Green on Blue (11 page)

Commander Sabir’s door flew open. From it, warm tobacco smoke
rose into the cold night. The squad leaders, Issaq and Batoor, emerged with faces so flushed they appeared swollen. They talked in loud drunken booms. Commander Sabir stepped between them and yawned into the sky with a silent roar. He pulled a pack of Marlboro Reds from his shoulder pocket and lit one between his teeth.

Issaq spoke, his voice flat: Give us a week before the checkpoints.

Despite all their carrying on, the three were in a negotiation.

Two days, said Commander Sabir.

But the trucks! added Issaq, growing angry.

Batoor placed a hand on Issaq’s shoulder. It is enough time, he said.

Two days, repeated Commander Sabir.

Issaq ran his fingers through his hair, dyed red with henna. He nodded his head. Yes, it is enough.

Mr. Jack wandered across the firebase. In the night he went unnoticed by Commander Sabir and the squad leaders. He didn’t wear his sunglasses and I strained to make out his eyes, but couldn’t. I wished to see the blueness I’d imagined. His steps were heavy and his full face hinted at a life unconcerned by hunger. In one hand Mr. Jack carried a large dark bottle by the neck, in the other he carried a brown paper sack.

He approached slowly. When he was almost on top of the doorway, Commander Sabir saw him. Batoor and Issaq broke their conversation in mid-sentence and stumbled back to the barracks. I sat frozen on the picnic table, closed up into my body, praying I wouldn’t be seen. Mr. Jack held out the bottle. Maakhaam pa kheyr, Commandance Sabir, he said.

Good evening to you, too, answered Commander Sabir. So you’ve finally decided to come see me.

Relax, I thought we could have a drink, said Mr. Jack.

Each time you bring that fool Atal to my firebase, it is an insult, snapped Commander Sabir. And now you wish us to drink as friends?

Your firebase? answered Mr. Jack. I pay the bills, Sabir, and have since James fought Hafez from here. How was your operation in Gomal? Inshallah, you’ll have a good fighting season.

Inshallah? Fuck you and your inshallah, said Commander Sabir. Your work with Atal does not help my operations.

Mr. Jack held his index finger in Commander Sabir’s face. I work with who I want, when I want. Don’t forget that, he said, and continued slowly from memory: Khpal kaar saray kaar lara. Let each man turn his mind to his own concerns.

Commander Sabir kissed his teeth. Izzat kawa izzat ba dey kegi.
He who respects is respected, he said, shaking his head. He put his cigarette out on the bottom of his boot and flicked the butt over Mr. Jack’s shoulder. He continued: Atal is not one to be involved with. When you Americans are deceived, killed in a green on blue by the very soldiers you trained, or something less, always it is done by those Afghans whose business it is to play each side against the other. Atal is one of those.

It’s a business you seem to understand very well, replied Mr. Jack. Is my work with him going to be a problem?

Then, in the light of the doorway, I glimpsed Mr. Jack’s eyes. They were faded as if the dust, the mountains, and the war had taken the blue out of them. These elements put the color into our eyes, but seemed to take the color from his. Commander Sabir looked at these eyes for a long moment and then spoke: No, no problem, boss.

Okay, said Mr. Jack, nodding. Now, let’s have a drink.

He held out the bottle of whiskey and offered it, but Commander Sabir waved it away. He didn’t want anything from Mr. Jack, at least not right now.

Fine, Sabir, said Mr. Jack. He reached into the brown paper sack he carried. From it he pulled a plastic can of fish food. But you’ll need this for Omar, he added.

Commander Sabir’s pet goldfish, Omar, had been a gift from Mr. Jack some years before. As it was with all his gifts, this one had been given with some design to it. I later learned from Naseeb that Mr. Jack thought a companion might soothe some of Commander Sabir’s darker impulses, but if it had, none of us could tell. Omar always had a look of menace about him. He was missing an eye. In its place was a smooth and empty socket. That look of menace had reminded Commander Sabir of the one-eyed mullah, Mohammed Omar, the exiled leader of the Taliban. The Americans had been lucklessly chasing him for years, while Commander Sabir’s Omar swam circles in his glass bowl.

