Farishta (27 page)

Nilofar assured me that when we left the PRT carrying parcels with our faces and bodies concealed under the burkas, the Afghan guards and the British sentries in the watchtowers would all assume we were the laundry ladies and ignore us. She was right. It was as though we were invisible.

Our first demonstration was met with astonishment by the women whose children wandered daily through our neighborhood scrounging for fuel.

We cooked a pot of rice and answered their questions.

“How long will it take to cook the rice? ” asked one of the women.

“One hour,” I replied as Nilofar translated.

“That’s too long,” shouted another, who was sitting in front of her tent.

“How long does it take your children to gather fuel for your cooking fires every day?” I asked.

“It takes all day, but they are children. What else can they do?” she answered.

“They could go to school,” I said as I watched her six- and seven-year-old daughters depositing scraps of paper and bundles of twigs in piles near her makeshift tent.

Each time we arrived in the camp, a few more curious women would gather to watch us cook and demonstrate the construction of the cardboard-and-aluminum-foil boxes. Everything needed to make a solar oven was available in Mazār-i-Sharīf, except for the aluminum foil.

In April, I had mailed a check to my brother, Bill, who purchased forty-five rolls of heavy-duty Reynolds Wrap and mailed them to my APO address. With a huge supply of foil stashed under my bed at the PRT, I inaugurated what I called Operation Sunshine, taking solar ovens on every patrol I accompanied and giving demonstrations whenever we stopped in a village. Enthusiastically supported by the colonel, who remained unaware of my clandestine visits to the Hazara camp, I recruited a few of the soldiers to help me build more solar ovens in the atrium a few nights a week. My unauthorized day trips with Nilofar would remain secret for a while longer.

“Sir, eleven trucks filled with men and equipment have just pulled up in front of the PRT. There’s an American bloke at the gate says he wants to speak to you.” The duty NCO was out of breath after running from the ops room, through the bullpen, and into the colonel’s office. “Our internal phone lines are down again, sir.”

“Damn, I wasn’t expecting them until next week,” groaned the colonel. “Take the American to the officers’ mess and give him a cup of coffee. I’ll be over in a minute.

“Angela, would you come in here, please?” called Colonel Jameson after he had dismissed the sergeant.

“I’m so sorry I didn’t discuss this with you earlier,” he apologized, “but I was under strict orders from our headquarters in Kabul to keep it close hold. I had planned to tell you before they arrived since your government is funding this activity.”

“What activity would that be, Colonel? ” I asked dryly. I walked over to his window and gazed down at the long line of white trucks idling in the road.

“Poppy eradication,” he said with a sigh.

“It’s a little late for that,” I replied. “The biggest poppy harvest in Balkh’s history has been under way for the past month.”

It was not surprising that a U.S.-funded operation of this scope was about to take place in my area of responsibility and I knew nothing about it. The embassy was well aware of my objections to the poppy eradication program. Perhaps Plawner had decided not to tell me ahead of time because he knew I’d lodge a protest.

I felt embarrassed and betrayed to have been left so completely out of the picture by my own embassy. “There are thousands of hectares under cultivation, although it doesn’t matter much at this point where they go since a good portion of the opium paste has already been scraped from the bulbs and packaged for transport. All this will do is piss off the locals.”

“You’re right, Angela, but it’s out of our hands.”

“Why won’t those idiots in Kabul listen to reason? ” I fumed. “Isn’t there any way to stop this? ”

“No, there isn’t,” the colonel said grimly. “I know full well the danger this presents for our boys. We’ll just have to keep the MOTs out of the eradication areas for a while. We’re not expecting much violence, but there are certain to be some very angry farmers.”

On the second day of the operation, I approached the liaison officer for the eradication team after dinner. He was bunking at the PRT. “How are you determining which fields to destroy? ” I asked.

“Ma’am, I don’t decide what gets cut, and I am not at liberty to discuss my activities with you. My head office said you should send your questions to the people in your embassy who are managing this contract, and they’ll relay the questions to my supervisor.

“Sorry, ma’am,” he added as he headed into the pub for a beer and left me standing alone in the dining hall, wondering if I should even bother to report this.

Any time there was a lull in my increasingly busy schedule, I would haul a few hundred more pages of my predecessor’s outdated but still confidential reports and cables into the basement of the main building, feed them into the shredder, and grind them into confetti. I resented having to waste my time disposing of classified material that Brooks should have chucked as soon as he read it. But it was now my responsibility, and I was determined to complete this task before the end of the month.

“Destroying more state secrets? ” Mark asked as he exited the ops room, which was always kept cool to protect the communications equipment. His uniform was crisp and he carried a steaming cup of coffee. I was in jeans, sandals, and a tank top—and drenched in sweat. It was at least 110 outside and more than 90 degrees in the open hallway outside the ops room.

“I can’t answer that question, Mark, or I’ll have to kill you,” I shot back with a grin, dropping another bundle of paper into the howling maw of the shredder and brushing my hair out of my eyes.

“Angela,” he said as he made a discreet sweep of my dripping torso, “I could ask one of the men to help you with that.”

“Thanks, Mark, but I’m responsible for cleaning up the mess left by Mr. Brooks.”

“Why are you torturing yourself?” he asked.

“What do you mean?” I demanded as I pulled another sheaf of papers from the folder.

“Well, look at you,” he began, “you’re never . . .”

“Yes, look at me,” I interrupted, shoving so much paper into the shredder that it shuddered to a halt.

“I’ve been shredding these damned papers for months, and I’m still at it. No one in Kabul is responding to my reports, and I’m still lying to the one person in this place who respects me and who I really care about.”

