26
Steffensen sees Ali Shar a few days later at their weekly meeting at the FOB, a forward operating base that also functions as the police station, just across from the bazaar in Girishk. They sit at tables arranged in a square so that everyone is face-to-face: heavy, bearded men, some in military uniforms, others dressed in the traditional shalwar kameez. Commissioner Ghuli Khan has his police cap pulled down over his greasy hair.
Steffensen has procured more information about Ghuli Khan. Strategically located on the highway that connects Iran in the west with Pakistan to the east, Girishk is the nerve center of widespread smuggling. He knows that the police commissioner is in deep—something Steffensen finds vulgar. Still, he also knows that Ghuli Khan’s real job as police commissioner is not to enforce the law but to preserve the delicate balance of power in a lawless city. You screw with that at your own risk.
Atmar has involved him in the complicated web of alliances controlling the city. “The police commissioner was my enemy,” he said, smiling wryly. “Now he is my friend.”
Atmar’s men have been incorporated into the police force. Steffensen has no idea what the warlord had to give Ghuli Khan in return, but he senses that it’s a certain degree of control. Atmar is his key to the city; he can exercise his influence through him. Steffensen knows that even though he’s viewed as just another warlord, he still has access to the greatest firepower. The men sitting around the table view him as an equal, and he realizes he mustn’t want more. Power’s secrets hide in many places, not only in the barrel of a gun. He looks around the square. For all these men, killing is an everyday occurrence, something banal. His mission is the exact opposite.
Steffensen is the last to enter the room. That’s his privilege and meant as a signal: they wait for him. Making the rounds, he offers his hand. One after another they stand up. A few embrace him, their woolen patus swinging like capes. Ali Shar nods formally; there’s no conviviality in their greeting. Steffensen can see that the mayor views their last conversation as a turning point. He also notices that the chairs on both sides of Ali Shar are empty.
In various reports, the men go over the week’s events. A new offensive south of camp has just concluded. Taliban fighters were holding on to a larger area, and now they’ve been driven out. For five days, the Afghan army, supported by Danish and British soldiers, brought in heavy artillery and air bombs. Bulldozers plowed through the Taliban’s minefields. The enemy lost sixteen men, possibly more, while the coalition suffered no losses. The men express their satisfaction with the results, and a jovial mood spreads among them. Steffensen recognizes it from home, the feeling powerful men get when they’ve completed a difficult task.
Ali Shar, who has remained silent up until now, raises his hand and asks to speak. Unlike the rest of those gathered there, he has difficulty viewing the operation as successful. Many local farmers’ houses were destroyed and families have been forced to flee. There are sick children in every home; it’s winter and it’s cold. Now they are forced to live in schools or with relatives. Several of those killed were local farmers who, according to his sources, had either no connection to the Taliban or the loose association frightened men always have with their persecutors. “And now we have sown the dragon seeds of vengeance among the locals,” he says.
He raises his hand in warning, his voice getting stronger. Despite the delayed translation Roshaan whispers in his ear, Steffensen senses that Ali Shar might be a powerful speaker. Maybe this is where the mayor’s strengths lie—in his ability to speak for others and not only himself.
“We won’t be able to hold the area,” he says. “We’re setting up checkpoints manned by the local police force”—he looks right at the police commissioner, who glares back at him—“and we all know they’re incompetent and corrupt. These checkpoints that have cost so many lives to set up, one by one they’ll be blown to bits. Even if the police do manage to get their hands on a Taliban fighter, they’ll immediately accept a bribe and let him go. You call it a military victory, but we haven’t won a thing. By tomorrow we’ll have already lost the little piece of land that’s in our hands now.”
The police commissioner looks around at the men sitting there, as if to ensure their support. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he yells. Rising out of his seat, he points an accusatory finger at the mayor. “You’re doing the enemy’s work for them!”