Commander Sabir snatched the can of fish food from Mr. Jack and opened it. He considered the smell, dipping his nose just above the flakes of freeze-dried larva, insect, and earthworm. With appreciation, he nodded to Mr. Jack, not only for the food, it seemed, but also for its freshness. Taking Omar’s food, but nothing else, Commander Sabir returned to his quarters, shutting the door behind him.

Mr. Jack stood alone with his bottle in the night. He turned around and flipped it in the air, catching it by the neck. Then he stumbled through the darkness to his one-room shack. As soon as he was out of sight, I ran back to the barracks.

–

The next morning, I walked across the firebase to go to the bathroom. The stoves in every building poured woodsmoke into the cold dawn air, but none came from Mr. Jack’s shack. His black HiLux was gone.

T
he rumors at the mess hall proved true. The next morning Commander Sabir ordered the first checkpoints set up. While Gazan’s men operated freely around Gomal and the surrounding mountains, we settled into our positions, cutting the village off from the world outside. Each day some of us would block the north road with sandbags and razor wire and others would fan out and hide among the rocks and the pines. Here we’d wait in ambush for anyone who’d sneak through the tangle of smugglers’ paths that crossed the peaks and ridges.

One day, several weeks into these operations, I was standing near such a path, halfway between our firebase and Gomal. I leaned my rifle against the trunk of a pine and crouched low. It was my turn to watch for traffic. Behind me stretched a shale ridgeline. On its other side, Yar, Tawas, and Mortaza slept in our HiLux. We’d driven all night to get here and now the early-morning sun beat back the cold shadow. As day came, the mountains were pleasant and warm around me. I pulled a piece of stale naan and a packet of honey from my cargo pocket. The naan was frozen and the honey like plaster paste. Before I could finish smearing it, the hollow rumble of an engine echoed down the mountain’s walls. Fear clutched my stomach. No one of honest motive traveled these narrow smugglers’ paths. I dropped my food on the ground and went for
my rifle and the trail below. Around a bend in the mountain, a swirl of dust sprouted. I saw a man on a motorbike, sputtering toward me. The sides of his tires clung to the steep ridgeline.

Stop where you are! I shouted down the trail and leveled the sights of my rifle on him, unsure if I’d actually shoot. The man navigated the dangerous route with complete focus. His eyes fixed just in front of his handlebars.

He didn’t stop.

His motorbike bounced and slid on the loose rock.

I called out again.

He seemed not to hear me over the noise of his engine and wouldn’t stop.

And as he drew closer, his features came into focus. He was slim and young, his turban black and full. His beard was black too and hung down to his chest. Lashed above the rear tire was a wide crate. The crate was a little longer than my rifle. It made his efforts to stay balanced all the more difficult.

He was nearly on me now, but before I could shout another warning, a shot from above hit between us. I glanced up. Yar stood on the crest, framed against the sky, sighting along his rifle. The driver looked up and saw me planted in front of him. He jerked his handlebars, hard. He toppled over them and tumbled into the shale and down the side of the ridge.

As the man fell, he did nothing to save his motorbike. Instead he dove after the crate, which had sprung loose. I walked down the path, rifle in my shoulder, eyes running the barrel, until I towered over him. He paid me no notice, but in a panic dug his sandaled heels into the rock, kicking and clawing as he heaved the crate up to the trail. The crash had knocked his turban off. His scraped face seeped blood. He didn’t notice any of this or me. Only the crate.

I stood over him and softly said: Stop or I’ll shoot. At this, the driver sat down, looked up at me, and spat on the ground.

If you are a man of God, help me, please, he said. His eyes turned back to the crate. It was paneled in wood except for a pane of glass at the end. This window was intact but cracked. Inside was a small gray face garlanded in sage, thistle, and tulips. The driver’s eyes shone clear with a desperate purpose. I slung my rifle across my back and picked up one end of the coffin. The driver picked up the other and we heaved it to the trail.

Yar, Tawas, and Mortaza came down the ridge toward us, their rifles slung over their shoulders. They were relaxed. What is this fool doing? called out Yar.

He needs help! I yelled back.

He’s lucky we don’t take him in, said Yar.

Lend a hand! I shouted.

Yar frowned and his forehead wrinkled in thought. He looked at Mortaza and Tawas and nodded toward the motorbike, which had settled halfway down the ridge. The two climbed across the loose rock on hands and knees to recover it. Yar shuffled farther down the path. With the barrel of his rifle, he motioned for the driver to stand and walk away from the coffin.

