We cross the field with the villagers. Viktor, Gustav, Sebastian, and Mathias carry the fallen Dane in a stretcher. We still haven’t decided where to bury him. Since the chaplain is back at DarkSky’s camp, the matter will have to be postponed.
They’ve arranged the murdered girls in one long row. For a moment the soldiers, holding their helmets, stand with their heads bowed. Several cry openly. They’re crying about many things, I think. They’ve lost one of their own. Young women, covered in blood-soaked burkas, are lying on the ground. The unavoidable brutality of war has grabbed hold of them in a way it never would have had they stayed back at Camp Price. And then there’s the uncertainty about their destiny, which is my uncertainty, too. How much will we have to sacrifice to get back home?
Maybe they’re also crying for the murdered mercenaries from DarkSky, the men they shared a base with for a few days. If Schrøder were here, he’d insist that the first part of his experiment has succeeded. He wanted them to kill someone they knew—and that’s exactly what they’ve done. Not some faceless, demonized, inhuman enemy but guys they’ve shared a few beers with. Also, the image of mutilating all those dead bodies with their knives will remain etched in their minds forever. They knew so little about life’s darker corners when they enlisted to see what war was all about—and now they know. War is a slaughterhouse where no one, not even the butcher’s apprentice, is spared.
It had to be done, and now we’ve done it. It’s over.
36
If Mr. Timothy and his people had radio contact with the men at the base before they were wiped out, a hostage situation might be waiting for us. Or we’ll find new bodies: the locked-up women and the chaplain back at camp.
I ask Steffensen about the banner I saw waving from one of the guard towers, but he looks confused.
Walking toward the Humvees, we pass more bodies. It must be members of the militia. Some have been gunned down in an ambush; others must have stepped on mines. The force has torn one of them in half, his body and legs lying a dozen meters from each other. A wounded man on the ground lets out a protracted wail. One of the locals walks over and fires his Kalashnikov.
As we leave the locals, they bow their heads like the faithful at a shrine. I can see the confusion on the soldiers’ faces; they need to adapt to their new status. Maybe they never will, but their survival depends on it.
We head toward DarkSky’s base.
Beyond good and evil, I think, as the Humvees creep up the unexpectedly steep road. That’s where we are now.
When the fort finally rises before us, after yet another hairpin curve, I see the banner waving from one of the guard towers. It’s not a company flag. It’s a large dove-blue piece of clothing flapping slowly in the wind. I stare at it again. Is it possible . . . Yes, it’s definitely a burka.
The gate is wide open. I know what’s waiting inside. The remaining mercenaries from DarkSky have either hit the road and killed the others before they left or taken them with them. At least now we don’t have to shoot and blast our way into the base.
Then I see them. Four iron pipes sticking up out of the ground, two on each side of the gate. A bald head with upturned eyes and an open mouth with white, blood-smeared teeth sits on top of each pipe. They remind me of predators flashing their teeth in warning while they’re eating. The edges of their necks are frayed; the heads weren’t separated from their bodies with one clean chop.
Something is moving in the middle of the gate. A burka-clad figure steps forward as if to welcome us. The four dismembered heads resemble decorations in a macabre set built to make the woman’s appearance seem more dramatic.
I’m sitting in the passenger seat next to the driver in the leading Humvee. Although no one says anything, Viktor stops the vehicle as if he’s so overwhelmed by the sight that he needs time to digest it.
The woman grabs the hem of her burka and slowly pulls it back to reveal her face. It’s Sara.
Will I ever be free of this witch?
I hop out of the Humvee and walk over to her. Viktor remains seated, as do the others. I have some idea what they’re thinking right now. They knew the soldiers whose chopped-off heads are sitting on the end of iron pipes. They can probably add a name to each of them. And now here’s their old friend Sara, back from the dead.
“Sara,” I say, standing across from her. “Are you behind all this?”
