Farishta Page 7

  “Isn’t it armored? ” I asked, embarrassed at the slight quaver in my voice. I had grown accustomed to the protective bubble in which embassy personnel existed in Kabul. I didn’t want these soldiers to see how nervous I was, but I found it impossible to conceal my anxiety.

  “Oh, no, ma’am. We don’t use them vehicles up here. No need. No one’s shooting at us—at least right now,” Jenkins added with a grin. Fuzzy did not smile at this remark.

  “That’s why we don’t wear the Kevlar or the helmets, ma’am. The locals actually seem to like us, and the colonel, he wants us to drive around waving and smiling, weapons on the floor, passing out free newspapers in the local lingo. Can’t do that in those armored buckets with the windows glued shut. And they’re fucking heavy—impossible to maneuver on muddy roads in the mountains. Lord help us if we had to drive one of those two-ton fuckers through a river or near the edge of a cliff.”

  Jenkins stopped speaking and looked at me, his eyes wide, fingers pressed to his lips. “Sorry, apologies for the language, ma’am. We’re not used to having the ladies around.”

  “Don’t worry about your language, but I’d rather you didn’t call me ma’am. It’s Angela.”

  “Right, Angela,” replied Jenkins as he waited impatiently for me to climb into the Beast, which was growing angrier and louder. I felt the knot in my throat pushing up, but I was not going to show any weakness in front of these young soldiers.

  “Would you mind turning off the motor for a minute, Jenkins ? ”

  Rolling his eyes at my request, he reached in and pulled the key out of the ignition. The Beast shuddered violently then grew still. I sucked in a lungful of icy mountain air, released it slowly, and began to focus on my surroundings the way Mike, the Special Forces medic, had shown me the day I’d lost it during first-aid class. A blanket of silence settled over the empty runway, magnifying the vastness of the place and making me feel suddenly, inexplicably safer.

  The absence of machine-generated noise was having an equally profound effect on Jenkins and Fuzzy. They were both staring up at three raptors circling high above us, black chevrons against an impossibly blue sky. The only sounds were the rustling of the wind through the dry grasses along the runway and the raptors calling to one another overhead.

  “Ma’am—Angela, we’ll need to load up,” whispered Jenkins, tapping me softly on the shoulder and bringing to a close my few moments of serenity. “We’re driving back through town with vehicles coming from the Forward Support Base. They’ll be arriving any minute.”

  As he switched on the ignition and the Beast began to protest like a camel struggling to its feet under a heavy load, a convoy of three PRT vehicles rumbled by us. We followed them off the airfield, leaving it as we had found it, silent and empty with the raptors circling overhead.

  TWELVE

  January 4, 2005 ✦ PROVINCIAL RECONSTRUCTION TEAM, MAZĀR-I-SHARĪF

  Long before sunrise the following morning, I was startled out of a deep sleep by three soldiers running down the metal staircase outside my room. Their elongated shadows backlit by the security lights on the roof of the PRT danced across the bedsheet I had tacked over my window for privacy. I sat up, breathing hard, as the clatter of boots on metal faded into the predawn silence. According to a thermometer nailed to the wall near my bed, it was forty-five degrees inside my room.

  Somewhere in the neighborhood, the quavering voice of a muezzin was summoning the Mazāri faithful to the first of their five daily prayers. His singsong chanting took me back to that last day in Beirut with Tom, who had awakened as he always did when the first calls to prayer began drifting across the city. He brought me a steaming cup of coffee and a croissant and greeted me with two kisses—one on the lips and a second one on my swollen belly. Already dressed in his sweatpants, T-shirt, and sneakers, he was about to leave for his solitary morning jog along the corniche.

  I showered, threw on my clothes, and ran out the door in a rush, forgetting to put on the brooch Tom had given me for my birthday. During my meetings that morning, each time my fingers moved absently to press against my expanding midriff, I would reflexively lift them to touch the spot where the brooch should have been pinned to my lapel—and grow anxious at its absence. Later in the day, when Tom’s body was pulled from the smoking rubble, I held him in my arms sobbing and rocking him like a baby. Returning alone to our apartment that evening, I found the tiny golden goddess on her leaping gazelle lying next to Tom’s coffee cup in the kitchen.

