Crossing the Wire

by AnnaMaria Cardinalli

  Paula’s story leaves no room for doubt that this mission is fraught with cruel dangers—not just the flying bullets and bombs that seem typical of war—but those particularly terrorizing acts that can arise from extreme cultural and ideological differences. This time, like the old song says, we don’t know if we were coming home. If the information is worth the risk, I can’t help but wonder what might be the hidden mysteries of this culture that I am being charged to uncover.

  Dawn patrol.

  Day Two

  We have arrived too early. Camp Leatherneck, the planned bastion of the USMC presence in southern Afghanistan from which we are to base our operations, does not quite yet exist. From the C-130, we took a helicopter to the location where Leatherneck should have been. The helicopter let us off, crewmen helpfully tossing our bags out after us, and we charged like commandos just to remain on our feet against the power of the rushing blast generated by the propellers.

  In a few seconds, we found ourselves standing alone, each encumbered by four enormous and battered olive-green bags, and surrounded by darkness and silence so complete it seemed limitless. The stench of fuel was the only detail that reminded us where we were. Much like hapless tourists mistakenly dropped off in the “bad” part of town at the worst time of night, we had no idea where to go. Also, far more ominously, we couldn’t be sure what might wait for us in the still blackness.

  We dragged ourselves and our bags in the direction we deemed to be “forward” until we ran into the fabric wall of a tent. After groping for an entrance and fumbling for the string to a light bulb, we enjoyed an unimaginably welcome sight—food. Someone had left M.R.E.s for us. It meant that we were where we were supposed to be.

  In a few hours, dawn neared, and an earnest young Marine pulled up in a decrepit Pakistani minivan. My sleep-deprived mind settled into a cheerful place thanks to the incongruity of the Marine in his minivan, the newness of the adventure, and the promise of the good we might accomplish ahead. The quickly increasing heat of the rising sun smiled on us as we traveled the dusty miles to where Leatherneck actually began.

  I thought warmly of my companions in the minivan. We were a team of four, facing work that would take an army in itself. I did not know them well, but I thought I knew them enough. They had been in my training class, though they were not from the team with which I had originally trained to deploy. Still, I thought we made a perfect combination—two men and two women.

  The other woman, an analyst, shared a Hispanic heritage with me, and I thought this might make us close. She hadn’t disclosed much about herself, but I noticed she loved a college football team from Texas. No matter the military attire our circumstances might require, she somehow usually managed to fit her Texas football t-shirt into the outfit.

  Not knowing her better, in my mind I called her Tex. (Every military story seems to include a friend named “Tex,” as I have learned from the movies.) At one time, I learned, she had been a truck driver in the Army. A girl who’s hard to mess with, I thought. I liked Tex.

  The male analyst I admired for his dedication to his family. He was a bit shorter and rounder than most, but there was something shining about him—and it wasn’t his balding pate. I could see his eyes light up every time he spoke of his new baby. I had met the baby, and his wife, at a party our program threw before deploying us. We were all full of good wine and laughing away our fears and tension, but not him. He only had eyes for his family. The definition of a man, I thought. I called him Pop.

  The team leader I called Lanky. He was. With his height came a take-charge attitude, and I admired his confidence. He had thick dark hair and glowering eyebrows, which he tended to squeeze together, but this only added to his appearance of authority.

  Originally trained as an analyst, Lanky was just recently thrown into his team leader position when someone of higher rank abruptly left the program, and he accepted the challenge proudly. He was the picture of a soldier. I couldn’t recall if I had ever seen him out of his Army cammies, and if he said anything often, it was that he knew “how the Army really works.” I was pleased with the idea that our team was in such self-assured hands.

  I held the program title and rank of Senior Social Scientist, which I found funny as I was most likely the only social scientist for hundreds of miles. While Lanky directed our operations militarily, I led our research mission. I fully expected a wonderful symbiosis as we began to work together.