I threw the shredder into reverse, showering us both with a hail of torn paper.

“You mean Rahim?” asked Mark as he stooped to gather up the scattered remains of Mr. Brooks’s documents.

“Yes. But I don’t know how much longer I can stand it, Mark,” I said, still avoiding his gaze. “I’ve attended meetings with all the terps, filed endless reports stating that their translations are accurate, and my embassy still insists I keep my Dari a secret.”

“Angela, Rahim is not the only person at the PRT who respects you,” he said softly.

“Thank you for saying so,” I replied, clenching my jaw and raising my eyes to meet his.

“It’s just that Rahim and I have developed a real bond, Mark.” I took a deep breath and continued. “I’m sure you know that I’m a widow.”

He nodded, unsmiling.

“I lost my husband when our embassy in Beirut was bombed years ago, but I was also pregnant. The concussion from the bomb caused me to lose the baby a few days later. My son would be twenty-three now—Rahim’s age—and Rahim has told me several times that he thinks of me almost like a second mother. Yet here I am still spying on him and lying to him.”

Mark put his hand on my shoulder. I was trembling. “Someday soon, Angela, you’ll be able to explain this all to Rahim. I’m sure of it.”

I shook my head mutely and wiped my eyes with the back of my hand.

“Listen, a few of us are gathering in the colonel’s conference room this evening to try out his new projector. We’ll be showing
The Beast.
”

Noting the quizzical look on my face, he smiled and continued, “No, it’s not a movie about that rattletrap Toyota Land Cruiser of yours, it’s an American film made in the late 1980s—the story of a Soviet tank crew trapped in a remote Afghan valley and pursued by a group of angry villagers. It’s become quite a cult classic among war film buffs.”

“A guy movie,” I said, laughing.

“Yes, but you might enjoy it. Why don’t you join us? The Swedes are bringing the beer, and the room is air-conditioned. What do you say? ”

“I’d like that. Thank you, Mark,” I replied, mopping my brow and resuming my shredding.

Cup after cup of green tea, which turned icy during frigid winter meetings in unheated rooms and tepid as spring moved into summer, had lost its novelty after seven months in Afghanistan. Our endless and often fruitless meetings with Afghan officials were beginning to wear me down.

I looked forward to Sunday lunch at the PRT as a much-anticipated respite each week. Say what you will about British cuisine, but the food prepared by our Nepalese Gurkha military cooks was superb. While their daily fare often had curry powder or hot sauce worked into most recipes, Sunday lunch was always British comfort food at its best. Every Sunday afternoon, they carved up steaming slabs of traditional English roast beef and lamb, accompanied by crisp roasted potatoes, mint sauce, and Yorkshire pudding. Even the boiled cabbage and broad beans were cooked and seasoned to perfection in the PRT’s cramped field kitchen.

Jeef had sent a message that he was coming north to visit his dig in Balkh and I invited him to join me for lunch since he would be passing through Mazār on a Sunday.

The previous year, his team of archaeologists had uncovered a jumble of Hellenistic columns and their delicately carved capitals. Their trenches were more than six meters deep, but his Afghan crew had reburied the site for the winter to protect it from looters. Now that it was uncovered, Jeef had promised to show me “something remarkable” his men had discovered only a few days before.

“Angela, what a delight to see you,” cried Jeef with his characteristic enthusiasm as he bounded from his vehicle and took both of my hands into his.

He had let his hair grow longer since we last met at the museum in Kabul. His one visible eccentricity, a snowy white braid held in place by a knotted red cord, now reached below his collar. He seemed much younger than his sixty-five years, and radiated the infectious energy of a man who loved his work with a passion.

“Will my young protégé be joining us for lunch?” he asked. “I do hope so. I want to quiz him on some of the books I have assigned him to read. Rahim told me he has a friend at the university who is checking them out of the library for him.”

“Yes,” I replied, worrying silently about Rahim’s deepening relationship with Nilofar. I knew she was continuing to provide him with books on archaeology and architecture from the university during their brief meetings in town and sometimes at the PRT. I also suspected that neither of their families knew about it or would approve if they did.

Rahim was waiting for us in the dining room. His tray was piled high with this foreign food, which he ate in enormous quantities because it was free—but admitted he didn’t really like.

Mark, who usually took his meals in the officers’ mess, approached our table. “May I join you?” he asked, addressing the colonel. “I’ve heard a great deal about Professor Mongibeaux’s excavations near Balkh from Angela. I was hoping to learn more about what his workers have found there.”

“Of course, Mark, please sit down,” said the colonel, motioning to an empty seat next to me and making the formal introductions.

Mark and I had finally developed a real friendship. He still thought I was rash and impetuous, and I sometimes found his formality stifling, but more and more, when his fellow officers had drifted away after dinner, we would linger over coffee to talk shop. Our discussions were never personal, but we genuinely enjoyed each other’s company. I was glad he’d decided to join us for lunch with Jeef.

“Colonel, as a Frenchman, I don’t normally have many positive things to say about your English food, but this meal is really quite good,” Jeef said, scraping the last bits of Yorkshire pudding off his plate. He had regaled us over lunch with tales of the ferocity of his Afghan crew of former antiquity thieves who now zealously guarded his dig year-round.

As promised, he also quizzed Rahim on assorted details of the Hellenistic and Kushan civilizations that lay buried beneath the soil of northern Afghanistan. Mark and the colonel were both impressed with Rahim’s newly acquired, encyclopedic grasp of his country’s ancient past.