First Steps

The loudspeaker crackled to life. “The government of Pakistan has just announced that all foreigners must have an official entry visa for Pakistan.” The stewardess cleared her throat. I felt my own throat tighten as her voice droned on. “Those without visas . . .” I’d stopped listening. When I’d left Boston, just twenty hours ago, a visa was not required for entry to Pakistan. I glanced through the smudged little window as the plane glided to a stop, the heat from the tarmac rising in spindly waves, almost obscuring the antiaircraft artillery that ringed the airport’s periphery and the gun-toting soldiers who lined the narrow runway. As my eyes focused on the scene below, the warnings of well-meaning friends and family rang in my ears. “Are you crazy? You’ll be killed. You’ll never make it out of the airport.”

My intentions had been pure when I’d signed up to help the Afghan refugees fleeing the Soviet invasion for the relative safety of Pakistan. It had seemed a romantic notion—the perfect struggle of good against evil, and I’d wanted to be a part of it. Like most Americans, I knew little about Afghanistan or the Soviet invasion there in 1979, but the scenes of stick-thin refugees clad in rags fleeing their homes and their country had moved me to action. I’d always wanted to be involved, but until then it hadn’t been the right time, but there it was—the perfect spot for me. I’d had no doubt that I could do what was needed, and, with the images of starving children still flickering on my television screen, I’d picked up the phone and volunteered.

I’d been certain that friends and family would rally round to support me. But I was wrong. One after another chided me for what seemed, at least to them, a fool’s errand. “Do you really think you can help?” I did. In fact, I was sure I could help. Finally, my aunt stepped into the verbal fray. “Are you sure,” she asked softy, “that this is the right thing to do?” I nodded in reply. “And you’re sure this is not some kind of death wish?” My jaw dropped. “Death wish?” I’d asked, perplexed. “This is a life wish. I want it to matter, someday in the very distant future, that I was here. I know I can help. I’ve never been more sure of anything.” And once she was convinced of that, the angst surrounding my decision melted away. I would be fine. “I’m ready,” I’d said confidently. “I’ve done a lot of reading.” But as my face hugged the plane’s window, I suddenly wasn’t so sure.

I’d vaguely remembered President Carter’s boycott of the Winter Olympics in 1980 in response to the Soviet invasion, but knew little else until my planned trip had thrown me into a reading frenzy. I’d learned that Afghanistan, a nation seemingly always embroiled in conflict, offered a harsh existence in the best of times. The preinvasion population of twenty-five million lived in rural villages, where they’d subsisted on small farms, eking out a living however they could. The simple resources that we take for granted—electricity, running water, plumbing—were rarely available beyond the city limits. Health care was limited as well, resulting in maternal and infant mortality numbers that were among the highest in the world. Sixty percent of all deaths occurred before age five, and overall life expectancy hovered around forty years.¹ In the best of times, life was hard, and in those worst of times, after the invasion, life was unimaginable.

The situation across the border offered at least some hope to the millions of Afghans who poured out of their own country to the relative safety of Pakistan. But, by 1986, they continued to languish in squalid camps along the border, and though they received food, education, shelter, and health care, their host country was resentful of the attention they received. Terrorist attacks were on the rise, and the refugees were blamed. Pakistan wanted to be rid of them and the problems they brought.

To avoid the rigid structure of camp life, at least a million more Afghans chose to live outside the camps, invisible to aid and to the world. If life in the camps was hardscrabble, then life just beyond was pure misery, especially so for women, who’d never been considered of any importance beyond the sons they produced and the chores they completed. The refugees there needed everything—food, shelter, medical care. You name it—they needed it. And it was there, to that border area and those people, that I was headed.

But first, I had to get out of the airport.

