It wasn’t easy to wait calmly. No one but the merchants stood around long. Everyone else kept moving. Heads covered by shawls. The tension was palpable, with the repeated IED blasts that happened in the area.
I was wearing a worn pair of jeans, a dark shirt that hung low over them, an old imitation DKNY jacket and a brown shawl around my neck like a scarf. As I looked up I saw columns of buildings, sometimes three stories high that had been sliced down like a multi-layered cake, nothing remaining except sheer walls with exposed bricks and the remnants of door frames and windows. There were piles of bricks around the feet of these sheared buildings. There were walls around some of them, but they, too, were in various stages of collapse. It didn’t reassure me that American soldiers assigned to Company A, 1st Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment, wearing full regalia—sand camouflage uniforms, robot headgear, chest plates, radio mikes, and dark shades—walked around single file pointing their outsized assault guns at everyone’s knees.
A man was selling green and yellow vegetables, which, from the distance, I took to be squash. Beside him stood another man wearing a brick-coloured caftan with a black jerkin over it and a dark brown turban on his head. He looked from side to side, but never at me. Behind him a white minivan had sunk into the ground, tire-less, bullet riddled, and with all the windows gone. I heard radio chatter coming from an Indian-made Mahindra jeep parked nearby. I also heard an ominous drum being thumped in the distance.
Pashtun men walked by, speaking quietly, their dusty faces barely visible behind their shawls. Where I was standing there were no women in sight. The boys walking with them were quiet and, like the men, wore no socks.
A delegation of Canadian families arrived and gathered under a grey sand tent. I imagined they had come for “final closure,” a program introduced by the Canadian government to allow families of killed soldiers to visit the land where their loved ones had perished. It was, I thought, a feeble yet brave exercise, and I wondered if any other nation had undertaken the same. But there are ways in which the death of one’s young can be made acceptable, and perhaps this was one of them. I walked to another section of the bus terminal, which seemed sufficiently large to function as a kind of town centre.
It started to drizzle. The rain didn’t bother anyone. No one, nor did I, try to take shelter under the many tent-like stalls. There were women visible here, almost all of them in pale blue burqas. I also saw, sitting under a tent awning, two extraordinarily pretty young girls in their teens with brilliant smiles that revealed their gums. They wore chadors on their heads and giggled. There was a dusty tone to their skin and I imagined the enormous mix of ethnicities that might be racing through their veins. Their roots could be Greek, Jewish-Aramaic, Babylonian, Syrian, Persian, Uzbek, Mongol or, of course, Pashtun; just some of the people who had once upon a time set foot in Afghanistan to never leave. In fact the very name of Kandahar was said to be a derivative of Alexander, which in Pashto was pronounced Iskandar. All these races had mingled in this land—some long before the birth of Christ. In fact, the Pashtuns themselves could very well have started out as a mix of Jewish and Persian tribes.
I was looking for Nat, the Canadian, from Montreal. I returned to the tea stall where I had first stood. I finally decided my knees needed the rest and I walked into the tent. I sat on a bench and a young boy immediately handed me a milky mug of tea with buttery froth floating on top. I sipped it carefully and enjoyed it, feeling its thick warmth spread through my body. It tasted like goat’s milk.
The few dark eyes peering from the deeper recesses of the tent were staring at me. I looked at the ground with a simultaneous sense of wariness and reflection. Myra drifted by in my mind and I immediately straightened my back and thought of her eyes, the warmth of her hugs, and again heard her voice. Chuck, you won’t do anything silly, right? Chuck, if you don’t find Nat now there’ll be another time. I’m not stopping you, but think of what we have here. It’s not finished yet, Chuck, so don’t walk away from me. You have to come back, you know that, don’t you baby?
Outside the tent an all-terrain vehicle kicked up dust and roared away, crates of oranges visible on the back. Had some local managed to find supplies meant for the GIs and was transporting it home however he could? Who knows the values of the supplies that never made it to their intended destination, whether it be oranges, grapes, or grenades?
When the dust settled, I saw the tall Pashtun man who had been standing next to the squash seller come toward the tea stall. On the other side of the street I saw another tall person standing against the shadow of an isolated pillar. She had a shawl wrapped around her head, covering most of her face. I could only see her very sharp aquiline nose. She watched the first man crossing the street. I held my breath for a few seconds, knowing something was about to happen. He came straight towards me, bent his tall body so he could get into the tent and said “please,” pointing outside with an open palm.
