My Afghan father was a Communist who supported the Soviet invasion, but then he lost faith and fled to Denmark. He was trained as a helicopter pilot and wound up being a taxi driver. Another disappointment. When my mother died, he went back. He didn’t settle in Afghanistan, though, but in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan Province in Pakistan, just across the border. He no longer calls himself an Afghan but a Pashtun after the tribes scattered throughout Afghanistan and Pakistan. They have their own language and culture, but they don’t have their own country. The old head of the Taliban lives in exile in Quetta.
I’ve never asked my father directly where his sympathies lie. I don’t need to.
I’ve never told him what I do.
There’s someone in Kandahar I need to meet.
3
The Afghans love flowers. They’re skillful gardeners. Not many people know that. The same Taliban fighter who has just planted a roadside bomb wears a rose behind one ear. To get to the arrival and departure halls in the airport in Kandahar, you walk through colonnades facing gardens full of palm trees and rose beds. I consider the Kandahar airport the most beautiful in the world. Kandahar may not be that beautiful, but its airport is.
I walk through the gardens. I only took hand luggage with me. I left my jeans, shirts, and jacket in Kabul. Now I’m wearing a shalwar kameez and dusty leather shoes with worn-down heels. I’ve let my beard grow since I left Copenhagen. I wash my hair with hand soap so it looks dull. I keep an arsenal of pills in my threadbare traveling case, including yogurt tablets to keep my stomach in balance and Imodium in case of an accident. My background may be Afghan, but my stomach is Danish. Even in the shower, I keep my mouth shut tight so I don’t catch anything.
I’m out of the airport. The change is rather abrupt. No more gardens—just reinforced walls and armed guards waving me on until I leave the protected area and find myself standing in the middle of the desert. There are a handful of parked cars but no taxis I can hop into. They’re all four-wheel-drive trucks surrounded by guards from private militias waiting around restlessly. They’re wearing military uniforms that are difficult to distinguish from those worn by the army and the police. Not that it matters. They’ll shoot just as often—with even greater accuracy. Their pay is better, too. They give me a quick glance and then look away. No eyes follow me. I’m satisfied. I’m not conspicuous in any way.
I walk two kilometers down the asphalt road and up to the heavily guarded entrance to the airport. American soldiers are everywhere. It’s a labyrinth of concrete walls meant to prevent suicide bombers from coming too close and to reduce the impact of any explosion. My driver is waiting for me on the other side.
He’s not the one I usually use. Zaeff cancelled on me and sent a cousin in his place, though he assured me that his cousin is just as reliable. I hope so. He’s younger, in any case. He doesn’t even have a beard, and his youthful cheeks are covered with bright-red pimples.
Once an armed security guard opens the metal gate to the hotel area, they ask the driver and me to step out of the car so we can be searched. They search my bag, too. There’s a lawn surrounded by rose beds behind the main building. Shady arcades covered in vine leaves encircle the garden. My room faces the garden. Until a year ago, there were rooms facing out of all sides of the building. Now the side facing the street consists of nothing but a pink wall, thanks to a car bomb that exploded just outside and destroyed an entire wing of the hotel. The hotel wasn’t the target—it was a Canadian military vehicle passing by.
The man in reception tells me the story. I can see from his smile that he’s telling me to calm my nerves. No one wants to do us any harm here at the hotel. Still, if we get blown to pieces, it’s just an accident. I can drink my green tea safely in the rose garden.
I inquire casually if the wall has been reinforced. It’s recently painted, he says, his smile widening another inch. “We do everything we can here to take care of our guests.”
I smile back. “Pink is my favorite color.”
When I tell the driver the address of the person I’m here to see, he takes a step back. “This is a very dangerous man,” he says, looking around as if someone might have heard him. I add a few more dollars to the wad of bills I’m handing him.
“You can let me out a couple hundred meters from his house,” I say.
Nodding, he accepts the money. After he gets behind the wheel, his stiff back tells me what he’s thinking. Every so often he takes his eyes off the road and glances at me in the rearview mirror. To him, dangerous men hang out together, so I must be dangerous, too. I miss Zaeff.
Driving west out of the city, we pass a police station with a guard tower and tall, unpainted cement walls crowned with barbed wire. The city’s prison sits a couple hundred meters behind the walls: the Taliban has managed to free hundreds of prisoners twice now. Directly across from the prison there’s one of these massive cliffs that tower over the landscape around Kandahar. From a terrace a hundred meters up on the dark-gray cliff, members of the Taliban shelled the guard tower before their comrades blew open the gate and then drove motorcycles right into the prison yard. Afterward, they increased the height of the walls by a few meters and reinforced the gate. Next time, the Taliban dug a tunnel beneath the road before emptying the prison.
I walk the final few hundred meters. After he drops me off, the driver makes a dangerous U-turn, almost colliding with an oncoming car, before laying on the horn and speeding back down the road. I didn’t arrange for him to pick me up.
