Green on Blue (4 page)

I answered: I’ll be there and am grateful.

He nodded, still taking his measure of me.

We shook hands and Taqbir wished me luck and long life. I walked toward the hospital’s main double doors. As I put my shoulder into one, I looked back. Standing at the far end of the corridor, I saw Taqbir join the American with the blond beard. Together they spoke quietly. Then the two strolled off in search of another recruit.

T
hat night, I slept in the hills among the orphaned boys. I lacked the courage to visit Ali for a last time, and in the morning I departed. I walked without rest, guided by the helicopters that passed steadily above. When the sun set, I could see FOB Sharana spread low across the dust of the plain and the small airfield on it. A ditch ran around the FOB. The dirt from it filled the HESCO barriers of the perimeter wall. These were stacked three high with coils of concertina wire running on top. Their steel frames and burlap linings had splits and tears. This made the wall sag. In places the earth in the HESCOs spilled back into the ditch from where it was dug. In the back of the FOB, I found the HESCOs laid out in a serpentine. These led to a tall steel gate. A light from a tower shined onto the ground in front of the gate. Under the spotlight, the ground was bright as day. Next to it stood an Afghan guard in a plywood booth. He noticed me just before I stepped onto the ground where the light shone. He stepped into his booth and grabbed a radio.

I froze.

Slowly I took out my phone and called Taqbir’s contact. A voice answered: How did you get this number?

I am Aziz, I said, a friend of Taqbir’s. I am at the entrance.

Hold on, said the voice. It sounded as if the phone had been set down. I stood and watched the guard. Then the voice returned: Yes, Aziz, I will call you back.

The phone disconnected.

I waited. The gate guard continued to watch me from across the serpentine. He began to talk into his radio. I wanted to leave. Then my phone rang.

Tell the guard that you are on Flight 873 to Shkin, said the voice.

That is all? I asked.

Still the guard stared at me. It was as if we were having a silent conversation, one with the other, me speaking into my phone and he into his radio.

That is all, said the voice, hanging up.

I approached. The guard put down his radio and stepped from his booth, rubbing his eyes sleepily. His khaki uniform was too small and his brown suede boots too large. The thick mat of stubble on his cheeks was unkempt and seemed the result of laziness, not any effort to grow a beard.

I gave him my flight number. Shkin, eh? he said, grinning. You don’t look like a soldier.

How does a soldier look? I asked.

Not like you.

He banged against the gate with the butt of his Kalashnikov. Another guard ran down from his tower to open it. We stood, waiting. Shkin’s a brutal place, he told me.

It is, I said, my words not quite a statement but not a question either.

Good hunting for a soldier, he said, but I think it is better to be on the gate.

Maybe, I replied.

He laughed at me. You see, he said, you are no soldier.

How do you know that?

Soldiers don’t want to watch gates.

Soon I’ll be a soldier, I said, finding confidence.

Maybe you will be, but I’ll never know. The flights to Shkin carry soldiers, but the flights back never do. He shook his head in an unkind way.

A door was cut and hinged into the gate so it didn’t have to be opened fully each time. The other guard poked his head through it.

Him? he asked.

Yes, to Shkin, said the guard.

Now they both shook their heads.

Good hunting, said the gate guard as I entered the FOB. I couldn’t tell if he were wishing me luck or making another statement about the fighting. I was glad to leave him.

Inside, metal stakes threaded with rope formed a pen in the dust. This was the holding area for the helicopter flights. Afghan soldiers filled it. They wore a mix of green, khaki, and blue uniforms. None wore the camouflage pattern I’d seen on Taqbir. I had no uniform and they eyed me with suspicion.

Evening turned to night. Tucking my legs to my chest, I dozed on the cold dirt. Each hour a thin, clean-shaven Afghan, and an American with enormous muscles and cheeks red as bee stings walked into the holding area. The Afghan read names and destinations from a list while the American supervised. The crowd thinned out around me. Soon a chubby Afghan in shalwar kameez was the only other who remained. He seemed to be no soldier at all and he sat atop white bags of rice that rested on a pallet. Each of the bags was solid as a large mud brick. On their fronts, printed neatly in red and blue, were the letters
USAID.