Aziz, search him, said Yar.

He is no threat, I replied.

Yar’s eyes opened wide, angry.

I leaned over the man and patted down his wiry frame. Each time I touched him, the skin on his bones shifted loosely. He was ashamed to be handled like a criminal and I was ashamed to handle him as such. Neither of us could look at the other.

Finished, I held up my hands. He has nothing, I said.

Under his beard, insisted Yar.

I stood chest to chest with the man. He raised his chin and looked down his nose at me. I hung my head and reached toward his neck. I touched him lightly across it and stepped away.

Yar approached us. He glanced at the crate. What is this? he asked.

I didn’t answer, but allowed him to find the small dead face. The boy’s skin was smooth, almost fresh, but it lacked the fullness of youth. Where his cheeks should have been plump, the fat had melted away and they were yellowed and lean as a man’s. And the loss was all in the face. What he would’ve grown to be in ten or fifteen years was now right there, looking back, and I think even the coldest of us, even Yar, who fought against Hafez and the Haqqanis before there was a Gazan and the Taliban, and whose own story of misery, like mine and Ali’s, was so buried in him that I knew I’d never hear it, even he could see that loss. And even he could respect it.

What happened? asked Yar.

The driver’s eyes twitched between his feet and the coffin. He couldn’t look at the boy for too long and quickly he spoke the words: He’s dead.

Yes, I see that, replied Yar in a tone approaching tenderness. How did he die?

The man stood and fixed us in his gaze. His chest expanded and seemed to grow inches as he breathed hate into his lungs. My nephew, he said, was outside another village stealing food—pine nuts. The men there shot him as a thief, and left him on the hillside among the trees.

You will take badal against those who did this? Yar asked the man.

He nodded.

So bury your nephew and fight alongside us, Yar said. If Gazan is pushed out of Gomal, the suffering there ends.

He shook his head. What badal is there in that? he asked.

We will make Gazan and his men bleed, said Yar. There is your badal
.

The man’s next words came out spiteful and quick: If he bleeds or if you bleed, it is of no difference to me.

The man shouldered past us to where Tawas and Mortaza had heaved his motorbike back to the trail. He reached into the dirt and coiled a
piece of rope over his elbow and thumb. With the rope, he lashed the coffin above his back tire.

We’ve helped you, I said. To say you’d see us bleed is unjust.

The man dropped his coil of rope. He stared at the ground. Then he looked up at us. His eyes were hard and smooth, but shaking. Unjust? he said. You knocked me off this trail, which I drive because your feud with Gazan blocks the north road. My nephew is dead because you starve my village. Now I will bury him far from your fighting. Badal is all I have left and my badal is to deny myself to you, to Gazan, or to any other who speaks of blood.

The driver went back to his lashing. Then, finished, he straddled his motorbike, kick-started it, and sputtered past us down the trail.

–

We watched the driver and his coffin disappear where the mountains became like a braid in the north. Tawas replaced me on the trail and the rest of us walked back over the ridge and hid beneath the crest where boulders scooped shade from the sun. Here we struggled to sit comfortably along a field of shale and every so often stones shifted underfoot and a small rockslide crashed down the mountain’s front. Each time this happened, Yar gazed meanly at us. The day wore on with sitting, rockslides, and trail duty.

We longed for nightfall and our return to the firebase. Then, late in the afternoon, another dust cloud climbed from the distance. Yar looked toward Mortaza and me with a cold stare that demanded we remain still. The cloud wove through the mountain’s fingers, coming ever closer. On the trail Tawas stood stupid and unmovable, chewing his bubblegum with the blank look of a cow chewing its cud.

A pair of motorbikes appeared. Each carried two men. The first driver saw Tawas straight away and broke hard, nearly toppling end over
end. The second driver rocked back and forth, trying to see up the trail and cursing the front two for stopping. This continued long enough for me to push up on the balls of my feet so I might gain a better view. As I did this, I saw one of the men from the second motorbike run to the first. Then the ground beneath my high crouch gave out, crumbling shale stones from the mountainside. Seeing this, the four men dropped their motorbikes. In a panic they ran in four different directions. Yar fired steadily from his rifle into the air. The men froze.