I don’t care much for dawgs either, he drawls.
But you have this bunk free, I say quickly. Perhaps you can let me have it?
You wanna move in?
It would help me considerably.
He runs a finger down my arm, and I shiver.
I’ll think about it, he says.
I fall silent, dismayed by his lack of empathy. We watch each other for a moment, and then I observe: It would also help you, I think.
He draws away from me slightly.
Oh yeah? he says, narrowing his eyes. How would it help me?
I think that deep in your heart you are lonely.
He doesn’t deny it. Instead, after an interval of silence, he says: You think I give a flying fuck?
I flinch, but I don’t want to take offense.
He gazes at me without expression and then suddenly brings his hands down so hard on my shoulders that it jars my spine. When I lean back, startled, a shadow falls across his face. He digs his fingers
deep into my arms before letting go. Then he gets up and stumbles over to his cot. He lies down with his back to me. I’m tired, he says in a muffled voice. You talk too much. Jibber jabber, jibber jabber, yak yakety yak …
I realize that I am being asked to leave. Coloring fiercely, I get up.
You left your iPod behind, I tell him.
Chuck it on the cot. I’ll get it later.
I pause irresolutely and stare at his prone body.
May I go now? I ask.
Yup, he says faintly. Close the door behind you on your way out.
I step out and lean against the door. I feel completely confused, as if I have just had an encounter with a member of an alien race. I am about to walk away when I swivel around unthinkingly and open the door.
He turns slowly on the cot and stares at me.
Do you always fuckin’ barge in without knocking? he asks.
I forget what I was about to say and retreat. Without hesitating, I shut the door carefully and stumble away. It’s evening already, but I hardly notice. I feel baffled, humiliated, and at the same time he is all that I can think of. A line from a poem crosses my mind: “Dear Friend, did you travel all the way across the ocean only to torment me with your ruthless beauty?” I feel my eyes fill with tears. I thought I had found a companion in this miserable place, but now even that has proved false. I cannot believe the extent to which things are going wrong for me here.
Preoccupied, I turn a corner blindly and walk straight into the giant sergeant from the morning’s assembly.
Careful where you’re going, soldier, he says sharply, before stepping back and looking me up and down. Wait a minute, he says in a gentler voice. You’re our new interpreter, aren’t you?
I am Masood, I say with a nod, forcing my mind back to the present.
I’ve been looking for you, he says. Have you had your orientation?
My orientation? No …
Not good, not good, he says wearily. Sorry about that. We’ve had too much going on. He stops and thinks. Tell you what, he says. Come and see me tomorrow and I’ll take you through your paces. Ten a.m. okay? See you then.
He turns to leave, and then halts.
By the way, he says, I heard you took a look at our dead Taliban. Any conclusions?
I gather my thoughts, sensing the need to make a good impression on this man.
I found it very unusual that they went in for a direct confrontation, I say carefully. It isn’t their normal method. They’re usually much more sly.
He steps back and looks at me again as if seeing me in a different light.
I can see that we’re going have an interesting talk tomorrow, he says. I like you already. Ya’ll make a fine addition here.
He shakes my hand and moves on.
His words echo through my head as I return to my quarters. It’s a fittingly unreal conclusion to the day. I follow the Hesco wall and run my eyes over the field. The sun is low in the sky, and it lights up the mountains with an unearthly red-gold glow. When I reach my quarters, I hesitate before opening the door, and then I grit my teeth and walk in. The tiny room is jammed with soldiers playing cards. One of them looks up: it’s the man who yelled at me this morning. Astonishingly, once again his face twists with rage, and he shouts: What the fuck! Who are you? What’re you doing here?
Someone else says: Chill out, dude. He’s the new interpreter. He has Spitty’s bunk.
Are you fucking kidding me? Who told you he could have it?
The soldier named Lee puts down his cards.
No one told us, man, he says calmly. We didn’t have anything to do with it. He was assigned Spitty’s place, okay? He’s just following orders.
I think that’s fucking demented! the other man says, almost choking out the words. Are they out of their motherfucking minds?
I’m amazed at his rage: I can actually see the veins on his neck bulging out.
