News From the Red Desert (10 page)

W
hen Stewart Robinson got to the airfield it turned out that his flight was delayed—bad weather and unspecified operational issues. He waited around for two hours and then noticed that everyone else who was to have left on the same flight had gone. He was the only one still there, sitting on his suitcase, reading a copy of the
Economist.
He approached an air traffic officer and was told that it was almost certain that he wouldn't get out that day. He was told to come back the next morning by six.

Robinson was two parts frustrated to one part relieved. He took the opportunity to wander around KAF unescorted. He recognized almost nothing from his first visit here. There was construction underway everywhere. The population on base had doubled every eight months for the last four years, someone told him.

Robinson did not remember a cappuccino bar on the Kandahar Airfield, that was for sure. He ducked as he entered the Green Beans and smiled as he took in the sight of doctors and nurses and pilots drinking their coffees and eating biscotti. He ordered an espresso and made his way to the one free table he could see. He sat down and as he lifted his cup to his lips he noticed Deirdre at the table to next to his, staring into her laptop screen. He had to double check that it was her. She looked different.
Not older, exactly. More contained, perhaps. Every bit as attractive but more formidable. He watched her drink her own coffee and type away. It looked like she was writing one of those BuzzFeed listicles. Slumming, he supposed. Oh, that would be fun to tease her about.

Or perhaps she was no longer teasable. The set of her mouth was different than he recalled, more serious, probably angrier. In a moment she would notice him staring. She had always been stared at a lot and she had her techniques for dealing with it. He wondered which she would use on him.

“Hello, Stewart,” she said, without making eye contact. Then, looking at him over her coffee cup, and clearly with intent to injure, “I had heard you were on base.”

“Nice to see you, Deirdre.”

“Are you here peddling your book?”

“I finished touring it last year, but someone here in public affairs asked me here to talk about the Pashtun to them.”

“One more thing you are an expert in, now.”

“Well, no. But I gave a talk about what I understand of them.”

“I'm sure they loved you.”

“I'm sure they thought I was an idiot.”

“Little did they know…”

“…how right they were.”

“Are you still in Kabul?”

“Most of the time. I travel a lot. I was supposed to fly there today.”

“The plane isn't coming. Thunderstorm.”

“I heard.”

“What are your plans?”

He looked around and opened his arms. “My day is wide open.” The second he said it, he knew he sounded overeager.

“I saw your piece about Michael Hastings,” she said.

“I saw yours.”

“Oh?” They said in unison. They paused, and smiled at each other.

“I didn't like it,” they continued together.

They both grinned.

“How come?” he asked.

“I thought what he did was cheap. Hang out with that general and his aides for weeks straight and then report back on every indiscreet thing he overheard them say. If I or any of the other embeds did that, there would be no embedding programs. And there you were, saying he was re-establishing journalistic norms.”

“And there you were, saying he had no right to criticize the general that way, that he had never served his country the way the general had. Who do you think journalists are responsible to? Who is your constituency?”

The café was quiet now. He had raised his voice. He looked at his coffee. That was not what he had intended.

She nodded. “I'm afraid I'm on deadline. I have to get back to work.”

“Of course.”

And then she stood up and closed her laptop and collected her things. She walked out of the café. He watched her leave. She didn't look back. He was surprised. He had been half playing. She used to be able to tell.

After filing her story, Deirdre dropped her gear on her bed and showered. Then she walked to the press tent. There was no one there she wanted to talk to. She wasn't sure what she was hoping for. She lingered beside the coffee pot, and looked at an article in the
New York Times
about the drone.

WASHINGTON
—On May 6, a Central Intelligence Agency drone fired a volley of missiles at a pickup truck carrying nine militants and bomb materials through a desolate stretch of Pakistan near the Afghan border. It killed all the militants—a clean strike with no civilian casualties, extending what is now a yearlong perfect record of avoiding collateral deaths.

That sounded like Peter Sullivan, at the agency. He'd become their favourite unnamed source lately.

She wandered over to the bulletin board, where another piece, this one from the
Washington Post,
was tacked up. It discussed the leadership at the CIA and their resolve to prosecute the drone strikes ethically:

Brennan's bedrock belief in a “just war,” they said, is tempered by his deep knowledge of the Middle East, Islam and the CIA, and the critical thinking forged during a classic Jesuit education.

Some White House aides describe him as a nearly priest-like presence in their midst, with a moral depth leavened by a dry Irish wit.

One CIA colleague, former general counsel John Rizzo, recalled his rectitude surfacing in unexpected ways. Brennan once questioned Rizzo's use of the “BCC” function in the agency's e-mail system to send a blind copy of a message to a third party without the primary recipient's knowledge.

Right, she thought. And then Deirdre checked her mailbox, where she found a letter. She almost never got mail there. She opened it.

Dear Deirdre:

I've asked Major Horner to get this to you. Isn't he quite a specimen of military press liaison? I think he will go far. You should have seen him steering me around the room after the talk I gave to the senior combat arms officers this afternoon. I was a prized piece of flesh, let me tell you. (One hopes he is not reading this. If you are, Major, shame on you.)