The Afghan and the American returned. Even though there were just two of us left, the Afghan called our names and destinations from
his list. Aziz Iqtbal, Shkin! I stood and patted the dust from my clothes. Naseeb Ilyas, Shkin! The chubby man slid off his pallet.

The Afghan waved a forklift toward Naseeb’s rice. Its hydraulic controls whined as the steel prongs came up then down, aligning to the open ends of the pallet. The prongs paused for a moment and then stabbed under the pallet, heaving it to such a height that in order to steer, the driver leaned out the side of the cab. The load bounced as it moved across the uneven ground, before settling along the cement taxiway of the airfield. Naseeb and I walked behind. The night around us was so dark that I couldn’t see the rows of helicopters and jet planes I knew lined our path. I only felt the smooth concrete under my feet and also disappointment. I’d never seen a jet plane up close and now probably never would. We walked quickly and the fat man, Naseeb, panted behind me.

Are you a new soldier? he asked.

I considered the roundness of his face. His skin looked like the uneven moon cheese that shone down at us. I am a friend of Taqbir’s, I said. He offered me a soldier’s job.

Yes, yes, the place you’re going is full of Taqbir’s friends, said Naseeb. Every time we lose one, he sends us another.

You work in Shkin? I asked.

He pointed toward his pallet. I am the supply officer, he said. A thankless job but one that enjoys Commander Sabir’s complete trust. To fight in a unit led by him is a great honor.

I said nothing, unsure how to show the proper respect to Commander Sabir, a man I’d yet to know.

There are more recruits like you in Shkin, said Naseeb. One by one they’ve arrived this winter, training until the warm weather comes and the fighting season begins. There were eight when I left a week ago, maybe more now.

I am ready, I said.

He was quiet for a moment. When he spoke again, there was more weight in his voice: No doubt you heard of Gazan’s bombing in the bazaar.

I shrugged. There was nothing I wanted to say to him about that.

In the villages south of here it is even worse, he said. Those dogs attack and then hide in the mountains. What nang can be claimed in that?

I shook my head.

Yes, yes, he added, nodding to himself. The hunting will be good this fighting season. There are more Americans here and Gazan is tired and we will—

Distant thumps and a low shrieking squeezed out all other noise. We saw nothing and still the noise came. A hot wind surged downward. It spilled like a pitcher of water across the ground, pasting our baggy clothes to our bodies. The helicopter settled in front of us. The other sounds returned and the gust became a warm breeze in the cold night. The back ramp lowered, opening like a fist. Inside, blue overhead lights shined dimly into a long empty hull that shook, as if with a sickness, under the motors above. A pair of crewmembers ran up and down, unlashing bundles from the deck plates, clearing the cargo hold. Their night-vision goggles covered the tops of their faces except where two coins of green demon light shone onto their eyes. They wore dark one-piece jumpsuits, olive-green, maybe black. Each of their helmets was painted like a giant skull, white on black. A protective face mask formed the jawbone, decorated with jagged teeth. The two helmets were identical except that one of the crewmembers had decorated his with a red Mohawk that ran its length.

The crew waved us on board. I followed Naseeb to a canvas bench near the front. Naseeb slid his shoulders beneath a set of straps. He
pulled another set across his lap and fastened three buckles into a fourth with a circular clasp. I watched. Then I imitated him and slid my buckles into the clasp, but I was much smaller than whoever had sat in my seat before. Soon my loose straps were tangled. I tried to tighten them but couldn’t. I attempted to fit the loose straps into the clasp as Naseeb had done, but the buckles would not lock. As I struggled, Naseeb took pity on me. He loosened his own straps, leaned across his seat, tightened mine, and then pressed a button I hadn’t seen on the clasp’s front. He sat back down, tightened his straps, and nodded at me. Now that we were both seated, the forklift driver lowered his night-vision goggles and drove the pallet of rice in behind us. The crew lashed it to the floor. The ramp closed, the helicopter rattled. In an instant we became smooth and weightless. I smiled in the dark. I’d never flown before.

–

Less than an hour later, the helicopter lifted back and its engines screamed and rattled, easing us downward. I looked out the window but saw nothing. We landed with a heavy bounce. The blue lights came on again. The ramp lowered and the crew rolled the pallet into the gravel-and-dirt landing zone. Naseeb and I followed. Outside we hugged our bodies against the bags of rice as the helicopter’s engines pushed hot air against us. Its dead weight lifted and then disappeared.

