In My Father's Country (41 page)

After weeks of searching, I still couldn’t find anyone I could recommend with 100 percent confidence. I returned to Jason’s office and I told him about the
engineer-saab
but that if there was a meeting he felt was important, I would sit in on it and listen to the interpretation, to confirm that he was getting the whole story.

Not long after this meeting, there was a deeply unfortunate event. A village elder was killed by coalition forces during an Escalation of Force incident. He’d been driving head-on toward the patrol and, despite several warnings, had refused to stop. Our soldiers, following procedure, had fired and killed him and his driver.

At a meeting with other elders of the villiage, Jason said, “My soldiers told him in both Pashtu and English that he needed to stop, and he refused. They fired warning shots, and he refused. My soldiers had no other choice. They followed EOF procedure. They needed to do this for their own safety. How can we help your people understand this? If someone is driving toward us in a car and refuses to stop, how can we tell the difference between this person and an insurgent who wants to harm us?”

The interpreter wrung his hands. “We’re sorry,” he said to the elders.

“Do the complete translation,” I said. “These elders need to have all the information.”

“We’re so sorry, we’re so sorry!” he repeated.

I could tell that he didn’t know all the words in either Pashtu or English, but I could also see that he didn’t want to disrespect these elders by implying that it was the driver’s fault. Regardless of the reasons, as an interpreter he was obligated to translate Jason’s speech word for word.

I jumped in and did the translation, which may have caused Engineer-Saab
some shame and embarrassment, but it couldn’t be helped. As an American, I wanted to make sure the locals knew our soldiers had not broken any procedure and were not to be blamed for the incident. Like Engineer-Saab, I, too, had my loyalties. It was not easy to admit where they lay.

T
WENTY-NINE

E
very Human Terrain Team had a social scientist, and Michael Bhatia was ours. Michael was soft-spoken and sophisticated, a Californian of half-Indian decent. He was dark-eyed, wore small, wire-rimmed glasses, and could have easily passed for an Afghan. His credentials were stupendous; he had worked as a social scientist in East Timor and Kosovo, among other places. By the time he came to Khost he’d already edited a book on Afghanistan and had also published a photo-essay. He had been on the HTT for seven months when I arrived.

Our desks were across from each other. We sat together most mornings reading reports, assessing what was known (not much) and not known (a lot) about the people in the province. I liked to listen to my iPod when I read the reports. I tend to have a few favorite songs that I listen to constantly. During my first months at Salerno I listened to a certain upbeat Bollywood tune, sometimes six or seven times in a row.

One day as I was putting on my headphones, Michael started singing the song with made-up lyrics. He had a nice voice.

“You can hear it?”

“I hear that song even in my sleep, thanks to you. You need to expand your horizons. Please let me download something else on your iPod.”

“This is Bollywood, Michael. This music is half of your heritage,” I teased him.

“That song is
not
my heritage.”

“You need to embrace what is in your blood! Trust me, it’s much easier to embrace it than to deny it.”

He shook his head dramatically. “I’m begging you. Let me give you some Frank Sinatra. Everyone on earth loves Sinatra.” In the end, we compromised: I would listen to the song no more than five times a day, and Michael promised not to delete it from my iPod.

Audrey and I, in part because we were female, but also because we were friendly and outgoing, attracted a lot of attention. HTT had an official open-door policy. After 9:00
A.M
. a steady stream of soldiers would appear. Word had gotten out that if you had any questions about Afghans or Afghanistan, however ridiculous they might seem, HTT guys were the ones to ask.

They came with all varieties of questions. Why was it disrespectful to ask after a man’s wife but okay to talk about his children? How could they avoid talking about religion without seeming rude? Was it acceptable to ask what Afghans did all day? Was it rude to ask the elders how they dyed their beards that brilliant red? Did regular Afghans despise us? Did they have any idea what we were doing here? Was it true that sometimes when we drove through a particularly isolated village on patrol they mistook us for Soviets, the enemy of their worst nightmares? What was the best thing to say to a villager? Who were the movers and the shakers of the community?