  The rising sun was made more beautiful by the haze of red sand that lingered endlessly in the sky. The same sand, however, quickly prompted us all to pull scarves or shawls over our heads, ears, noses, and mouths, in quick order becoming unintentionally but properly dressed to fit in easily with locals. (There’s a reason people dress the way they do in the desert. It works.) The windows on the minivan were all broken out or inoperably jammed open, and the faster we traveled, the faster the fine, sharp, and choking sand came at us.

  The sand-clogged air, however, was the cleanest that we would breathe. An enormous plume of lazily rising black smoke announced Leatherneck on the horizon. We smelled the camp long before we reached it. The plume was the product of the fact that neither American nor Afghan political will would allow us to install any building projects that gave the impression of intended permanence, such as waste-disposal facilities.

  Therefore, everything was burned. The fuel for the flames today was a mixture of smoldering plastic and rubber, machine parts and gasoline, and a heaping contribution of kitchen, bathroom, and medical waste. I was certain that I would never be able to forget the unmistakable acridity of that smell, no matter the time or distance I eventually put between myself and it.

  Leatherneck itself was an unimaginably vast series of identical tents and cement blast barriers, their color perfectly matched to the desert that surrounded them and the sand that swirled about them. If not for their shadows, I imagined that one might not be able to see them at all. The camp already housed thousands of Marines in their equally color-matched cammies, and the effect was both stunning and a bit unnerving in its perfect regularity.

  After being shown into the tent where I was assigned a bunk, I wondered how I would ever find it again. There was not a single feature that would indicate my tent’s difference from the next. I knew no one who might help me back, and in my disorientation, I was struck with an intense if illogical sense of being lost and alone.

  I stepped outside my tent into the sun and watched dusty but ever-formal Marines pass me by. “Good morning, ma’am,” each would nod politely, not yet quite knowing who I was and a bit disconcerted to find a civilian woman in their midst. Still, in most faces was a determination I could understand and respect—a kindness spoken quietly through discipline and strength.

  My moment of panic began to pass as I realized I was surrounded by this special quality of the otherwise fierce Marines. I felt grateful to be a tiny part of it. For now, I accepted, I was home.

  Bunks at Leatherneck. (Photo courtesy Department of Defense)

  Day Three

  Life in the women’s tent promises to be interesting. There are so few female officers at the camp that they and some enlisted women all share a single space. There are twelve creaky and treacherously lopsided two-level bunks bunks, enough for twenty-four women. Two were vacant prior to our arrival. My female teammate and I are making a cramped space smaller, both with our presence and our gear, and it is understandably not appreciated.

  In the last few days’ time, however, I have realized how many more issues are at play. We are contractors, paid an obscenely greater amount than our military for deploying to face similar dangers. We also provide capabilities to military forces that they do not possess on their own so we are, grudgingly, indispensable.

  I wish I could tell the ladies that just before I left, I signed the paperwork to accept my own officer’s commission immediately upon my return to the U.S. I would swear the same oath they had, with the willingness to return to war on the same terms they had. How
ever, we didn’t seem to be on chatting terms since our initial conversation.

  When our new tentmates asked what we were doing at the camp, we happily explained the HTT mission. We thought of it as somewhat dry and academic, but it was met with not a small bit of envy. Most of the other women were logistics, aviation, or medical officers. They were incredibly educated and able, and they played vitally important roles in the Marines’ mission, but none of them were ever allowed outside the confines of the camp.

  “So you are saying that you cross the wire? That it’s in your job description to cross the wire?”

  Some ladies were wistful about the topic. “I wish I could go for a ride just once to see what’s out there, beyond the camp, so I could tell my children that I did it. I could tell them about the people we came to help, or maybe about the colors of the bazaars, even if I just saw them from a window. That’s my personal wish for this deployment. Otherwise, the camp is just a prison.”

