Crossing the Wire

by AnnaMaria Cardinalli

  As the afternoon wore on and we trudged under our stiflingly heavy armor, we would wave to the groups of curious children that spied on us from hiding places. We knew they were reporting our positions and progress back to adults who may or may not wish us harm, but we smiled warmly to show that we meant them none. I carried candy and brightly colored pens, passing them out when I could. These small gifts, my notebook, and my grandma’s pearl-handled stiletto with its well-worn blade, tucked close to my heart, were my only weapons.

  We arrived at the village as twilight just began to cool the air, when most of the residents would be awaking from the afternoon rest they took in the heat of day. As protocol demanded, we stopped at the house of the most important local leader, the Mullah, to greet him and ask his permission to proceed in visiting with members of his community. His reaction upon seeing me seemed rather extreme. “A woman! A woman!” he shouted repeatedly with surprise and apparent delight.

  While I found myself soon involved in a strange conversation with the Mullah, I noticed an odd phenomenon befall the men in my patrol. They were besieged by young men and boys. They were not violent but, bizarrely, almost fawning.

  This was perhaps friendly, but dangerous nonetheless, because the youngsters surrounded the soldiers and team members, constantly touching their arms, their uniforms, their weapons, and not giving them the freedom or room to move or see around them. Because these fawners were “harmless,” they could not easily be fought away. Endearing and childlike, they would insist on being shown a watch or a rifle over and over.

  My fiancée walked away from me to show a curious young man how a rifle worked. The big Marine was flattered by the attention, and he suddenly felt fatherly toward the teenager. He and his rifle, however, had been my closest protection, and now both were yards away and otherwise occupied.

  Meanwhile, ignoring all other topics of conversation, the Mullah spoke insistently to the translator, stating repeatedly that he must explain to me that “the Mullah likes women.” When I responded pleasantly but didn’t seem to grasp the full meaning, he insisted again, “the Mullah likes women.”

  “He likes sleeping with them,” the embarrassed and exasperated translator finally blurted out. “He is not uneducated, and he actually, truly enjoys sleeping with women,” he went on, as if this should be a revelation to me. I thought I understood the Mullah’s meaning now, and that he was bragging to me of some exceptional sexual appetite or prowess.

  The Mullah smiled, reassuring me enthusiastically. Somehow, it seemed that I was supposed to find it both surprising and a relief that he was openly attracted to women. I was again just beginning to encounter something entirely upside down from my own cultural norms.

  The Mullah then took on a cast of sincere concern and the translator went on. “The rest of the men are uneducated here. It would be safest and best for you if you stayed and married the Mullah. You could remain in his house and be happy.”

  The translator, now almost unbearably uncomfortable with the subject, continued at the Mullah’s insistence, saying, “His wives can attest that he sleeps with them. You must meet his wives.”

  At that moment, while utterly taken aback by this surreal conversation, I was physically overpowered. I had only barely nodded consent to the idea of meeting his wives, simply because it was a rare opportunity to encounter local women, which was a part of my job responsibility whenever it was possible. However, I was unprepared for what happened next. The Mullah swung me in strong arms through the door of his walled compound in one swift, unexpected motion.

  In a single nightmarish second’s passing, I found myself separated from my team and patrol. I was painfully aware of how easy a target I seemed—a diminutive woman, visibly unarmed. This swift isolation, we were taught, was how personnel are frequently taken when they are to be executed for propaganda purposes. It also seemed that the Mullah might be intent on “making me his wife” at that very moment. Either way, I had landed in a trap.

  To my complete dismay, the patrol had made no move to stop the Mullah, nor did they follow. HTT had recently lost another member who unwittingly stepped into a space which, like the Mullah’s imposing compound, had not been previously cleared of potential gunmen and explosives. The unknown possibilities beyond the door, everyone seemed to have decided, were too great a risk.

  I could no longer hear the team outside the thick plaster walls. All I could hear were the wailing screams of the Mullah’s wives and daughters, who appeared terrified over whatever violence they perceived was about to ensue.

  As the Mullah stood blocking my escape, time seemed almost liquid, allowing me a few final thoughts of regret. If he was about to rape me, I would be compelled to fight desperately to one of our deaths. I then quickly realized it would have to be mine. If it was his, we could count the tenuous and important alliance of this village lost. Bloody retaliation against our outpost would be assured, and too many American lives would suffer for it. I couldn’t fail to fight, but I couldn’t afford to win.

  If, instead, he had taken me to be the newest feature on a Taliban beheading video, I would be free to defend my life. However, without a gun, the probability of my success against the big Mullah in addition to whoever else might be there to assist with the video looked dim. I had a pang of regret for not wearing lipstick or earrings, so I could look my most presentable for the camera.

  My mother and grandmother both had always told me never to go anywhere without lipstick and earrings. They warned me that you always got caught when you’re not looking your best. Here I was, and they were right.

  My problem lay in the fact that until this man’s actions somehow identified him as an insurgent fighter or he made clear his intent to kill me, he could not be counted as an enemy—though it was always quite possible that any person we encountered might be one, as Paula’s story had made too clear. I couldn’t attack preemptively against him, the surprise of which may have been my only chance for survival. Instead, my actions needed to be founded on the assumption that he was an innocent man, simply acting as he saw appropriate, based upon his own cultural norms.