My ears rang in the silence and my eyes strained in the dark. There was no one there. Naseeb walked off the landing zone.

I grabbed his arm. Where do I sleep? I asked.

You see that light? he answered. Away from us blinked a dim slit. That is the barracks for the recruits, he said. Then Naseeb turned from me and walked into the night, leaving his pallet on the landing zone.

A heavy felt blanket was tacked over a HESCO doorway. It blew in the breeze. The light behind it escaped, in and out, in and out. Mud and
rock swelled the steel frames of the HESCOs, buckling them slowly. Inside, a stove full of embers held out against the cold. A thin dusty carpet struggled to cover the dirt floor. Under short wool blankets eight lumps slept with their knees huddled to their chests. I lay in the corner and crawled into myself for warmth. I had no blanket and was the ninth.

–

I woke an hour before sunrise, worrying about my brother and if Taqbir had kept his promise to me. As long as I worried, my sleep had no depth, so I left the barracks and looked for a warm place until dawn. Somewhere outside a generator hummed. I walked quickly through the firebase, toward the sound and the hope of warmth. I found the generator next to a trailer full of latrines. I stepped inside. It was clean and simple. A large mirror, two sinks, and two rows of toilets—not your Western kind, but stalls built around holes in the ground. I squatted down to use one and, still worrying about my brother, I dozed.

Suddenly I heard the noise of a truck outside and then footsteps as someone entered. Water ran from one of the faucets. I strained to see between the stall’s cracks, and noticed the very blond beard from the hospital. The man pulled clothes from a bag—a few T-shirts and some underwear and blue jeans. No uniforms, just regular clothes. He washed them in the sink with a bar of hand soap. As he did, he whistled to himself some happy tune. He didn’t catch my feet under the stall. I dared not move.

The door slammed again. There was another set of steps. I angled my head and caught the first glimpse of a man I would come to know well, Issaq. He had a dwarfish look common to those for whom starvation was a childhood companion. His strange appearance made me question whether I was in fact awake, or he real. He stood at the sink next to the blond man and ran a rag under the water. He took off his shirt and
scrubbed with the rag under his arms and against his shoulders. I only caught glimpses, but what I saw frightened me. Scars crossed his body in every direction. The skin around each was cracked and dry. Issaq itched at the tangle of scars with his wet rag. Soon they became red and looked evil, like sleeping snakes beneath his skin.

The blond man stood next to Issaq, wringing water from his shirts and underpants. For a time neither spoke, but in that quiet lay a familiarity. Item by item, the blond man hung his clothes on the edge of an empty sink. Stenciled on a waistband or shirt collar, I saw his name—JACK.

Finally, Mr. Jack broke the silence. How are the recruits? he asked. His Pashto was like a child’s. He invented unusual pronunciations for common words.

They are fine, said Issaq, but I wonder how long they will stay.

Are they scared to fight? asked Mr. Jack.

Issaq turned toward him, displaying his body’s many scars. That has never been a problem for us, he said. He stood there for a moment longer, forcing Mr. Jack to look at him. Satisfied, Issaq faced back to the mirror. He spoke into his reflection: It has been two months since we’ve been paid.

I’ve seen Sabir tonight, said Mr. Jack. He has plenty for everyone now.

Issaq was quiet for a moment. Would you like to come to training tomorrow, to see the recruits? he asked.

Mr. Jack answered: I would, but my trip was only for tonight, to see Sabir.

When you’re next here, they will be ready, said Issaq, proudly.

Train them hard, Mr. Jack said. The spring will be busy.

We are always busy, Issaq grumbled.

I don’t think Mr. Jack understood him, though. He’d spoken quickly and, as I’ve said, Mr. Jack’s Pashto was not so good. I leaned back and
stopped looking at the two of them. I heard the faucet turn off. There were more steps. Outside a truck door slammed shut. The engine’s noise fell into the distance and Mr. Jack was gone.

I was very still. I strained to hear. Steps came toward me. A set of boots planted themselves in front of my stall.