The Watch (13 page)

My face is half lathered and I’m standing in a distinctly ungainly posture with my legs spread apart on either side of the dog.

I was just about to shave, I tell him, as if it weren’t obvious.

That’s all right, he says. The captain won’t notice. Trust me, he has more important things on his mind.

Reluctantly, I put away my shaving things, wipe my face with a towel, and turn my vomit-stained jacket inside out before putting it on. I reflect guiltily that I haven’t said my morning prayers. As I prepare to leave, the dog jumps up on my bunk.

I can see Shorty’s taken a liking to you, the sergeant says.

I don’t reply but give a brave little smile instead.

The dog butts me playfully with his muzzle as we walk out.

The sergeant offers me his hand. I’m Flint, by the way.

It’s overcast outside. It’s getting warmer, but there’s still a hint of mist in the air, probably because the mountains are so close.

The sergeant seems to read my mind.

We have strange weather here, he says, but we’ve gotten used to it. It goes from bitter cold in the morning to 115 degrees in the shade by noon.

I heard about the simoom, I remark. Surely it must have made it difficult to fight?

He turns his head. Simoom? What’s that?

It’s what we call the burning wind that accompanies a sandstorm.

He takes a notebook out of his pocket and writes down the word, but I notice he avoids answering my question.

You talk funny, he says when he has finished writing.

I hesitate, not sure how to respond. I didn’t think I had said anything especially humorous, and I tell him that.

No, no, he says, I meant you have a funny accent. Where’s it from?

My conversation teacher in Kabul was British, I reply.

Then I feel suddenly anxious and add: I hope it’s not going to affect my standing with the captain …

Don’t worry, kiddo, he says with a grin. You talk better than most people here.

A soldier overtakes us and turns around and looks at me quizzically. Who dat, Sarn’t? he says with a grin. Dude walks like a lady! Whoo, whoo …

That’s enough, Ramirez, the sergeant snaps. Cut it out.

We reach the command post just as a radio operator runs out with a receiver held high in the air. He glances at us. I can’t get main base, he says rapidly as he raises the radio’s antenna as far as it can go. There’s an urgency to his voice that my escort seems to react to. He tells me to wait before hurrying into the hut. Nonplussed, I idle around for a few moments before deciding to disregard his instructions and follow him inside.

It’s crowded in the hut. It takes my eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness. There are officers and men lining the walls, but everyone seems distracted, and my intrusion passes unnoticed. An officer
sits at a table with his head held down. The radio operator leans over and whispers something to him. From the officer’s chest tabs, I surmise that this must be the captain I am supposed to meet, but something is obviously the matter, because a sudden hush falls over the assembly as he begins to speak. He says that the helicopter carrying the dead and wounded men from the base—the same helicopter that had brought me here, in other words—has crashed a few kilometers south of here. Although they are waiting for confirmation, no one on board is thought to have survived.

A subdued groan of dismay greets the announcement. Some of the men cover their faces; others, more stoic, look on with stony expressions. The captain has a word with a couple of men, and then one of them, a veritable giant, walks out of the hut with anguish written all over his face. Meanwhile, Staff Sergeant Flint notices me and storms over. What the fuck are you doing here? he asks in a fierce whisper. You’re not allowed inside the command post. I thought I told you to wait out in the open. Now get the fuck out. I don’t want you anywhere within a hundred clicks of the CP!

Click, Sir? I ask him, bewildered.

Didn’t they teach you anything at Bagram? he snaps. A click is a thousand meters. And I didn’t mean that literally, for fuck’s sake, or you’d be stationed permanently outside the wire. I just don’t want you in the C.O.’s office, that’s all.

Yes, Sir, I understand now. It was my mistake.

And don’t fucking call me “Sir,” all right? I’m a sergeant. I work for a living.

As he grabs my arm, I ask him about my meeting with the captain, but he cuts me short and tells me that he’ll rearrange it for some other time.

Chastened, I leave the vicinity of the hut and return to my quarters.