  Hoping to banish the memories of my husband’s body in the charred ruins of the embassy, I rose from the bed in my room at the PRT and peered out my second-floor window. Under the glare of a full moon, I could see across the street an old mullah in front of a tiny mosque. He was standing before his prayer rug under the bare branches of a gnarled tree that cast a lacy trellis of blue shadows across the snow in his courtyard. When his chanting ended, I crawled back into bed and stared at the ceiling.

  The camp generators kicked into high gear, interrupting my momentary descent into melancholy. Somewhere in my suitcase was a box of earplugs, but it was too cold and I was too depressed to search for them. Wrapped in a fleece robe, flannel pj’s, and two pairs of wool socks I burrowed deeper into my embassy-issued sleeping bag, and curled into a tight ball.

  I had planned to take a shower the previous night before bed, but I couldn’t bring myself to enter the British officers’ steaming all-male redoubt.

  “What the hell,” I muttered, switching on my light, crawling out of my sleeping bag, picking up my towel, and marching down the darkened hallway into the empty men’s shower room. Thirty minutes later, I returned to my room thoroughly parboiled. I dressed in the khaki cargo pants, hiking boots, and long-sleeved white shirt that would become my unofficial uniform, put on a down jacket, and sat at my desk with a volume of Rumi. He would have to comfort me until the sun rose over the eastern desert and breakfast was served.

  During the first thirty minutes of our drive from the airport back to the PRT the previous afternoon, my two young escorts had not said a word. Jenkins was focused on keeping up with the convoy and maneuvering the Beast through the clogged streets of Mazār-i-Sharīf, while giving the right of way to every camel, donkey, and darting child we passed.

  The British Army driving style contrasted starkly with the aggressive tactics I had experienced in Kabul, riding with American security details. This ‘softly, softly’ approach was a calculated risk taken by British forces to gain the trust of the locals. I gritted my teeth and wished I could put on my body armor without looking like a complete wimp—I had felt so much safer in the fully armored American vehicles. But I could tell from the smiles and friendly waves of pedestrians that the British tactic was having the desired effect.

  As we rode, I felt my anxiety slipping away. Even though they were giving the illusion of casual openness, my two military escorts were on high alert. I watched Fuzzy scan the sidewalks, giving special attention to the long rows of rusted shipping containers, which had been converted into shops and decorated with hand-painted signs. Each one bustled with vendors and customers haggling over piles of merchandise that spilled from their dark interiors.

  Fuzzy was also examining the shoes of the burka-clad women who floated by us hidden beneath their blue pleated shrouds. When I asked him what he was looking for, he explained tersely that the “shoe test” was his method of determining whether there was actually a female concealed under the yards of billowing cloth.

  Jenkins swung the Beast around a busy traffic circle, and we headed down a wide boulevard into the city center. Ahead loomed Afghanistan’s most revered shrine, the glistening, ceramic-tiled, five-hundred-year-old Blue Mosque, surrounded by broad walkways and expansive rose gardens. A low fence of filigreed wrought iron enclosed the entire plaza, and a bustling two-lane road funneled traffic around the sacred complex.

  “Do you guys know the history of this place? ” I asked, hoping to spark a conversation with my sullen escort
s.

  “I don’t, ma’am,” replied Jenkins, glancing quickly at Fuzzy. “What about you, mate?”

  Fuzzy didn’t respond. He continued to sweep his eyes slowly back and forth out the front windshield, while his enormous hands squeezed and released the barrel of his rifle. His eyes lingered briefly on the blue-tiled domes and arches of the mosque complex before he resumed his rhythmic scanning of the pedestrians and their footwear.

  “Fuzzy? ” I repeated. “Do you know? ”

  Silence.

  “Why doesn’t he answer?” I asked Jenkins.

  “He’s watching.”

  “Watching for what? ” I asked.

  “For anyone who might want to kill us.”

  “What do you mean?” I demanded as I looked in alarm at the suddenly menacing crowd. “You just said that you drive around up here with your windows down, waving and smiling.”