I liked the soldiers. I encouraged their questions.

Michael would stand up and place his hands on his hips in mock disapproval. “I’ve been here for seven months and none of these guys ever asked me anything! I think we need to make some rules around here. For every five guys who show up in here asking questions that they’ve made up just to visit you, you girls need to buy me a coffee at the Green Beans.” Every FOB in Afghanistan had a Green Beans Coffee franchise; ours was over by the PX. The coffee was overpriced and not very good, but it represented an indulgence anyway.

Audrey and I protested, but Michael started making hatch marks on
the wall. Whenever another soldier would show up, he’d get out his black Sharpie. “This one doesn’t count!” I would exclaim. “He only wants to borrow a book!” Michael would shake his head. “These are the rules. I don’t make them, I just follow them.” Which, in fact, he did.

We laughed a lot, but it wasn’t all fun all the time. Michael and I differed on some fundamental issues, which often resulted in intense bickering. Perhaps it was because we were stuck together in that office for hours on end. We did have meetings at the TOC and went on the occasional mission, but it felt as if we all lived together in that square plywood room.

There was a basic conflict at the heart of our relationship. I knew Michael was working on his Ph.D. while he was there, and I suspected that a lot of the data he was gathering was to support his dissertation. He knew that I was Pashtun and thought that I believed I knew it all. I was at a point in my life where I took everything very personally when it came to Afghanistan, and felt that only those civilians who truly loved and were invested in the development of the country should be allowed to work there. Any other reason, no matter how valid, was not acceptable to me. Our approach to the job couldn’t have been more different. Once, I was reading some data he’d gathered during a routine mission to a nearby village.

“You asked them how many doctors they had?” I blurted out while scanning his report.

“It’s a standard question.”

“You are showing insensitivity here by assuming that there’s even a single doctor in the village. After being in Afghanistan for years, we should know that most villages don’t have any.”

“As it happened, there was a doctor in the village,” he said. “I don’t see your point.”

“The point is that it reveals how little we have learned and retained about these people. Instead of asking how many, it’s better to ask where they take the sick to be treated. The Pashtun are impossibly proud. For them to answer ‘None’ reinforces the fact that they are lacking the ability
to provide for the basic needs of their families, and it sets the tone for the rest of the interview.”

I rambled on. My cheeks were hot, even though the room was cold and we were sitting in our jackets. These villagers were not required to talk to us at all, and when we conveyed our ignorance, even in something as minor as to how to phrase a question, we risked closing our channels of communication entirely.

Michael sighed heavily. He explained that he had spent two years in Africa, and knew how to conduct a proper interview through an interpreter.

“Whatever you did, wherever you did it, it’s not going to work here. We are lucky if we get two hours in a village here, so you’re going to have to completely change the way you research and study and think.”

“Whoa, take it easy!” said Billy.

Michael and I stopped. We’d forgotten Billy was there.

“Things were a lot chiller in Kandahar,” he said.

Sometimes our differences felt insurmountable. Then I would grab Audrey and go to Aziz’s bakery.

Aziz was scrawny and milky-eyed, a cagey old Pashtun. His way of saying hello involved blinking one eye shut and wagging his finger at me. Although he was missing a few teeth, his smile was dazzling. Like the rest of the locals, Aziz was puzzled and curious about where I had come from and who my people were in Afghanistan. For the safety of my family still there, I had never disclosed which tribe I belonged to because from there it would be very easy to trace my roots. Everywhere I went, people would try to find out, and I would tell them one tribe or another, sometimes I would even say I was from Pakistan. In all the years I spent in Afghanistan, Aziz was the only one who correctly guessed my tribe. He said it was my accent, the accent I had apparently retained even though I had left my village when I was five. Of course I didn’t tell him that he had guessed right.

There was a bench near the bakery. Unlike my bench in Farah, on which I had sat for many hours enjoying the solitude and Eric’s company,
or the bench in Asadabad at the top of the PRT with the view of the gray-brown mountains and cold blue river below, this bench had nothing going for it aside from being near the bakery and Aziz’s mouthwatering bread.