I immediately put down my mug of tea, left some money on the wooden table, and followed him. The woman had already started walking and was about fifty paces ahead of us. There was no conversation for the next two hours as I walked quickly behind the two of them. We walked the length of several streets, then emerged behind a grouping of houses, followed several dustier alleyways before passing a soccer field and, finally, walking through an open field with pebbles, rocks, and clumps of underbrush growing at irregular intervals.
I noticed that many buildings I passed had blue mosaic tiles on their dome-like roofs. The colour, apparently, had remained fashionable for centuries. I was becoming exhausted and my shins hurt. The man continued ten feet ahead and the tall woman fifty paces ahead of him. I looked to the sky for drones carrying hellfire missiles. I knew they had become the standard operational procedure: several hits per week, all of which—or so it was claimed—only killed terrorists, the worst of the worst, but then a day or two later it inevitably emerged that someone’s extended family had been wiped out. This was followed by routine denials, then apologies, and then a reaffirmation the forces would be more careful.
After we had walked through another small village and left it behind too, I saw we were headed straight towards a blue ridged mountain. The sun was setting and the mountain cast a long dark shadow on the ground in front of us. Above, birds flew around in large circular orbits. I was now visibly in pain. My escort slowed down. It was only then that I noticed the woman who had been walking fifty paces ahead had been replaced with another guide who marched with similar vigour. He wore a long Afghan salwar kameez, which was black. He also had a black shawl wrapped around him that covered most of his upper torso. I suddenly felt a wave of apprehension. Only the Taliban wore black.
We reached the crest of a hill where five elderly men sat overlooking a cliff. I noticed that they had not lit a fire, despite the fact it was getting cooler. Thermal cameras hovered in the skies. What a state of siege! The coming darkness and cold made me shiver. Plumes of smoke rose from a peak high to the north, twisting like Pashtun headgear in the skies. The large, billowing, genii-like, ayatollah clouds coiled up and hovered over the mountain capturing the colours of the sunset. The man in black pointed toward that direction and talked to the four elders as they looked up at the horizon. One of the elders didn’t care to look, his face disdainfully turned away, preferring to stare at the pebble-strewn soil around his feet.
Somewhere in the sky a fighter went supersonic and the Mach cone came down with a series of thunder claps that rattled the entire valley. The man in black had a compact sub-machine gun hanging from his shoulder, which, until now, I hadn’t noticed. It had a folding butt stock and a pistol grip, and was a new variant of an AK-56. I had diligently studied weaponry, including improvised explosive devices, as preparation for this trip. I had crawled the web, fearful, cautious, and a bit excited. Wires, detonators, battery packs, Semtex, C-4, packaging, colour codes were all new concerns in my current life.
My guide, who by now I knew as “Ten Paces Ahead,” broke the news that we would be spending the night right there. When he said “here,” I had the inclination to look around and say “where?” but restrained myself. It was then I noticed a small shed built of bricks and tarpaulin against the side of the cliff.
One of the elderly men looked like Fidel Castro with a high nose and a full beard. He was fair complexioned and his blue eyes were sad and droopy. Another had no moustache, but wore a well-rounded and precisely trimmed beard. He was scratching the top of his head after removing his Afghan hat. They all looked from the sides of their eyes and no one seemed to have any inclination whatsoever to engage me in any discussion.
A thick blanket hung down like a door to the shed, the floor of which was surprisingly well prepared and smooth. Several rolled up blankets had been neatly arranged inside. Ten Paces Ahead, whose real name he told me was Hameed, pulled out an aluminum container from under his shawl. It was a food hamper with bread and roasted meat. No fires were lit. We squatted down on the floor and attacked the food. The man in black stayed outside briefly and then he, too, disappeared, as had the elders. I thanked Hameed for dinner. There was a canteen of water with which I washed my hands.
The sun had finally disappeared and the distant mountain rose like a restless jinn in the dark. The dull thump of explosions continued. I sat outside and looked at the hills. As my eyes adapted to the darkness, I saw sand bags along the edges of the hill-top and beside it an old generator with handle grips lying on its side. I walked over and picked up two shiny 7.62-mm spent cartridges among the many lying about and put them in my pocket.
