Farishta Page 15

  “We have no idea why or when these caves were abandoned and we can only speculate about what they looked like in their heyday.” Jeef gazed up at the smoke damaged lotus frescoes. “We’re going to lose it all if it’s not restored, but,” he added, “that takes money . . .”

  When we had finished our tour, Jeef led us out of the caves and into the blinding afternoon sunlight. “Did you know, Rahim, that the foothills of Samangan Province used to be covered with pistachio groves?” he asked as he pointed toward the barren hills to the south and east of Takht-i-Rustam.

  “Yes, Professor,” Rahim replied. “My father told me that when he was a boy, northern Afghanistan was famous for these orchards. I know there is one pistachio tree left in Mazār-i-Sharīf. It is in the courtyard of the mosque across the street from our PRT.”

  I had seen this tree from my bedroom window, although until now I hadn’t been aware of its significance. The first buds of spring had only this week begun to cover its gnarled branches.

  Jeef lowered his head in thought and closed his eyes briefly, but his sparkle returned and he motioned to Rahim.

  “Come, my boy, let’s show my friends the monks’ sleeping quarters and their waterworks at the foot of the dome,” he said, clapping his hand on Rahim’s shoulder and marching him back up the hill to the base of the polished limestone stupa. The rest of us trailed behind them, amused at the instant bond that had formed between the elderly Frenchman and his eager Afghan pupil.

  Late that afternoon, when our convoy exited the shaded confines of the canyon, we were again blinded by the sun, which had made its daily transit across the sky and was now a circle of molten gold plunging into the western desert.

  Jenkins and Fuzzy donned sunglasses and lowered their visors, while Rahim and I looked out our windows or dozed. The freshly poured asphalt on the Mazār–Kabul road allowed Jenkins to maintain a good clip until we reached the shipping-container shopping mall where the road forked north to the Amu Darya.

  Jenkins slowed the Beast to allow another ragged parade of children, balancing bundles of brush and cardboard on their heads, to cross the road.

  A slender whirlwind danced toward us across the desert, flinging everything in its path high into the air and raining bits of roadside trash onto the hood of the Beast.

  “Roll up your windows ! ” shouted Jenkins as he pulled over, temporarily blinded by the blowing sand. Small cardboard boxes and juice containers with torn foil liners glinted in the sunlight and bounced across the windshield, landing in the dirt near the plodding children.

  At that moment, for reasons I will never understand, the answer to a question I had not even asked popped into my head. I gasped in surprise at my sudden epiphany.

  “Of course,” I shouted, staring out the window at the receding dust storm.

  Rahim, Fuzzy, and Jenkins all turned and stared at me with worried looks on their faces.

  “You all right, Angela?” asked Jenkins.

  “I’m fine. I’m just thinking,” I replied. It had not occurred to me until now that there was plenty of fuel for cooking in Afghanistan, an endless, free supply. It was the sun—beating down on these poor kids and their families almost every day of the year!

  Memories flooded back of a long ago summer in New Mexico when I had earned a Girl Scout cooking badge. Our troop leader suggested that I build a primitive solar oven with a cardboard box and aluminum foil. I had never thought about solar ovens again—until now.

  “Rahim,” I said as he stared out the window at the children on his side of the road. “Does anyone in this country use solar ovens? ”

  “What is that, Angela-jan?” he replied, looking puzzled at my question.

  “It’s an insulated box painted black inside with a piece of glass on top and aluminum foil reflectors. It cooks food with sunshine.”

  “How can you cook food with the sun, Angela?” asked Jenkins, who could never resist joining a conversation. “Is that like the panels people are putting on their roofs to make electricity? ”

  “No, those are photovoltaic cells. Solar ovens are much simpler than that, and they’re really cheap. They turn plain old sunlight into heat and trap it inside a box,” I replied. “I made one years ago, but I think I’ll do a little research tonight. If I can find some plans on the Internet, maybe I’ll build one and show you boys how it works.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  March 12, 2005

  Three days after the arrival of Colonel Robert Jameson, the PRT’s new commanding officer, and Richard Carrington, the young diplomat who would represent the British Foreign Office, I was politely asked by the colonel to vacate the desk Harry had allowed me to use in his office. I packed my things immediately, deeply embarrassed at this unexpected request. Richard watched impassively from his desk next to the colonel’s as I carried my boxes out of their office and returned to the bullpen. My NATO colleagues, who had been using my typing table for storage, quickly cleared it off and welcomed me back without comment. The colonel’s door was now frequently shut.

