43
“That’s Murray up there. His shift has just begun. He’s got his fat ass in his seat now and is enjoying a cup of freshly brewed coffee. Then the daily ritual begins, a detailed account of what Dorothy did to his dick last night.”
I look at Gray, the former drone pilot who helped the chaplain take out DarkSky’s mercenaries at the base. He’s pretty cold-blooded, but he’s also been on the dispatch side when it comes to the Hellfire missiles drones fire.
“What did Murray do?”
“What do you think? He never got tired of extolling the joys of oral sex. Meanwhile, he would look at me like we were frat boys, or something. With a big, stupid grin on his face.”
Gray walks beside me. He’s also wearing a shalwar kameez, and it suits him. Instead of being a chubby little man in a pink T-shirt, he looks more compact, stocky. I stare at the overcast sky, knowing the drone is up there somewhere. We can’t see it because of the cloud cover, but we can hear it. And that’s enough.
“Can’t you call this Murray up and ask him to go home to his wife for a blow job?” I say.
“If only. First, you have to make sure that the men, women, and children are all mixed together. Human shields. If the men stand out, they become easy targets.”
“That’s already happened,” I say. “Haven’t you noticed? People out here are used to living with drones. They know our rules of attack just as well as we do.”
Gray might have been good at watching the screen, but here, far from the computer, his observation skills are sorely lacking. Migration up and down the column began the moment we heard the drone’s deep murmur; within a few minutes, the whole group had integrated. It’s the only protection we have: each other.
No one shouts any orders. It’s all second nature to the villagers—it reminds me of the soldiers’ training. Soldiers don’t even need to think when a situation calls for a quick reaction. It’s the same here. We’re a mixed group, but we’re also an army.
Ten thousand kilometers away, a contract drone pilot with a penchant for oral sex is deciding our fate.
“So how did you deal with all these rules?” I ask Gray.
“It’s so damned frustrating. It takes forever to get clearance. You have no idea how many of the worst ones get away from us in that office. Terrorists aren’t dumb. They know they’re being watched—that’s why they’re always trying to blend in with others. We learn everything we can about their wives and children, their cousins, uncles, and grandfathers. It’s a fucking family album we’re sitting there leafing through.”
“And then it’s not so hard to push the red button when they’re finally alone, right?”
Gray looks at me. “Nothing is hard on a screen.”
Andreas told me how Gray just got up one day and walked out in the middle of a mission. “Forgive me if I’m being intrusive,” I say, “but I know how your career as a drone pilot ended.”
“If you had asked me back then, I would have said it’s a good job and that I was happy. But something deep inside was saying something else. I can’t explain it.”
“Like what something inside you said up in DarkSky’s camp?”
“Yes.” He throws out his arms in despair. “And now I’m here. Fuck!”
I’ve been so preoccupied with our conversation that I didn’t realize we’ve slowed down. The marching column has turned into a funeral procession. An unnatural silence spreads, broken only by a sob, a gasp, or an animal’s whimper, which always stops abruptly. The women pull their veils down over their foreheads, until their faces are almost hidden, and then place their hands over their children’s ears; the small ones tremble at their touch. A boy throws up. Looking around uneasily, the men also slow their tempo. The sheep stop and draw together. I feel as if an earthquake is approaching and that these people who live so close to the earth sense it as an animal would.
Their reaction to the drone warning is disciplined. They seek each other in the hope that their numbers will protect them, but their physical closeness actually makes them more vulnerable. It’s only a matter of time before someone starts to scream—and then they’ll all be screaming and running in all directions hoping that the dense woods will offer protection.
What I feared happens. Because cloud cover has hampered the drone pilot’s vision, he chooses to descend. The long, narrow hull with those thin, elegant wings, whose span must be just as wide, suddenly emerges from the clouds’ underbelly. It’s as gray as the cloud cover, camouflaged so that death can hide easily in the heavy, overcast sky.