I’m body-searched by a guard with an AK-47 hanging over his shoulder before I step into a grove of mulberry trees shading a well-tended lawn behind a tall wall. I feel like a landscape architect on an inspirational tour. Halim is waiting under one of the trees. There’s a pink birdcage with a yellow canary in it on a small table in front of him. His deaf-mute servant sits a little farther off on the grass.
Halim doesn’t stand until I’m right in front of him. He squeezes my hand and places his other hand familiarly on my shoulder. I know better than to return the gesture. I mustn’t contest the hierarchy his hand establishes between us. We are not equals.
He’s not tall but he’s stocky. He’s wearing a pearl-embroidered calotte on his head. His hair, like his beard, is graying, although it’s not thick enough to hide two symmetrical scars, one on each cheek. When he’s in a good mood, he points to the scars and tells the story. A bullet fired by the Taliban went right through his face.
Halim likes to brag about the many times he’s been shot. Seven of the bullets are still in his body, though he’s certain that someday they’ll all work themselves out. Why he thinks they’ll work their way out of his body instead of farther in is beyond me. I guess it’s the same optimism that keeps him alive.
As we sit facing each other, he points to the birdcage. “It lost its mate,” he says. “Now it’s all alone. We keep each other company.”
I don’t know anything about his private life. I would imagine he has four wives, so when he alludes to his loneliness, he’s not talking about them. It’s the war. He’s led many men, both in the war against the Russians and, after their withdrawal, in the civil war that followed. He’s fought the Taliban. He still has men beneath him, and I’m certain they’re involved in some operation on some front right this very minute. In Afghanistan there’s always a front, but he’s become too old for it. He has to let others do his fighting for him. The war was his mate—and now he’s like the lonely canary, trapped in a cage of aging.
I know the Americans come here, although he never misses an opportunity to bad-mouth them. Government people show up. Other warlords appear, each with their own agenda, just like him. I think the Taliban shows up every so often, too. Halim is a man who will speak to anyone, which is why I’m here. He knows who I am and what I want. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t waste his time on me.
“You’re here to talk about the ones who’ve disappeared,” he says.
4
The deaf-mute se
rvant stands up to pour green tea into a cup he places in front of me. In a little while, he’ll lead us inside to a table brimming with food.
“What do you know about them?”
“I know that they’re soldiers from the same country as you. I know that some of their friends were betrayed by one of their own and killed in an ambush. I know that they went out to find the man who betrayed them.”
“Do you know more?”
“They hit a roadside bomb, but no one was killed. They attacked a qalat in Sangin, because they thought he was there. But they didn’t find him. The trail stops there.”
“And you can’t tell me anything else?”
“Yes, I can tell you one thing, but I don’t know if there’s any connection.”
He looks up at his servant and makes a complex motion with the fingers on his right hand. They share their own private sign language. The servant nods.
“It’s time to eat.”
We sit facing each other on two comfy sofas. The food is laid out on a low table between us. It’s an unusual setup for an Afghan host; normally we’d be sitting on cushions, with a carpet on the floor functioning as the table. He fishes special tidbits up out of the bowl of lamb’s meat and places them on my plate. The servant pours a yogurt drink made with thin slices of cucumber into my glass. The yogurt has been mixed with water, which is why I’ve taken my own little drug store with me. My Danish stomach will soon pay the price for all this Afghan luxuriousness. If I want to get anything done in the coming days—instead of sitting bent over a hole in the floor—I need to put a plug in it.
Eventually our meandering conversation works its way from the side roads back to the main highway. “So, what is it you know about the vanished soldiers that you haven’t told me yet?” My patience will now be rewarded. He tested me and I’ve passed the test. Fortunately he didn’t ask me to come back the next day.
“I don’t know any more about the vanished soldiers than what I’ve already told you. I know something about the place where they disappeared.”
“Okay, where did they disappear?”
“Sorry.” He smiles apologetically, as if a higher power has ordered him to keep quiet.
“You don’t know or you’re not saying?”
The same smile. He’s playing with me. I’m not going to get anywhere here.
“Something happened while your countrymen were there.”
I lean forward. He lifts an index finger and looks at me as if he’s admonishing me to be patient. “You’ll never guess,” he says. He leans back on the sofa and laughs. For a moment I wonder if he’s been playing me for a fool all along. He must be able to see it on my face, because he leans forward again and suddenly becomes serious. “An American drone crashed.”
“You mean it was shot down? I would have known about that.”
He shakes his head. “It flew into the side of a mountain.”
“A glitch in the steering mechanism?”
“Yes, that’s what the Americans say. But why keep it a secret? No one believes that. Not even themselves. They moved in with a great show of force and cleared the whole area. You wouldn’t be able to find anything left of the wreckage today.”
He signals to the deaf-mute, who vanishes into the nearest room and returns with an object wrapped in white cloth. There isn’t much to see as he unpacks it and places it on the table in front of him. It’s a piece of metal with something that resembles a relay.
“I had it brought here today,” he says. “It came from the drone.”
“How do you know all this?” I don’t even attempt to hide my skepticism.