As I looked across the valley I saw no lights anywhere.
I went back inside and Hameed was reading a book with the help of a Swiss Army flashlight. It seemed everything was well planned and he knew why I was there. There was no reason to ask him the plan. I covered myself with the musty smelling blankets and quickly fell asleep.
It must have been about four in the morning when he woke me. Once again, the man in black stood paces away in the distance. This time we walked down the hill with Hameed using his flashlight to show the way. He aimed the light in such a way that he could see the path and his legs were silhouetted so I could follow. We walked like that for an hour before we came to the outskirts of a small town. I believe it may have been Pir Zadeh or Per Zidah. There was a sign, but I’m pretty sure the writing was in Pashto.
The sun had begun to bob on the horizon when we reached a small enclave of houses. We entered one and I was asked to sit in a room with an open door. The man in black remained outside. Hameed left. He never said good-bye, just disappeared. I put my backpack down and sat on a wooden bench. Once again, a young boy appeared out of nowhere. He gave me an empty mug and flashed me a smile. As I held the mug he poured the strong-smelling tea from a pot that was twice the size of his head. He lifted it up deftly and tilted the curved spout and the milky tea came out in a gush of steam. It cleaned the insides of my mouth and generally felt good going down the throat.
“Taliban key ma key chut! That’s it, that’s all.” The Taliban’s mama’s cunt, that’s it that’s all. I was in a relaxed state of bewilderment when I overheard this conversation between the guy in black and someone else outside. I had learnt a few choice Urdu words from Indian and Pakistani friends when I was at Concordia University, but I thought this a frightening exchange in a country under the firm grip of the Taliban. Immediately, a Pakistani man wearing salwar kameez and an Afghan hat stepped in. His Guevara beard was a handsome contrast to the long beards or the orange-tinted trimmed ones prevalent in the town centre. He had a shoulder holster with a sub-compact machine gun hanging from it. It was partially covered by his shawl but clearly visible. He stepped in and said “Salaam Walekhom” to me and plunked himself down on the opposite bench. The sun had risen and was funnelling its first rays in long spikes over the Afghan mountains. I greeted him back, “Walekhom Salaam”.
He introduced himself as Shaheed and held out his hand. I shook it. “You are looking for your friend. He’s with us. He knows you’re coming and is looking forward to seeing you. There are certain rules to be followed and both you and I are going to follow them to the letter. Okay? Otherwise the behnchoot kuttey drones will send the fireball up our arses and that, I’ve heard, is unpleasant. You will cover your head with your shawl completely and you will not speak unless you are spoken to. We are going to make a very short trip to the other side of town in the van.”
“Sure,” I said calmly.
We got into a small van waiting outside. I considered it a perfect target for a drone. It had a noisy diesel engine, no windows and at least five people already packed in, as well as the man in black. I got into a rear passenger seat and dipped my head to the people sitting next to me. Everyone smelt of unpasteurized goat milk. The van roared off and left the little enclave behind in no time. It climbed the side of a mountain and then, after about ten minutes, Shaheed drove it straight into a narrow pass and parked it under a cliff overhang expertly carved out of the side of a rock face, large enough for a number of cars. The men in the back all trooped out and went down a hill. We got out and entered another cliff-top settlement, but this one with signs of family activity. I saw a man playing with a child. There were huts carved into the sides of a hill and I thought I saw women in the distance, their faces exposed but their heads covered. In the middle of the settlement there was a clearing, like a plaza. It was composed of dry, red clay and at the edge of it, standing still, with the rays of the morning sun bouncing off his teeth, was Nat, a huge smile on his face.
He was lankier and had grown a long beard. He was wearing a salwar kameez with a large shawl wrapped loosely around his head and neck. All about were small groups of men, dressed somewhat similarly, with sophisticated weapons slung over their shoulders, a few with rocket launchers on their backs. Shaheed swung over to the other side of the car and said a few things to the man in black before coming around and leading me to Nat.
We stared at each other and I maintained the discipline of not speaking till I was spoken to, when Shaheed in his boisterous style said “So—like man!—this is a Montreal party!” He had quite the character, flamboyant mannerisms married to a refined appreciation for danger.
I said to Nat as gently as I possibly could, “Hey!”
He put his arms around me and we hugged as brothers. “Hey,” he finally replied, “I’m known as Azmat around here.”