Farishta Read online

  I slipped into a T-shirt, sweatpants, and sneakers, spent an hour on the treadmill in the empty gym, and returned to my hooch for a long, stinging shower.

  Night fell quickly in Kabul. The snowy mountains, which had cast a pale tangerine glow over the city late in the afternoon, vanished quickly moments after sunset. The hum of the embassy’s generators seemed to grow louder as the rest of the city, much of it without electricity, shut down and locked itself in for the night.

  Standing alone outside my hooch, I inhaled for the first time the smells I would forever associate with this country—a mix of cooking fires, grilled meat, crushed spices, mud, sweating pack animals, and the rusting detritus of Afghanistan’s many wars.

  I was hungry. It was time to find the dining hall even though I dreaded joining a room full of strangers for Christmas Eve dinner. No planes flew after dark, leaving the night sky to the millions of stars visible over Kabul. I picked out the Big Dipper, found Polaris, locked the door of my hooch, switched on my flashlight, and headed off to the cafeteria.

  Bundled against the icy mountain air, I approached the door of the double-wide trailer Carl had pointed out when I arrived. The windows were dark and there was a CLOSED FOR THE HOLIDAYS sign taped to the door. A passing security guard told me there was another cafeteria near the old embassy building. He took me to an underground tunnel, which he promised led to the far side of the compound and a hot meal.

  “It’s just there,” he said, pointing at a narrow stairwell and walking off to continue his patrol. I gripped the cold metal railing and stared with some trepidation at the concrete steps, which spiraled down into a dark passageway. This was a tunnel inside a well-guarded U.S. Embassy compound. What the hell was I afraid of?

  I slowly descended the stairs and entered the tunnel. Halfway through, I heard the click of approaching boots and saw the hulking shape of an armed man approaching me. Behind the glare of a powerful flashlight, which was trained on my face, an unfriendly male voice demanded to see the embassy ID, which I had stuffed inside my jacket after showing it to the first guard. I struggled to untangle the badge on its metal chain from my scarf and zipper.

  “Badges must be displayed at all times,” he barked in heavily accented English as his flashlight flicked from my ID photo to my face. Releasing the badge, he walked away without another word, leaving me temporarily blinded, perspiring heavily, and standing alone in the tunnel.

  Still shaking, I emerged into a poorly lit, rubble-strewn, and very muddy construction site surrounding the old and new embassy buildings. There were no signs and no people, just rows of darkened shipping containers. I briefly considered returning to my hooch, but hunger trumped fear and after five minutes of searching, I located a narrow path and a hand-drawn sign, which led me to another double-wide trailer strung with garlands of winking Christmas lights.

  A Charlie Brown Christmas, broadcast from a wall-mounted TV set by the door, was competing with the Chipmunks’ version of “Jingle Bells” on a portable CD player in the cafeteria kitchen. The room was overheated and the conversation subdued as the Marine guards and those embassy employees who had not gone back to the States for the holidays tried to make the best of a bad situation.

  A large man wearing reindeer antlers and dishing up slices of turkey roll greeted me as I joined the serving line.

  “You must be Angela,” he said, wiping beads of sweat from his forehead. “Welcome and Merry Christmas. I’m Paul Plawner, Deputy Chief of Mission. The ambassador had the good fortune to go home for the holidays, but those of us who stayed behind are glad you’re here.” He dropped a slab of rubbery white meat on my plastic plate.

  “There’s plenty of food, so don’t be shy,” he said. “Take Christmas Day off, of course, but please call my secretary first thing Sunday morning to set up an appointment. I’ll try to see you in the afternoon.”

  Doc had explained to me during Dari language training that Afghanistan, like most Muslim countries, observes a Sunday through Thursday workweek. The U.S. Embassy in Kabul was officially closed every Friday, the Islamic holy day, and in theory it was also closed on Saturday. But I would soon learn that this being a war zone, most American Embassy employees were hard at work six and even seven days a week.