  Before Richard’s arrival, I’d been hoping he would become an ally as Harry had. I was sorely disappointed. Since his first day at the PRT, he had through word and gesture marked his territory, making it clear to the colonel, the other officers, and especially to me that he and only he would provide political guidance at this PRT. He had even taken me aside to inform me I was no longer welcome at senior staff meetings. Much to my disappointment, Colonel Jameson, who was focused completely on his military mission and the welfare of his soldiers, had decided as soon as he arrived to leave all things political to Richard.

  And then there was Major Davies. Now that my security clearance had come through, I had access to everything coming out of his shop. As unpleasant as he seemed to be, I had to admit that his detailed reports were reason enough to be grateful he had arrived. The tangled power relationships that existed among the warlords, mullahs, and government officials in the five provinces we covered were beginning to make sense, and I was at last feeling confident enough to spread the word among the MOT commanders that I was interested in going on an overnight patrol.

  My first invitation came from the Romanian MOT. It was for a three-day trek into the northern desert that was exhausting and bone-chilling, but endlessly fascinating. The illiterate, poorly armed, and often shoeless border policemen we met in remote outposts along the Amu Darya River were underequipped, underpaid, and surprisingly candid about their allegiance to the warlords who controlled their districts. At the end of each day of meetings, the Romanians, their interpreter, and I would drive deep into the desert, pitch our tents in the lee of a massive sand dune, build a huge bonfire, and cook pots of spicy chicken goulash. I hoped this patrol would be the first of many during my year in Mazār.

  TWENTY-THREE

  March 16, 2005

  “I’m going to need a burka, Rahim,” I said when he stopped on his way to breakfast to watch me pruning the rosebushes after an early morning Estonian demolition. Rahim, who still put on his best gruff face when the other terps saw us together, had begun to seek out my company.

  “Angela-jan, why do you need a burka?” he asked with a puzzled half-smile. “No one expects an American woman to cover herself like Afghan women do. Why, even that law student Nilofar does not wear a burka when she goes out in the street.”

  He said her name with such feigned disinterest I almost laughed. Although he would never ask a direct question about Nilofar, Rahim managed to work her name into our conversations whenever he could.

  She seemed equally interested in him. A few days after our encounter at the prison, Nilofar called to invite me to dinner at her family’s home in Mazār. “My father said you can bring your cousin along, and he can eat with the men,” she added in a loud voice.

  “Nilofar, Rahim is neither my son nor my cousin. He’s my interpreter,” I said, laughing. “You know that.”

  “Yes, Angela-jan,” she said, lowering her voice to a whisper, “but the only way my fa
ther would allow him to enter our house is if he thinks you are a relative. I told him you are Rahim’s distant cousin from America and that you can’t travel in the evening without him. After my family gets to know him, we can sort these details out as a mistranslation on my part.”

  “Fine with me,” I said, wondering what I was getting myself into.

  Our dinner conversation had been awkward but the food was wonderful. Nilofar’s mother had prepared steaming trays of qabele palau, the lamb, rice, pistachio, and raisin dish that seemed to be the primary fare served at all special occasions in northern Afghanistan.

  Rahim and I ate in separate but adjoining dining rooms where the men and women could see each other but not speak. I had warned him in advance about Nilofar’s little white lie concerning our relationship. It pleased him immensely.

  Lounging with Nilofar, her mother, and sisters on the overstuffed cushions surrounding the trays of food in the women’s dining room, I allowed her to control the conversation since she had to translate everything we said to one another.

