Unspoken Abandonment (15 page)

April 6,
2003
:

Today was my first day on the new shift. The day was beautiful, and the evenings here are actually gorgeous.
I slept a normal night
time sleep, and it was so quiet. I loved it!

The weather today was just perfe
ct. The temperature was seventy-
five degrees, and
throughout the day,
there was
nothing but sunshine. Around six o’clock
in the evening
, I climbed to the roof of my OP to sit and watch the sun
set behind the mountains. I felt a cool wind blowing across my face and realized that this moment was absolutely amazing. Regardless of what was going on around me, regardless of what I was in the middle of, this moment was flawless.

Not long after the sunset, the day turned into night, the temperature fell, and it became the cold dark night I
ha
ve grown to know all too well here.

After d
ark, I climbed back to the roof
and looked up at the sky. The stars were absolutely amazing. There are no streetlights or other types
of ambient artificial lighting,
so you get to see every star in all its glory. I
ha
ve never seen anything quite like it. I got lost in my own head, just thinking about the vastness and the enormity of what I was looking
upon
.
It made me realize just how small I was,
and
how insignificant we all are in the grand scheme of things. Tonight, I found an indescribable beauty while in the midst of chaos, and it made me feel as though I
ha
ve never been so alone.

April 7,
2003
:

I had a hard time falling asleep after shift last
night;
I think my body might need a few days to adjust to sleeping at night again. Once I
am
adjusted, I think I
a
m going to love this shift. The best part of it is that there are no missions. We still have to do daytime patrols, but no significant missions. My squad has barely enough people to cover the shift, and
we a
re almost never back fr
om a mission by four o’clock. It is
looking
as though our shift will have us
awake,
and ready
to do patrols for four or five hours
,
every morning by eight o’clock
. We will
then have a few hours before shift starts, then shift,
and
then off to sleep for the night. This is a lot better than before.

I woke up around seven-
thirty this morning, and
I
found that there were no patrols assigned today. My squad has actually been getting very lucky with that lately. A few guys and I decided to throw
the football around, go to the
gym, and then just hang around
and
talk. We talked about random
, stupid crap
,
but
we
mostly
talked about
home.

Four o’clock brought
the start of
shift with it, and I was on the east wall again tonight. There were a few random gunshots here and there, but nothing of
any
major
concern to us. Before I knew it
,
shift was over, and now I
a
m writing this and
getting
ready for bed.

Most of the guys in the squad get along pretty well, but I can see that
all of our relationships are
becoming very strained. We all feel the same way about life in this place, and we
a
re all being torn apart in our own way. No one ever talks about how they feel, and it seems to leak out in other ways. I can see guys becoming upset or depressed over the silliest shit. Mail
will
come
,
and
if
someone did
n
o
t get a package,
they
wi
ll become upset. Sometimes,
we
will
go to dinner and there
will be
no more sport drinks left,
making someone furious.
It i
s always one stupid thing or another
setting someone off
. It
may sound
kind of crazy,
but that is just
the way it is here. When you have absolutely nothing to look forward to
, except a stupid sport drink
and nothing else, it becomes an enormous letdown when it
i
s not there. Each and every one of us
is
do
ing
our best to
get
through this, and we a
re always there for each other. I guess
that is
what is really important
and not a drink.

April 8,
2003
:

Right next door to our compound is a German-run school for young girls. Every day we see the children walking to and from school,
and
the little girls
are
all wearing the same uniform. It
i
s a very conservative looking, long
, felt-like dress, with
a white head scarf covering their hair.
The idea of
girls getting an education is not
well accepted
in Afghanistan
, and the school is very unpopular with a many local Afghans. Taliban
supporters
have openly denounced the school and criticized its being.

Just as my squad was getting ready to go on shift, at about three forty-five, I heard three rapid gunshots, right at the gate. They were followed by a quick burst of automatic gunfire. As
we
got to the gate, I could
n
o
t believe what I saw, and I do
n
ot think I wi
ll ever be able to understand it.

A man was
lying
dead in the street, having just been shot by one of the Afghan guards from our gate. Before he was shot, he walked up to a group o
f
young girls leaving the school, pulled out a handgun, and opened fire. The Afghan guard reacted by firing at the shooter and killing him.

