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  I had momentarily forgotten that I was in Afghanistan. Now I began to worry that this moment of spontaneity might have cost me Rahim’s respect.

  THIRTY-ONE

  May 3, 2005

  Rahim was waiting for me in the rose garden early the next morning. He looked sad and confused. I knew why.

  “Angela-jan, you have told me I can ask you almost anything.”

  “Yes, I have, Rahim.”

  “Last night, I saw you dancing with the soldiers. This is not allowed in my country. An Afghan woman would never dance in front of men.” He gazed down at me with his impenetrable dark eyes, begging for a response that would restore my reputation according to the rigid standards of his culture.

  “Rahim, you told me a few weeks ago that you and your friends listen to American music. Have you ever seen films of Americans dancing? ”

  He nodded gravely.

  “Did you see men and women dancing together?”

  Another nod.

  “So you know that’s how we dance?”

  “Of course I do. The Taliban have been gone from Afghanistan for almost four years. People my age watch TV and DVDs. We have access to the Internet and cell phones. We listen to your music and some of us even like it,” Rahim replied, sweeping his arms in the air to indicate the breadth of his exposure to the outside world.

  “So why are you asking me these questions?” I said, probing gently.

  “Because I think of you like I do my mother, and I could never imagine her doing such a thing as you did last night with the soldiers,” he said, choking imperceptibly on his own words.

  His response stunned me. My innocent dancing with the soldiers had deeply embarrassed this gentle young man, who was already the unwitting recipient of the motherly affection I’d never been able to give to my own child.

  “Rahim, what I did last night would be considered completely acceptable and harmless in my country. I did nothing wrong and I had a wonderful time. I hope you won’t judge me too harshly.”

  “It’s not just me,” he replied, still distressed. “What about the other soldiers?”

  I was touched by his concern that my reputation might have been damaged after my wild romp in the atrium.

  “Rahim, I promise you that the soldiers will not think any less of me because I danced with them last night.”

  “And the terps? What about them?” he asked, his voice rising.

  “I’m really not worried about this, Rahim. Unless you tell the terps yourself, they probably won’t even know. It’s just not a big deal for Americans and Europeans.”

  “Thank you for explaining this to me, Angela-jan,” he said with a relieved sigh. “Perhaps someday this sort of dancing will be allowed in my country.”

  “Is there anyone in particular you’d like to dance with, Rahim?” I asked, a smile slowly spreading across my face.

  “Angela-jan, there are some questions I should not ask you, and there are some questions you should not ask me,” he replied, returning my grin.

  “Touché,” I said, gathering up my gardening tools.

  “Angela-jan, what does this ‘touché’ mean?”

  “Let’s save that conversation for another day, Rahim,” I replied with a laugh. “It’s a French word. Perhaps you can ask Professor Mongibeaux the next time you see him.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  May 5, 2005

  The newly arrived Gurkha Sergeant Major tried hard to be as accommodating as his predecessor when I had last-minute vehicle requests, but after my disastrous return trip from Uzbekistan, he had vowed he would never again allow me to drive the Beast.

  I put his ultimatum to the test one morning when Nilofar stopped by the PRT to invite me to join her for Ladies’ Day at the Blue Mosque. Rahim had told me about Ladies’ Day, one of the rare opportunities for large groups of Afghan women to gather in public without wearing their burkas.

  “Not on my watch, Angela,” grumbled Sergeant Major, folding his beefy arms over his chest and frowning when I came to his office to ask for the keys. “If you need to go somewhere in your beloved Beast, a British soldier—and not you—will be at the wheel.”

  “You’re the boss, Sergeant Major,” I replied with a shrug and a smile.

  “Corporal Fotheringham and Corporal Jenkins will be ready to take you to Ladies’ Day at the Blue Mosque in twenty minutes,” he added with a twinkle in his eye.