She looks at me with that expression I’ve never learned to read. “Khaiber,” she says. “I knew we would meet again. No, I am not behind any of this. Not on my own, in any case.”
“What happened?” As I say it, I realize it’s a foolish question. As always, Sara will give me some hazy, half-prophetic answer that doesn’t tell me a thing.
Turning around, I wave the four Humvees in and then walk through the gate. The four headless bodies are lying on the ground, none of them still wearing a flak jacket or uniform. On one of them, the pants have been pulled down to the ankles, revealing a muscular ass. A chubby guy with disheveled red-blond hair in a pink T-shirt is sitting on a chair and staring with a lost expression.
The Humvees drive into the courtyard. The men hop out, slamming the doors behind them. The chubby guy in the pink T-shirt starts as if suddenly realizing he’s no longer alone with four headless bodies. I can’t see any relief in his face—in fact, he pulls his arms into his body protectively as if expecting a blow or maybe a fatal shot. I look back at the soldiers, none of whom has noticed him. They’re gathered around the four decapitated bodies.
“Boy, am I glad to see you’re alive.”
The voice is Danish, so I assume it must belong to the chaplain, Lukas Møller, whom I still haven’t met. He steps out of a doorway, and the men immediately gather around him. They hug him and slap him on the back. “We thought we’d never see you again,” says one of them.
Three young women also appear in the doorway. They’re wearing floor-length, coarsely woven dresses in bright-red and -blue colors. Their faces are uncovered, and their dark hair is hanging in sweaty locks down onto their foreheads and shoulders. The women have scrapes and bruises on their faces, as if they’ve been beaten. Two of them are holding long-handled axes with bloody edges. Their hands grip the handles tightly, and their expressions are vigilant.
Sara walks over and speaks softly to them. The vigilant expression dissipates, and for a moment they seem defenseless and vulnerable. I don’t even want to think about what they’ve been through.
“These are Malalai’s sisters,” Sara tells me.
I walk over to the chaplain and introduce myself. Though he nods and shakes my hand, his attention is elsewhere. The soldiers bombard him with questions—and he certainly has several he’d like to ask about our sudden appearance without the men from DarkSky. He has trouble focusing, however, and his inquisitive voice is slurred.
“I just couldn’t watch,” he says. He tries to appear composed, but his voice is shaking. “They dragged the girls out into the courtyard and . . .” He stops, as if struggling to find the right word. When he continues, he doesn’t look as if he’s found it. “. . . started passing them around. I think the men had been drinking. Then one of them pulled down his pants . . . I mean, right in front of the others. I could see they were used to it. So I fired.” He looks down at his hands as if they have a life of their own. “It was the way they were getting ready to rape the girls . . . as if it were their right. As if they thought because they’d done it before they could do it again, so it can’t be that bad. It’s just another day for these girls. It doesn’t really mean anything.”
“What did you shoot with—your Neuhausen?” Viktor asks the chaplain.
“I couldn’t have done it without him over there.” The chaplain nods at the crestfallen guy in the pink T-shirt who seems to have lost interest in everything again. “I think he has dysentery—he was sitting on the toilet the whole time. As I started shooting, he came out with a rifle and started shooting, too. I haven’t been able to get a word out of him since then. The girls say
he never took part in anything that happened to them.”
We turn to look at the chubby man who doesn’t seem to realize we’re talking about him. Andreas walks over and hugs him. The man looks up and, hugging him back, buries his face in Andreas’s narrow chest and starts to shake.
“Sara found the axes,” says Møller. “We just did the shooting.”
He seems to be trying to downplay the murder of four men. I suspect he’s on something.
“When did she show up?” I ask. She’s like a ghost to me—she must be for them, too—and ghosts usually arrive to exorcise something.
“A few days ago she was suddenly there at the gate, asking to be let in,” replies Viktor. “We vouched for her, and she’s been here ever since.”
Everyone looks at Sara. No good has come from following her advice, so I have no idea how they feel about her. The same as I do, maybe. Mixed, to say the least. Still, a resurrection always makes a strong impression.
