31
Lukas Møller has relinquished ownership of his brain and allowed some unknown renters to come and go as they please. From Jim—or was it Tim?—in any case a soldier with an Asian face, he’s procured a clump of hash. Tim—or was it Jim?—thinks he’s going to smoke it, but Møller eats it instead. “It’s the hash eaters’ time,” he mumbles to himself as he ingests the foul-tasting substance. He’s sitting in one of the guard towers, where it’s shady. He ignores the two guards—and after trying unsuccessfully to start a conversation, they’re ignoring him, too.
Viktor crawls up into the tower and sits down next to him. They sit for a while in silence. Møller is staring blankly at the tree-covered mountain rising on the valley’s other side.
“Chaplain, I’m worried about you.” Viktor lays a hand on the chaplain’s shoulder. Møller doesn’t react. “We need you.”
“Stop calling me ‘Chaplain.’ You’re a bunch of fucking Muslims.” Møller still isn’t looking at Viktor. His speech is slurred, as if it’s all completely irrelevant. “Beat it!”
“You know that’s total bullshit.” At this moment, Viktor isn’t a sergeant; he’s a social worker addressing a difficult child who needs tolerance and patience.
Møller smacks the side of his own head as if to swat an annoying fly.
Viktor grabs his wrist. “Chaplain,” he says, “you need to pull it together.” Møller tries to wrench his arm loose, but there’s no strength in the attempt, and Viktor maintains his grip.
“I know what’s bothering you. God and all that stuff. You did it for us. Those words don’t mean anything to the rest of us, but they do for you. You care about your job, so you’re upset. That’s why you’re eating hash—and that can be cool sometimes. But I don’t think it suits you. The others feel the same way.”
Viktor notices that Møller’s gaze has moved from the distant mountainside down to the gravel path meandering up to the base. He follows the chaplain’s eyes. A burka-clad figure is approaching. The guards have already aimed their 12.7s and shouted a warning. Anyone could be hiding beneath it. A thin hand pushes back the front of the robe, revealing a woman’s face.
“Fuck!” shouts Viktor. “It’s Sara!”
One of the guards spins around. “You know her?”
Viktor nods emphatically, forgetting all about the chaplain and his mission. This is unbelievable! He saw Sara taken down by a bullet—and now she’s here again! Resurrected from the dead, or whatever she is, in this country where even the laws of nature seem suspended.
A moment later a welcome committee is standing in front of the armored gate. Jim and Tom from DarkSky have released the safety catch on their rifles. They insist that Sara remove her burka and raise her hands in the air, so she can be searched. Sara obeys and places the burka in a pile on the dusty ground. She stands there, emaciated and defenseless, her bony arms exposed; as she lifts her arms in the air, the white sleeves roll down.
Hannah frisks her. “Have you come for revenge on your son?” she asks. “Because if that’s the case, you’re not coming in.”
“No,” answers Sara laconically, and for some reason Hannah believes her.
Hannah has mixed feelings about Sara. She regrets striking her in the bazaar. She hit the wrong person—and she knows it. Sara kept her part of the bargain and led them to Schrøder. It was their own fault the mission ended in catastrophe. Still, the sense that Sara’s role is unclear haunts them all, although they can’t quite put their finger on anything specific.
There’s one thing Hannah is unequivocal about: Sara is not allowed anywhere near Zuy. She’s done enough harm to him already. In despair, the child has repaid evil with evil, and Hannah has no doubt which of the two is guilty.
“Stay away from Zuy,” she says.
Sara nods. She exudes humility. Hannah can’t figure out how she managed to rise from the dead or why she came searching for them again.
“She can clean the johns,” says Tom. “She’s no good for anything else.” Hannah doesn’t like the contempt in his eyes. They aren’t johns in the camp—they’re chemicals toilets. And this isn’t about the toilets anyway; it’s about Sara’s gaunt body, which they’ve been boldly staring at. Hannah’s had to deal with that, too. She turns to the two men. “She understands English,” she says, “and you can clean your own damn toilets!”