I had hoped I would run into you but I am told you are out on a patrol with some Canadians. I hope they know what they're in for. I am back to Kabul in the morning, and it appears that I am unlikely to see you. In the event that our missing one another was entirely accidental and you'd like to have a drink, drop me a line. I'll tell you my Iraq stories if you tell me yours.

Either way, it's very nice to have you back in Afghanistan. You were always my favourite memory of Kandahar.

Stewart

T
he Special Forces sergeant from Boise, soon to be a captain in military intelligence, was stateside, with more days of leave available to him than he knew what to do with. He drove his truck into the badlands and camped in the dust. He had had an idea about doing some antelope hunting, but as it turned out, he'd had no appetite for shooting. He watched the prong-horns through his binoculars as they drank at sloughs, eyeing the horizon and trying to decide if they smelled danger or not. He was struck once again by their skittish intensity. Three weeks in hunting season, their heads jerked in all directions and they sniffed the air compulsively. They appeared incapable of ease. This, he thought, is what hypervigilance looks like.

He slept in motels when it rained and on a mat unrolled in his truck box when it was clear. He drove through western Washington, Idaho and Montana, circling through the arid high country with its failing farms. He ate in diners when it was convenient, and other times he cooked for himself on the tailgate of his truck. He did not go into bars. He could count on being left alone over a meal, but not over a drink, and he had no interest in answering anyone's questions. Or in being thanked for his service. Eventually he found himself parked in the driveway of his stepfather's
stuccoed house. He had not seen the old man since he was twenty. Ten years now. His mother had left him and then she'd died. He had no idea where his biological father was. So this old man was it, his only tenuous remnant of family.

The screen door opened and the old man looked out. The sergeant got out of his truck.

“Jesus Christ, look at you.”

“Hi, Dick.”

“Could you fit another tattoo on your arms?”

“It's been a long time.”

“It has. Care for a beer?”

“Yes.”

“Inside or out here?”

“I'd as soon sit inside.”

“It's about what you might expect. C'mon. I'll clear some space at the kitchen table.”

They talked about the Mariners and about his mother. They agreed that with that bullpen there would be no excuse for not doing well and that she was a good woman. The thing about good pitching is that it normally makes for better hitting and base running, too. People feel supported. It took a long time for the war to come up. The old man's own forearms were tattooed, if less exuberantly than his onetime stepson's. On his right arm were the letters “U.S.M.C.”

“So how come you're not in the city, partying?”

“I seem to have lost my taste for that.”

“Growing up?”

“Too much time in the field, I think. I don't enjoy company the way I used to.”

“Ah. So what's left that you enjoy?”

“Being in the field.”

“You know the war is going to end.”

“It's a problem.”

“One you'll want to fix. You have lots of years in front of you. You don't want to spend them alone.”

“I've been commissioned. Into intelligence. That has dialled back the field time.”

“So you're a lifer, then.”

The sergeant nodded. “Probably was a few years ago.”

“Big difference—between visiting that place and living there.”

“Yes.”

“When do you go back?”

“Next week.”

“You looking forward to it?”

“Yes.”

The old man poured him another bottle of Coors.

The younger man nodded. He wasn't going to argue. On the old man's arm, under “U.S.M.C,” was “Da Nang.”

W
ithin days of its purchase, already the Green Beans chess set had been used a number of times. Rami Issay's capacity for self-congratulation was such that he could perceive vindication in the colour of his own waste water. And so he immediately bought more chess sets in the market, and soon there was one available for each of the little tables in the café. With successive purchases, he had grown less particular, buying wooden sets and then ones made of injection moulded plastic.

He and Rashid sat down in the lull after lunch. There were only three games going now. The younger man set up the pieces while his employer congratulated himself: “We will be selling more coffee, too. Customers draw other customers. The chess players occupy their tables for half an hour or more, but many people come in to watch some moves and have a latte.”

Rashid pushed his king's pawn forward two. “The staff enjoys the game, too.” He nodded at Amr and little Mohammed Hashto, who were playing behind the counter.

Rami Issay put his own king's pawn up. “I'm more interested in the response of the military and para-military personnel of the
International Assistance Force. Many are, for the moment, wary of being seen as too thoughtful.”

“Why would that be?” Rashid said, his king's pawn taking Rami Issay's queen's pawn.

“Everywhere in the world, these qualities are cast in opposition to one another,” Issay said. “Action versus reflection and understanding. A man may possess one set of these qualities but not the other. Men of action disdain things as impotent-looking as chess playing and book reading. And the book-readers, it must be admitted, scarcely participate in things like this Global War on Terror. Why do you think this is?” Queen's knight advancing.

“Well…” Rashid said, studying the board. Advancing his own knight.