  “We do, ma’am—but Corporal Fotheringham, Fuzzy, he’s a sniper, and he’s had a tour of duty in Iraq. He says we can’t ever be too careful,” explained Jenkins as he steered the Beast through heavy traffic around the Blue Mosque plaza.

  “So tell us the story of the mosque, ma’am,” said Jenkins as he slowed to avoid hitting an old man dragging a wooden vegetable cart across the road, “we’ll be at the PRT in a few more minutes.”

  “Would you please not call me ma’am?”

  “Right, Angela. Now tell us the story.”

  “Okay. Legend has it,” I began, “that Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, was assassinated in A.D. 661 and buried in Kufa, Iraq. Did you get to Kufa while you were in Iraq, Fuzzy? ”

  There was no reply, so I continued. “Many Shiite Muslims swear that Ali’s followers, in order to protect his body from desecration, strapped it to a white camel, which walked to Mazār-i-Sharīf and dropped dead of exhaustion right where the shrine is today.”

  “Bloody hell, do they actually believe that? ” snorted Jenkins.

  “Many people do,” I replied. “Just like lots of people believe Moses spoke to God hiding inside a burning bush.”

  “Point taken,” said Jenkins.

  “The name Mazār-i-Sharīf means ‘tomb of the saint.’ The first shrine to Ali was built in 1136, right where the Blue Mosque is today, but Genghis Khan’s army destroyed it looking for buried treasure. Three hundred years later, one of the Timurid sultans rebuilt the shrine, and it has survived until today through all the fighting and occupations of the past five centuries. Quite remarkable,” I said to my captive audience, “don’t you think?”

  “Yes, Angela, it really is remarkable,” said Fuzzy, momentarily breaking his silence, but keeping his eyes on the pedestrians swirling around the Beast.

  “Do you think I’ll be able to visit the mosque?” I asked. “Has anyone from the PRT been allowed to go inside?”

  “We always have to stay outside guarding the vehicles, but I’m sure you’ll be going in for some of the ceremonies with the governor. He’s a piece of work, if I ever saw one,” Jenkins added without further elaboration.

  We turned off the main highway, bounced down a deeply rutted dirt road, and entered the mud-walled PRT compound through a pair of corrugated metal gates. Two bearded Afghan guards with AK-47s slung over their shoulders dragged them open for us.

  The Beast rattled to a stop next to a collection of weathered yellow buildings, each with a metal staircase leading to sandbagged guard towers. Jenkins explained that this crowded compound had housed the family of a local warlord before the U.S. and then the British Army moved in.

  Fuzzy and Jenkins jumped out of the Beast, pointed the barrels of their rifles into a large bin of sand, and removed their ammunition clips.

  While Jenkins parked the Beast, Fuzzy escorted me in silence to the small office—it was more like a closet—of the PRT’s Sergeant Major, who greeted me with a brusque nod. He was on the phone and engaged in a heated argument with someone at the airport in Kabul. Although officially outranked by even the youngest commissioned officer, Sergeant Major, I would soon learn, was not a man to be trifled with. Aside from the colonel, who outranked everyone else in camp, he was the most feared and respected enforcer of standards, discipline, and order at the PRT.

  I turned to thank Fuzzy, but saw only his broad back as he headed out the door. A rotund supply clerk motioned brusquely for me to follow him out of Sergeant Major’s office.

  “Pity there’s no welcoming party for you, ma’am,” announced the unsmiling clerk, as I followed him up the stairs to the floor where the officers’ sleeping quarters were located. He hadn’t bothered to introduce himself.

  “The colonel’s out at the safe house in Sar-e Pol for a few days, and the chief of staff has been behind closed doors since morning with some visiting German Army officers over from Kunduz. The rest of the men are out on patrol or in training. Frankly, ma’am, we were all bloody gobsmacked when they told us the Yanks were sending a female up here to live for a year.”

  I wasn’t sure if “gobsmacked” meant they were surprised or angry, and decided not to ask.

  “This will be your personal space, ma’am,” he said, opening the door to a small room with a thin layer of dust on every surface and a view of the Hindu Kush obscured by a forest of communication antennas. A smaller window behind the bed faced a mud wall and a metal staircase. There were no curtains.

