The First Stone

by Carsten Jensen

  Steffensen wants to ask him to pull it together, but he needs to maintain an official facade toward the Afghan. So, to win time before the inevitable no falls like a hammer, he asks if it needs to happen right now.

  “Do you feel threatened? Are you in danger?”

  “Yes,” says Roshaan, forcing a smile.

  “So you are being threatened. Literally? By whom?”

  “I can’t say. It is too dangerous. I have to leave.”

  “Why don’t you just go to Kabul?”

  “They will find me. I would put my family in danger. My wife and my two children must leave with me.”

  “Listen here. We’re all in danger. This is war. But I really can’t see that you’re in any more danger than the others. You live with us here in the camp. You’re in no more danger than the soldiers. Isn’t when we leave what you’re really afraid of? Isn’t that what you mean?”

  Steffensen is ready to make a confession. Yes, he’ll say, he can certainly see the problem. And then he will once again refer to Kabul. His own intelligence service offers only pessimistic prognoses when it comes to the rural areas that will probably be overrun the moment that foreign troops withdraw. That may well be a problem for their collaborators. But no one doubts that Kabul can be held.

  “No, that’s not what I mean. I mean now.”

  Steffensen feels that Roshaan is being difficult and doesn’t believe his story. Threatened? Well, then, he needs to say who it is. He decides to try again.

  “You must know who is threatening you. How else can I take your application for asylum seriously?”

  Roshaan shakes his head, the idiotic smile still sitting on his face. Is that fear in his eyes? Steffensen chooses to ignore it. Since Roshaan is being uncooperative, why should he extend him any sympathy? This is a negotiation—they both have to contribute something—and Roshaan isn’t contributing anything.

  Steffensen makes his voice sound official. “When we withdraw, it will be because we have created stability. This is your country. You have to stay and help to rebuild it. You’ve already made a good start. Your help has been invaluable to us. You should be proud of yourself.”

  Is Roshaan’s life really in danger? If Steffensen were being honest, he doesn’t know. The interpreter’s history is vague, and he refuses to offer any details. He could easily have made it up, and maybe the reason Roshaan won’t tell them more is that he’s afraid that the story will fall apart. Steffensen prides himself on his political instincts, and they’re telling him one thing: Roshaan is fighting a losing battle.

  “I’m not the one who decides who gets asylum. It’s decided in Denmark.” He places his hands on the polished desktop in front of him, as if to invoke the authority that comes with sitting behind a desk. “We’ll find a solution,” he says soothingly.

  “I don’t want a solution,” says Roshaan. “I want asylum.”

  His voice is determined as he presents his case. There’s nothing humble about him.

  “I’ll see what I can do. But I can’t promise anything.”

  It’s the ultimate rejection, at least if you want to stay within the parameters of politeness. Steffensen could just as well have told Roshaan to take a hike, but there’s no reason to be so blunt. Despite everything, he and Roshaan have worked together on many occasions. They aren’t chummy, but then it’s not in Steffensen’s nature to get too close to anyone. Now, in the name of diplomacy, he has gone as far as he can.

  “Goodbye, Roshaan!” He stands up to emphasize that the conversation is over and offers his hand in farewell.

  Roshaan remains standing. He has a woven bag in a red-and-black pattern hanging over one shoulder. He digs down into it, and when his hand resurfaces, he’s holding a thick wad of dollar bills. Instead of taking Steffensen’s outstretched hand, he places the bills in it. “It’s all I have,” he says. “Is it enough?”

  Steffensen is so surprised that he doesn’t know what to say. Standing there holding the wad of bills in his hand, he realizes he’s hesitating too long. He lays the bundle on the table and shoves the money back toward Roshaan.

  “So it’s not enough? Shouldn’t you count it first? It’s my life savings.” Roshaan is still smiling, but his voice sounds worried.

  “Listen to me, Roshaan. This is important. The Danish authorities do not accept bribes. If we were in Denmark, you could be arrested. Corruption is bad for any exercise in good governance—including yours. It’s what we’re always trying to teach you. How can you even think of bribing me?”