  In the other room, Rahim limited his discussion with Nilofar’s father and brothers to sports. We were thus both spared the need to elaborate on her innocent deception. Nilofar’s father, who like her mother was Hazara, did not seem bothered that Rahim was Tajik, but then again, he didn’t realize he was talking to a potential suitor for his daughter’s hand.

  “The reason I need a burka, Rahim, is so I can have some privacy when I go on patrol with the soldiers,” I said, adjusting my bloodstained woolen gloves that were providing little protection against the thorny rosebushes. “Since I survived the three-day trip with the Romanians, the other MOTs have started inviting me to join their patrols.”

  “I know that, Angela-jan, but do the soldiers expect you to wear a burka?” he asked, still confused by my response.

  “No, of course not,” I said. “But when the soldiers stop out in the desert or on a treeless mountain pass to, well. . . . to relieve themselves next to their vehicles, there is no place I can go where they or a passing Afghan shepherd won’t see me. The burka will make me virtually invisible to Afghan men, and it will save me the trouble of having to walk so far away from the soldiers and our vehicles.”

  “So you want a burka to use as a portable loo? ” asked Rahim, trying to suppress a grin.

  “Correct,” I replied.

  That afternoon, with Jenkins driving the Beast, Rahim and me in the backseat, and Fuzzy in the passenger seat, grinding his teeth and kneading the barrel of his assault rifle, we were off to the crowded market stalls of Mazār-i-Sharīf. This was a route we had taken dozens of times before, so Fuzzy’s hypervigilance didn’t make sense to me.

  “Fuzzy, you seem upset. Is everything okay? ”

  He stared straight ahead, while Jenkins jumped in with a response. “Fuz just got word this morning that one of his mates was killed in an ambush in Iraq. They were childhood friends.”

  I breathed in sharply. It was so easy for me to forget how young these guys were.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, leaning forward and placing my hand on Fuzzy’s shoulder.

  “Thanks, Angela.”

  The heating/air-conditioning system in the Beast had finally given out and been declared unfixable by the camp mechanic. Now that the weather was starting to warm up, we always drove with the windows rolled down. This made us a tempting target for young men selling phone cards, who would rush our vehicle every time Jenkins had to slow down for pedestrian and animal traffic.

  They were aggressive salesmen, but always friendly as they shoved their fistfuls of cards through our windows. Fuzzy grew increasingly agitated with each new onslaught of vendors that surrounded the Beast. Jenkins sensed his concern and tried to avoid slowing down, but it was impossible.

  When we pulled up to the market entrance, Fuzzy was clearly agitated. He climbed out of the Beast with his assault rifle, and for the first time ever, insisted on accompanying me.

  I wanted to humor him, but I knew his presence would attract unwanted attention inside the covered market. “Fuzzy, I don’t think it’s such a good idea for you to go in there with us. Your uniform, red hair, and loaded weapon are going to really stand out,” I said, hoping he would agree and wait in the Beast with Jenkins.

  Fuzzy stared down at me, clenching his jaw and squeezing the stock of his rifle. “Listen, Angela, I’m the vehicle commander, and I’m also supposed to provide you with close protection whenever we leave the PRT. I should never have let you go alone into that crowd when the suicide bomber blew himself up in Andkhoy,” he said, his voice catching.

  “We were just damned fortunate that nothing happened to you or Rahim. I was also bloody lucky that Sergeant Major agreed with your decision that day to leave me behind in the vehicle. But goddamn it, Angela, this is not a political rally, and I am under strict orders never to let you go off alone again. Is that understood?”

  “Okay,” I said, submitting reluctantly to his demand.

  The three of us left Jenkins sitting in the Beast in front of the Blue Mosque as we vanished into the milling crowd of turbaned men and covered women.

  It bothered me to be buying a burka, knowing what it symbolized in this part of the world. Nilofar put herself at risk every time she left her house without a burka, and I, who enjoyed a level of freedom she would never know, was about to purchase one. But the very thing that made the burka so loathsome—its ability to make a woman invisible to men—made it perfect for my need to provide myself with some privacy when I went out on patrol.