One girl was struck in the stomach, and she was on the ground screaming in pain. Another girl was struck in the side of the head, with her white scarf almost completely red as her lifeless body just laid there. I could see her eyes were wide open, and they looked like she was staring at something far, far away.

Doctors came rushing out, and everyone started trying to help.
A large crowd was gathering, but they were almost completely sil
ent, with many praying. By four-
thirty, the injured girl had also died, and we were instructed to go to our assigned
OPs
and go on as normal.
I always love when something like this happens and they tell us, “Go about business as normal.”

The whole story is actually a lot longe
r and
with a lot more detail, but this is all I care to write
about it
. There are other things that I normally would have written, but I guess it does
n
o
t really matter that I went to the gym or played with a football. What does any of that matter?

April 9,
2003
:

Today started off around seven-
thirty. I got out of bed, got my gear together, and grabbed a quick breakfast before heading out for our patrol at eight.
Because of yesterday’s shooting, the
patrol
assignment for today
was all d
ay long, right up until four o’clock
.

On the four to midnight shift, the beginning of the shift is very busy. The streets around the compound are packed with people
,
so
if you are
in an OP you need to keep your eyes open and watch for everything. If you
a
re on a checkpoint, you
a
re running your ass off dealing with the stream of vehicles and pedestrians coming in and out of the compound. It makes the day fly by, but both of them are really stressful. It
i
s not like wo
rking at a fast food restaurant
where if you fuck up
,
somebody does
n
o
t get their fries. If we screw up here, someone could get shot, or worse
,
a vehicle with a bomb could make it inside the compound.

If any
one
thinks that there are not people out
here
who are
willing to walk up and
simply
shoot one of us, they
a
re just plain blind. If someone is willing to walk up to a little girl and shoot her in the head, they
wi
ll do the same to
any one of
us without a second thought.

Massoud was back on the compound today. He had gone back to his home village for a little while, to take a break from things. We got to talk for a while
tonight
, and he told me about his home. He said it
i
s a very poor village, but
it is also
very nice. Massoud said there is no violence where he is from and practically no crime. He described it as a small remote area that has very little interaction from the outside world. He told me that what I see in Kabul is not all of Afghanistan. For his sake, I hope that is the truth. I can
no
t imagine this poor man having to live like this for the rest of his life.
I get to leave; this is his home.

During the shift, we
received
a
situation
report that
a
coalition compound on the other side of Kabul was hit with a rocket. Within minutes of the rocket striking, a car bomb exploded just two blocks away from the same compound.
For us on the other hand, it was nice and quiet.

April 10,
2003
:

Working on the four to midnight shift
provides
me
the
opportunity
to meet a lot of
interesting
people. The compound has been active for about eighteen months, and there are a lot of local Afghan employees who work here
throughout
the day. There are gardeners, cooks, construction workers, and others, many of
whom
are starting to pick up English after months of contact with Americans. The older Afghan workers tend to shy away from us, but the Afghans in their late teens or early twenties love trying to speak English. A lot of them also try very hard to act American.

The more people I meet, the more stories I hear, and
many
of them are sadder than the last. One kid, I forget his name, is about eighteen years old, and he
h
as
been
proud of his new baseball hat
for the last few days
. It
i
s an obvious bootleg of the real brand
,
and
it is also
a very poor qu
ality knockoff. He loves it, and w
e told him it looks great. He told us it was very expensive
,
and he had been saving for over a month to buy it. I asked him how much it cost
him, and he proudly answered, “T
wo dollars.”

I saw the same kid yesterday, but
he was not wearing
his hat. I asked him where it was, and he just looked down at the ground as he said, “
Stole
.”

We
a
re ordered not to pay the local Afghans any money or give them any donations. It can be a bad thing because if we give to one
,
it could get out of hand
for everyone else. I normally abide by this rule
because I know what can happen. Once you give to one, you get swarmed by others, and it can easily grow to a dangerous level very fast. I
normally
abide by this rule.

About an hour after telling me his hat was stolen, I saw this kid walking from the north gate checkpoint. He was alone, and I saw no one else around. I walked towards him, and I raised my index finger to my lips, making the “sshhh” sign
,
as I handed him two dollars. I just saw him again today, about an hour ago, and he was wearing a new hat.