Until this trip, the farthest I’d traveled was a beach resort in Mexico, and I’d never traveled alone. As the first doubts about my mission began to bubble up in my brain, I held my breath, gathered my belongings, and stepped into a world more foreign than anything I could have imagined. The heat I’d seen rising in steamy ripples wove itself into my hair and skin and even my clothes. But it was the odors—the scents of food and spices and sweating bodies, all mingling in the heat to create a musky, pungent odor—that permeated everything. It was all so exotic, I might have just landed on the moon. Still, I tried to stand a little straighter and hold my head a little higher as I was shuttled, amidst one large chaotic crowd, from one long line to the next, but my sudden burst of bravado was short-lived. As others were allowed to pass through, I stammered my way through explanations for arriving without the necessary visa, watching as eyebrows were raised and soldiers moved in. My pulse quickened when a young soldier directed me to a small room, where three disheveled young European men sat, their feet tapping nervously, their eyes darting about every time someone moved. Drug dealers, I thought. And as that reality sunk in, my mouth grew dry. Shit.

As the minutes ticked by, I began to think I really might not make it out of the airport, but I was determined to somehow stay in this country and do what I’d come for. To give up now and just go home would be to admit defeat. I wasn’t ready to do that, so instead I tried desperately to think of a way to reason with the soldiers. “I’m waiting for friends,” I announced to the young soldier when he reappeared and motioned one of the young men to follow him. I’d been advised to keep my aid work a secret. “Pakistan is tired of the refugees,” the aid recruiter had cautioned me. “Better to say you’re a tourist.” I’d stuck to that story though it had seemed implausible even to me. I heard the crack of a whip and shouts and another soldier returned and took a second man out. More shouts and sounds of a beating filled my ears. I could almost hear the acid churning in my stomach. Would they beat me, too?

But the young soldier had taken a shine to me and he brought me a cup of tea, smiling as he set it down. “Rafiq,” he said, pointing to his name tag. I nodded. “Roberta,” I answered with a hopeful smile. I settled in with my tea and prayed that the other members of the aid group would arrive soon and vouch for me. The third man was directed out of the room, and I sat alone. One, maybe two hours passed. Sweat pooled on the back of my neck. Surely, if they were going to beat me or arrest me, I reasoned with myself, they would’ve done it by now.

Finally, after what seemed an eternity, a handwritten sign rose above the crowd just beyond the small room, and my heart beat a little faster. Freedom Medicine, the fledgling NGO I’d be joining, had arrived to pluck me from the line, and I was free—with only a stern warning to get my documents straightened out. I nodded. I’d made it out of the airport.

As alien as the airport had seemed, the city of Peshawar in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan was even more so. A tribal frontier town, Peshawar was the international epicenter during the Soviet invasion of neighboring Afghanistan. It had become an exciting, crowded, noisy city filled with refugees, spies, freedom fighters, foreign diplomats, aid workers, journalists, and those adventurers who had simply been drawn there, and now I was one of them. People and donkeys and dogs, and all manner of vehicles—buses, lorries, screeching taxis, tiny motorized rickshaws, horse-drawn wagons and even bicycles—filled every inch of space. Coupled with the noise of barking dogs, braying donkeys, squawking chickens, groaning motors, and the shouts of those caught in the middle, it was a place of absolute chaos, the sort of place a person might never adjust to.

For me and the others on my team—Ella, a nurse, and Tom, a medic, both from New England—Peshawar was just a quick stop, a place where we could acclimate a bit at the American Club, the brightly lit restaurant and dark, smoke-filled bar run by the American consulate, protected by security guards and hidden behind high walls. It was a place where the eclectic group of foreigners here could have a drink, flirt, begin or end an affair, and just let loose. Whether noon or midnight, it was always lively, always the place to be, but we didn’t have time for more than a quick envious peek at the goings-on there.

The next stop after the club was the local bazaar, where Ella and I would pick up our new clothes—balloonlike pants covered by long dresses, and head scarves, all to comply with local customs and hide our evil feminine wiles. Men, on the other hand, were less restricted and allowed to wear their own clothes.

With those tasks completed, we set out for Thal, the small border village where FM was in the process of setting up a clinic and a medic training for Afghan freedom fighters. Once we left the city limits of Peshawar, the road narrowed, snaking through dusty villages where you could purchase a warm bottle of Coca-Cola, a bad-tempered camel, a newly polished piece of antiaircraft artillery, or, if you were so inclined, a bit of opium, fresh from Afghanistan’s poppies.