“She said something to the girls as the soldiers were dragging them out of the room. At first they became calmer, and then they resisted. The men started hitting them, and that’s when I opened fire. I couldn’t just stand there.” Møller shrugs as if he almost regrets what happened.
I look over at Sara. “What did you tell them?”
She stares back with that look in her eyes that always makes me feel insecure. “I told them they were Malalai’s sisters.”
“You must have said more than that.”
“I did. I told them their tormentors would be dead before the day was over.”
“What about the axes?”
“The axes were my idea. It was the sisters’ idea to cut off their heads.”
I translate our conversation and look at the soldiers. Nodding in affirmation, Hannah walks over to the young women and hugs them. The others don’t seem to be judging what happened, either.
Maybe there’s something shocking about the sight of the mutilated bodies and heads on stakes, but them-or-us is still the deciding factor here. The soldiers themselves just killed people, and this is only a small step beyond what they were forced to do to their enemies’ bodies down in the village. It’s like an exorcism. I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that mutilating one’s dead enemies might even have a healthy mental effect. Right now there’s only one thing we can do if we want to survive—be as fucking tough as we can be.
“We have to leave now,” I say.
They look at Steffensen. “Karlsen is dead,” he says to the chaplain. “We need to bury him.”
“We can’t bury him here.” I look around at them. “I know we’ve taken him up here with us, but it would be better to bring him back down and bury him in the village. This is not an appropriate location.”
Several of the soldiers start to cry. I sense how close they are to everything, from uncontrollable euphoria to uncontrollable violence.
“We have to leave now,” I repeat.
“What about the women?” asks Hannah. “What are we going to do with them?”
“They have to go back to their families, back to the village,” says Møller.
I look at Sara. “I don’t think they can. Remember in Sangin when you took three women and used them as human shields?”
They answer my question with silence. They don’t like the words “human shield.”
“Sara found them right where you left them. She buried them. They committed suicide. Once a woman is touched by a foreigner, she has lost all her honor forever.”
“It’s not fair.” Møller gives me a disapproving glance, as if it were my own personal mistake.
“No,” I say. “It’s not fair. It’s also not fair to intervene in other people’s lives when you don’t know a single thing about them. You have a lot to make amends for. We take the women with us. There’s no other choice.”
“What about the Humvees? Can’t we use them?” asks Viktor.
“We have to go farther up the valley, where there are no passable roads for vehicles. Only paths. The mountains are our only chance. We can’t go back the way we came. We’d have to cross the desert again—and we’d be way too visible.”
“True, but it means we’d also have a better view. We’d get there faster, too. Also, we risk running into roadside bombs everywhere,” objects Viktor. Several of the soldiers nod.
“Don’t forget that we’ve crossed a line in the sand. It’s not insurgents I’m worried about—it’s attacks from our own. You can be sure that DarkSky’s colleagues would like to talk to you. So would the American Special Forces. Right now there are too many people who’d really like to see your charred bodies in a burned-out Humvee in the middle of the highway.”
I turn to Steffensen, who nods. He’s still with me. “We need time,” I say. “Then we can turn the situation around again. We can’t just march right into the line of fire.
“Call it a detour—but a necessary one. We’ll take the Humvees down to the village and then leave them there.”
There’s something I’m not telling them. They know Helmand, but their knowledge of the rest of Afghanistan’s geography is vague. They have no idea that the valley will lead us deeper into the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The farther we move into the southern part of the Hindu Kush ridge of mountains, called the Sulaiman Mountains here, the closer we come to Waziristan.
The heart of Taliban territory. That’s where I’m taking them.
37
Møller acknowledges that two of the headless bodies were struck by bullets from his Neuhausen, the other two by bullets from the American’s rifle. His name is Gray—we consider him one of us now—so I ask Simon to remove the bullets from all four bodies. I’ve seen the medic’s skill. He nods and walks toward them with the field knife in his hand. No one comes any closer to watch him work.