Simon asks permission to examine Sara. It’s not concern but a medic’s professionalism. He stares appreciatively at the bandages. “You’ve been in skillful hands,” he says.
Sara nods. “He’s coming soon.”
“Who?” Simon asks. “What are you taking about?”
Sara doesn’t respond.
In the guard tower, Møller is still staring at the mountainside, as if he’s waiting for someone else.
32
The door is always closed to a mud structure in one corner of the base. Now and then, Jim and Tom enter through the door, Jim carrying a tray full of bowls. Tom, who seems to be there for protection, has a pistol in one hand and a watchful expression on his face. He closes the door carefully behind them. A little later, they both come out again, and the tray is empty. At other times, usually late afternoon or early evening, three men walk in together, all of them armed. When they come back out, they’re laughing and slapping each other on the shoulder.
“Are you keeping prisoners?” asks Steffensen.
Mr. Timothy shakes his head. “You know as well as I do that we aren’t authorized to take prisoners. That’s the job of the Afghan authorities. No, we have . . . guests.”
“Then why don’t they come out? Why are they sitting there locked up as if they’re prisoners? Who are they?”
“You’re our guests—and you can’t come or go as you please. You know you can’t do that in a war zone.”
Hannah can’t sleep at night, because Sara keeps her awake with her monotonous mumbling. A hole has opened inside her since her son shot her, and the once-nailed-shut coffin of her darkened mind has opened. The toneless sound of her constant recitation gives Hannah the uncomfortable feeling of watching an endless procession of dead and mutilated people staggering among the soldiers’ cots. Sara’s memories are like an underground mausoleum filled with rotting human remains. Yet, there was a beginning, and in one way, the most terrible kind: a safe childhood in a well-educated middle-class family with an encouraging, caring father, followed by medical studies at Kabul’s university and an engagement to a young doctor. Then the Russians left the country, and civil war broke out in Kabul. Within a few years, the city was leveled by rocket attacks from the surrounding hills and house-to-house fighting. Sara’s father was found beheaded, with his legs sawed off, and her fiancé gunned down at a random checkpoint. With no men to protect her, she wound up with a granduncle who married her off as payment on a bottomless debt. From there, she fell into the darkest of all wells—life as the third or fourth wife in some distant province’s rural district, where she was reduced to working like a slave and serving as a baby factory. In a protest that seemed to come directly from her womb, she bore one stillborn or short-lived baby after another, until Zuy poked his head out into the light, only to be exposed to his now-warped mother’s attempt to maim him fatally.
Each new catastrophe Sara recounts tugs at Hannah’s heart. Sara has always reminded her of her mother, but now she realizes that she never tried to understand the reasons for her mother’s drinking. What was her mother trying to escape? The prerequisite for Hannah’s survival was always that she neither identified with nor felt any sympathy for her mother. She sensed that instinctively. Lying next to Sara, she suddenly feels defenseless.
Sara finally quiets down. Hannah really wants to fall asleep, but she can’t. She just keeps picturing her mother.
Suddenly she hears a sound coming from inside the building housing DarkSky’s so-called guests. It sounds like someone crying. Not a grown man’s crying but a child’s. Or maybe a young woman’s. A young woman just like me, she thinks. The
crying stops. She gets up and walks out into the courtyard. The silence is as deep as the starry sky above her, which seems to be its source. She can hear a generator running somewhere in the camp, but its motor isn’t noisy; instead, it sounds as if it’s apologizing for its presence in the pervasive silence.
A woman is singing. It’s the first time Hannah has heard singing in Afghanistan. The voice is thin and tentative, as if at any moment it will lose faith in its own power and disappear. But it continues.
Hannah walks back to the tent and her cot. The voice is still singing. Sara isn’t on her cot. She’s dressed in the coarse, dirty robe she always has on. They both walk back to the courtyard.
“Who could that be?”
