The First Stone

by Carsten Jensen

  A figure on the ground in front of her reaches for his weapon. Hannah runs full force into him and smashes her knee against his face. Then she moves on. With one foot forward, so she can get a foothold, she jumps onto the gate. She did it! There are no sharp edges cutting into her palms, no nails piercing her hands. She swings one leg over and for a moment straddles the top edge of the gate. She lands heavily, but—about to lose her balance—she leans up against the gate, which protects her from the next shock wave. Stones and gravel fall all over the street in front of her. Sticky drops splatter in her face as something heavy slams to the ground a few meters away. She can see that it’s a torn-off leg. There are dark spots all over the gravel. She runs. She doesn’t know if the qalat where she just left her comrades has taken a direct hit. She’s not thinking. Her legs are thinking for her.

  She’s standing in the square where the conversions occurred. The stage is deserted and the area around it is empty, too. Hannah, who suddenly finds the whole thing comic, can hear herself laughing out loud in the middle of the empty square.

  Her thoughts race in complicated patterns, as if she has acquired a surprising grasp of what she’s thinking, although she can’t account for it. Nothing and everything merge into one, making her feel omniscient. Right now she’s seeing the universe in its all-encompassing, wonderfully mysterious, and eternally expanding oneness. The exposed world whispers its secrets to her and her alone.

  She no longer feels rushed. Surrounded by walls on all sides, she walks around the deserted streets. A sound rises up from the steep street—a piercing yell.

  “Marg pa Āmrikā!”

  A large crowd is moving toward her.

  “Marg pa Āmrikā!” yells Hannah in hypnotic imitation.

  She stands there in her man’s uniform, covered in a thick layer of gray dust, her discolored face making her unrecognizable, even as a woman. She looks like a petrified monument to some person or piece of land long gone. The throng swarms around her, sweeping her into their forward-streaming bodies; she feels both swallowed up by the crowd and as if she were their leader.

  “Marg pa Āmrikā! Marg pa Āmrikā!”

  She doesn’t associate anything with the words, but she likes the sound of them and raises her voice louder than the others. They move faster and faster, new people joining them from every street and square they cross. Eventually they stop in front of a mountain of rubble. Thick smoke rises from it, resting symbolically over the area.

  Indefinite forms covered by loose-fitting white shrouds are being carried out of the piles of ruins. Dark stains—probably blood—reveal that something drastic has happened. The word “death” hovers at the edge of Hannah’s consciousness, but she’s in no condition to make any sense out of that word. Her current exhilarated state is unaffected by the sight of the shrouded bodies or the red color spreading across the white cloth. There’s richness in the sights before her; she could stand here forever.

  The remains of what were once bodies are laid on roughly constructed stretchers with beds of braided rope. Those waiting lift the stretchers up onto their shoulders. They move through the streets in close procession. Once again Hannah lets the rhythmic yelling carry her away as she mimics the myriad voices surrounding her. She is beyond all rational thought, ready to be swallowed into any community that might form around her.

  She walks around, at first yelling enthusiastically in chorus, then alone, until she’s suddenly seized by exhaustion. Sitting down in one of the open squares, she hides her face in her hands.

  The ecstasy slowly dissipates, and she starts to feel as if thick clouds are forming overhead. She’s about to land, not as a pilot after a successful flight but as a diver who, weighed down by the lead weights in his belt, is sinking deeper and deeper into an opaque sea, until she’s at the bottom of a watery grave known as reality.

  She has been beyond all words. Now they’ve returned as if she’s wearing an invisible telecommunication helmet and an interpreter is robbing the world of all its joyful meaninglessness. In endless succession, objects reacquire the names torn from them in ecstasy’s unguarded moment. She feels as if she has been exiled from the deep sky above her and bound in chains on the ground. The world returns to its old, familiar meanings, and she’s locked back into Hannah. Hannah, who has undergone a heart transplant but never got a new heart to replace the old one.