  A deeply embarrassed Rahim asked one male shopkeeper after another where we could find a burka shop. None of them seemed to know, and it was forbidden for Rahim to ask the women floating by under their shrouds. Since I had to maintain my sham ignorance of Dari, I couldn’t ask them, either. Rahim’s face reddened as the amused vendors listened to his questions and suggested possible locations for the burka store.

  “This way, Angela-jan,” Rahim ordered as the three of us waded deeper into the covered bazaar. I followed him around another corner and through a narrow door into a shop that resembled a giant blue pillow with burkas covering all four walls. Fuzzy remained just outside and was quickly surrounded by a gaggle of curious young boys.

  “And why does the English lady want a burka?” asked the owner.

  Rahim melting with shame responded without bothering to translate the question for me. “She is American, not English, and she wants a burka because she thinks they are beautiful. She would like to take one back to her country to show her family.”

  “A souvenir, of course,” said the smiling merchant as he eyeballed my height and removed a burka from the rack on the wall. “This might be a little short, but it should do. Would she like to try it on? ”

  “Ney, ney,” Rahim snapped. “How much is it?”

  “Fifteen hundred Afghanis,” said the shopkeeper with a straight face. Although the thirty dollars that translated to was reasonable from my perspective, I remained silent and poker-faced while Rahim began the obligatory bargaining.

  “Are you trying to rob her? ” Rahim shouted, waving his arms in the air.

  “The woman will pay you five hundred Afghanis for this inferior piece of workmanship.”

  “Did you know, my young friend, that every one of the hundreds of pleats in this cloth is pressed by hand?” The shop owner lifted the hem of the burka to reveal its workmanship. “Do you think I can simply give it away for what I paid for it? ”

  Their verbal jousting continued for several more minutes until Rahim turned to me. “The man wants to be paid in U.S. currency, Angela-jan. Give him ten dollars and let’s go.”

  “We need to make a few more stops before we go back to the PRT,” I announced as we left the burka shop. Rahim and Fuzzy did not reply, but their muffled sighs made it clear they wanted this shopping trip to be over.

  “I’ve printed out the plans for several solar ovens from a site I found on the Internet. I need supplies to build them
so I can test them on the roof,” I informed my unhappy escorts.

  “The kitchen staff at the PRT gave me a roll of aluminum foil, which they don’t sell in Mazār, but I need a few cooking pots, a can of black paint, a few sheets of glass, and some glue.”

  It took another hour to find, bargain for, and purchase my supplies, but Rahim and Fuzzy humored me and insisted on carrying my packages back to the Beast.

  “Fuzzy, this is the first shopping trip I’ve ever taken with an armed guard,” I said as he took another plastic bag from my hand.

  “The first of many for both of us, I’m sure, Angela,” he replied, trying but failing to suppress a smile.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  March 17, 2005

  While I never achieved the level of rapport with Colonel Jameson that Harry and I had so quickly developed, I did appreciate Jameson’s objectivity and his sense of fairness. Although upon his arrival, he had made no overt efforts to ensure that I was included in his staff meetings, he never objected to my presence, and as soon as he learned of Carrington’s machinations to have me barred from command team discussions, he had leaped to my defense. Even Major Davies, who had by no means welcomed me, spoke up on my behalf when Carrington tried to keep me from attending the senior staff’s strategy sessions.

  Despite this slight improvement in my relationship with the PRT’s new crop of senior military officers, I still felt marginalized and was shocked when at the end of a weekly all-hands meeting the colonel announced that the major and I would be representing the PRT at the Afghan Nauroz or New Year’s Day celebration at the Blue Mosque.

  My pen slipped from my fingers and rolled under my chair at the colonel’s words. As I bent down to pick it up, I sneaked a glimpse at Major Davies, whose eyes had widened in surprise. Richard glared at me but said nothing. He would be at a meeting in Kabul with the colonel over the New Year’s holidays. Had they been in Mazār, they would have represented the PRT at this major event.