Farishta (13 page)

“Morning, Angela,” said Fuzzy, nodding toward an empty spot next to him on the bench.

“We’ll be following the colonel’s car in the Beast to provide you with some extra security this morning,” announced Jenkins, still chewing a mouthful of food. “Some of those mujahideen blokes aren’t exactly over the moon about giving up their weapons, and you don’t want to get stuck out there with only one vehicle. You’ll ride with the colonel, and Rahim will ride with us. The colonel wants him to do the interpreting since Professor Sayeed is still sick.”

“Who’s Professor Sayeed? ” I asked.

“The head interpreter at the PRT. Used to teach English at Balkh University, so everyone calls him the professor,” said Jenkins.

Fuzzy and Jenkins stood up together. “We’ve got to kit up and get the Beast topped off for our trip. See you outside in twenty, Angela,” said Jenkins as they carried their trays to the kitchen.

By six forty, our two-vehicle convoy was bouncing out the gates and splashing through a long ribbon of gray mud in front of the PRT. Pools of water concealed deep holes in the road, which Harry’s driver and Jenkins behind us did their best to avoid. By the time we pulled onto the pockmarked asphalt road leading to the Sholgara Valley, our Land Cruisers were spattered with so much mud that the green NATO insignias on the sides of the vehicles were no longer visible.

The British officers and soldiers had informed me they did not wear seat belts so they could swiftly exit a vehicle in case of an emergency. I didn’t feel safe without a belt and was glad I had strapped myself in when Harry’s driver began to dodge potholes and speeding trucks at fifty miles per hour. I was comfortably secured on my side of the backseat, while Harry gripped the handle of his door and struggled to keep from bouncing into my lap. We rode in silence past fallow wheat fields, mud-walled villages, and large earthen mounds, rising fifty feet or more into the air and dotted with circular openings—the ancient and mysterious stupas, which Jeef had described at our dinner.

Harry was dozing even as he clung to the door handle, his head bobbing with each bump. His driver and vehicle commander, the most spit-and-polish pair at the PRT, were silent—keeping their eyes on the road that under a sudden downpour was now only visible through the triangles made by their thumping wiper blades. When the rain ended and the sky brightened from dark pewter to gunmetal gray, we crossed a narrow bridge spanning the Balkh River and pulled onto a remarkably smooth dirt road. I was asleep within minutes.

 

 

“Angela.” Harry was tapping my arm. “We’re almost here. You’ve been out for the past hour.”

Our convoy rolled to a stop before a large assembly of bearded men in snowy white turbans. They all wore the traditional pajama-like brown and beige
shalwar kameez
topped with gray blankets or dark wool overcoats. Despite the cold, they had leather sandals strapped to their bare feet.

The men stared at me briefly when I got out, but quickly turned their attention to the British colonel, who was holding the certificates, printed on one of the copy machines at the PRT, that would confirm their compliance with the Interior Ministry’s orders to hand over excess weapons and ammunition to the government. A blue UN truck, idling nearby, would cart their munitions off to a cantonment, where they would be inventoried and destroyed or turned over to the Afghan Army.

Rahim barely acknowledged my presence as he climbed out of the Beast and moved to Harry’s side to translate his remarks into Dari for the assembled mujahideen. The Afghan men had formed tight clusters around the grenades, rocket launchers, machine guns, and boxes of ammunition that were laid out in orderly rows on three blood-red carpets spread on the dirt in front of the local commander’s walled compound.

“Honorable Commander and heroic fighters.” Harry scanned the men’s faces to be sure he had their attention. “I would like to thank you on behalf of your president and the PRT for your willingness to hand over your weapons and ammunition to assure a peaceful future for your country.” Rahim’s translation of Harry’s remarks was clear and precise. The men nodded gravely.

Harry paused to allow Rahim to finish, then heaped more praise on the men for driving out the Taliban in 2001 and for their willingness to hand over their tanks and armored personnel carriers to the UN the previous year.

I was observing the ceremony a few yards away from Harry and listening to the men around me discuss their hidden caches of weapons—the ones we would never see. Their other conversation was about me.

“Who is this woman? ”

“She must be one of the British officer’s wives, but why would he bring her here?”

Rahim trailed Harry as he strode slowly down the neat rows of munitions, hands clasped behind his back, brow furrowed, and lips pursed. Suddenly, Harry stopped and turned in my direction. “Good gracious, Angela, I have completely forgotten to introduce you. Please join us over here and allow me to present you to the commander and his men.”

As I stepped forward, Harry introduced me to the silent, staring crowd.

When he mentioned the millions of dollars the United States was spending on reconstruction in the north, the old man who had speculated about my marital status spat in the dirt and grumbled, “What reconstruction? The American money is going to the Pashtun friends of the president and rich foreign contractors.” Rahim did not translate that remark.

After Harry handed out the certificates, we followed the commander into a room inside his compound. Thick cushions lined the walls of this narrow space that was lit only by small openings in the mud walls.

A worn green oilcloth unrolled in front of us, covered the length of the room. As soon as we were seated, barefoot young men padded down the oilcloth, placing cups, bottles of soda, and large warm rounds of fresh baked
naan
in front of the guests. More men pushed their way into the crowded room and squeezed onto the cushions.

Hot platters of meat and rice were set before the guests. The men kept their eyes on Harry and as soon as he dipped his fingers into the great pyramid of greasy rice, tore off a chunk of tender lamb, chewed it, and smiled, they began ripping the
naan
into small pieces and devouring their own trays of
qabale palau.

The conversations about me continued and I listened, amused.

“So this woman is from the American government?” growled a young man, licking his fingers and pulling another strip of lamb from a bone buried in the rice. “Is she a soldier?”

“She looks like one of our women, but for those clothes.”