  She hasn’t smoked, so the hash must have been in the meal they ate right before the missiles barreled into the qalat next to them. She recalls Schrøder’s words: “It’s hash brownie time.” At the time she didn’t understand what he meant. And she still doesn’t. What was the point? And what about the others? Are they all dead now? She dashed off on a crazy escape that might have saved her life—but now what?

  A high-flying drone must have made the attack. Was Steffensen right, after all, and Schrøder wrong? The hunt for Schrøder succeeded, but with one crucial oversight. Hasn’t anybody thought about freeing them? Will their death be just an unintended consequence, a fucking minor event in the pursuit of a larger goal?

  Could Schrøder have been killed in the attack—and her comrades along with him? Is she the last survivor?

  At that moment she feels a hand on her shoulder.

  She turns around and stares into a smiling blond-bearded face. “Nice to see you,” says Schrøder.

  17

  Wherever I go, I’m a stranger, so the first few days always make me nervous. Will someone view my presence as suspicious? Still, this country is full of people rebelling or traveling for unknown purposes. We’re all nomads in a land at war.

  Two days ago, I left Camp Price. I’ve ridden buses and gotten lifts from truck drivers. Both the police and the Taliban have stopped me at checkpoints, and I’ve shown them my papers and my cell phone. The Taliban has let me go. I’ve been spared the sight of any more random passengers executed on the roadside. Young policemen, high on hash, have shoved me around and accepted the handful of bills I’ve offered them.

  Seen from the outside, you’d think that Afghanistan is a country held together by unbreakable traditions. From the inside, however, you can tell that there’s barely anything left holding the country together. The Afghans are restless; it’s the restlessness of the survivor searching for a way out after far too many bonds have been broken. So many people wander along the roads, so many ride the buses—and observing them, I get the impression that they’re people going around and around in circles, searching for something lost.

  Along the way, I learn things about the squad of Danes I’m tracking. I first overhear bits of the story on a bus, and then a truck driver repeats it. Some foreign soldiers have attacked a qalat, though that’s not why they’re telling the story—attacks on qalats occur frequently. The aftermath makes the story worth repeating. As they retreated, the soldiers used three women as shields. They took the women with them, and the women have never been seen again.

  If it’s the Danes, I can probably assume they’re searching for Schrøder. I don’t know where they got the tip that led them to the qalat. Were they right on his heels? That seems unlikely. But then who told them he was going to be at that location?

  I have trouble believing the story. On one hand, anything’s possible. I’m told that the women were abducted in Sangin, so I take the bus to Sangin. I can’t ask anything too specific or it will arouse suspicion, but I don’t even need to ask. The local bazaar is rife with rumors, and the stories I hear all sound the same, except for a few variations on the women’s destiny after the abduction.

  According to one version, the women are raped. The soldiers drag them off and abuse them. In another version, the soldiers murder the women as soon as they’re no longer needed as shields.

  While I don’t believe everything I hear, the stories possess some kernel of truth. Some soldiers have attacked a qalat, but something in their behavior—and in the fact that they received no air support—told the Afghans that they weren’t like other soldiers. I can’t rule out tha
t my countrymen might have taken three women as hostages. Maybe their backs were against the wall, so they grabbed any means possible, even one we normally condemn as proof of our enemy’s ruthlessness: the use of human shields.

  The women didn’t dare to return home because of the fate awaiting them. Even the most infamous patriarch is always ready to protect his women, if for no other reason because they’re his property and you guard your property. But these women? They’re damaged goods in the eyes of everyone. They have no value to anyone, and I fear they’re on their way to that last stop for all human garbage, the waste dump known as death.

  For fuck’s sake, boys, what are you doing? Come home and abandon all this revenge bullshit.

  That’s what I feel like yelling at them.

  But first I have to find them.

  That is, if they haven’t also ended up in the back of death’s garbage truck.