With barely repressed contempt, he turns to Duggal. Maybe you should take him somewhere else, hot stuff, seeing that you’re from the same place and all.
Fuck off, Grohl, Duggal growls. You’re way outta line. They put him here ’cos there’s nothing left of the ANA’s hooch. It was totaled.
Grohl throws down his cards and pushes me aside as he storms out of the hut.
I’ll fucking own your face if I see you around here again, he yells in parting.
There’s a moment of awkward silence, and then another man walks over and introduces himself. Welcome to the Cave, he says. It’s what we call our hooch. And how are you today? I’m Specialist Garcia. Ricardo Garcia—that’s Rick to you. There are seven of us here, and I think you’ve met everyone except for Ash Jackson, though I’m sure you’ll run into him soon enough. As for Chuck Grohl, don’t mind him; he lost his best friend in the bird crash, and it’s made him go crazy.
He called me a raghead this morning, I say quietly.
Both Duggal and Lee swivel their heads and stare at me.
There’s a pause, and then Lee says: He was just messing with you.
Messing with me?
It means Chuck was kidding around with you, Duggal explains. He didn’t mean what he said.
He seemed serious enough, I reply. He stormed out of here. You saw how angry he was.
He wasn’t angry, all right? You can take it from us. We know him well. He’s hurtin’, man—we all are. We just went through hell. It’s been tough. Our brothers died.
He’s basically okay, Lee says. He’s family. You know what I mean?
I don’t think he’s slept since yesterday, as a matter of fact, Duggal adds.
So what should I do? I ask.
Just let it go, man, Duggal says. Chucky’ll come around. Give him some time.
And don’t fucking snitch on him, Lee says tersely. Or on any one of us. It ain’t a good habit. All right?
He looks away from me in disgust and says to his companions: Fruit’s as gay as Father Christmas. Fuckin’ loud and queer.
Duggal appears to share my bafflement at this strange comment, because he asks: Santa Claus is gay?
Lee ignores his question. Instead, he says morosely: If jigga starts goin’ through the gears here, I’ll whack him, I swear.
Garcia intervenes even as Duggal bursts into laughter. Still and all, guys, he says, Grohl isn’t the easiest guy to get along with. Even at the best of times he’s somewhere south of crazy. He glances at me and smiles. If it’s okay with you, we can exchange bunks.
I agree instantly, and in a matter of moments find myself in the bunk that’s farthest from Grohl’s. I reflect on the additional bonus of not having to share my sleeping space with the dog, who, I’ve noticed, has returned from his jaunt in the mountains. Still, I feel drained as I lie down and go over the day’s events. My already disorganized train of thought is frequently interrupted by muted snatches of conversation from the card players. I hear Garcia talk about a lieutenant who went down with the helicopter and how much they’re going to miss his leadership. Duggal says that one of the men killed in the firefight was about to become a father. Then Garcia tells them that his house in Florida has been repossessed. Stacey couldn’t keep up with the
fucking mortgage payments, he says, and that really, really sucks. Lee asks if they think the Taliban will attack again, but then they start talking over one another, and I stop listening to them. Instead, my mind returns to my afternoon with Simonis, and I find myself wondering about him again.
It’s because you missed the point, he says suddenly, letting go of my hand. And that really, really sucks.
I didn’t know, I murmur, my eyes on the floor. Small yellow flames flicker in the corners of the room, and I try to move without making a sound, intimidated by the destruction all around. We are walking through the scorched remains of my mother’s library, which I can hardly remember, but recognize all the same. The rest of the house is as dark as a mineshaft.
He turns to me with somber, burning eyes. Do you understand?
I am trying, I reply. It’s difficult for me to put it into words.
He picks up one of the charred books and asks who destroyed the library.
Who do you think? The Taliban. It’s what they do. They burn books and murder women.
I’m sorry you had to go through this, he says abruptly. I truly am.
I don’t want you to feel sorry for me. That is not what I want you to feel.
He says: I would like to make it up to you.
I try to keep the beseeching tone out of my voice. Really? How?
I’ll show you, he says, and waves his hand.
I watch in astonishment as the room, along with all its books and shelves, reconstitutes itself until it is exactly as it used to be before the catastrophe.