A drone does not have great speed, and from this distance it looks as if the robot plane is standing still, a flying cross marking a coming strike.
And we’re the target.
“Stay calm,” says Gray. “We rarely shoot from that height. Contrary to what you’d think, the closer we are, the more difficult it is to hit our target. The satellite connection causes a delay of two seconds, so the ideal height for an attack is three kilometers. At that distance, we’re invisible from the ground and no one knows what hit them.”
I can hear the nostalgia in his voice when he says “we.” Something inside Gray made him get up and walk out, but some part of him is still sitting in his chair at Nellis Air Force Base.
“So we aren’t in danger?”
Gray shakes his head. “I don’t think so. At least not for now. Even though this is certainly what we’d call a loaded target.”
Maybe Gray is right, but I’m the only one who hears him.
No one is looking down now—everyone’s eyes are searching the clouds. Wide-eyed, the women stare up while their hands move from the children’s ears to their eyes, as if darkness will hold the hovering drone at bay. Their hands have the opposite effect, however, and the children try to wriggle out of their mothers’ clammy, angst-ridden hands. Then the screaming starts, first one, then two, and then countless voices join in.
The sheep and the goats are the first to run, and the rest follow; the animals seem to take control of the confused crowd. At first, a few men stand their ground as they watch their wives and children flee into the woods, but then their protective instinct kicks in and they follow.
I remain standing with Gray at my side. The soldiers draw together as if expecting an assault from an enemy hidden somewhere in the landscape. Yet all of their faces are turned up toward the slowly approaching drone, and it reminds me of a predator sniffing its way toward its prey before pouncing. Rifles are still hanging from their shoulders, but they don’t aim them anywhere. Their range would be too short anyway.
Only one thing points directly at the drone, and that’s the lens on Andreas’s camera.
The soldiers aren’t standing there because they’re brave. They just can’t fathom that they’re the ones being hunted. They’re so accustomed to fighting a low-tech enemy that they assume any piece of high-tech hardware must be on their side. They see a drone hovering in the sky and think: It’s one of ours.
But this drone is not ours.
I glance at Gray, who’s still standing next to me. He doesn’t look quite as certain as he did a moment ago. “Are you still sure it won’t attack?”
“I don’t know.” His voice is husky. He’s on the wrong side of the screen now, and it’s clearly terrifying.
“Run! Run!” I yell. “Go! Go!” But the Danes don’t move. Nor do I. I can’t be the first who runs. “Run!” I yell, but my voice has none of the authority one normally associates with an order. It’s merely a cry for help.
I hear myself mumble a totally insane prayer, not to any higher power but to the lowest I can think of.
“Schrøder, you bastard, if you’re there—this is it!”
My eyes fixate on the drone, and for a moment I feel that the cross hovering in the sky will be the last thing I ever see. But the drone suddenly turns around, as if Murray in Nevada is playing with his joystick. Not really, though, because the drone aims its front end at the ground and starts to accelerate, as if gravity has a
hold on it.
Although the woods aren’t thick here, I can’t see the impact behind some pine trees a few hundred meters away. Still, I hear the massive explosion as the metal body crashes to the forest floor. The shock wave hits me like the hot breath of a lover. The closest trees must be on fire. Flames and smoke rise above the treetops.
“Holy shit!” screams Dennis, raising both arms in the air as if the home team scored. “Yes!”
Confused, Steffensen shakes his head. Hannah has one hand over her mouth, but I can’t tell whether she’s about to laugh or cry. Andreas keeps filming.
Other than the fiery roar of the burning wreckage, there’s total silence. A small group of Afghans, among them Sharif, approaches slowly from behind the tree trunks. Surely they expected to see charred earth and human remains all over the spot where the jihadists, for some incomprehensible reason, stood frozen like statues. But we’re still standing here in our white robes, alive and unharmed, perhaps in their eyes resurrected, immortal, in a state that defies all human understanding. Not far away, they can see the fiery glow from the drone that, a moment ago, they thought was the most invincible weapon ever created, a weapon that can destroy their hearts, minds, and courage long before its lightning bolt strikes. And now there’s nothing left but its wreckage.