Steffensen, who feels as if everyone is staring at him, looks down and says nothing. He feels a reluctant admiration for Ali Shar and actually agrees with him. Military operations like that are useless. It’s nothing more than theater, a kind of therapy for soldiers, military advisers, and politicians, so they can feel some sense of accomplishment. They need to believe that this incomprehensible war—where no piece of land is ever fully conquered and no victory is ever definitive—somehow has direction and meaning. The war can be won, but not like this. It will be won in conversations, like the ones he has with Atmar. Horse-trading is the only way forward. The alternative is human slaughter, and the bloodshed can easily get much worse than what they have just observed.
Steffensen listens to Ali Shar with a feeling of regret. The man certainly has an excellent handle on the problem, and there’s a need for his ruthless sharp-sightedness. Yet, Ali Shar’s innate opposition to the local powers that be and his massive resistance to any form of compromise make him an unfit collaborator. Now, he’s questioning the usefulness of the NATO forces—which is the same as questioning their very presence.
Steffensen motions at Roshaan and looks up from the table. “I would like to praise both your troops and ours for having made such a great effort. We have shown that we can work together. The Afghan army has proven that it is superior to the enemy. And in the future, the Afghan police will ensure that farmers can return and resume their lives. Now they can finally live without fear and threats.”
He stays a little longer to thank the men for their efforts. Their faces beam up at him, as if the recognition truly means something to them. He avoids mentioning Ali Shar.
When the meeting ends, they flock around him. There are several handshakes. The mayor stands off by himself. As the Danish commander prepares to leave the room, Ali Shar heads toward him. Clearly he has been waiting for an opportunity to speak to him alone. Steffensen ignores him and leaves the building.
Out in the courtyard, his military police bodyguards are waiting for him. From his vantage point, standing in the back of the APC’s open hatch, Steffensen looks back. As the powerful motor revs up, he can feel the metal vibrate beneath his feet. Ali Shar stands alone in the middle of the courtyard. The other men from the meeting stand a little ways off, laughing, shaking hands, and embracing each other jovially. Maybe it will teach him a lesson, thinks Steffensen.
He often looks back on this moment. A man standing alone in a courtyard, an impossible man, a useless idealist whose courage he can’t help but respect. Courage doesn’t save the world, however; loners don’t set things in motion. That takes conversations between people who, however different, struggle to understand each other.
Three days later, the mayor is found dead outside his home, killed by a single bullet to the head. It went right through his turban, pierced his fragile skull, and lodged in his brain, where it put an end to all he ever was.
A British officer conveys the information to Steffensen, even though the murder occurred in an area that is the Danes’ responsibility. “He was a valuable man to us,” says the officer. “It’s extremely unfortunate.”
They’re standing across from each other, Steffensen’s desk between them, as if they’re in the middle of a changing of the guard.
“I hear he didn’t have a bodyguard?”
27
The news of Ali Shar’s murder hits Steffensen like a ton of bricks. For a moment he feels as if he’s seeing double. He wants to sit down on the floor and put his head in his hands. Only self-discipline enables him to continue the conversation as if it involved
normal matters.
“He said he didn’t want a bodyguard.”
Steffensen responds quickly to the officer. He has no idea if Ali Shar ever asked for a bodyguard. He can still see him standing alone in the courtyard. Is he responsible for what has happened?
The British officer stares at him. “The Afghan police have apprehended a man they think is guilty.” His tone remains neutral.
Steffensen doesn’t know whether he should react with relief or satisfaction. “Has he confessed?” he asks, immediately feeling stupid.
“Here they always confess.”
The officer nods briefly and leaves the office. Steffensen sits down heavily in his chair and hides his face in his hands.
He’s shaken. He feels like something has broken loose inside his head and is rattling around in there. Does he feel guilty? Why should he? He grasps for something to hold on to. The murderer. He needs to meet him.
He takes a detail with him to the police station. He’s about to encounter a reality he doesn’t care for, one that holds no possibility for negotiation. There’s no horse-trading with death—and now he must face a dead man and his murderer. Roshaan comes along as his interpreter.
To his astonishment, he learns that neither the suspected murderer nor Ali Shar’s body is at the police station. They’re both at the police commissioner’s home.