These villages were miniatures of Peshawar—less crowded, less noisy, but still overflowing with donkeys, dogs, shrieking children, shouting men, and conspicuously absent—women. Hidden behind burqas or the mud-plastered walls of their own homes, they rarely ventured out. A sighting of any woman’s face was rare, which made Ella and me the object of great curiosity. Were we—as some probably hoped—whores, or maybe just fools in a foreign land?

Hours later, we arrived at the Freedom Medicine compound in Thal, situated on a paved stretch of road on the way to nowhere. The surrounding landscape was bare—dust and an occasional bit of scrub or a lone stray dog were all that I could see. FM, hidden behind high mud walls, was a series of one-story brick buildings with plastic sheeting for windows and doors. The living quarters, a cluster of tents, were nestled behind those buildings.

Ella and I would share a raggedy old UN tent that housed two bare cots and countless bugs, some the size of small animals. There were no amenities—no electricity, two simple outdoor showers, and two doorless side-by-side latrines (no toilets here, just simple no-nonsense holes dug deep into the ground) separated by a brick wall. A roll of toilet paper (Chinese and very scratchy, I’d later learn) lay in the dirt.

A fresh bead of sweat tracked along my forehead. Before I’d volunteered, I’d never even gone camping. My idea of roughing it had been no room service after ten, and yet, I was sure that my experience at the airport had somehow toughened me. Or so I hoped. But, in all my planning, I’d somehow never imagined what it would be like to actually be here—the scents, the noise, the desolation—and that was only here, in the FM compound. I’d only imagined myself cradling desperately ill babies or tending to fresh wounds, and so far, it wasn’t like that at all.

Ella, a seasoned aid worker who’d most recently volunteered at a Cambodian refugee camp in Thailand, unpacked quickly, as she filled me in on her work there, regaling me with her memories of the work she’d done. “Mostly in the morgue,” she announced matter-of-factly. “I was in charge of public health, and when the rains came and the camp flooded, there was a big problem with what to do with the bodies, so I worked on that.” I sighed and hoped that the work here would be different. Ella barely noticed my chagrin. She pulled out a blue nylon nightgown before plopping herself down on her cot. “So, tell me about yourself,” she said, a quick smile draping her lips.

There wasn’t much to tell. Until a few hours ago, I’d been an opinionated, maybe slightly overconfident ER nurse, but now, I wasn’t even sure of that. Ella sensed my unease, and she literally took my hand as she walked me to the latrine and the shower and demonstrated the basics of third world life.

By the time I fell onto my cot (still in my clothes, since I’d inexplicably decided that bringing a nightgown might be seen as too prissy), I was certain sleep would come quickly. And it did. For Ella.

For me, it was a different story. I lay awake, my mind still racing—so much to learn, so little time, my confidence ebbing away with each passing minute. Just as I felt myself start to drift off, I was startled by the sudden rumble and whistle of distant artillery. I sat bolt upright, my eyes wide open. “What the hell is that?” I whispered. Ella’s only reply was the soft snoring that punctuated her sleep. I wanted to shake her awake, to make her sit with me, but she remained blissfully wrapped in her dreams. I curled up, covered my head with my pillow, and tried to sleep. And, as the artillery rounds tapered off and the sun began to poke through the tent’s flap, I finally drifted off.

Not much later, I woke to find Ella, already dressed, swiping a line of blue eye shadow across her eyelids. I sat up straighter. “Ella, makeup?” I sighed. “I am so impressed.”

“Oh honey,” she replied, finger-combing her tousled curls, “you’ve got to look good, you never know who you’re going to meet.”

My pencil eyeliner and lipstick had already melted in the sticky heat, but I was learning. After that, I never left home without sturdy lipstick, not to mention real sleep-wear. Ella was right; even if you are without water and haven’t washed your face in days, a swipe of color across your lips and you feel better, renewed somehow.

Lipstick, even in Afghanistan, or perhaps especially in Afghanistan, makes a world of difference.