“Because they've reflected on the matter, and see the folly of it? Not so, my young friend. Look online: read on the personal computer the organs of London and New York—the thinkers advocate for this business,” he waved his arm lazily overhead, “as blood-thirstily as any warrior. Precisely because they don't participate.”

He switched to Pashto and whispered, “It's because the scholars—there, and here—do not fight, would not permit a situation where anyone might yell at them, or hurt them, that they don't know the nature of war. They advocate it, imagining it to be a tool, something that can be controlled: smart weapons and surgical strikes. Limited inputs producing predictable outputs. No one faces up to the madness at the essence of war.”

At the sound of the Pashto, the contractors had looked up. They had thought this to be their place.

Queen's bishop to the third rank.

King's knight up.

In Pashto, whispering back, Rashid said, “Boss, you really have to think about what you say out loud here. Who knows who's listening?” Advancing a knight.

Still in Pashto: “I want to say, who cares?”

“But that would be crazy,” said Rashid, in English.

“You are not without a point, my young friend.”

He wasn't always able to look on the bright side. When his visa difficulties emerged in the UK, Rami Issay had had to leave for Pakistan within a few days. Saying goodbye to his wife and daughters was agony then and agony every time he thought about it. His daughters were three, five, six and nine years old at the time. His wife, Sula, was angry with him. She did not understand any better than he what had happened to prompt the revocation of his UK permanent resident card, but she was correct in her view that he could have gotten his citizenship long ago. She suspected strongly that he knew more than he was letting on. He didn't. There had been some minor scrapes with the police in Pakistan that he had not told her about when they'd met. But he had nothing to do with Islamic radicals, as everyone had concluded when he was made to leave the country in the first crazy days after the towers came down.

In the subsequent years he had sent her money and when the computer sales company he started up was doing well, he sent her a lot. Then it failed and the money stopped. Now she was living with her uncle in Leeds. The girls had all been born in the UK and were citizens. He'd last got a letter from his youngest daughter a year earlier. Since he had come to Kandahar he had not heard from any of them, though he'd been able to send money again. He should write to them himself. He should write to Sula.

Rasia, the oldest, would be fifteen now. She had a Facebook page. She had friended him. He looked at it nearly every day. It appears she was a fan of the Arctic Monkeys. He had listened to their music in order to understand something of what her tastes had become. The exercise was not very productive. She was so beautiful, as beautiful as Sula had been. In pictures of the two of them that Rasia had posted, Sula looked tired and old. Her life there must be hard. He knew her uncle was a controlling man who drank. She did not like him and it must have been very painful for her to ask him for help.

There were pictures of Rasia's sisters in her photo album, too. He scarcely recognized them. It was painful to contemplate that. Goddamned internet. He made an effort to turn his attention back to his surroundings.

Just Amachai walked in then, followed a minute later by Deirdre O'Malley. The two women did not acknowledge one another and found tables at opposite corners of the café. Mohammed hopped off his stool while Amr continued to study the chess board between them. Mohammed approached the American journalist first because he knew her less well.

Deirdre had been out all day on a helicopter with the regional commander, a Canadian brigadier, visiting FOBs. She was exhausted and dirty. She asked for an iced latte and Mohammed nodded.

He approached Just Amachai less cautiously. She reached to tousle his hair and he grinned. “How are you today, Madam?” he asked. Amr was already making the latte he had heard Deirdre O'Malley order.

“My arms and fingers and back are tired.”

“Was the day very busy, madam?”

“It was. A battalion of French engineers and one of English infantry came in from their FOBs today.” She leaned forward. “Such tired men. So many muscle knots.”

Mohammed blushed deeply, which had been Just Amachai's intention. “Perhaps some tea would help you feel better, madam.”

“Yes, please.”

He knew how she liked it. He couldn't wait to show her.

Deirdre eavesdropped on the boy's interaction with the masseuse with the vague idea that she might write about the massage parlour. It was surprising that such a thing existed here at all. It predated the media's
time in Kandahar; no one seemed to know exactly how it had come here or when. The perverse purpose of the parlour: reassuring everyone that the suspension of their sexuality was possible. If they could not do that for a few months, how could they possibly win the Global War on Terror?

Formally, the suspension of sexuality was a cardinal principle of the camp: no fraternization of any sort, between any of the five hundred women and eleven thousand men on the base, even among those who happened to be married to one another. The barracks were segregated and visiting was forbidden. It was like summer camp. Campers were sent home for transgressing the rules all the time. They were often greeted with divorce petitions, given that the army made sure the circumstances of their return were known. And laid charges when adultery could be proven.

Everyone who came for a massage understood that physical release would not be tolerated, even if it was inadvertent. The gender and attractiveness of the attendants were apparently simply a happy, or perhaps cruel, accident. Deirdre had had a massage there, when she was very sore from riding in a Stryker, and she had found her masseuse skilled. She had been Czech, she thought, and so beautiful that Deirdre wondered how the men could find the interaction more therapeutic than agonizing.

Her BlackBerry buzzed and she saw an all caps message from her boss in New York:
CALL ME
. She did.