Ghuli Khan’s home is surrounded by smooth concrete walls that, given their height and the barbed wire crowning them, resemble a prison. They aren’t built to hold prisoners inside, however, but to keep out the police commissioner’s enemies. Behind them are several three-story buildings, their floors sharply delineated in bright-red and -green colors. Men in dark-blue police uniforms stand guard at the sturdy iron doors.
Ghuli Khan greets them in the courtyard, and Steffensen is surprised to see that the police commissioner isn’t in uniform. Dressed in a newly starched shalwar kameez, with an embroidered chest piece, he embraces the Danish commander, which makes Steffensen stiffen in distaste. This isn’t some friendly visit. He’s here on behalf of the Danish army; this is official business.
Scores of men, some in uniform, seem to be wandering aimlessly around the enormous courtyard. Long rows of grenades are arranged between pyramids of rifles. Unruly piles of Kalashnikovs lie all over the place, as if the surfeit of weapons exempts anyone from having to take care of them. All the buildings have an unfinished appearance, with steel posts sticking out of their rough walls. Those that clearly serve as a residence for the police commissioner have gaudy balconies and mosaic-tiled facades outlined in strong colors that sharply contrast the unfinished walls. Steffensen is a guest in a warlord’s fortress and a police commissioner’s private residence—a contradiction that could only make sense in Afghanistan.
Ghuli Khan leads Steffensen over toward a low annex with a row of doors, one beside the next. Six of the Danish commander’s soldiers follow on their heels, as do a larger number of Ghuli Khan’s men, none of them in uniform. If it weren’t that there were no horses in sight, Steffensen would guess the building is a stable. As they step inside, a faint animal-like smell hangs in the air. Khan lays a hand on Steffensen’s shoulder as if to prevent him from going in any farther. The group gathered outside is blocking the light, so Steffensen can’t see a thing. Khan barks an order and the group disperses; light gushes in through the doorway, a large rectangle lighting up the floor before them.
In the middle of the sunlight lies a figure on his side with one leg bent over the other and his head resting on his half-outstretched arm. The unraveled turban lies like a ribbon across the floor. One of his temples and his silver-colored beard are sticky with black blood that, before congealing, ran down into one eye and farther along his nose, resting in a small pool near one nostril. His pants are soiled in the crotch, the origin of the animal-like stench, which mixes with a slightly sweet odor Steffensen assumes must be flesh starting to rot. The body belongs to Ali Shar.
Strange as it seems, especially for a professional soldier, he has only seen a dead person a few times. His parents were both old when they passed away, and the sight of their peaceful faces didn’t upset him. At that time, he didn’t view life as a battlefield.
Whenever he thinks about death, he thinks of his first wife, Irene. Following a long battle with a malignant tumor in her left breast, she succumbed once the cancer spread to her lungs. Although her death was as brutal as any fatal shooting, hers took place in slow motion. The hourglass figure he once loved dissolved into protruding hip bones and an emaciated rib cage. Only the tumor in her one remaining breast was still daringly fleshy, rising and falling of its own weight. It wasn’t until he bent over the coffin to say goodbye that he fully grasped the destruction, as if it had happened in the last moments instead of having spread over the course of an entire winter.
Steffensen had never been on any intimate footing with Ali Shar; his misguided idealism kept him moving in a borderland where you couldn’t tell if he was a friend or an enemy. Steffensen led Ali Shar behind the light, but only with the best intentions. He still isn’t sure of the murderer’s motives—but do terrorists have any other motive than to instill fear?
“Ask him why he’s lying here,” he says to Roshaan, whose expression is stony.
“He has to lie somewhere. There wasn’t room in the police station.”
Ghuli Khan answers nonchalantly, as if the whole matter has nothing to do with him. Something about his studied indifference makes Steffensen suspicious. Rather than a police commissioner, Khan is acting like a warlord demonstrating that he’s the master of life and death—which also means he’s above the law, this paltry, barely existing defense against the abyss. Steffensen gets the uncomfortable feeling that the mayor’s body lying on the clay floor isn’t evidence in a murder case. It’s a hunting trophy.
