You can get anything you want, at Alice’s Restaurant
With this song as their anthem, wearing bells and flower power and tie-dye, she and Bill and their friends had boarded the bus that took them from Boston to D.C. to march on the Pentagon and demand love not war.
You can get anything you want, at Alice’s Restaurant
With aching bellies, exhausted and undernourished, hundreds of foreign Taliban fighters boarded trucks destined for Mazar-e-Sharif, for surrender to the Northern Alliance. The agreement, brokered by generals, required the foreign fighters to offer themselves up as prisoners in exchange for the lives of Afghan Taliban. The agreement demanded that the fighters drive into enemy territory and surrender themselves and their weapons into the hands of General Dostum’s men, who would transport them for imprisonment in Qala-i-jangi. The agreement, Taliban leaders rationalized, would give these crazy foreign fighters what they’d come for, a chance to fulfill themselves in martyrdom. Sick with dysentery, thirst, and the hundred-mile trek to Tahkt, they climbed into the waiting Toyotas and stretched their useless legs, and hardly noticed when the next exhausted fighter climbed in and stretched out beside them, and the next one stretched out on top of them, all of them packed and layered and marinated in Toyota sardine cans, paid for by oily Soviet and U.S. greed. Relieved to be off their rubbery legs, relieved the terms of surrender were finally agreed upon, that the wait was over, the exhausted fighters hoped this jihad would soon be finished, that they would soon be delivered to their deaths or their homes, either one.
You can get anything you want, at Alice’s Restaurant
With flower power and flares, Barbara and Bill had marched on the Pentagon. With placards and chants and love, they protested the war and the draft, and still the senseless killing continued for years. Even after veterans spoke in front of Congress, condemned what they’d been sent to do, condemned having been implicated in the murder of civilians, even then, politicians in Washington insisted on staying the course, if only for appearances’ sake, so that the United States of America could continue to believe in its strength, could continue to prove itself a superpower. And so we didn’t get out without more bloodletting, and when we finally did get out, we were quite certain that we’d never go to war again.
It’s the Alice’s Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement
She chopped, she peeled, she washed, she cooked. The U.S. military, she read, was flying in hundreds of turkeys, and six hundred pounds of stuffing, and a thousand pies, and eleven flavors of ice cream. Our troops in Afghanistan will eat well. But where would John eat? In the basement, the deep freezer was stocked with Ben & Jerry’s chocolate-fudge-brownie ice cream. She dressed and stuffed the turkey, put it in the oven, and hoped and willed John onto a plane, into a bus, into a taxi destined toward home.
You can get anything you want, at Alice’s Restaurant
You can get anything you want, at Alice’s Restaurant
Downtown New York City, in the rubble that was once the World Trade Center, ashes smoldered; sniffing dogs unearthed shoes, bones, teeth, arms, legs, fire-retardant items of clothing; fathers dug for sons and daughters; sons dug for fathers and mothers. For those who weren’t going home, didn’t want to go home, couldn’t think for what or to whom to give thanks, local restaurants announced that they’d be cooking and serving turkey, stuffing, and pie through the day. John would be returning to a changed world, a different America, and Barbara wondered what he knew. She worried about his judgment, about his misguided ideas, about his new friends and where they might have led him. She prayed against what she was afraid to put into words, that John had signed on to fight for what he thought was right, for someone else’s cause that he didn’t begin to understand. She turned to the television for more news.
THE TURKEY WENT INTO THE OVEN at noon, roasted for three and a half hours, rested on the counter for half an hour. Between the hours, every hour, Barbara went to the door, opened the door, looked up and down the street. After four in the afternoon, she and Bill sat down to eat. And ate little. There were only the two of them. They’d invited no one. Anxious and heartsick and sleep deprived, they’d declined invitations to give thanks with others and hoped only for the joy of John’s last-minute arrival.
How about a movie? Bill asked, sorting through the rented movies.
Barbara found the remote, turned the TV on, heard again about the prison uprising that left an American CIA agent dead, the first American casualty of the Afghan war. And then a commercial break. U.S. military fighter planes, they heard, were sent in to help the Northern Alliance regain control of the prison compound. And again a commercial break. This is awful, she said. How can they?
Turn it off, Bill said. That’s all the information they have, and they’re going to make it last all night.
I’ll get more details on the Internet, Barbara said.
Let’s watch the movie, Bill said. He pressed PLAY and the black-and-white lion roared. Paper curtains parted. Hollywood starlets wrapped in ermine materialized. And with darkened eyes and stained lips lived. And two hours later died. And again the news offered no news: On CNN, a rerun of Larry King interviewing the widowed and the suffering. On CNN2, a rerun of Larry King interviewing a fatherless son. On CNN3, a rerun of Flight 11 flying toward the first tower, in slow motion. On CNN4, a rerun of the tower collapsing, in slow motion, and again the towers fell, again people jumped and died. On CNN5, a rerun of Larry King interviewing a motherless daughter, a daughterless father, interviewing the motherless, fatherless, wifeless, husbandless, childless, shameless—disgusted, Bill pressed POWER and beheaded King, exiled CNN, and the world went dark. They sat relieved in the silence and dark. Not much road traffic now, but somewhere in the distant overhead the honk and flap of southbound geese, instinct bound, in vees for victory. The turkey was still on the table; the sides were still out. Let all who are hungry come and eat. Let all who are tired come home.