  Rahim, who knew he wasn’t needed for this trip, walked Nilofar and me to the Beast and waved us out the gate. His eyes never left Nilofar, who leaned out the window and waved back at him until Jenkins swung the Beast onto the main road.

  On the way into town, Nilofar placed her hand on my arm. Her normally bright eyes darkened. “Angela, I want us to have a good time today, but I must tell you about something that has happened before we get to the mosque.”

  “What’s wrong, Nilofar? ”

  “Last week, I helped an eleven-year-old girl in Sheberghān escape an arranged marriage. She is now safe in Kabul with a women’s organization. Her father was using her to pay a debt to an opium dealer. He and the man she was to marry have threatened me.”

  “Does your family know about this? ”

  “No, I don’t want them involved, and you must not tell Rahim.”

  “Why are you telling me this, Nilofar? ”

  “If anything happens to me, I want someone to know,” she said ominously.

  As soon as we parked at the western entrance to the Blue Mosque and climbed out of the Beast, Nilofar’s dark mood vanished and she said no more about the threats against her life. “You’re going to love this, Angela! ” she laughed as she walked toward the mosque.

  Fuzzy jumped out, shouldered his rifle, and started to follow us.

  “Fuzzy, I know we’ve agreed that you’ll accompany me everywhere, but today has to be an exception. The only men allowed in the inner courtyard of the mosque on Ladies’ Day are the mullahs. You’ll have to stay here with Jenkins.”

  My hulking, ginger-haired bodyguard did not put up a fight. “Right, Angela,” he said with downcast eyes.

  Since losing his childhood friend in Iraq, Fuzzy no longer smiled and he spoke even less than before. He stood next to the Beast and watched me walk with Nilofar through the filigreed iron gates and into the vast gardens that led to the interior plaza of the Blue Mosque complex.

  “Have fun, ladies,” called Jenkins, who was already slipping a movie into his portable DVD player.

  “Look, Angela, no burkas!” cried Nilofar, flinging her arms wide as we passed under an arch of pearl white marble and entered the sunny inner courtyard.

  Other than large family weddings, Ladies’ Day at the Blue Mosque was the only occasion for Mazāri women to gather in large numbers freed from the restrictive confines of their burkas. But even this small social exception was observed only once a week during the forty days following Nauroz.

  Several hundred women were clustered around picnic baskets, or walking arm in arm and reveling in their few precious hours of secluded freedom. Their burkas, piled in shapeless blue heaps on the grass, no longer hid their heavy makeup, ankle-length robes, gold earrings, necklaces, and bracelets that sparkled in the afternoon sun. Flocks of white turtledoves circled overhead. A few of the bolder birds swooped down to feast on bits of naan and rice tossed to them by the chattering women.

  Nilofar spotted a few friends from the university, who tsked over my unfeminine clothing and complete lack of makeup. I longed to engage them in a deep discussion about their lives, but I could only do it through Nilofar.

  “Does she really live with men who are not members of her family?” asked one of the young women.

  “She must be a prostitute to be staying with all those soldiers!” shouted an old lady, wagging her finger in my direction.

  Nilofar laughed. “She is not a prostitute. She is an American diplomat who is here to help our people.”

  We were now completely engulfed by chattering clusters of women who offe
red to share their lunch with us while Nilofar’s friends peppered me with questions about life in America. I regretted not having brought one of my solar ovens.

  I could have stayed for hours surrounded by this joyous crowd as they reveled in their few hours of freedom, but Sergeant Major had made me promise to get Fuzzy and Jenkins back to camp by two P.M.

  Many of the young university students described to us how excited they were about the opportunity to make real contributions to the rebuilding of their country. I hoped they would be able to realize their dreams. If the Taliban ever retook the government and imposed their draconian laws, the potential of these young women and that of half the nation of Afghanistan would once again be locked away and hidden from view.

  THIRTY-THREE

  May 24, 2005

  Colonel Jameson squeezed awkwardly around my typing table and entered his office. He looked worried. “Angela, would you mind stepping in for a minute?”

