Margarita Wednesdays: Making a New Life by the Mexican Sea (3 page)

And that scared me even more. Who the hell was this person? I had traveled all over the world and never once had been nervous about finding my way. Ethiopia, Pakistan, Syria, India, Morocco, Malaysia . . . no problem! But something inside me had drastically
changed. And now I was a self-imposed prisoner in a little house on top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere—and spending way, way too much time alone.

One day, not long after I had arrived, Mike suggested a road trip. He and his friend Shelly had planned a weekend of camping in Yosemite National Park.

“Camping?” I asked, pressing the pause button on the remote.

“It’ll do you good, Deb.” Mike ran his ruddy hands through his cropped hair.

“Yeah, but are you talking
camping-
camping, as in sleeping bags and dirt and stuff ?”

Mike laughed. “Of course it’s camping-camping. It’ll be fun. Just tents, flashlights, a Coleman stove. Really roughing it. You can sleep in the back of the truck if you want.”

I thought, wow. I had gone without electricity, but at this point in my life I’d never
choose
to go without electricity. I’ve slept on the floor because I
had
to sleep on the floor. But this is a first-world country. After all I’d seen in Afghanistan, I had to wonder why on earth anybody would want to have this kind of make-believe adventure. I saw no point in it whatsoever.

“And we might even get to see a bear!” Mike added, his voice rising half an octave with enthusiasm.

A bizarre image of Yogi Bear and Boo-Boo with black Taliban turbans wrapped around their little fuzzy ears popped into my head, but out of gratitude toward Mike, and to escape the loneliness and boredom that had become all too familiar, I agreed to go.

The first night wasn’t great. My back had gone out, and the rock-hard truck bed felt like a slab of cement. I lay there as still as a fallen statue, and even with my eyes open the entire night I couldn’t make out a single shape. It was that dark. And the noises! Hoots and howls and crackling and rustling. I had no idea what was out there. At least in Kabul I knew that a long high whistle meant a missile, and I could tell the difference between an incoming and outgoing rocket just by
its sound. But in Yosemite I was terrified. The covered pickup felt like a coffin. Too scared (and achy) to even get up to pee, I sweated and hyperventilated for seven hours straight.

By the time morning came I was a wreck. My back was throbbing, so when Mike and Shelly said they wanted to make a pit stop before we started touring around, I told them I’d wait in the truck. As they crossed the parking lot toward the restrooms, I leaned back into the headrest and tried my damnedest to relax a little, breathing deeply to ease the pain and calm my brain. Who was that person last night? I asked myself. I had been truly scared, and I’m not scared of anything! Please. Where was the Deb who, not that long ago, was fighting mercenaries on the streets of Afghanistan?

K
ABUL WAS ON HIGH ALERT
. Riots had been triggered by a military convoy losing control of one of its Hummers. Many foreign businesses had not reopened. I was just finishing up morning classes at the beauty school when a sudden, overwhelming craving for a coffee and a quesada from the coffeehouse just five blocks away hit me.

“Debbie, you really must wait for Actar to drive you,” Akmed Zia pleaded, standing between me and the door.

“I’ll be
fine
,” I insisted, grabbing my purse from the counter. Really, how much trouble could I get into in five little blocks?

I had made it just two blocks down Wild West Street when I saw the men. Hundreds of them coming right toward me. Shit, another riot, I thought as I frantically searched among the walled compounds lining the street for somewhere, anywhere, to duck into. The mob was on me in a flash—I flattened myself against a wall, lowered my head, and tried my best to blend in, my heart racing as I realized I had been idiotic enough to leave without my headscarf. Just jeans, a big T-shirt, and my flaming red hair. But they weren’t running, I realized. They were walking, slowly. Maybe it’s some sort of a nonviolent protest, I thought, but I knew how those went. Peace and love for the first part,
and all-out slaughtering for the second. I had no desire to be the uncovered infidel who set things off.

As the crowd began to pass, I sucked in my breath, daring to look up for just one brief moment to see a body. A corpse enveloped in a white sheet, held aloft above their heads. The funeral procession passed silently by, the mourners too grief-stricken to even give me the time of day.