“Shouldn’t his body be delivered to his family? Shouldn’t he be washed?” He recalls something about Muslim burial rituals.
“Of course, of course.” The police commissioner’s voice sounds somewhat impatient. “First we must finish our investigation.” He waves his hand in an inviting gesture. “Follow me. Let’s go see the prisoner.”
Noticing the sweet rotting-body smell even stronger than before, Steffensen suddenly feels a rising nausea. He takes deep breaths to repress the uncontrollable urge to throw up and follows the police commissioner across the courtyard.
Clever staging, he thinks. First I see the murder victim lying on the floor in total humiliation, and then, once I’m properly primed, I meet the murderer.
28
They step through the door and into the three-story house that Steffensen assumes is the warlord’s private residence. Confused, he stops.
“The prisoner’s here?”
“This way,” Ghuli Khan indicates with his hand.
They walk up a flight of stairs with no handrails. On the second floor, they step into a large hall. In the middle of the floor, covered by a rug woven in dark red and black, a figure lies doubled over on a blue plastic sheet. His half-naked body is covered in marks, his flowing pants soiled and sticking to a pair of skinny legs. The man has short hair and a thin beard that in several places reveals a battered chin, as if someone has pulled tufts of hair out of it. His lips are bruised and bloody, and one eye is swollen shut. A group of men sitting on cushions bordering the room stare blankly at him while drinking tea out of small porcelain cups decorated with a flower motif.
Ghuli Khan walks over to the prisoner and kicks him in the ribs. He bends over and grabs him by the beard. “Get up! You have a distinguished guest!”
Roshaan looks at Steffensen, who nods imperceptibly. It’s important that the interpreter translates every single word that’s spoken.
The police commissioner turns toward Steffensen. “We caught him lying in wait outside the mayor’s house. He had a donkey with him, loaded with explosives. His plan was to go to the bazaar afterward and blow up a bunch of civilians.”
As if to emphas
ize the seriousness of the crime, he gives his prisoner another kick.
“I’d like to be alone with him,” says Steffensen.
Ghuli Khan lets go of the prisoner, whose head hits the floor with a loud thud. “Ove jan, he’s my prisoner. I can make him talk.” He reaches out his arms as if preparing to hug Steffensen.
Steffensen takes a step back. Where did this “Ove jan” stuff come from? In his few encounters with the police commissioner, they’ve shaken hands, nodded at each other, and exchanged a few formalities. They’ve never switched to any intimate declarations of friendship. Did Atmar tell the police commissioner that this is how you speak to the Danish commander if you want something?
The indistinct feeling of being manipulated builds inside him, and his discomfort turns into irritation. Standing up straight, he fixes his gaze on the police commissioner. “My name is not Ove jan,” he says. “I am Colonel Ove Steffensen, commander of the Danish forces in Girishk. And I insist on being left alone with the prisoner.”
Roshaan’s voice remains neutral as he translates. He doesn’t look at the police commissioner but at the wall behind him.
Steffensen then walks over to the door and stands insistently next to it. He has no idea whether he’s lost control of the situation or just gotten the upper hand. For a moment, Ghuli Khan stands there not doing anything, the prisoner still lying at his feet. Then he turns toward the men camped on the cushions along the walls. “Come,” he says with a disarming grin. “Let us leave Colonel Ove Steffensen, commander of the Danish forces in Girishk, alone with the prisoner.”
Ghuli Khan walks through the door, his men following one by one, until Steffensen is alone with Roshaan and the figure lying on the blue plastic sheet. He and Roshaan exchange a glance. They can hear laughter out on the steps.
Steffensen walks over to the prisoner and crouches down in front of him. One of the man’s eyes is open, the other completely shut. He stares down at the ground. “I’m not going to harm you,” says Steffensen. “I just want to hear your version of events.”
The First Stone Page 14