Sara places a finger on her lips and creeps closer to the house with the singing. She turns around toward Hannah. “It is Malalai’s poem,” she says.
“Who’s Malalai?”
“Over a hundred years ago, the Afghans were about to lose a battle against the British. Then Malalai came forth and cheered them on. ‘Young love, if you do not fall in the battle of Maiwand, by God, someone is saving you as a symbol of shame!’ Those were Malalai’s words. She tore off her veil and used it as a banner.”
Sara places her ear against the door.
“With a drop of my sweetheart’s blood,
Shed in defense of Motherland,
Will I put a beauty spot on my forehead,
Such as would put to shame the rose in the garden.”
She looks at Sara. “What’s going on in there?”
Several voices have joined in; it’s not a powerful choir but whispering in the night, like children keeping the darkness at bay with the sound of their own voices.
“Who are you?” Sara asks in Pashto through the door.
Silence on the other side. Hannah knocks softly and then grabs the handle. The door is locked. Someone moans and then there’s silence again.
“This isn’t good.” Hannah looks at Sara. “Tell them we’re here to help them.”
A voice speaks behind the door. “Is that a sister speaking?”
“Yes, we are women,” says Sara.
“And you want to help us?”
“Yes, we will get you out of there.” Sara turns to Hannah. “You realize what is going on here, don’t you?”
Nodding, Hannah bites her lower lip. Her face is filled with fury.
There’s silence behind the door again, and then they hear the same voices.
Sara translates: “If you want to help us, kill us.”
“Hey! Get back to your tent!”
They turn around. One of DarkSky’s men—Stan with the flat nose and the Russian accent—is standing behind them. He must have heard them or come down from the guard tower to check on things.
“What’s going on? Why are these women locked up in here?” Hannah glowers at him.
Stan stares intensely at Hannah—and he’s not looking at her face. She sleeps in a sleeveless T-shirt that hangs loosely off her shoulders, and she isn’t wearing a bra.
“Nothing that involves you women. Unless you’d like to join in.”
He winks at Hannah, and in his eyes she sees the same blend of contempt and lechery she can hear in his voice.
Stan doesn’t have time to react before Hannah takes a step forward and knees him in the groin. He doubles over with a groan, only to encounter her knee again as she grabs his bald head and forces his face forward. It makes an ugly sound as his nose slams into her kneecap. Rolling onto the ground, he groans as if it’s coming from the depths of his battered balls.
Someone calls from one of the guard towers. “Stan, what’s going on down there?”
Hannah pulls Sara away. “Come here!” She races for the tent, where she grabs her weapon and with a shout awakens the others. They jump out of bed at the sound of the safety being released on a rifle.
Steffensen and Mr. Timothy have also been roused, and the two leaders are standing face-to-face in the courtyard, which is now full of armed men. Although none of them point their loaded weapons at each other, the mood is clearly tense. Stan is on his knees, clutching his crotch, while blood from his broken nose drips onto the ground. Hannah is the only one pointing her rifle.
“Some women are locked inside that house there. The assholes are raping them.”
“Let’s all just calm down now,” says Mr. Timothy.
“Calm down,” repeats Steffensen, speaking English to show he agrees.
“What exactly happened here?” Mr. Timothy walks over to the still-doubled-over Stan. “You let a girl beat you up?” His voice is full of contempt. “Then you got what you deserved.” He turns around to Hannah and gives her a thumbs-up. “Nice work! We could use more like you.”
Several of the men laugh, but Hannah isn’t smiling. “The key,” she says.
Mr. Timothy barks an order. Jim, who brings the prisoners food every day, fishes a key out of his pocket. He’s about to walk over to the house when Hannah stops him. “Give me the key,” she says, waving Sara over. A moment later they vanish inside the door, which Hannah leaves open behind her. After a little while, she appears again in the doorway. “I’m on watch here now,” she says in English. “And if anyone wants to come for a visit, they’ll be asking for a new set of balls this Christmas!” She directs her gaze at the men from Third Platoon, who are still standing together. “Do you understand what’s going on?” she asks in Danish. “There are three young women, about sixteen years old! These bastards—” Her voice breaks. “I won’t stay here another day!” Her eyes are all red in the middle of the still-greenish swelling.