  An excessively cheery personnel officer was passing out homemade Christmas cookies in plastic sandwich bags—three cookies per person.

  “I didn’t bake these myself, but I did put on all the sprinkles,” she gushed as she offered me a bag, patted my hand, and said, “Come on, honey, it’s not that bad here.” I forced myself to smile until she turned her attention to the next customer.

  I knew that alcohol, even a small glass of wine, which would have made this meal so much more bearable, was not permitted in this cafeteria because it was where the Marine guards ate. So I washed down my turkey, wilted broccoli, scoop of powdered mashed potatoes, and jellied cranberry sauce with one of the liter bottles of water that could be found stacked by the case in front of every building on the compound. Tap water, Carl had warned, was safe for bathing here, but not for drinking.

  I sat down at a bare metal table with three young Marines and attempted without success to make small talk. They shoveled down their food, eyes glued to a football game playing on another Armed Forces TV set bolted to the wall near their table. As soon as their plates were scraped clean, they rose as one, explaining politely that they had to report for guard duty. I knew from my briefings in Washington that all but a few of these boys would soon be on their way to Iraq, replaced by a private security force that had been contracted to guard the embassy.

  After picking at my food for a few more minutes, I grabbed the bag of cookies, switched on my flashlight, walked cautiously back through the tunnel with my badge out, and returned alone to my hooch.

  SEVEN

  December 25, 2004

  At six A.M., I ate the three cookies and washed them down with a microwave cup of instant coffee from a jar left by a previous occupant. It was raining, my hooch was warm, and I couldn’t face another walk through the rubble to the embassy cafeteria. Crawling back under the covers, I unwrapped the small package my brother, Bill, had made me promise not to open until Christmas morning. It was a plastic cube with six old black-and-white photos of Bill, Mom, Dad, Tom, and me on the ranch. I fell asleep with the cube on my pillow and didn’t wake up until the sun was setting—just in time to throw on a pair of jeans, a sweater, and a jacket, switch on my flashlight, and force myself again through the tunnel and into a room full of strangers for leftover turkey roll.

  There are many reasons for a diplomat to go unarmed and virtually untrained into a war zone—a sense of duty, an unhappy marriage, a big mortgage, or a less than brilliant career like mine that was about to crash and burn. Had I honestly added Afghanistan to my wish list because I thought it might help me get promoted?

  One picture in the photo cube of me riding my pony Novio reminded me of the many times I had fallen off when Bill and I raced back to the barn. My strategy, which usually got me home first, was to jump over instead of walk through the smaller arroyos. When that plan failed, and I would arrive home limping, crying, and leading Novio, Mom would not let me in the house until I got back in the saddle and rode at a full gallop down to the main road and back. I had not been on a horse or in a war zone since I lost Tom. Perhaps it was time to remount.

  I overslept and was late for my Sunday morning appointment with DCM Plawner, but he didn’t seem to mind. The rules were apparently different here.

  “I understand you speak Russian and Arabic and got the highest score ever recorded at FSI in Farsi years ago,” Plawner said after welcoming me into his cramped office in the old embassy building. He remained behind his desk when I entered and motioned for me to take a seat on a worn leather couch.

  “I was also told that you took a Farsi–Dari conversion course and reached fluency in Dari after only three months. Pretty impressive,” he added as he stared out the window at the barricaded embassy gr
ounds.

  “It was actually four months, sir, and languages come fairly easily to me,” I replied.

  “Good, good,” he said, nodding absently. “I understand that the DEA wants us to keep your fluency secret. They need to know if the interpreters at the PRT in Mazār are giving the full picture to the British Army regarding what’s being said about the whole narcotics mess up there. We need accurate reporting on poppy production in Balkh Province and, of course, any evidence of government appointees’ involvement in the opium trade.”

  “Excuse me, sir,” I interrupted, “other than listening in on the interpreters and reporting on poppy production, what precisely will my role in Mazār be? I was given very few details on this assignment before I left Washington, and I know the Brits already have a diplomat there.”