  “It’s not posh, but at least you’ll have it all to yourself. Only you and the colonel have private rooms,” he added, looking down at me with his head cocked to the side and one eyebrow raised. “Mr. Brooks, the American who was here before you, had this room, but he’s been gone for a while and we’ve been using it for storage—all nicely cleared out for you now, as you can see.”

  He pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, and placed it on the desk. “Ma’am, I’ll need for you to sign this inventory after we identify all the items in your space.” Tapping the paper with his pen, he rattled off in his most official voice: “One metal bed stand, one plastic-covered mattress, one standing locker, one dresser, one desk, one lamp, one pillow, two sheets, one pillowcase, one towel. Your Yank friend left the blankets, so we won’t count them. You also have a wall heater, though that may need fixing. Please sign here, ma’am.” He pushed the paper over to me, clearing a path through the dust, and handed me his pen.

  “Please call me Angela, and would you mind telling me your name?”

  “Right, ma’am—I mean, Angela,” he replied, pursing his lips. “It’s Wickersham, Corporal James Wickersham. Wick will do,” he said, extending his hand briefly to shake mine.

  “One more thing, Angela.” He opened one of the desk drawers and pulled out a battered cell phone attached to its charging cord. “This is also yours. The other Yank left it here.

  “The loo’s right outside your room,” he added, pointing to an unmarked door that led to a communal toilet in the hallway. “You’ll be sharing it and the showers on this floor with the officers and noncoms. There are curtains in the shower room, so you’ll have some privacy. Ship showers only, of course.”

  I opened my mouth to ask a question, but he wasn’t finished.

  “The men all know you arrived today, and everyone’s under strict orders from the colonel to keep a towel over their—private parts,” he elevated his left eyebrow again, “when they leave their rooms. No worries there.”

  “What’s a ship shower, Wick? ”

  “Right. A ship shower, Angela,” he said, carefully pronouncing each syllable of my name, “means you do like the sailors do on a ship. You turn on the water and get wet. You turn off the water and soap up. You turn on the water again and rinse yourself and then you turn the water off. There are more than a hundred of us living in this camp right now, and when the Swedes start showing up in a few months, we’ll be almost a hundred and fifty. When the Americans set this place up in 2003, there were only seventy of them. Our self-contained water and power systems are now stretched to the bloody limit.”

  W
ickersham led me through a maze of passageways and up a flight of cement stairs to my “office,” a long, narrow room that I would share with military liaison personnel from France, Finland, Romania, Norway, and Estonia. They, like me, had been sent to PRT Mazār by their governments with loosely defined roles and responsibilities. Only the two young Estonians had real jobs at the PRT. They were explosive ordnance demolition technicians, EODs, who spent their days defusing the occasional IED and blowing up the tons of ammunition and explosives that were being uncovered in caves all over northern Afghanistan.

  My new colleagues looked up from their computer screens when we entered the crowded room, which they referred to as the bullpen. They rose to their feet in unison and greeted me with handshakes and broad smiles.

  “Here’s your spot, Angela,” announced Wickersham, pointing his stubby finger at a battered typing table barely large enough to hold a computer monitor, a keyboard, and a satellite phone. It had been shoved against the wall just outside the PRT commander’s office door. My foreign military colleagues sitting behind their large desks smiled wanly and shrugged their shoulders in mute apology at the newest member of the bullpen who had drawn the short straw in the desk lottery.

  THIRTEEN

  “Last stop before I let you unpack and wash up for supper will be the interpreters’ room,” said Wickersham, trotting down the stairs as fast as his bulky frame would allow. I followed him along a narrow sidewalk bordering an overgrown patch of rosebushes in serious need of pruning. A few shriveled flowers still clung to their thorn-covered stems.

  “Here we are,” he said, rapping his knuckles against an unlocked door and pushing it open without waiting for a response.

  “Hello, boys. Here’s the lady we’ve all been waiting for. Rahim, I believe you’ve been assigned as Miss Morgan’s interpreter.” A broad-shouldered, square-jawed young man in his early twenties, with close-cropped black hair, sideburns, and a five o’clock shadow stood up to greet us. He wore a white T-shirt, pressed blue jeans, and held what appeared to be a large textbook in his left hand. His dark eyes met mine briefly, then shifted to Wickersham.