  As Steffensen says that last sentence, he can feel his self-control starting to wane. He stops short and tries to stare right into Roshaan’s eyes.

  “Then you will not do anything for me.” Roshaan avoids his gaze and looks down at his hands, clasping the bag.

  “Not that way. You must be able to understand that. Haven’t you been listening? It’s exactly what we’re always telling you. Corruption is not the way forward.”

  Roshaan looks up, returning his gaze. “Yes, I have been listening. I have translated many times for you. I noticed not only what was being said but also whom it was being said to. All the people you speak to are corrupt. They only have their position because they’ve bought it. And they only have it because it gives them more opportunities to get richer. You accept corruption. You collaborate with the corrupt. I even think it looks as if you encourage it.”

  “It’s politics,” says Steffensen quickly.

  “And when I ask you to save my life, and you refuse, is that also politics?”

  Steffensen ignores the interpreter’s question. And how could he answer? He walks over to the door and opens it demonstratively. They stand facing each other in the doorway, and it seems to Steffensen that he sees hope flare up in the interpreter’s eyes.

  “Goodbye—and thank you,” says Roshaan. His face assumes a transfigured expression.

  Thank you? What does he have to be thankful for? Is he being sarcastic?

  Roshaan walks down the corridor and has already disappeared around the corner when Steffensen understands the sudden change in the interpreter’s tone of voice. The money is still lying on his desk! In his eagerness to get rid of Roshaan, he forgot all about it. The interpreter must have thought Steffensen was only rejecting the bribe for appearance’s sake, all the while actually accepting the money. Maybe he thought the room was bugged and the Danish commander’s rejection was merely an act for all the microphones.

  Steffensen races over to the desk and then runs through the door, which is still open, and chases after Roshaan.

  “You’re not pulling a fast one on me!” he yells.

  He catches up with the interpreter as he’s about to leave the building. Even though he must have heard his footsteps, Roshaan doesn’t turn around. Steffensen grabs him by the shoulder and swings him around in one swift motion. He feels an uncontrollable rage ready to burst inside him. He shoves the Afghan up against the wall. “Take your money!” he shouts. “I don’t want it!”

  Roshaan holds his woven bag defensively in front of his chest, clutching the coarsely woven fabric between his hands. Steffensen tries to snatch it from him, so he can shove the wad of money back where it came from. The rubber band holding the bills together breaks, and dollar bills fly into a large, disorderly pile on the dirty floor.

  Still enraged, he starts kicking at them. The doors along the corridor fly open, and half of his staff, alarmed, stick their heads out and stare at him. He feels no urge to be discreet at this moment. “The idiot tried to bribe me,” he yells in Danish.

  Suddenly he realizes what he just said. There’s total silence around them. Then someone starts to giggle, and Steffensen knows why. The thought is absurd. A Danish officer taking a bribe! Now there’s no way back. After this incident, he can no longer retain Roshaan.

  He turns toward the interpreter and yells into his face. “You are fired. Pack up your things and leave the camp immediately. Now!”

  “Okay, then, I’ll say it!” Ro
shaan’s eyes are filled with desperation. “It’s one of your own men who is threatening me. Schrøder! Rasmus Schrøder!”

  Steffensen can’t believe his ears. He doesn’t only find Roshaan’s accusation embarrassing but truly tasteless. What does he think will come of accusing one of Steffensen’s own officers of treason? Just how low will he sink to get his fucking asylum? Has the man no pride at all? Or what about some sense of propriety?

  “Out!” he yells. “Out!”

  With unusually long steps for a person with such short legs, Steffensen walks back to his office and slams the door.

  17

  Steffensen likes order. Seven minutes later he leaves his office and walks back through the hallway as if he’s searching for something. He’s not looking for Roshaan. He’s sure the Afghan understood that he’s no longer welcome in Camp Price—but he’s not quite as certain that the interpreter wasn’t too proud to pick up his money and take it with him. Judging by the thickness of the wad of bills, it might have been a whole year’s salary, maybe even more. Now that he’s out of work, he and his family will have to live off that money.