It takes me a while to find my way back. When I open the door, I find Alizadeh and the others gone, but in their place there’s a man in an
undershirt stretched out on the floor, sobbing like a child. I’m holding the door open uncertainly, wondering whether I should go in, when he turns to look at me and then bursts out almost in a frenzy: Shut the damn door and get the fuck out of here, you frickin’ raghead!

I close the door abruptly and stand outside, my legs shaking.

Another soldier passes by and stares fixedly at me with a cold expression.

I light a cigarette with trembling fingers and try to compose myself. Drawing a deep breath, I walk away slowly. After a few minutes of aimless wandering, I find myself at the Hesco wall that marks the base’s perimeter. I follow the wall until I come to the Entry Control Point. It’s manned by two men and overseen by a lieutenant I had glimpsed in the communications hut. He glances interrogatively at me as I draw abreast. I smile at him with a degree of uncertainty, and he nods and walks over.

I am Masood, the new interpreter, I tell him.

Ellison, Second Platoon, he says briskly as he shakes my hand.

I am sorry about the crash, I remark. I arrived in that helicopter.

Yes, I know, he says. You were lucky.

He stands beside me as I gaze out at the field and take in the bodies lying there. Beyond the field, the mountains tower over everything. A dense mass of ash-colored clouds veils the highest slopes and scarcely admits any light to the plain below.

It’s strange that the Taliban haven’t collected their dead, I observe.

He gives a humorless laugh. That’s because they know we’re primed to clean their clocks if they show up again.

Noticing that my cigarette has burned down to a stub, he takes out a packet and offers me one. He waits to light mine first; I find the ease of his gestures very reassuring. For the first time since my arrival here, I begin to feel comfortable.

So where are you from? he asks.

I am originally from Charikar, which is a small town north
of Bagram and south of the Panjshir Valley, but I’ve been all over Afghanistan.

Your English is very good, he says. The last few interpreters we had could barely string a sentence together.

Thank you, I reply. Then I ask if I can go out and inspect the bodies.

He turns to look at me, and I notice that he has astonishingly light blue eyes. Now why would you want to do that? he asks.

Because I hate the Taliban, and it would be nice to see their dead faces.

He bows his head for a moment and then glances at me with a neutral expression. I can’t let you do that, he replies. The perimeter is mined. I wouldn’t want you blowing up on my watch.

But someone must have taken the bodies out and arranged them in such a neat row?

Yup, he replies without explaining.

So that’s all I am proposing—to go out and look at the bodies and then come back again.

He laughs. Do you know how security SOP works? What was the last base you were at?

I was in Bagram, and before that in a small outpost in Paktika.

Paktika, huh? I’ve heard it’s frickin’ wild there.

It is difficult.

He gazes at the row of bodies with squinting eyes. Then, decisively, he says: Nope. No can do, Paco.

Paco?

Forget it. It was a joke.

Maybe I can identify some of the Taliban, I suggest. Wouldn’t that be helpful?

He glances at me sharply. Then he looks at the field again and takes a deep drag on his cigarette. All right, he says at length, but you can only examine the row of bodies lined up outside the wire.
The ones at the end of the field are off-limits. They’re too close to the slopes, and we don’t want any more casualties from snipers who might be lurking there.

I’m about to go when he stops me with a gesture: I’ll send someone with you to make sure you don’t stray too far.

That’s all right, I reply. I can manage on my own. It’s only a few meters, after all.

He purses his lips, his eyes cold. If you take one step outside the ECP without my permission, he says casually, I’ll shoot you myself.

I stare at him, wondering if he’s joking again.

He smiles at me, but somehow he no longer resembles the affable young officer who’d offered me a cigarette.

Surely you cannot mean that, I murmur, bewildered.

Oh, I mean it, he says. I’m dead serious. Now: you just wait here while I find someone to go with you.

He turns his head to scan the Hescos before walking away a couple of steps and calling out to one of the men. Meanwhile I feel myself coloring furiously as I absorb the full extent of his insult. Does he really believe that I would be that irresponsible? For an instant, I wonder if I am being too sensitive, given their paranoid security procedures, then decide that I am not. Here, then, is yet another example of the contempt with which they seem to regard me. I can’t tell if it’s an attitude they share toward all my countrymen, but since I haven’t met any since my arrival here, I cannot tell, in all fairness.