I turn to him open-mouthed. Can this be real? Are you a magician?
I’m a galandat, he says. I’m blessed with baraka. So’s the captain, by the way.
The captain? What captain?
Captain Connolly, for fuck’s sake. The Commanding Officer.
Someone is shaking me by the shoulder. Wake up, Masood. The captain wants you. Right now.
It’s Duggal. He looks tense. Come on, man, he says. Hurry up.
Half-awake, I ask him what time it is. It’s seven in the morning, he replies.
What is the matter? I ask as I struggle to put on my boots.
I’ll tell you on the way, he says, already out of the door.
I have to run to catch up with him, and by the time I do, the captain has arrived.
How’s your Pashto? he asks me without any preliminaries.
Very good … I begin, before he cuts me off.
We’ve a situation here, he says tersely. There’s a woman in the field outside …
A woman …?
Or at least we think it’s a woman, but we can’t be sure because of her burqa. Here, come along …
He doesn’t wait for me but begins to walk briskly toward the ECP.
What I want you to do, he says over his shoulder, is translate my questions to her. Keep it simple. Tell me exactly what she says in reply. Got it?
Yes, Sir, I say hurriedly, even as there’s a part of me that wonders if I’m still dreaming. It almost feels as if I no longer know who or where I am. I look up at the sky, which is cloudless in the early morning light. A flock of crows flies soundlessly past, heading for the mountains. Everything feels strange. Everything feels very, very strange. We hurry past Simonis leaning against a pile of sandbags with his sniper rifle trained on the field. The rifle’s scope gleams as he adjusts his position and shifts slightly to his right. I glance back, and he looks up, catching my eye. I realize he is aiming straight at me now. Then the captain distracts me by handing me a megaphone. There she is, he says, and points. I raise the megaphone to my mouth. He clears his throat,
about to speak, when the sun breaks over the mountains. It floods into the field, blinding me. The captain steps back and shades his eyes. The field glows red, then white, then red again. I can’t see a thing, the captain says. I lower the megaphone and wait for my vision to clear.
The field flares fire, then blood, then fire again.
SECOND LIEUTENANT
O
NE.
Two.
Three.
Four … I count off the meters silently as the rickety cart inches forward across the field toward us. Despite the early hour, there’s a considerable amount of dust suspended in the air. Beside me, the sharpshooter, Simonis, stretches out on his stomach on top of the Hescos and aims his sniper’s rifle at the shrouded figure in the cart. Without turning my head, I ask him:
How far are we from the slopes, would you reckon?
I’d say about nine hundred meters, Sir.
And what would you say is the maximum possible range of a Taliban sniper?
With one of their better bolt-action rifles, Sir, I’d say up to seven hundred to eight hundred meters—that’s on a good day without
wind. But he’d have to be shooting with a Lee-Enfield or Mosin-Nagant with a telescopic sight, and those are pretty damn accurate.
In that case, line up your sights on her, I tell him. I want you to fire a warning shot the moment she closes in on our one-hundred-meter line. That’s far enough from the slopes for their sniper’s range, but close enough to us to drill her if there’s something fishy going on.
He pulls on a pair of green Nomex gloves while I crane over his shoulders and repeat my instructions to LaShawn “Wonk” Gaines, who’s serving as his spotter. Got that, Wonk?
Yes, Sir.
Simonis rests his finger gently on the trigger and waits for me to clear him to engage. Moments earlier, as soon as I’d sent off Pfc. Renholder to fetch Connolly, I’d instructed Flint, Schott, and Ashworth, as the squad leaders of Second Platoon, to secure the perimeter. I also instructed Spc. Simonis to zero in on the target in the kill zone. Simonis mounted the Hescos with two sniper rifles. He eyed the target and selected his modified Remington hunting rifle over the M-24.
Now he turns to me after looking through his sight and says: She’s nearly there.
I raise my binoculars and watch the cart approach the one-hundred-meter marker. In her powder-blue burqa, its occupant looks like a mirage against the dun-colored ground.
D’you see that jagged black stone to her right? I ask. It’s about ten meters from the marker at nine o’clock.