Viktor stands next to her. “I’ll keep watch with you.”
Steffensen has walked over to Mr. Timothy. He lowers his voice. “We need to talk.”
“Of course! Of course! Let’s go into my office.”
Mr. Timothy opens the door to a container and turns on the neon lights. The office resembles Steffensen’s at Camp Price. There’s something calming about it, although he doesn’t see any family pictures on the desk.
They sit facing each other. “I understand from one of my soldiers that you’re keeping a group of women locked up. You call them guests. I would describe that as misinformation. I would like an explanation. What is their status? Are they prisoners? Hostages? It’s definitely against all rules. We can’t detain Afghan civilians, unless they’re suspected of helping insurgents. And even then, we have to hand them over to the Afghan army.”
“We improvise a little here.”
“It’s my impression that the women are being exploited sexually.”
“That depends on how you look at it.” Mr. Timothy is clearly losing interest in the conversation.
“Let me just say it—I find this totally unacceptable. Neither I nor my people can tolerate it.”
“You’re here under our conditions, so you’ll have to live with it. And let’s speak man-to-man. You’ve had to accept much worse things than this. We all have. All the time. We can’t just come here and change an entire country and its culture.”
“Worse? What do you mean?” Steffensen asks.
“You’ve worked with the Afghan police, haven’t you? What about those tea boys, as they call them, those underage servers they use for sex? We all know it—but do we do anything about it? No, we turn our heads the other way. It’s their culture, we say, with a respect we don’t show much of on a daily basis. But the women? They’ve been shuffling around in those damn burkas ever since the Prophet was in diapers, but suddenly it’s not okay anymore. Now they have to take off those rags, no matter what. Show us your tits, girls! We’re ready to blow the country sky high if we spot so much as the hem of a burka. For some strange reason, that’s not part of the Afghans’ culture. It’s the repression of women, a bad habit they need to break, and it can’t happen soon enough. But pedophilia? That’s totally fine. We share barracks with these pedophiles. We share baths and toilets with them—we go on patrol with them. We praise them just for not plund
ering their own people. And then, when the locals—surprise! surprise!—aren’t thrilled with these so-called law-enforcement officers whose preferred leisure activity is plowing their underage sons, we don’t get it. And now my men are having a little fun with some local gals, but that’s wrong? Why not look on the bright side? We’re giving them a basic course in Western civilization. In our hands, they’re taking the first step toward sexual liberation. And trust me—we return them in the same condition we found them in.”
“The same condition?”
“Yes, damn it. They’re still virgins. We only fuck them in the ass.”
Mr. Timothy laughs loud and hard, but then he returns to his more officious tone. “Tomorrow we’ll go on patrol. There’s some business we need to take care of down in the valley. You’re all coming along. We can leave your chaplain here to watch the girls. I guarantee my men won’t touch them again. Your female soldier can sleep with them tonight.”
“They can’t stay here,” says Steffensen.
“Give us a couple days and we’ll straighten it out.” Mr. Timothy gives Steffensen an appraising look and then smiles. “We have our differences,” he says. “You’re probably more politically correct than we are. And there’s room for that, too. The most important thing is that we’re all able to work together.”
Standing up, he reaches out his hand.
33
I decide to buy a Honda CD175, dented and scratched, with rust spots all over its red and black paint. I have no idea how long it will last before it falls apart beneath me. As I bend over to run an evaluative finger along the worn-out drivechain, the salesman assures me that it will last for the rest of my life.
“Then I have a short life ahead of me,” I respond.
We smile at each other. I manage to haggle the price down from twenty thousand afghanis to seven thousand.
“Here’s to a short life,” he says when we finally agree. I take it from this not particularly optimistic prophecy that the motorcycle he just sold me is a piece of crap.
The First Stone Page 46