Bill tied on his red Coca-Cola apron and cleared the table and washed up. Barbara pulled the laptop into her lap and read:
In the bloodiest engagement of the war in Afghanistan, imprisoned foreign Taliban soldiers, in a mud-brick fort outside of Mazar-e-Sharif, are all killed. The death toll includes scores of Northern Alliance soldiers and a CIA operative, who was questioning the Taliban at the time of the prison uprising. Speaking at an Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said the U.S. military bombed a compound near Kandahar used by Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network. It clearly was a leadership area. Whoever was in there is going to wish they weren’t, said Rumsfeld. The CIA identifies Michael Spann as the operative killed in the Mazar-e-Sharif prison uprising. Spann officially becomes the first American combat death in the Afghan war. The Pentagon says the Taliban leadership has lost control of its troops.
She went to tell Bill. She loaded the dishwasher and told.
We’re at war, Bill said, which means this is only one story. There are surely ten unreported variations on this one.
He sliced the rest of the turkey, and Barbara filled a collection of leftover refrigerator containers with food that only John could demolish.
They washed up, they went to bed, but sleep, elusive sleep, stayed away. Awake, Barbara opened her laptop and read:
American warplanes fired into the compound, burning and shredding humans and horses, Dostum’s stable of prized Arabian horses. At the end of day two, rockets blasted the armory, which exploded and smoldered for days. On the third day, when no more Taliban appeared, Red Cross officials entered the compound to collect bodies, but when two workers went down to the basement, they were fired on and killed. There were armed Taliban rebels still down there, still alive, alive enough to fight and kill, and no one would risk going in to get them. The Northern Alliance poured in water to drown them. They poured in gasoline to burn them. They threw in grenades to bomb them. Unable to hold out any longer, the remaining prisoners emerged from hell and surrendered to purgatory, or emerged from purgatory a
nd surrendered to hell, they couldn’t know which.
ON DECEMBER 3, early morning, Barbara opened the door and retrieved the daily bundle of newspapers, set it down on the counter, and went to make coffee. She separated the Post from the Times, the Times from the Herald Tribune, the coffee dripped, she unfolded the papers, slowed by sleep, by the need for sleep. She smoothed and straightened the papers, stared at the covers. But who was this? John? She was asleep, she was dreaming. She poured coffee. She swallowed coffee. She was afraid to look. She looked and read. An American. Named John. Naked. All bones. And bleeding. But why were his hands twisted and bound between his legs? And why had he arrived on the front pages, under this banner, this headline, AMERICAN TALIBAN?
Bill, she wailed. And ran to the bedroom trailing the front page. Bill sat up, groped for his glasses. What? What’s wrong?
But the paper was crushed in her hand and had to be uncrushed.
American, he read. Taliban?
Look, Barbara keened. Look.
Bill swung his legs off the bed, found ground, the cold floor on his sleepy feet. He snatched the newspaper from Barbara’s hand and looked, shook his head.
This isn’t John, he said.
Read it, Barbara heaved. It’s John.
Yes, but not our John, not John Jude.
It could be, she sputtered.
But it’s not.
It might be.
What do you mean? Bill asked. What are you talking about?
I don’t know, Barbara sobbed. Call it a mother’s intuition. I feel that John’s there, alive, somewhere, that somehow he’s gotten himself caught up in this mess. And I must go to Pakistan. Today. We waited. He didn’t show up for Thanksgiving. He probably couldn’t. So we have to go there. We have to help him.
Bill promised to make the necessary calls.
AT SIX THAT EVENING, Barbara and Bill and the people of the United States sat stunned in front of their television sets tuned to CNN:
I was a student in Pakistan studying Islam. And I came into contact with many people who were connected with the Taliban. I lived in a region in the northwestern province—the people there in general have a great love for the Taliban, so I started to read some of the literature of the scholars and the history of the movement. And my heart became attached to them. I wanted to help them in one way or another…[Yes] it’s the goal of every Muslim to be shahid … I tell you, to be honest, every single one of us, without any exaggeration, every single one of us was one hundred percent sure that we would all be shahid … all be martyred. But you know, Allah chooses to take a person’s life when he chooses. And we have no control.
Barbara wept. If only this were John Jude. It would be enough. To know her son was alive. To hear him talking. Smartassing. Like this John. If only our John like this John were in the hands of the United States Army, a prisoner of the United States Army. Mouthing off. Badassing. They probably know each other with their same smartass talk.
They watched the replays. Late night, after replays and tears and repeated replays, and after seeing Barbara to bed with a Demerol, Bill sent another e-mail to Khaled asking him if he’d found Yusef and demanding all available information about Yusef. Then he dialed the best criminal defense lawyer he knew. They would need him. If and when John Jude turned up, if he turned up in the hands of the United States Army, they would need the best.
EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, better rested and calmer than she’d been in weeks, Barbara scanned the headlines of the Times, the Washington Post. She paged through Glenn Reynolds’ Instapundit, Gunzberger’s Politics1.com, the Kausfiles, and Andrew Sullivan’s blog. She went to the Israeli intelligence conspiracy site, Debka.com, to see what they might be revealing about yesterday’s headline: American Taliban. Homegrown. She and every American, probably every citizen of the world with access to CNN, had watched and listened, repelled, attracted, and afraid all at once, and had gone to bed profoundly disturbed.
To be an American and speak so calmly of your own death, to offer yourself up as a martyr for Islam, to make martyrdom your goal, it was incomprehensible, especially for a contemporary American, unaccustomed to such sacrifice. But she needed to understand. She’d read Hegel, Hegel for whom overcoming one’s fear of death was the only way to achieve true freedom. How else to understand the martyr’s impulse? Self-consciousness, she knew, comes with beginnings. This was true for societies and nations as well as individuals. When the Middle East freed itself from its colonizers and came into independence, it became self-conscious about itself, its nationality. It was this long ongoing struggle toward self-realization that drove its politics now.
She looked again at the cover of the Times, the photo of this long-haired, bush-bearded American Taliban who, with his wounds and his nakedness and the bindings that nailed him to the stretcher, resembled Jesus Christ, resembled her own John. And it was a photo-op for jihad. That was what was so disturbing. In other words, the White House should not have permitted its dissemination. If she were working PR for the White House, she would have censored this image for evoking what every child knows as Christ on the cross, what every child comes to understand: that Christ fulfills himself in his crucifixion, becomes distinguished in death. Without his death, he could not have become Christ. In one of his papers for World Religion, John had argued for Judas as enabler rather than betrayer. Judas, his thesis stated, sacrificed himself and not Christ as the church has claimed. If Judas had refused Jesus this service, if he had put self-interest first, Christ would not have become the Savior God. Therefore without Judas, no God. Therefore without Judas, no Jew to blame and hate. But Christianity needed an enemy, a religion against which to fulfill itself, and found what it needed in Judas.
And this kid, Barbara wondered, this John Walker Lindh, with his wild hair and beard, resembling Jesus, Jeremiah, John Brown, resembling all martyrs, proving himself their descendant, what does he know? He has created himself in the image of martyrdom, with features in symmetry, eyes well paired with nose, nose with mouth, a harmonious face good to look at. The White House should have censored this photo, would surely have censored it given half a chance.
And John Jude? She hoped, she prayed, that their John, wherever he was, had made better decisions than this kid. If only he would call or write. If only he would come home.
THE STATE DEPARTMENT strongly advised against travel in northern Pakistan. It’s where the Taliban is hiding. It’s where Osama bin Laden’s friends are. It’s where the CIA thinks he might be hiding.
We’re at war in Afghanistan, someone at the office of Richard Armitage informed Bill, but the North-West Frontier of Pakistan qualifies as within the theater of war.
Over Barbara’s protestations, over her accusations of coldheartedness and unfatherly unconcern, Bill canceled plans for their trip to Pakistan.
Getting ourselves trapped in a war zone, he snapped, possibly the same war zone John’s trapped in, would be completely stupidly ludicrous. He’s my son, too, and I want to find him as much as you do, but hysterical irrational behavior will get us nowhere. Careful thinking and planning will. For example, this: I’m debating whether to file a missing person report for an American abroad with the State Department’s Office of American Citizens Services and Crisis Management. On the one hand, given Ashcroft’s decision to try Lindh as an enemy of the state, filing could leave John similarly charged. That is if he too foolishly took up arms against Americans. But then I think no matter what, I’d rather have John in the custody of the U.S. Army than anywhere else.
I don’t know how you can even hesitate about this, Barbara exploded. I’d rather have my son incarcerated anywhere in the U.S. than leave him rotting in some tribal prison.
Bill went ahead and filed.
————
BARBARA AWOKE, heaved her Demerol-deadened limbs out of bed and onto the cold dead floor, and lurched down the hard hall into her study, to her laptop, where she hoped an envelope hovered telling her she had mail, an e-mail from John Jude, or
at the very least, a Red Cross letter, which would mean secondhand word from John. It was now four months since she’d heard from him. She was a mother who hadn’t heard from her son, who didn’t know whether he was still alive, and not knowing, she was stuck marking minutes, hours, and days, with only the daily papers, the news, and the postings, stuck in chronology, not life:
On December 9, at Camp Rhino, on a marine base near Kandahar, an FBI agent interviewed John Walker Lindh and walked away with a nine-page report that would become the basis for the criminal case against him.
On December 11, Zacarías Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, was charged with conspiring with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to murder Americans.
On December 22, Richard Reid, a British citizen, was apprehended for trying to blow up a Miami-bound jet with explosives hidden in his shoe.
On January 9, the White House declared that the Guantanamo detainees were not entitled to the protections accorded prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions.
American Taliban: A Novel Page 20