  “Our biggest push right now is trying to convince local warlords to tell us where their hidden weapons caches are so the Afghan Army can confiscate them, but that’s a bit of a hard sell. The Brits are working on that up north as well.”

  “I’m supposed to convince warlords to hand over their weapons?” I asked incredulously.

  “Not exactly,” he replied, still staring out the window, “but we do want you to report on any successes the British Army has in this regard and, of course, you and the British diplomat will be serving as political advisors to the PRT commander and his officers.” Plawner ran through a laundry list of issues, droning on as though he were alone in his office and dictating into a tape recorder.

  As I absently jotted Plawner’s main points into my notebook, my gaze shifted to the wall behind his desk. Except for a faded map of Afghanistan bristling with red, green, and yellow pins, the wall was bare and in serious need of a coat of paint. The colored pins, which indicated U.S. PRTs and Forward Operating Bases, circled Kabul and Bagram Air Base, marched south toward Jalalabad and Kandahār, and merged into thick clusters along the border with Pakistan. There were few pins in the northern part of the map and none near Mazār-i-Sharīf. Perhaps Plawner would add one after I left his office.

  He turned away from the window and leaned forward on his elbows, pausing until I had finished inspecting his map. “Most of the weapons and ammunition the Afghans have squirreled away were taken from the Russians during their occupation, but a number of these stockpiles also contain the remnants of some pretty nasty toys we gave the mujahideen back in the eighties.

  “We certainly don’t want all that firepower used against us in the future—especially the shoulder-launched Stingers. They can take out a helicopter or even one of our big transport planes. We’re paying a pretty penny to get them back,” he said, pausing to observe my reaction as he added, “up to a hundred thousand dollars.”

  I raised one eyebrow, scribbled in my notebook, and looked suitably impressed.

  “You know, of course, that we’re cooperating with the British Embassy on all these issues. You’ll be working closely with your British counterpart up there. That should make things much easier for you,” he added, having no idea how wrong that statement would prove to be.

  “You might be interested in looking into the treatment of rural women,” he continued. “It’s appalling, and I don’t know there’s much we can do about it, but some reporting would be useful.

  “No hostiles are shooting at NATO forces up north right now, Angela, but please do be careful. We expect political tensions to heat up as local strongmen start positioning themselves for the September parliamentary elections. That could be interesting,” he added without much enthusiasm.

  “You understand, of course, that the U.S. government’s main focus is in the south where the fighting is,” he said, motioning toward the pins on his map, “but we’ll definitely be looking forward to reading your reports.”

  I nodded silently as he continued. “I do hope you’ll be able to get out and explore some of the historic sites near Mazār. I understand they are quite remarkable. I’ve been here for almost a year, but I don’t get to leave Kabul very often. The ambassador does most of the traveling while I stay back and mind the fort.”

  An alarm went off somewhere in the building. Plawner stiffened and grabbed the arms of his chair. We both froze, our eyes darting from the door to the window until the clanging ceased. This time, I noted silently, I wasn’t the only one who had been spooked.

  Plawner mopped his forehead with the back of his hand, took a deep breath, and continued with his lecture. “I’ve learned to my dismay that many Afghans, even the educated ones, have little appreciation for their country’s remarkable past. A French archaeologist I met a few months ago at an embassy reception told me that many rural Afghans are taught a strange mix of historical facts and hero sagas by their village elders—legends of Alexander the Great blended with stories of Genghis Khan, King Amanullah, and the prophet Muhammad. Such a pity.” His voice trailed off and his eyes focused again on the ceiling. I waited for him to continue.

  “I’m no expert on this country. None of us are,” he said, rubbing his forehead and shifting in his chair, which squeaked loudly. He leaned forward and looked straight at me for the first time. “We armed this place to the teeth, abandoned it fifteen years ago, and now we’re paying a hellish price, Angela. We assign Foreign Service Officers like you here for one year at a time, the Afghans barely get to know your names, and then you leave, taking all your knowledge with you. It’s an almost impossible . . .”