  The Brits lost more than a hundred men in Sangin. The American Marines also suffered great losses here. The Brits left the city center bombed out, while the Americans bulldozed key parts of it to establish secure sight lines. Half of Sangin is a labyrinth, with the usual high walls on all sides, and the other half is a ruin with surprisingly large open areas without a trace of any homes. The war has created its own architecture. The Americans planted trees and set up benches to fill the void—but Afghans don’t sit on the benches. They prefer to squat on the ground.

  I spend the night at an inn, lying on a thin mattress on the floor of a cell-like room with dirty white walls, and then hang out in the bazaar. It’s my turn to tell the story, so I drop a hint here and there. There’s always somebody who wants to listen. I join a group of men in a teahouse, where I’m surrounded by bowls filled with raisins, pistachio nuts, and sunflower seeds. I tell my story as I drink green tea.

  I also know about these men who struck like lightning in a qalat in Sangin, I say. The lightning also struck in Maiwand, where I come from, and it was my house they hit. “Maybe you’ve heard about it,” I say. They stare at me in anticipation. “They didn’t take any women as hostages—instead they killed them.” Now I have their attention. “My two wives . . . my three daughters . . .”

  Pausing, I sigh deeply and cover my eyes as if I’ve seen something I never want to see again.

  “. . . and my sons.” I look right at my audience and strengthen my voice so they can sense the rage within me. “I’ve come to seek revenge. Vengeance is all I have left.”

  “We will grieve with you,” says one of them, an older man with a henna-colored beard and a silvery turban wrapped around his graying hair. The others nod, mumbling their sympathy.

  “But how do you know it was the same soldiers?” The older one looks at me. “The ferengi commit their crimes everywhere.”

  “Their uniforms were different than the Americans—that’s how I know they have to be the same.”

  The old man nods. “We believe they are Americans, but not dressed in the same way. They had a symbol on their shoulder. Red and white. But a different pattern than the Americans. We don’t know what it means.”

  I nod back. Now I’m sure. “Exactly,” I say eagerly. “Were you there, too?”

  He shakes his head. “I live in the same part of the city. I know the people in that qalat. I can show you where they live, but you cannot visit them. They are grieving.”

  I’m happy I won’t have to set foot inside the ambushed qalat. There’ll be all these hardened faces, turned away. We might believe that the Afghans get over the death of others easily because there’s so much of it. They don’t. You can see it in their faces. Sorrow is part of the Afghans’ physiognomy.

  “Could you possibly arrange a meeting with one of them?”

  He nods again. “You are my guest.” He tells me his name: Hamidullah.

  I thank him. I didn’t leave anything at the hostel; my bag’s at my feet and all my things are in it. That way no one can rummage through it. You never know what might make others suspicious.

  As we stroll through the city, Hamidullah looks at me. “Do you have a weapon?” he asks.

  There are loads of weapons in his home. Hamidullah offers me a Kalashnikov, as if his magnanimity includes the house’s arsenal. I weigh the rifle in my hand. I’ve held an AK-47 before but never tried to shoot one. I shake my head and say no, thank you. He gives me a long look. I can’t figure out what he’s thinking.

  Later I meet two men from the qalat my countrymen attacked. They console me for my loss, and I console them. We’ve established a bond between us. They had seven killed and a similar number wounded. A male family member, Massoud, has vanished without a trace. And then there are the three women. The infidels came without warning. The men have no idea what they wanted. The attack has never been reported anywhere. A surviving family head went directly to the local American headquarters, where they denied any knowledge of the matter. That confirms my impression that many civilian losses never appear in any official statistics.

  “Do you think they were searching for someone?” I ask.

  “No,” replies one of them, a lanky man with sunken cheeks half hidden beneath a thin beard, and striking green eyes. “They kill for no reason. They come and go. We mean nothing to them.”

