.
Still, we were so used to the sounds of warfare, of whistling rockets and the boom of mortars, that we didn’t dwell on it much. We finished our lunch and chatted briefly with Aziz about the difficulty he was having securing good-quality garlic for his garlic bread. We strolled back to the office. The sun was hot on my face, on the part in my hair. The heat plus the good food made me feel sleepy, and I wished I could curl up in a quiet spot and take a nap.
However, a meeting was scheduled at the office. Because the day was so warm the HTT door was open to allow for a breeze. Our purpose in being there was to meet the members of an incoming unit, and Alex, who would be replacing Evan as the team leader.
An hour later, I’d forgotten about the explosion. At war, an explosion was business as usual. I sat facing the open door and saw Tim, the CSM who was Jason’s right-hand man, walking slowly toward the office. The sun was on his face. I couldn’t see his expression—but I suspected that something bad had happened simply by the way he walked, like he dreaded every step he took closer to what he had to do. He entered the room. Tim had always smiled at me easily. Today his face was gray beneath his tan.
He asked Evan to step outside, and when Evan returned, he wore the same ashen expression.
“Two soldiers and Michael have been killed in an IED in Sabari.”
BEFORE MICHAEL’S BODY was flown from Salerno to BAF, there was a hero’s flight for him and the soldiers who’d been killed with him. By then I had done three contracts working with the army in Afghanistan, for a total of over three years. I knew many soldiers who had died in that time. As an interpreter, however, I was never aware of what happened to the bodies of these fallen heroes. Interpreters were usually so isolated, but now that I was one of the elite civilians known as the primary staff, working directly for the brigade commander, I got to see the war in a more intimate way, whether I wanted to or not. A hero’s flight was one of the rituals I had never known existed, which upset me beyond measure. How much more had I been left out of as an interpreter? I was fuming at myself, at the army, at the contracting companies for excluding me from so much by making me an interpreter all those years. I was furious that I had wasted more than three years playing puppet at meetings between U.S. soldiers and Afghans. In retrospect, I was probably lashing out at anything or anyone just so I could delay facing my feelings.
The hero’s flight took place in the middle of the night. The Afghan moon was like a light fixture in the sky. There were nights, like that one, when you could easily read by the moonlight. For safety reasons, planes were no longer flown in the bright moon. They would be too visible to the missiles of the insurgents.
At 11:45 P.M. there was an announcement over the loudspeaker. The bodies had been kept in the hospital until the time came to load them onto the plane. The night was still, no mortars outgoing, no pickup basketball games or heavy metal issuing from the random B-hut. You could hear coyotes in the distance. The sky was splattered with stars. The absence of the wind was not the only cause of silence—there was no sound coming from anywhere. There must have been hundreds of soldiers all around me, and not a sound was made as they stood at ease.
There was no hiding from my guilt in the silence of the night and the light of the moon. I felt guilty for every uncharitable thought I’d ever had about Michael, every harsh word I’d uttered. Audrey and I were there first; we had stayed in our room until the loudspeaker had told us it was time. Evan and the rest of the team came and found us at the front and stood next to us in silence. The thousands of soldiers and few civilians present all stood in silence, alone with their own thoughts. I will never forget the looks on the faces of the soldiers at a fallen hero’s flight. The raw emotions were so stark that it took my breath away, and I couldn’t look any of them in the eyes. This was one of the rare times when I desperately wanted to not be known as an Afghan. When I wanted to explain my association with them, and tell these soldiers that I myself would never forgive the Afghans for each American life lost in that country. Not when I knew firsthand the lives of those soldiers, and had witnessed the goodwill of most of them even when they thought no one but their God was watching.
As part of the tradition, the fallen soldier’s team carries the body to the terminal and loads it onto the plane. It could be seven people, ten people. Two people could carry it, but that’s not the point. Our team was Audrey, Billy, Evan, and Alex, as well as Farhad and Ehsan, our CAT I interpreters, and I.
We stood in the cold at the entrance to the emergency room, waiting for Michael’s body. On a night like this in Khost, you could feel the altitude. My lungs were struggling to draw each breath, and it hurt even more knowing Michael would never breathe again.
Civilians generally don’t receive a hero’s flight, but the brigade commander had made the decision to treat Michael the same way he would the soldiers. Michael had died in the line of duty and deserved the same honor.
A hospital worker brought Michael’s body out in a small truck. It was wrapped tightly in an American flag. We could clearly see its outline. We picked him up. I was by his right leg on the stretcher. As we passed the crowd, soldiers saluted. I knew I wasn’t the only one with tears streaming down my face. I swallowed hard to keep myself from making any sound, knowing that once I started I would not be able to stop.
As I carried his body with my team,
my hand touched his leg. It was cold through the fabric. I hated that this was how I would remember him. Instead of Michael smiling, laughing, fighting, singing, teasing, it would be this, the feel of a lifeless leg wrapped in the flag. I wished I had broken my own rule about hugging. It had been easy enough to give him heaps of criticism, assuming that he would be around and we could hash out our differences, but I had withheld that final hug.
I felt wretched for his parents, who’d been against his coming to Afghanistan. Michael hadn’t listened to them, just as I hadn’t listened to my family, but I knew it upset him that he didn’t have their support. He had wanted to show them that what he was doing was a great service, one that mattered, and I think his inability to convey the importance of his work to them frustrated him. He had tried to do an outstanding job, not just because he was that kind of person but because on some level he wanted to show them, too. I couldn’t imagine how horrible it must have been for his mother to receive the news of his death. For her sake, I hoped that her faith would be strong enough for her to handle the cruel reality that would end her life as she knew it. I longed for her to know that Michael died doing what he loved, and more than that, I wished that God would dull her pain and treat her kindly in the next life, because to go through the death of a child has to be the hardest thing on earth.
My regrets gathered in my heart. I hoped he’d written me off as a nutty Pashtun, and hadn’t listened when I’d accused him of using Afghanistan to further his academic career, or of making a thesis out of the Afghan people. I realized, then, that I had criticized Michael for not being more understanding, and yet I had made no effort to understand him.
It took less than five minutes to deliver the body to the waiting C-16. It seemed as if during those minutes I felt more emotions than I had ever imagined humanly possible. It wasn’t just that insufferable guilt. I was sad beyond measure because any loss of life is sad, but of course it resonates on a deeper level when it’s someone with whom you’ve shared many hours, someone who has teased you about the guys who might have tried to flirt with you, who has challenged your way of thinking, and who had the potential of being a true friend. There was also the heaviness of relief—which I knew was wrong—the gratitude that it hadn’t been me in that Humvee.