  His secretary poked her head in the office. “Sir, your next appointment has arrived.”

  “I know your job description is a bit vague, but that’s the nature of the game here. We’re all sort of making things up as we go along. Please don’t quote me on that. But seriously, if you have any problems, don’t hesitate to call,” he added with little enthusiasm as we shook hands.

  “Do you have any idea when you will be taking your two R and Rs? We like people to space them out if possible so you’re not all out of the country at the same time.”

  I shook my head. I had given absolutely no thought to when I would use my two free trips out of Afghanistan. “My father’s had a lot of medical problems, so I’ll probably be going back to see him, but I’m fairly flexible. I have no plans at this point.”

  “We can talk about that the next time you come down to Kabul,” he replied. “Best of luck, Angela. I’m sure the Brits will take good care of you.”

  The man was clearly overwhelmed. I doubted we would ever meet again, but I wished him well, exited through his double cyber-locked doors, and headed down a poorly lit back stairway in the old embassy building.

  Crates of bottled water blocked the battered metal door at the bottom of the stairwell. I would have to find another way out. I pulled a liter of water from one of the boxes that had already been torn open, unscrewed the lid, took a long drink, and checked my watch. Thirty minutes to find my way out of this place and get to my next appointment.

  Having come from what should have been my most important briefing, I was at that moment unable to recall a single thing the DCM had just said to me. Sitting on the bottom step, sipping my water, and flipping through my notes, I briefly imagined an alternative scenario for my recently concluded meeting with Plawner.

  “Miss Morgan, I have no idea why the Department wants you to go to Mazār since the Brits already have one of their own diplomats there. I suggest you hop on the next flight and get yourself back to Washington. You’re not really needed here. You won’t even be getting a pin on my map.”

  EIGHT

  December 28, 2004

  Dear Angela,

  Please join me for a small dinner party Wednesday evening at one of the few restaurants we are still allowed to frequent after dark. I received a call this afternoon from the French archaeologist I mentioned during our meeting. He is working on a project at the Kabul Museum and will be heading to his dig as soon as the snow melts this spring. I thought you might enjoy meeting him and hearing about his excavation just a few miles from your PRT. Our embassy political counselor, an Afghan
archaeologist from the Kabul Museum, and my counterpart at the British Embassy will join us.

  Sincerely,

  Paul Plawner

  Deputy Chief of Mission

  U.S. Embassy Kabul

  Plawner’s invitation, which had been slipped under the door of my hooch, was a pleasant and unexpected surprise after another long day of the less than informative briefings I had been attending in fortified compounds around Kabul. His request was a formality, since one did not turn down an invitation from the DCM, but the prospect of meeting the French archaeologist intrigued me, and I would have gone in any case. I called his secretary and accepted the invitation.

  My first exposure to the endless internal debates about America’s efforts to pacify and rebuild Afghanistan had been at a disarmament strategy meeting at the embassy, which I attended as an observer the day after I had seen Plawner. A U.S. Army colonel, who had been trying for almost a year to defang illegal militias in Kandahār Province, stood up and openly mocked a proposed national decree that would give warlords and their followers one month to disband and hand over their stocks of weapons and ammunition.

  “Who the hell do we think we’re we kidding here?” he snorted. “The Afghans have been living in these mountains for thousands of years. If I’ve learned one thing here, it’s that these are a damned patient people. Hell, they can sit on a rock watching a herd of sheep eat grass all day and not get bored.”

  There were a few snickers around the table, but the colonel wasn’t finished.

  “The Russian Army was here for ten years, but the Afghans knew they’d leave eventually. They don’t know how long we’ll be here, but they do know one thing for damn sure. We won’t be here forever. And when we get tired and pull out, they’ll dig up all those munitions they have wrapped, oiled, and buried in their backyards or hidden in caves, and control of this country will go right back to the guys with the most guns.”