  I can’t tell if he’s lying. Had Schrøder ever been in that qalat? And if he had, what was he after? Right now he’s not the one I’m tracking. His vanished pursuers have left behind a much clearer trail, and my only hope is that sooner or later they’ll lead me to him. Or, at the very least, that I’ll reach the place where they suddenly disappear into thin air. And that’s where Schrøder is.

  “Do you have any idea where they headed?”

  The man with the green eyes shakes his head. “If we did, we’d be there now.”

  We walk by the qalat where the attack occurred. The settlement on the outskirts of Sangin is so sparse that you can’t really talk about streets. We look out across the landscape, which consists of small, thicket-covered hillsides, no more than five meters high yet high enough to hide an advance. The highway must be out there somewhere. They must have stopped there and parked their APCs before moving on foot toward the qalat. But who knew the way? Who led them to this specific qalat?

  They can’t possibly have attacked it by accident. They must have had intelligence they considered reliable—or at least somewhat reliable.

  I look at my host. “They came from that direction,” he says, pointing.

  I do something impulsive. “I think I’ll look around a little.”

  “Would you like some company?”

  I shake my head. Hamidullah raises his hand goodbye. “Be back before dark,” he says.

  Still holding my bag, I’m seized by a sudden premonition: I’ll never spend the night in his house.

  18

  Turning my back on Sangin’s walls, I walk out into the desert, where I enter a rocky area. The highway is elevated above the rest of the terrain. I look for a straight line cutting through the landscape and watch a car pass in the distance. As I expected, there isn’t much traffic.

  It occurs to me that I have no idea what I’m looking for. Tire tracks in the sand? How will that help me? They’ll disappear as soon as they reach the highway. I’m not some scout tracking his enemy through the woods with the help of a broken twig and a stepped-on blade of grass. I have nothing to pursue here. I need to go back to where there are people.

  That’s when I spot her, squatting in the grass. She has thrown back her burka, revealing a dark, gaunt face with deep-set eyes. A lock of hair, stiff with dust and dirt, hangs down on her forehead and over one cheek. She pushes it back when she sees me. Although her forehead and cheeks are covered in a layer of gray dust, her dark eyes are glowing.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” says the woman.

  “What’s your name?” I have to say something.

  “Sara.” Her voice is flat, as if it’s a worthless piece of information. “They’re lying here.” She points at three crooked rocks
sticking up out of the sand. “I’ve buried them.” I look at her hands. They’re full of scrapes, with dirt beneath her broken nails. Has she really clawed into the ground until there were three graves?

  “Were they the women the soldiers used as a shield?”

  She nods.

  “Did the soldiers kill them?”

  She shakes her head and then makes a fist, hammering it into her chest. “They killed themselves.”

  I can picture it—a knife to the heart. Three knives in three hearts. And I ask my countrymen: What have you done?

  “I am the one who led the soldiers here,” she says. “They were searching for a man.”

  “Who?”

  “The same one you are searching for.”

  I try to hide my surprise. “Describe him.”

  “He was a soldier once. But no more. He has killed many of his own people.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I will lead you to him.”

  She stands up as if we need to get going. She winces and holds her right side as if she’s in pain.

  “Are you hurt?” I ask.

  “I’ve been shot,” she says matter-of-factly.

  “The soldiers?”

  “No. My son.”

  She says it as if it’s something you’d say every day. Looking at her gaunt, dirty face and deep-set eyes, I wonder if maybe she isn’t crazy. Can she really lead me to Schrøder?

  From now on, maybe I need to follow my instincts. It’s the rational Dane in me I need to silence. I know very little about this country, but I know enough to realize that the trains of thought I usually follow are useless here. I have to surrender and let myself be carried off by the stream. Maybe that’s why I chose to walk into the desert where this woman was waiting for me. I surrendered.

  “But if you knew that Schrøder was here, why didn’t his pursuers find him? I’ve spoken to the people from the qalat they attacked. They say they’ve never heard of him.”

  “Maybe they’re lying. Maybe I was wrong,” she says and looks me in the eye. “But I found him eventually. The soldiers met him.”