Audrey and I were a team within the team. We shared a B-hut, and only a very thin plywood wall divided our tiny rooms. We could hear everything, every phone call and cough, every sigh of frustration. For the first month we’d shared the building with a female staff sergeant who liked to sing to herself and an older civilian who worked for USAID. They both left when their deployment was over in late March, and so we had the place to ourselves. We liked to stay up late, reading, watching movies, listening to music, and talking.

She was less troubled by what I felt was Michael’s cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all methods. Many afternoons at the bakery she would talk me off the ledge, reminding me that Michael was there for the same reason I was—I loved Afghanistan and cared about its people, and so did he. I couldn’t explain to her that Michael made me doubt myself by questioning my qualifications, much like I had been doing myself, and that I wasn’t able to face my own doubts voiced by another human being.

This was the first time I had an office in Afghanistan, not to mention the ear of the U.S. Army leadership, so to speak. I was in a position to potentially help my father’s people, if I could only figure out how, and be confident enough to advise and affect military operations in the region. Having Michael point out constantly that just being an Afghan didn’t make me an expert on Afghans undermined my confidence, and thus my personal goal. I realized that just being an Afghan didn’t make me an expert, but being able to speak the common language and having grown up as an Afghan had to at least put me ahead of those who did not speak the language or have the same genes. Those two assets mattered more to Afghans than the academic background—I knew this because they mattered more to
me
.

In the beginning, several days a week we were required to continue our training. One week it was Humvee rollover training. The point was
to learn how to unbuckle your seat belt, keep positive control of your weapon, extricate yourself, rescue the injured, and maintain security, in case the Humvee was hit by a roadside bomb and was tossed and rolled. It required a lot of imagination to pretend that the Humvee, which was hooked up to a special device and had been turned over like a chicken on a spit, was imperiled on some lone mountain road.

Our team—Audrey, Billy, Tom, Michael, and I—trained together. During our first simulation I was told to open the door while the Humvee was lying on its side. The door of an armored Humvee weighs hundreds of pounds. Pushing it open while on your side requires bracing yourself and using your hands and feet. My arms were never as strong as they were after a couple of weeks of rollover training.

Medical-emergency training was next. We were schooled in how to stop the kind of bleeding that would kill someone in a minute or two. Soldiers in the simulations were slathered from chin to knees in blood so bright and red it could only have been real.

The medic conducting the course was named Todd. He was small and energetic, and he believed in his mission. When he asked whether we had any questions, I asked about the blood. Where did it come from?

“This is pig’s blood, dried into powder, shipped from the States specifically for this training,” he replied.

I had already seen my share of blood in the clinics in Farah, Jalalabad, and Asadabad, from the locals with their blown-apart limbs to the suicide bomber bits I’d seen stuck on the sides of a Humvee or splattered all over the road. But I’d never gotten used to it. I wanted to learn how to tie a tourniquet, but I didn’t want to be immersed in any blood, particularly pig’s blood, which is especially repulsive to Muslims.

I said, “Oh, no. As a Muslim I’m afraid I can’t touch pig’s blood. I’m going to need to be excused.”

Todd frowned; a line appeared between his brows. He put his hands on his hips. “You’re right; this is not okay,” he said. “This is the stuff I’ve been using to train the ANA.”

He felt bad and worried that he’d been insensitive. But I had pointed it out mostly to avoid getting the blood on myself. “As long as you don’t
tell them it’s pig’s blood, they won’t go to hell. Don’t tell them, but meanwhile, try to get other blood,” I suggested.

A couple of weeks later Todd found me at the chow hall, eating a pistachio ice cream cone. Pistachio was my favorite flavor, and it was offered only occasionally. I struggled with the food at Salerno. I couldn’t understand why the army put pork in everything. Salads were an option, but the lettuce was sad and wilted, the edges brown. Sometimes I ate Jell-O, like someone recovering from an illness. Todd sat on a chair next to our table and said he’d managed to find a new blood source. “It’s not animal blood at all but still looks real. It’s already mixed, and they ship it in bags. Now you can take the training.”