“People come here to ask my advice about things. But there’s something they don’t understand when they come here. Each of their questions also contains an answer. And the questions I can’t answer make me wiser. I think you came here to get information out of me—but I’m the one who has been getting information from you.”
“I haven’t told you anything at all.”
“No, you think you haven’t. But you have anyway.”
“And Schrøder? What do you know about him? Who is he working with?”
“I know that he’s a Dane, and thanks to you, I now know his name.”
“Is he a problem for you?”
“Not just him. Every single Dane here is our problem. We all thank Allah that there are only seven hundred and fifty of you. I dare not think about the misfortunes you might have caused if there were more.”
“We’ve shot a lot of Taliban fighters. I believe they are our common enemy.”
“I would estimate that only a fifth of those you’re so proud of killing were actually Taliban.”
“Are you saying the rest were all civilians?”
“I didn’t say that.”
We sit for a moment in silence. I enjoy our conversations. I make myself seem dumber than I am. That way, Halim feels superior and gets more communicative.
“This—what do you call him—Schroder?” His pronunciation, except for the Danish ø, which he turns into an o, is surprisingly accurate.
“Yes, what about him?”
“I believe he’s the most intelligent of all the Danes who’ve come out here.”
“He is a traitor against his own country. He has thirteen Danish lives on his conscience. Maybe even more.”
“Khaiber, you’d think you didn’t have any Afghan blood in your veins. You’re starting to sound like your loyal countrymen. I’m not talking about the man’s moral qualities. I don’t even know what a traitor is, but I know what maneuverability is. And this”—he hesitates a moment as if searching for the name—“Schroder. That’s what I mean by intelligence.”
“What does he want? What is it all about?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. Or more accurately—since you’ve become more Danish than is good for you—it’s probably best if I do the guessing.”
“And just what is the guess your Afghan brain makes you so qualified to make?”
“I think he’s doing an experiment. He’s searching for new alliances and new front lines. Also, I don’t think your missing countrymen are dead. They are alive. He’s using them.”
“Using them? How is he using them? We haven’t heard from him at all. He hasn’t made any demands.”
“Of course not. That’s not the way he’s using them. They’ll have to work for him.”
He places a new piece of lamb’s meat on my plate and signals the servant to refill my glass of watered-down yogurt. Halim knows more than he’s saying.
“Well, they have only one thought on their minds, only one goal. And that’s to kill him.”
I’m convinced about that last part. Officially, or as officially as it could be under the current circumstances, the soldiers headed out to take Schrøder prisoner. Everyone knows that if they get their hands on him, he’ll never come back alive. Of course the secret service wants to talk to him, but we know it will never happen. The soldiers have discovered the oldest impulse in history—revenge—and nothing can stop them if they get their hands on him. The great “if.” We agreed to place Schrøder on the list of killed soldiers. That’s the price to avoid the unprecedented scandal of a Dane taking the lives of thirteen of his countrymen.
“That’s true,” he says. “The only thing they’re thinking about is killing him.” He doesn’t say anything else. It’s as if he has handed me the first piece of a puzzle and I have to figure out the rest.
“Why is he using them?”
I’m being stubborn now and don’t care if I’m asking stupid questions.
“Because he can trust them.”
I feel hopelessly stupid. That’s Halim’s intention. He laughs at me, and then he feels sorry for me.
“They’re alone, surrounded by enemies on all sides. If they’re reasonable, they’ll realize that they can’t survive without him. So right now they’re in a tactical alliance with their own worst enemy. I’m sure Schroder enjoys that thought, although I’m not so sure that they d
o.”
I can tell Halim is enjoying himself. He could have come up with this game on his own—and maybe he has several times now. Maybe he sees himself in Schrøder.
“They know that, without him, they’re lost. He knows the playing field. He has led them into the very heart of a network of alliances whose existence you Danes, not to mention all of NATO, have no idea about. Your countrymen have no chance of escaping with their lives if they kill their protector. They’re in a codependent relationship with their abductor.”
“Honestly, do you think they have the same perspective on the situation that you have?”
“I can only guess. But since you ask me that way, I have to answer honestly. No, I don’t think that they do. They are young, and the young are driven by their feelings, not their intellect. So you’d better hurry up.”
I look at the piece of metal in front of him. “Are you willing to let me have this?”
“Of course not.”
“I don’t buy this story about the drone.”
He lights a cigarette and blows smoke out of his nostrils. “I don’t care whether you believe it or not. During the war in Iraq, insurgents were able to see what was happening on a drone’s control panel with the help of some hardware they could buy in any computer store for twenty-six dollars. They weren’t able to take over the controls with it, though. On the other hand, the Iranians succeeded with a Stealth aircraft. They landed it in one of their airports. And that was a couple of years ago. The world is always making progress.”
“Can I take a picture of that?” I take out my cell phone.
Halim makes a nonchalant motion with his hand. “Help yourself.”
“Any suggestions?”
“About Iran and the drone?” He shakes his head. “No, but Afghanistan has other neighbors who are interested in the war’s outcome.”
“China?”
“You already know that China discovered the whole idea of cyber war. So why not?”
The First Stone Page 34