  The money is not there. That’s one bright spot in the middle of this whole mess. Because only Danes are left in the building, Steffensen feels certain that Roshaan took the money. So he must have a little common sense left. Steffensen feels guilty; he behaved in an unforgivable manner. He had to fire Roshaan after everyone heard him accuse the interpreter of bribery. And then that absurd accusation against Schrøder. The interpreter really behaved irrationally. But it should never have gotten to that point.

  What the hell was he thinking when he ordered Roshaan to leave a heavily fortified military camp to go strolling through the desert after dark? Could Roshaan maybe get a lift and be dropped off at the bazaar in Girishk?

  Is that what the genius Steffensen was thinking?

  Girishk, city of opportunity?

  Not exactly, especially if you’re an interpreter who more often than not has shown his face in the company of foreign soldiers. Within five minutes, Roshaan would have his throat slit. He has no illusions about the security the Danish forces—with him at the helm—claim they have created. Outside the camp’s fortresslike walls of HESCO bales, a man like Roshaan doesn’t stand a chance. Steffensen could just as well have kicked the interpreter out of a plane without a parachute and told him to have a nice trip.

  He calls the guard at the camp’s entrance and introduces himself. Has anyone left the camp within the last hour? He gives a detailed description of Roshaan. The guard responds negatively. Not even as a passenger in a vehicle? The guard responds negatively again. No vehicles have left the camp. Steffensen can hear the amazement in the guard’s voice. An Afghan doesn’t just stroll out of camp. Steffensen realizes it was a dumb question. He just needs to know for certain. He feels a momentary relief.

  Should he start searching for him in the camp? What good would it do? He has nothing to offer—he just fired him. And he can’t take it back. He could offer for him to stay on as an interpreter until the Danish forces leave Helmand. Maybe things will change by then. He already tried that, however, and Roshaan said no. And then there’s the interpreter’s accusation against one of the camp’s officers. That alone precludes any future collaboration. Still, Steffensen could at least see to it that Roshaan gets to Kabul safely.

  At midnight two men wearing MP armbands come to get him.

  “We need you to identify him,” says the taller of the two.

  It started when someone noticed a fire over by one of the bastion’s walls. That’s where they found him.

  “Who?” asks Steffensen, though he already knows the answer.

  “That’s what we need your help with.”

  It’s completely ridiculous for them to ask him for assistance. Everyone knows how bad he is with faces and names. It must mean that they already know who it is. They just need him to confirm it. Or maybe they’re trying to give me a guilty conscience, he thinks, before rejecting the thought as paranoid.

  They cross the square. It has rained and the damp gravel sloshes beneath their boots. The trek seems endless to Steffensen. In the distance he can see a group of men standing with their headlamps lit. Beams of light fall on a sitting figure leaning up against the outer wall.

  Roshaan’s facial muscles are relaxed, and his lower lip hangs down over his bearded chin. He has cut his own throat, his one hand still holding the knife. He must have known precisely where the carotid artery was, because it only took a very short incision to open it. Or maybe he felt his way to it. Did he take his own pulse before he slit it? Was it fast or slow? Fast, Steffensen thinks. His heart must have been on high alert, adrenaline pumping through his body, the flight impulse overwhelming. How was he able to ignore the will to live that his entire body must have mobilized, pounding in his eardrums with every beat of his heart? Is that how it feels when you’re determined to commit suicide? You make yourself blind and deaf, close yourself up in a darkened room, without the tiniest sliver of light, and in an unprecedented act of will ignore the knock on the door coming from your own life-loving heart?

  His application for asylum? His desperate attempt at bribery? His embarrassing lies about Schrøder? Were they all just last-ditch efforts before he wound up here with a slit artery? That’s not what Steffensen thought when he rejected Roshaan. Now he can see the connection, how each step led logically to the next.