I’d never been so happy to see a dead guy in my life. But feeling slightly less cocky by this point, I decided to stop at a friend’s compound to borrow one of their guards for the last three blocks of my walk. The request felt a bit ridiculous, but having an Afghan man at my side was a safer way to go, me being a foreigner, a woman, and an uncovered woman at that.

Reza and I were just about to cross the narrow, pitted street when a speeding Hummer came barreling toward us. Children, bicyclists, donkeys, dogs were all flying to get out of the way. Then there was a sudden, loud crack, and the Hummer’s giant tire began to bounce down the street, missing us by inches, landing smack on top of a taxi.

The taxi driver leapt out to assess the damage. A crowd began to gather, which made me nervous, considering that this was exactly how the riots had started not that long ago. I sent Reza to the taxi to calm the driver down, and turned my attention to the folks still sitting in the disabled Hummer. It was hard to tell if they were U.S. military or private security, but I was sure that no matter who they were, they wouldn’t want another riot to start on their watch, and that they’d quickly right their wrong and offer to pay for the damage.

I started across the gravel to see what I could do to help. My five years in Kabul had taught me that giving a little money and getting the foreigner off the street as quickly as possible could go a long way in keeping a situation from escalating. But by now the taxi driver was yelling, and people were pouring out of their shops to see the big foreign Hummer that had destroyed the little Afghan taxi.

Reza ran over to me, frantically waving his arms in the air. “Debbie, we have to act fast. We must do something!”

“Go find out how much he needs,” I said, turning back to the tan Hummer, when the doors flew open and out jumped a ponytailed blond woman and a stocky young man, both in black flak jackets, dark glasses covering their eyes and automatic rifles pointed at the crowd.

“Don’t!” I yelled, running over to push the rifle noses down. “Are you guys okay? Anybody hurt?” They shook their heads. By now it was obvious that they weren’t military. I led them behind the Hummer, out of view from the crowd that just seemed to be getting bigger and bigger. “We need to handle this fast, and you guys need to get out of here.”

“How much?” I mouthed across the street to Reza.

“One hundred,” he mouthed back.

“One hundred dollars, and it will be over,” I reported to the mercenaries. “Everyone will be happy.”

“Uh, that’s just not doable. Our orders in this type of circumstance are to A, provide a business card, and B, remove ourselves from the situation.” The young man turned to his partner for confirmation.

“C’mon, guys! If you do that all hell will break loose. You have no idea how sensitive this situation is.” I couldn’t help but think what would happen to my business if anything went down here. For sure a security alert would go out, and the beauty school, salon, and coffeehouse would all be off-limits to half the people in town. And the other half would be too afraid to come anywhere near us.

The blonde was on her phone, dialing for backup. Reza was staring at me anxiously, waiting for an answer. I rushed across the street.

“Don’t worry,” I assured the taxi driver in loud, slow Dari. “The foreigners will make good. Don’t worry.” Reza echoed my words at the top of his lungs, his voice bouncing off the shabby storefronts.

Just as I finished, a trio of black Hummers screeched to a halt beside us, spitting out six huge men with weapons drawn and ready for a fight.

“Are you guys stupid or what?” I yelled as I ran back across the
street. “Is this your first fucking rodeo? I’m telling you, we will have a riot on our hands if you keep this up.” Again I walked from gun to gun, pushing the noses of the rifles down toward the ground. I was sick of our neighborhood being overrun by tanks that would practically demolish a car in a blink. For those of us who lived there, Afghans and foreigners alike, just trying to lead a normal life was getting near to impossible. Too much stupid shit was happening. And now the place was crawling with private security companies who seemed to be making up the rules as they went along. They had their guns, and they’d do whatever they wanted to do to whomever they wanted to do it to. And if there is one thing I can’t stand, it’s bullies.

By this time the Afghans weren’t sure which was more entertaining—the taxi driver ranting over his broken car, or the crazy woman fighting with the mercenaries.

“Back up! Back up!” the mercenaries screamed at me.

“You need to clean up your mess!” I screamed right back.

“We’re not cleaning up anything! Back up!”

By now we were nose to nose, or rather nose to noses, me right in the face of this chorus line of idiots, their guns once again poised for action.