  Other ladies were angry. “If you can go, can you explain what, exactly, prevents us? In order to be perceived well as Marines, we do everything in high heels and backwards. We need to excel beyond our brothers in fitness, in combat arts, in everything. We’re officers, and we didn’t join the Marines to idly stand by in the fight.”

  I wasn’t sure how to respond, but I knew I had mixed feelings regarding women in combat. I was going out because I was among the few researchers both willing and qualified to conduct the HTT mission. Because the “pool” of such people was so small, some of us were bound to be female. I wasn’t actually trying to take a stand regarding women in combat, nor was I anxious to have to face combat myself, should it find me.

  It is now 3 AM and I am writing from a chow tent in some unknown part of the camp. As I feared, I never was able to find my way back to the unfriendly women’s tent at night. It’s just as well.

  Even if I had miraculously located the tent, my big flashlight wouldn’t be allowed after lights-out, and I wondered how I would find my bunk in the pitch blackness. I was also fairly certain that I wouldn’t be able to manage the Hail-Mary running vault required to reach the top mattress if I tried it blindly. (Ladders appear to be an unnecessary luxury for Marines, and the top bunk is so high that you hit your head against the tent roof if you try to sit up in bed.)

  I am on my third bowl of the tomato soup left out overnight for insomniac eaters. It lets me keep my place at a quiet table. I have found the perfect location to collect my thoughts and wait out my jet lag. I admire how the near-orange color of the soup compliments that of the Tang, also left out for late-night refreshment. The combination is growing on me.

  Day Four

  The biggest problem of the camp has been brought to light thanks to the central areas between tents where smoking is allowed. Neighboring tents have begun to install creatively constructed benches around the smoking areas. This was quickly and vehemently prohibited by the camp’s commander, based on the fact that Marines sitting on benches gave the appearance of having nothing to do.

  The sad fact is, for the most part, nobody does have anything to do. We have been utterly shocked to find no work for ourselves as we settle in to our new existence. It isn’t that HTT work isn’t needed, it is that Leatherneck is still so much in the process of building itself that no patrols are currently going out. Our sole purpose is to “go out,” so we find ourselves stymied. Each of us is secretly anxious to test ourselves—to go out and return without fear.

  Today we tried a temporary solution to part of our problem. If we can’t go out, we might still be able to inform the commander of the Human Terrain situation of his area by interviewing those who came in. Local truck drivers are arriving daily, delivering supplies for the building of the camp.

  While the Marines kept the incoming truck drivers “penned” in a secure area while their vehicles were inspected, we attempted to insert ourselves diplomatically into a somewhat tense situation. While most drivers were neutral or friendly toward U.S. forces, they still can’t be treated as “safe” by the Marines because of the possibility of a bomber posing among them. However, the constant segregation builds resentment. We somehow had to appear neither distrustful nor vulnerable while mingling with the drivers.

  I personally thought the truck drivers were quite brave. By delivering supplies to a U.S. camp, they were openly defying the wishes of the Taliban. Doing so invited retaliation. Still, one could never be sure if just one of them wasn’t actually an enemy waiting to execute an attack.

  We approached a group of several men, lounging and smoking. Their reaction to us as a team was interesting. They immediately reached out to shake hands and share quick smiles with our two men.

  Lanky was in an Army uniform, and Pop was in the Indiana-Jones-type clothing typical of government employees attached to the military. Clearly, the Afghan gentlemen displayed no issues of discomfort with either a representative of the U.S. military or an American civilian. They were relaxed, jovial, and friendly.

  Tex was dressed fairly conservatively, but she wore her short-sleeved T-shirt and let her long hair show. I, still waiting to assess of the liberalness of the area, was dressed with more modesty—my arms were covered in the available Indiana-Jones gear, and my hair was concealed. The Afghan men’s reaction to both of us was the same. It was a combination of discomfort, disdain, and even a certain degree of revulsion.