“Why is she dressed like a man?”

“Why would her husband let her do this? ”

Rahim did not translate any of these comments for Harry or for me.

Cleanup was fast and efficient. Three of the barefoot youths collected the bottles and cups. Four others picked up the half-eaten trays of
palau,
while the remaining two rolled up the oilcloth, which still contained large uneaten pieces of bread, bits of rice, and portions of lamb. They carried the cloth into the next hallway, where thirty more men were waiting to eat. It was unrolled, and the used cups and half-eaten food trays set in front of the second string of diners who devoured our leftovers and drank from our cups with gusto. The unseen women and children in the kitchen, who had prepared the food, would be given whatever scraps the men did not eat.

Harry suggested I ride back to camp in my vehicle with Fuzzy, Jenkins, and Rahim. “I won’t be very good company, Angela, since I’m certain to be sound asleep for the entire trip.”

Fuzzy and Jenkins, who had remained with the Beast while we ate, were anxious to get back to the PRT before the cooks stopped serving dinner. I was too drowsy to talk to Rahim, who sat stiffly on his side of the backseat staring out the window. Jenkins had turned up the heat, adding to my lethargy. I dozed off as soon as we pulled onto the dirt road and headed for home.

Just before sunset, I was startled awake by the horn and headlights of an approaching truck. Jenkins swerved violently, narrowly avoiding a collision with the brightly painted and dangerously overloaded vehicle.

“Fucking asshole!” he muttered. “Oops, sorry, Angela,” he added as he forced the Beast back into our lane. Fuzzy glared at him but said nothing.

Rahim ignored Jenkins’s outburst and still had his back to me. We rode in silence until we passed another one of the stupas.

“Rahim,” I said, formulating a question I hoped would break through his wall of silence. “Do you know anything about the origins of these mounds?”

He surprised me by responding to my question immediately. “They’re the remains of ancient mud-brick and earthen temple complexes,” he replied in a weary monotone. “Grave robbers long ago removed everything of value, but most of the mounds have never been excavated by professional archaeologists. They were Buddhist temples almost two thousand years ago, long before my country became an Islamic nation. Some are even older.”

“Have you met the men who are excavating the Greek ruins near Balkh?” I asked, wishing that Professor Mongibeaux were here to help me reach out to this sullen young man.

“I have heard about the work of the French archaeologists there, but I have not met them,” said Rahim in a disinterested voice.

“Fuzzy, we’ve seen that dig, haven’t we?” asked Jenkins.

Fuzzy nodded. “It looks like one of them tomb-raider movies.”

“It’s bloody amazing,” added Jenkins. “Greek columns and Buddha heads all dug out of the same pit! ”

All conversation ceased when the sun briefly set fire to the Hindu Kush and plunged into the western desert. Ahead of us, in the blood orange eastern sky, lightning pulsed inside an expanding thunderhead.

“Beautiful,” I said aloud.

“Yes,” replied Rahim, turning his head in my direction to look at the mountains.

“Rahim, have you spent your whole life in Mazār? ”

He sighed and shook his head. “No. My sisters and I were born here, but my parents took us to Karachi when the Taliban came to power in 1996. I finished high school and started university there, but my father wanted to come home in 2001. We are Tajik and he thought he should support the Northern Alliance in their fight against the Taliban. He died of a heart attack a few weeks after our return, so now I must work as an interpreter to support my mother and three sisters.”

“Your English is very good. How long have you worked at the PRT? ”

Fuzzy turned around and looked at Rahim. “Tell Angela how the U.S. Special Forces blokes recruited you.”

“Right,” said Jenkins, laughing. “He had to get his mother’s permission, Angela! No offense, Rahim, but you’re the only one at the PRT who’s seen any combat up here. It’s a great story.”

“Okay, no offense taken, Jenkins. I’ll tell it.” Rahim began to relax in my presence for the first time. He curled one leg up, stretched his arm over the back of the seat, and faced me directly.

“For several days after the fighting started in Mazār, my mother wouldn’t let me leave the house. Parts of the city were being bombed, but we didn’t know who was doing it since the Taliban had cut the phone lines and they controlled the only radio station. Nobody had cell phones then. We knew from BBC shortwave reports that there was fighting in the south, and that the Americans had sent soldiers and airplanes to attack the Taliban at Tora Bora, but there was no reporting on the fighting up here.

“One morning when the shooting and bombing stopped for a few hours, my mother told me to go downtown and find some food for our family. I was buying bread near the Blue Mosque, still concealed under my scraggly teenage, Taliban-required beard, when a truck with American Special Forces soldiers drove up. One soldier jumped out and came over to buy
naan.
He greeted me in Dari, and I replied in English. His Dari was terrible,” Rahim said, laughing softly.

“I had studied English in Mazār and for four more years in Pakistan. When I answered him in his own language, he immediately asked me if I wanted a job as an interpreter. He told me I would have to shave my beard.”

Rahim closed his eyes and leaned his head back on the seat. “I needed the work, but I told him I’d have to ask my mother’s permission, so he and his men drove me to my house. They told my mother how much they would pay me. At first, she said no, but I insisted that I wanted to do it and reminded her that we had no more money for food. She finally said yes if the soldiers promised to keep me safe. They promised.

“I was nineteen years old. By late the next afternoon, I was pinned down by machine gun fire inside Qala-i-Jangi fort, where the Taliban were making their last stand against the Northern Alliance and the Americans. The soldiers had already broken their promise to my mother.” He laughed.

“I crawled around in the mud behind your soldiers, eating their revolting MREs, translating instructions to the Northern Alliance fighters, and praying to Allah that my mother’s son would not be brought home to her wrapped in a sheet. I am not a soldier, Angela, and I was very afraid,” he admitted with surprising candor.