More Afghans appear until the dense woods are filled with people and animals approaching together. It reminds me of a religious procession—I’m afraid they might fall on one knee before us. To my great relief, they lift their arms in the air and cheer: Allahu Akbar! Yes, he is.
Sharif is the first to walk over, even before the jubilations die down. He looks like he wants to share a secret. His eyes are dancing as he lifts his mouth to my ear. “They see God’s hand,” he whispers in English, “but you and I both know, it’s all just electronics.” He laughs until his face twitches again.
“Who are you?” I ask, baffled.
He winks at me. “Just an Afghan boy.”
44
It’s the first night we’ll have to sleep outdoors together. Although spring’s almost here, the air is cold. The Danes have their sleeping bags, the Afghans blankets and each other. They light fires, cook rice, and slaughter a couple of sheep. Light from the flames flickers across the scattered trees. Most of the meal consists of dried naan. We’re economizing on food. The soldiers get lamb—warriors’ privilege—but they pass the meat on to the nearest children, who devour it, their faces smeared with grease.
The sky still buzzes with the sound of a distant combine. One crashed to the ground, but now there’s another hovering above us. I’m sure that the sound will follow us, one way or another, until all this is over.
In their daily life, the Afghans have grown used to the sound; they have no choice. It’s the sight of a drone they can’t handle. Still, that sound, death’s score, which they hear all day long, takes its toll. It’s there when they’re working in the fields, shopping at the market, preparing food, or walking the children to school (when there is a school). A carefully proportioned daily drop of horror, it eats away at them, bringing sleepless nights, vomiting, headaches, and a persistent edge that can make them fall into a protective stupor or suddenly turn aggressive.
I have no doubt that we’re appearing on several screens tonight. Infrared night cameras are pointed right at us, and on distant screens, we move in a green twilight like small, phosphorous beings. On others, heat sensors read our presence, and we pulse red and yellow, in time with our heartbeats, while our surroundings turn increasingly darker as the temperature on the mountainside slowly falls.
Which screen is Schrøder sitting in front of?
A hand was held over us this afternoon, although we can disagree about whose hand it was. The villagers are of one mind, and Sharif and I of another. In the end, however, it’s Schrøder’s hand. And that’s an unreliable hand, one that isn’t on anyone’s side.
Least of all ours.
Everyone has gone to bed for the night around the smoldering bonfires. I’ve borrowed a pair of extra woolen shawls. Simon even offered me his sleeping bag, but I said no, thanks. I can’t sleep anyway. I find one of the Afghan guards and pace around the camp’s periphery with him. I stare up at the sky. The Milky Way is so clear you feel as if you could walk on it, a heavenly bridge that will lead you across . . . yes, across what? Something you don’t want any contact with, something that reaches from horizon to horizon, a black hand, space’s icy infinity, which no one can stand to think about.
I make small talk with the sentry. With his gray hair and beard, Bazgar looks like a tough man in his sixties, but he’s probably in his mid-forties. He asks me about the farm he thinks my family owns in a distant country where life is the same as here. He asks me about crops and seasons, and about the animals we’re raising. I fabricate a story to make myself seem more relatable. I tell him I have two wives, children, and a life beneath a big sky. I don’t tell him about the times I’ve turned my back on one kind of life just to try another—or how I ended up here.
Suddenly he breaks the illusion. “Don’t you have any respect for your elders?”
I know immediately what he means. “Is it the war?” I ask.
Bazgar nods. “Yes, the war has changed everything.”
“Change”—that poisonous word in a society where age-old traditions dictate that life must remain the same from one generation to the next. Here, change means failure.
I think about my father. I’m not sure I disrespected my father, although that’s how he would have described it. I didn’t see it that way. I just couldn’t relate to him. He would tell me about the world he came from but not about the one I was living in—and that’s the one I wanted to know about.