I realize that I have no option but to wait until the officer returns. I seethe in the shadow of the ECP and gaze out at the field. Soon I hear footsteps behind me and turn around, shading my eyes from the sun.

It’s the soldier who escorted me from the LZ last night. He stands there cradling a slim, long-barreled rifle, its metal gleaming black.

I read his name lapel. It says: Simonis.

The lieutenant returns and, with a nod at my guide, says: He’s gonna take you to the hajjis.

To Simonis, he says: Keep an eye on the slopes.

I follow in Simonis’s footsteps as we skirt the concertina and trace a weaving path that leads directly to the dead Taliban. In the time that it takes for us to reach them, I conclude that I’ve seldom felt more alienated than I have since my arrival in this place.

A flock of crows rises into the air as we approach, while a buzzing cloud of flies loudly protests our intrusion. I take my time as I walk around the bodies. The ground under them is soaked with dark patches of moisture. It’s the first time I’ve seen the enemy at such close quarters, and it feels curiously anticlimactic. I was prepared to hate them, but they seem disappointingly ordinary and nothing along the lines that I had imagined. They’re also horribly mangled, and some are barely recognizable as human remains. The corpse nearest me has his head attached to his torso by the merest shred of cartilage. Farther away, two boys who’ve fared somewhat better are more or less the same age as me. One even wears an embroidered green jacket that’s similar to one of mine. Most of them are farmers: I can tell by the calluses on their hands. The only perceptible difference between us is that they all have full-grown, red-dyed beards where I have day-old stubble. I begin to feel a reluctant kinship with them—one that I cannot but help contrast to the way I’ve been made to feel inside the base.

Then I remind myself that the Americans are here to help, and it is men like these now-supine wretches who slaughtered my family. They killed my father, my mother, my two older brothers, my sister and her husband, my father’s two brothers and their families, and both of my grandparents from my father’s side. They stole up one Friday afternoon and surrounded our house, which was some distance from the town. My father and his brothers owned the oldest clothing shop in the Charikar bazaar—my grandfather used to say that it dated back to the time of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, yet another of those who’d attempted to subjugate the savage Pashtuns and failed.

My mother was a beautiful, educated woman who ran a maktab, a primary school for girls, under the auspices of a secular women’s
organization. My father was neither educated nor handsome, but he was a good man who doted on my mother and was supportive of her projects. Later I would learn that it was my mother’s school that had provoked the Taliban. They gave her two warnings, and when she ignored them, they acted in the only way they knew.

I was the sole survivor of the massacre, but only because I was catching minnows in a nearby pond. My first intimation of what had happened was the black pall of smoke rising from the burning house. I have no memory of what followed, save that two days later I showed up covered in dust at my maternal grandmother’s farm, fifty kilometers to the north. I sat without speaking for days. I was six years old. It took me a long time after that to find my voice.

That is why I would have liked to feel hatred toward these corpses lying at my feet, but instead I feel strangely empty. I crouch down next to them and wonder if it might have to do with their condition. Three of them were obviously blown apart by Claymores, because there’s nothing left of their legs but shreds of bone and flesh. Two others took direct shots to the head, and their faces are a bloody mess. I have to twist my head to piece together their features. Only one of the boys my age seems unscathed and appears to be merely asleep; but his neighbor’s head is bludgeoned in, although his right hand is braced against the ground as if he’s just about to get up. What’s more, all of them are beginning to show the aftereffects of the simoom: the tips of their noses and ears have turned black, while their skin looks desiccated and paperlike. But the drying up of the bodies has also prevented them from smelling. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they don’t smell yet.

A mournful howl interrupts my thoughts.

It’s Shorty, the company’s dog. I’m surprised to see him at the far end of the field, near the slopes. With all the fuss that’s made over him, I would have expected him to be kept within the limits of the base; but who knows, perhaps they allow him to run around. I watch as he runs past the three bodies at the end of the field and darts up a
narrow trail. I follow him with my eyes until he disappears behind a screen of trees.