  The open shirt is stained in blood. There’s blood on his pants, too, and in a semicircle on the sand in front of him where it sprayed while his head shook from side to side in those final muscle spasms. Once again Steffensen looks up into the night sky.

  “It’s Roshaan,” he says laconically.

  One of the soldiers writes the name down in a notebook. “Roshaan?”

  Steffensen gives them the interpreter’s full name and position.

  “Does he have any family?”

  Steffensen names the wife and two children in Kabul.

  “It looks like a suicide.”

  Steffensen nods affirmatively. “Yes . . . so it would seem.”

  “Did he have any special reason? You worked closely with him. Did you observe anything? Mental imbalance? Threats?”

  What do I look like—his therapist? If that’s what you think, you’re mistaken. I wasn’t. I’m the guilty one here. These thoughts run through Steffensen’s mind, not because seeing Roshaan dead has given him a guilty conscience. He is overwhelmed, instead, by a feeling of inevitability, a dark, gloomy inevitability surrounding all of them.

  “He was fired today.”

  No sense denying it. There were loads of witnesses, and anyway it’s all too easy to make the connection. Someone is fired and then commits suicide a few hours later.

  “You mean that might have motivated this”—the soldier, nodding at the deceased, looks as if he’s searching for the right word—“this action?”

  “It certainly can’t be ruled out. There might be other reasons. He worked for me, but I wasn’t close to him.”

  He doesn’t mention Roshaan’s request for asylum, the interpreter’s embarrassing attempt at bribery, or the even more embarrassing accusation against Schrøder. Firing him was the conclusion to the whole mess, so mentioning that will have to be enough.

  The soldier closes his notebook as if to indicate he has no more questions.

  Steffensen’s gaze falls on what’s left of the fire that originally attracted the soldiers’ attention. It’s not any large bonfire, only a small, smoldering pile of ashes, on the edge of which are some half-burned pieces of paper that escaped the flames. Steffensen bends over and picks one up. His own headlamp is on, and when the light falls on the scrap of paper between his fingers, he has no doubts. He recognizes the paper’s strong texture and the green pattern on the border. He’s holding a dollar bill in his hand.

  The soldier with the notebook has come over and stares curiously at the scrap of paper.

  “He just burned an entire yea
r’s salary,” says Steffensen.

  Whenever Steffensen reflects on Roshaan’s suicide—which he does often—he is surprised, every time, by how difficult it is to picture the dead interpreter with the hanging lower lip and slashed throat. His strongest memory is of the smoldering pile of burned money: the wad of bills Roshaan wanted to give him and which he refused, the wad of bills that were supposed to pay for the interpreter’s life and, instead, came to symbolize its end.

  For Steffensen, the smoldering bundle of bills represents the moment that all hope dies for Roshaan. The slashed carotid artery does the same thing. So why is it the fire that he remembers? When Roshaan slashes his throat, it’s his own life he’s ending. When he sets fire to the money, he’s ending something else.

  But what? Are the burning bills Roshaan’s personal protest against corruption? Against the presence of foreign troops? Evidence of a self-reckoning? He sold himself for money, and what did he get for it? Only money. No loyalty, in any case.

  Steffensen doesn’t have any answers. Roshaan is dead, so there will never be any answers.

  That night he doesn’t sleep.

  18

  Steffensen has Amalie Strøm on the line. He’s the one who requested they speak.

  “This isn’t working,” he says.

  “Are they in a bad mood?” Her voice is unnecessarily sarcastic.

  “Yes,” he says. “The mood out here is really bad. The men are in a bad mood. I’m in a bad mood. We’re all in a bad mood. And you sure as hell know why. The situation is unbearable.”

  “And the interpreters are also in a bad mood?”

  “You could certainly say that.”

  Amalie Strøm is well informed—as she should be. Although he’s not sure whether he finds that reassuring or not. There’s a pause in the conversation. She uses them to intimidate him.

  “What should we do?” he asks.

  He knows the question is an admission of failure. She ended their last conversation by reminding him that he was in command. Now he’s once again exposing his irresolution.