I’ve heard it said that veterans never talk about what they’ve been through, but my father did all the time. He would talk hypnotically about the Russian soldiers who were flayed alive and the Afghan prisoners tossed out of helicopters. He told me other things, too, equally as horrifying and monstrous, things others had done, things he had done.
He trusted me with his life’s most dearly bought experiences—I just didn’t know what to do with them. I found them uncomfortable, even useless. They said nothing about the world I was living in; in fact, they became an obstacle. They left me in an icy place where I didn’t want to be.
He noticed that, and he perceived it as a lack of respect. He told me about his war against barbarism, but he never told me what he wanted to replace it with, so I began to experience it as nothing. Just a void where there should have been a father.
It wasn’t until I was an adult and left home—after my mother’s death, he decided to go back to Afghanistan—that he gave himself a name, as if a name explained everything. I perceived it as a last-ditch effort, a desperate man’s excuse for an answer.
He said he was Pashtun. That word, that name, became his way out of the emptiness. When you no longer see the difference between right and wrong, when you’ve abandoned every thought of good and evil, or to use his words from my childhood, civilization and barbarism, then you discover your “roots.” So you can have an identity, something to call yourself, and to hell with everything else.
I never said that to him, but he was a wise man. He could read it on my face. What happened between us could never heal.
I’d like to start by asking Bazgar if he’s ever seen the movie Blade Runner, at which point our conversation would end abruptly. I already know he hasn’t.
There’s a scene in that film that always makes me think of my father. If I ever have to explain my father to anyone, I’ll tell them about Rutger Hauer in his role as the replicant Roy Batty. He’s sitting on a roof in the pouring rain after having saved his pursuer, the replicant-killer Harrison Ford, from plunging to his death. Batty is programmed to die now. He’s nothing more than a piece of machinery that looks like a person on the outside but is only a machine on the inside. But somewhere in the relays, a soul has developed. He’s a robot who knows he has to die, complet
ely alone with his tragic awareness of all that will be lost when his shelf life expires. He has surpassed his creators and seen something they will never comprehend.
I don’t see my father as a robot or a machine that suddenly, in defiance of everything, turns out to possess a soul. It’s the dying replicant’s final words that make me think of him. And whenever I try to understand my father, I hear him speaking like Rutger Hauer, describing the attack ships off the shoulder of Orion and the C-beams glittering in the darkness near Tannhäuser Gate. Moments lost in time . . . time to die.
My father didn’t die, but he might as well be dead. No one wanted to believe what he saw in Afghanistan; no one wanted to hear about it. He sat like the replicant on the roof in Blade Runner and talked in the pouring rain, but no one was listening. He tried to pass it on to me, his son, but I wasn’t listening, either. He wound up feeling that everything within him would disappear with him. Time . . . to die. He died right there, before my eyes, because he failed to pass any of it on to his son.
Sometimes I picture him sitting behind the wheel of his taxi with his passengers. The man who saw warships on fire off Orion’s shoulder. The man who sat in Mi-24 helicopters and watched entire villages go up in flames beneath him, women and children gunned down. The man who spoke five languages fluently: Pashto, Dari, Russian, English, and then fucking Danish. And there he was: stopping on red on Vigerslev Allé, printing out receipts, opening the door to the back seat for a passenger, and lifting suitcases out of the trunk.
Where was he during all those years of driving a taxi in Copenhagen? Next to Orion’s right shoulder. How did he experience Denmark? Not as a mirror where he might recognize himself, but as a wall. Right from the start, it must have been a dead country for him.
How many more like him are there? Ray Battys, speaking into the emptiness, their tears washed away by the pouring rain.
It’s my father I need to get hold of on the other side of the border, where we’re headed. For all this to succeed, so we can get home, I need to speak to the man who’s locked himself up in the word “Pashtun.”
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