  They seemed obliged by the men who introduced us to shake our hands, but they did so with obvious reluctance. They literally recoiled from the touch. Then, as if sharing some joke, they laughed together as they wiped their hands immediately on one another’s clothing, as if to “clean off the cooties.” I found this fascinating. It was just this sort of detail I was there to learn from and record for analysis so that we could interact better on our next try.

  I also found their reaction somewhat surprising, as I had expected that they would enjoy the opportunity to encounter foreign women, who were both culturally permissible and accessible for them to interact with and touch. I had assumed that men who rarely saw women to whom they were not related would be interested to see new faces. I had also wrongly assumed that they would be anything but put off at the rare opportunity to touch such a woman.

  These assumptions were, of course, based out of my own cultural norms. I realized my perspective needed to be re-examined in short order. My goal, eventually, would be to try to see Pashtun culture through its own norms.

  Despite their icy attitude toward me, I began to interview the men about where they had come from. They had made a perilous journey, and their truck had been hit by an insurgent rocket. They showed us the point of impact.

  Then, I saw the most interesting member of the party peering uncertainly around a corner. A boy, about 11 or 12, had traveled with the men. I invited him out, and while he was at first distant and sullen, his eyes lit when he told us of his bravery in the face of the rocket-wielders.

  I asked him why he had come, and he said he was accompanying his older brother. However, it turned out that none of the men in the party were, in fact, his brother. All were easily old enough to be his father. I considered if he was, perhaps, an orphan or a tolerated stowaway. I wondered who might be concerned about his having gone missing, and I hoped for his safety.

  I wanted to keep an eye on him and try to better understand his story, but I must not have tried hard enough, as the boy slipped away amid the trucks and the noisy confusion. I had a strangely intense pang of regret. Worrying that he might have been in some trouble or in need of help, I mentioned him to the guards.

  I passed on how odd I thought it was that his story about traveling with family didn’t fit. “Don’t worry about him,” I was told, “These guys sometimes travel with kids, and they seem fine. They’ll get to where they belong. It’s normal.” The Dari speaker on my team, who had spent prior deployments in Afghanistan, said as much, so I resigned myself to this unusual fact.

  However, the day has passed, and I am still bothered. The boy see
ms to have been “okay” within the cultural norms I am just learning, but I still have the uncomfortable gut sense that I somehow failed that brave child. I suspect that it is just my unease at the idea of seeing any child in a war that has me disturbed. I am certain that I will soon meet many more.

  Day Seven

  Unexpectedly, I connected with the ladies still unpacking in the tent over a topic about which all girls giggle and embrace, regardless of their differences. I was recently engaged! My teammate mentioned the fact, and suddenly there were congratulations and questions all around. I quickly found myself telling everyone about my favorite topic.

  My fiancée, an HTT program member and a strapping example of a former Marine, was also in Afghanistan. When I said a difficult goodbye to him at the airfield in Kandahar, we both expressed that we hated to be unmarried much longer—especially as we were pulled our separate ways on different teams. We planned to start a family as soon as our deployments ended. (This produced delighted squeals from the ladies in the tent.)

  My Marine and I had attended an impromptu party around a bonfire on the outskirts of the airfield, and surrounded by friends old and new, it seemed we were seeing exactly what our wedding should be. We could easily get a Chaplain to marry us, and maybe even a local Mullah as well. We would help the local economy by purchasing bread and roasting a goat to share with everyone, and we could dance the night away around the fire.

  It was the most romantic notion that had ever played through my mind—a celebration of life and love amid the reality of war. It also appealed strongly to my more sensible side. Aside from the goat, I never could see spending big money on a wedding that you could later put toward a good washing machine.

  The ladies pressed for the details of my dress, and I told them how my Mom, so wonderfully understanding and supportive, was finding it, sewing my veil, and shipping it, with all the decorations for the wedding, to Afghanistan. Though Mom couldn’t be there, she would be in every detail. The whole tent got teary with me.