  “I’ll be right there,” I replied, logging off and grabbing my notebook.

  “And would you mind closing the door? ” he asked. I did, smiling apologetically and shrugging my shoulders at the unhappy faces of my NATO officemates. They hated it when the colonel shut his door.

  “I’m sending a patrol tomorrow morning to meet with the leaders of a Pashtun village that’s fairly close to Mazār. It’s isolated from the surrounding districts by a winding branch of the Balkh River that cuts through their valley. We’ve been keeping an eye on that village from a distance and are concerned because we’re not sure where their sympathies lie. We need to have some visible and positive presence there.”

  “Have Colonel Tremain’s men led any Afghan Army patrols through that area? ” I asked.

  “No, they haven’t, and apparently none of our MOTs have been there since early 2004, when they got a very chilly reception.”

  The windows in the colonel’s office suddenly rattled and the floor shook violently. The Estonians were blowing things up again. I continued taking notes and silently congratulated myself on having finally overcome my fear of these explosions.

  The colonel continued, “Tomorrow’s shura should be fairly benign. Our main purpose is to find out if the farmers need any assistance. We’ve had reports of extensive poppy cultivation in that valley. The warlord who controls the area is a known trafficker and a pretty nasty fellow. We also suspect that villagers may still have links to Taliban family members in the south.

  “How would you like to go along with the patrol tomorrow? ”

  “You know I would,” I replied with a smile.

  “Of course,” he said. “Your observations will be useful, especially any Dari side chatter you pick up during the meeting. Are you up for this? ”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I’ve asked Major Davies to go along, since we’re not sure if Dari or Pashto is the lingua franca in the village,” he added. “Rahim will accompany your patrol as interpreter. I was hoping that the old professor, whom I’ve yet to meet, would have returned from Kabul by now so he could accompany you, but I’m told he’s still recuperating.”

  The colonel leaned forward in his chair and pursed his lips. “One more thing, Angela. The Estonians dismantled a large IED earlier this week on Route Five, where you’ll be traveling tomorrow. We have reports that there may be another, so everyone will have to wear helmets and body armor.”

  “Great! Another new experience,” I replied with false enthusiasm. I wondered silently and with a creeping uncertainty just how my oversized Kevlar vest and ill-fitting helmet would protect me if a bomb went off beneath one of our unarmored vehicles. My body armor had sat unused in the back of the Beast for the past four months—right where Fuzzy had tossed it the day I arrived. I had felt completely safe riding around in the Beast with the windows rolled down until this unsettling announcement.

  The sudden need for a bulletproof vest after all these months, along with my certainty that it would provide no protection at all if we hit an IED, triggered a minor anxiety attack, which I managed to conceal from the colonel. The room became much brighter as my pupils dilated and my heart began to race. The colonel continued to speak, and I nodded attentively, but his words had temporarily lost their meaning. When his phone rang and he took the call, I pressed my fingers hard into the arms of my chair, breathed slowly, and stared out the window until the sensation passed.

  In the end, I survived the trip to the Pashtun village and sweated off a few pounds bouncing along in full body armor for six hours in our unair-conditioned vehicle. There was no IED, but I was surprised to learn on that trip that the terps did not wear body armor. If it was necessary for my safety, then it should be necessary for theirs as well. I raised this with Rahim on the ride back to the PRT but he seemed unconcerned. “It’s too hot to wear body armor today, Angela-jan.” He was right about that.

  “Angela, will you be coming to the camel races tonight? I believe you have a mount in race four,” said the colonel with a wink as he passed me in the bullpen working on my Pashtun-village trip report after dinner.

  “Your report can wait,” he added. “You don’t want to miss this.”

  “I’ll be there,” I promised.

  There were no actual camels in these races, which were held every few months at the PRT. The colonel explained that they were the “afghanized” version of horse racing night, which British troops often staged during deployments in other parts of the world.