“Lady,” the biggest one of the group shouted, “this isn’t your concern. You need to back up! Now! Let’s roll, guys!”

“Roll? You were fucking rolling, man! Your guy was rolling so fucking fast that his tire didn’t just fall off, it
flew
off and nearly took off my head! The cabbie just wants a hundred bucks to fix his car. Just do it, man!”

“I said, let’s roll!” he shouted again, louder.

As he raised his arm to signal for the rest to follow, I swiftly grabbed his wrist. “You are not going fucking anywhere until this guy gets his money!” I hissed.

By now the crowd had grown silent. You could almost see them placing mental bets on who was going to win this fight.

“Who the fuck
are
you?” he yelled in my face.

“Who the fuck am I? Who the fuck am I? I’m Debbie, the fucking
hairdresser,
asshole, and I am telling you to hand over the money
now
!”

Behind him, the team of mercenaries started rummaging through their pockets. One handed me a twenty, another a ten. Before long I had the hundred dollars and started to head over to the cab. I turned to the mercenary leader. “Now get out, and get out fast.”

They loaded up, rogue tire and all, and were gone in a flash. I cautiously scanned the silent crowd as I handed the driver his money, knowing things could still go either way, and fast. All of a sudden I heard a single clap, then another, until the crowd erupted into a cheering, whistling serenade that followed Reza and me as we ran, laughing, all the way to the coffeehouse.

W
HERE HAD THAT WOMAN GONE
? I desperately needed her back to talk some sense into the other one who had panicked at the sound of falling leaves the night before. I deepened my breaths and closed my eyes. When I awoke with a start thirty minutes later, I was surprised to find myself still alone in the truck. Ten minutes more passed, and still no Mike, no Shelly. Must be one long line for that toilet, I thought. After ten more minutes I checked my phone for messages. No reception. All of a sudden it felt as though a switch had been flicked on inside my head, and I began to panic. What if something had happened? What if they fell off a cliff ? What if they ran into a bear? And the weirdest thing is, all I could think of was how would I ever get myself home. Who would I contact? Was there anyone who would help me? I could have sworn my heart was going to beat its way right out of my chest.

After a few more minutes I was circling the truck, gasping for air, tears streaming down my cheeks. Too scared to wander even twenty feet away, for fear I couldn’t find my way back again, I must have looked like an escapee from a mental hospital to the park ranger patrolling the area.

“Is everything okay, ma’am?” he asked as he approached with caution.

“It’s . . . I’m . . . my friends . . .” I sobbed, the snot dribbling down my lip.

“Deb! What’s going on?” I turned to see Mike coming toward me, with a dripping chocolate ice-cream cone in each hand. “Are you all right?”

And that’s when it began to hit home that I really wasn’t.

B
ACK ON TOP OF
B
ELL
Mountain, my bizarro self continued to reign.

On top of that, the passivity that had seeped into my veins somehow convinced me that allowing myself to become more than just friends with Mike would be okay.

I was already sort of notorious for my questionable choices in men. Though they weren’t always to blame for the failures in our relationships, I had by now gone through a boatload of bad matches, including my polygamous wannabe Afghan warlord, to whom I was still married, who could now have me stoned to death for adultery, and who was the reason I couldn’t go back home to Kabul in the first place.

But this one, at that time, seemed different. Mike and his mother, who lived next door, were like a big hug and a soothing Band-Aid rolled into one, particularly after what I had been through. It seemed to just be part of their way to take others under their wing—they liked to save and fix people. So I did my best to settle into my new role as the needy person in the group. Who knew? Maybe I just might find my happy ending after all.

Despite my attempts at fitting in, things quickly started to go from bad to worse. I was still often too paralyzed to leave the house, and inside the house I wasn’t faring much better. The bare white walls seemed to be closing in on me. Of course, there was no way I was going to make new friends if I didn’t get my ass off that futon, so I had nobody to talk to. And for once in my life, I had nothing to say. The only thing I felt like talking about was Afghanistan, and the only people I really wanted to be with were people who had been through
the same sort of things I had. I didn’t figure there were many of those in the Napa Valley.