The American soldier has vanished into one of the chemical toilets in a corner of the courtyard. I’m not sure how he’ll keep up with the march. We might have to carry him on a stretcher.
I look around. “Are we all here?”
“Zuy!” exclaims Hannah. “We forgot about him.” She looks around. “Zuy!” she calls. “Zuy!” the others join in.
The door to the middle house facing the courtyard opens, and a boy wearing a dirty blue kirtle steps out. He’s squinting; he must have been sitting in the dark with the chaplain. Møller probably wanted to protect him, and he did the right thing. There’s a lot to protect a child from here. Even an Afghan child.
I walk over and say my name. “And what’s your name?” I ask, bending down to speak to him. He shakes his head.
“His name is Zuy.” Hannah is standing behind me.
I don’t turn around. “Zuy is not a name. It’s Pashto for ‘boy.’ Someone’s name can’t be ‘Boy.’”
I repeat my question. “What is your name?”
“Bahramand,” he mumbles while staring at Sara, who’s standing nearby. Now I understand his reaction. He looks away and ignores her. Sara doesn’t look as if she can handle the situation, either; the shot he fired severed all ties between them. They are no longer mother and son.
Crossing the courtyard, Bahramand stops at the headless bodies. Two of them have deep cuts where Simon made incisions searching for the bullets that killed them. He might as well get used to it, I think.
I know it’s a dumb, cynical thought. No one should ever have to get used to such a sight. You have to rebel against it with all your might if you want to preserve your sanity—although we all seem to have crossed that line some time ago. And what can really shock this boy after his own mother’s attack? He was baptized in boiling water. Is there any way back? For him? For us?
Should I run over and cover his eyes? Put a bag over his head? He’d have to keep it on for the rest of his life if he wants to avoid similar sights.
In a moment we’ll leave the base and pass through a gate flanked by four chopped-off heads. He’ll stare at them, but what will I see in his eyes? Indifferent curiosity? A slowly
creeping schadenfreude? Or will he react like most children sitting in front of a screen—roaring excitedly when the head they’re looking at blows up, because it’s all just a joke and unreal?
I’m still thinking about all this when Hannah strides across the courtyard and pulls Bahramand away from the four mutilated bodies.
When we leave the base in the Humvees, Hannah is sitting next to him. She covers his eyes with her hands as we pass the lopped-off heads. Although he squirms to get loose, she holds on tightly. She’s even more of a pedagogue than I am.
The young women from the village are huddled together on the seat behind me. They didn’t bring their burkas with them; one of them is still flying from the corner guard tower, where it will stay until someone takes it down. I’ve been told that they begged to be killed, but they’re still alive. They’ve crossed a line as critical as that between life and death. They’ve become untouchable, so whether or not they wear a burka is irrelevant. They can show their faces, but they’ll never be married off or have children. They’re myths in real life: Sara was right when she called them “Malalai’s sisters.” They’re devoted to the insurgency now, and every armed man who lifts his Kalashnikov to fire at a foreign soldier is their bridegroom. Like the soldiers of Third Platoon, they’ll become fixtures in the popular imagination.
I start to think about Bahramand again. Will he also end up as part of the myth? Afghanistan is full of children like him, boys with no father, boys who share a terrifying familiarity with violence, small relay runners ready to pass on their misfortune in a generations-long marathon with no finish line. Anywhere else in the world, they’d be considered maladjusted, but here they fit in all too well. The god of my Christian countrymen says, Let the little children come to me. Be aware, however, that out here, they’re coming with stones, knives, a Kalashnikov, or a roadside bomb.
We stop in Khan Kala and park the Humvees before continuing on foot. The locals are waiting for us. They’ve wrapped the murdered women in white shrouds and placed them on improvised biers of woven branches, so they can bring them back to the villages farther up the valley, where they were abducted.
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