  The Afghan carpenters in our maintenance shop had fashioned meter-high camels out of sheets of plywood and decorated them with red, blue, yellow, and green racing stripes. The floor of the pub served as the racetrack. The quartermaster and his staff wrote up elaborate tip sheets for the six camels in each race. Betting was in U.S. dollars, and the speed of each camel was determined by the toss of an enormous pair of sponge dice, which the designated jockeys tossed into the air or threw at their opponents, to the roaring approval of the crowd.

  Everyone who was not working that night had gathered in the pub by eight thirty for the PRT Mazār Grand National spring camel races. The tip sheets were a closely guarded secret, which no one was allowed to see until they were handed out minutes before the first race, when bets were placed. Each race had a title, with detailed descriptions of the competing camels.

  I flipped through the booklet, laughing at the descriptions of the camels, each of which referred obliquely to one of the officers or soldiers at the PRT. As the colonel had warned, my “camel” was in the fourth race, The Commander’s Cup. Number 3 : American Beauty. “A solar-powered camel from the United States, descended from the original Irish breed with the stamina to win, but will have to fight since this is her first race.”

  Fuzzy’s camel was also in my race. Number 2: Staffordshire Knot. “A huge, well-armed camel, speed unknown, who doesn’t say much, but if you try to pass him will spit bullets at you—and this camel never misses.”

  In race number five was Number 6: Davies Delight. “An imported polo camel from the famous Hertfordshire stables in Brunei. A quiet and highly intelligent animal that could sneak up from the outside and surprise some of the favorites.”

  The evening was raucous, with Fuzzy and me concluding our tie for last place by pummeling each other with the sponge dice. It was wonderful to see him smiling again. To my great surprise Mark showed up during my race and stayed until the end. He bet twenty dollars on his camel, tossed the dice with exaggerated seriousness, and won, using his prize money to buy a round of drinks for everyone in the pub.

  “Strongbow?” he asked, handing me a can.

  “Thanks, Mark. Congratulations on your win. You’re the most popular man in the pub right now.”

  “A rare occasion for me,” he observed with a wry smile. We chatted about our trip to the Pashtun village and shared our frustration at the lack of reconstruction assistance for the rural people who most needed it. When Mark dropped his guard, he was actually quite pleasant to be around. Although this was the first time I’d seen h
im totally relaxed, it didn’t last for long. When he finished his beer, he excused himself with his usual formality—more intel reports to write before the morning staff meeting. I was sorry to see him go.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  May 29, 2005

  Spring is the time of year when young boys released from the confines of school or field or workshop gallop through the back streets of Mazār-i-Sharīf and every other Afghan city, laughing and squealing as they battle for aerial supremacy with their multicolored kites.

  These spring winds, which give such delight to the kite runners, descend cold and heavy from the melting mountain snows and are swept aloft by the warm air rising from the northern steppes and southern deserts. They also pose a serious hazard to aircraft flying low across Afghanistan’s treacherous mountains between the months of March and May.

  I had cleared my schedule for two days, anticipating the arrival of counter-narcotics officials from the British and American embassies. They were coming in response to a series of urgent e-mails I had sent reporting that it was already too late to stop the bumper crop of opium poppies expected to be harvested this year in Balkh Province.

  I’d been asked to accompany the two men on a helicopter tour of the thousands of acres of poppy fields that had burst into deadly and colorful bloom. They were scheduled to arrive by Afghan Army helicopter—a risky way to travel over the mountains even in the best of times.

  “The trip has been cancelled, Angela,” said the operations officer when I entered the vault for our morning briefing. “One of your American choppers went down yesterday in a dust storm in Khost. All survived, fortunately, but the Afghan Air Force have wisely decided not to make the trip north today—if ever. It looks like you have no excuses left to skip the wedding tonight,” he said with a malicious grin. Ahmad, one of our interpreters, was getting married in the largest wedding hall in Mazār-i-Sharīf.