  Though his actions were extremely threatening, to this point he had not necessarily done anything wrong. He was the prominent leader of a village that could be swayed either toward support of the Taliban or support of our forces. We could quickly make enemies of this village by any misstep on our part.

  It was, oddly, just these cultural missteps that the Human Terrain Program had been created to identify and ultimately help avoid. Unfortunately, I had found myself directly involved in what was perhaps the most extreme confluence of cultural hot-spots imaginable—those of life, death, and sex.

  A few more moments passed while I fully registered that no one from my patrol or team would be following me. Though my hand still hovered over my hidden blade, the Mullah remained still, so I turned my attention to calming the screaming women. With much bobbing and bowing and offerings of Salaam, I finally communicated that I intended no violence toward the ladies, and we all got past our shock at seeing one another. The Mullah, though he had not moved from his stance in blocking the way out, suddenly broke out in a smile and gestured as if to say “Perfect! Get to know each other!”

  It occurred to me then that the Mullah might truly hope to keep me as a wife without the use of violence, and that he seemed to believe himself to be saving me from the “uneducated” men outside his walls—whatever that meant. A solution to the cultural stalemate began to form in my mind. I realized that getting out the door meant creating my own opportunity, though I needed to do so while I still had some chance of reuniting with my patrol.

  So, using the few broken Pashto phrases I had learned to ask women about food and cooking, I settled in and started to ask what the ladies were making for dinner. I expressed interest, as best I could, in learning the Mullah’s favorite recipes. Then, I allowed them to see what a dense and hopeless learner I was without a translator.

  “Tarjomaan! Tarjomaan!�
� I kept repeating. “I just don’t understand without a translator.” Finally convinced of my intent to stay and learn, but exhausted with my linguistic ineptitude, the Mullah himself opened the heavy metal door he guarded and started to call out for the patrol to return with a translator. While the women remained silent watching my intended escape, I inched slowly and calmly for the opening.

  When a male translator peeked through, the women began their screaming once again, and I feigned offense for my new near-sisters that a man would have looked into the Mullah’s wives’ quarters. To restore somewhat more culturally-appropriate decorum to the situation, I stepped out into the open street to speak with the translator. Then, clear of the door, I made a break to catch up with my team, who had proceeded a bit further along the route, and once again surround myself with well-armed soldiers. The deterrent finally worked, and to my utter relief, the disappointed Mullah did not follow.

  This was far from the end of the patrol. Still without a gun, I actually had to use a simple hand-to-hand technique I learned from Krav Maga[1] to get out of the violent grip of another man of the village, angry about my being a woman walking freely, later that evening. He was close to breaking my wrist before he reacted with utter shock to the fact I was able to break his grip unexpectedly.

  His shock itself is what allowed me to move away. As before, concern for Afghan cultural constraints put me in the position of having to free myself from the man while carefully refraining from going so far as to hurt him. This was a continually bizarre detriment in the context of a war.

  For a man to be publicly bested by a woman would cause a degree of insult and outrage that would damage the vital “hearts and minds” effort we had sacrificed so much to win. Should I shame the man in the incident, the potential for damage and the endangerment of American lives would again be much greater than any risk might be to me. I was learning quickly how challenging it would be, as a female, to accomplish my purpose in this deployment.

  Anyone on the patrol could have aided me without causing offense, as they were all men. Again, no one did. Instead, I was later heartily congratulated on my ability to take care of myself.

  During what debriefing there was, the fact that I was able to diplomatically defend myself without the use of a gun was turned into evidence supporting the idea that it should not matter if I was allowed to qualify and carry a weapon in theatre. My observation that my lack of a gun contributed to the initial problem was dismissed. I couldn’t help but laugh with resignation at the reversed logic.

  Much later this evening, safely back in a tent, the male social scientist from the Kandahar team shook my still-sore hand for making it through the day and quietly asked me what I felt when I was pulled through the door of the Mullah’s compound. He too had counted me for dead when he saw me disappear, just as I had thought, and he shared his concern about the same thing happening to him. I pride myself on remaining always truthful, but I lied tonight—both to him

  and perhaps to myself—when I said that I had consented to go in and calmly regarded the whole experience as an interesting research opportunity.

  I couldn’t help but wonder why he, if he shared my perception of the situation, had done nothing, along with everyone else. The incidents of my being isolated and unaided went completely unaddressed. However, on a quiet level—a level that it is unwise to explore now—I am afraid I am deeply unnerved by this fact.

  I am in a situation where I can’t afford to be distracted by my own hurt or fear. These feelings should be shelved away for later. My complete attention now has to be focused on present dangers if I want to survive, and present clues if I want to do my job well.

  In a similar way, I am shelving away today’s experiences for later analysis. The entirety of my first open encounter with southern Afghan culture has been bizarrely charged with the issues of sex and violence. However, I don’t yet have the context to interpret any of it. For the time being, I have recorded it in my field notes, considered it a very strange day, and assured my exhausted self that future events will be different.

  Day 15

  I sat in the chow tent the next morning, and after fully appreciating the fact that I was still alive, I thought a lukewarm bowl of Frosted Flakes had never quite tasted so good. I was savoring a spoonful when a young soldier approached politely. “May I sit with you, Ma’am?”

  He was the picture of a little brother. Blonde haired, sparkly-eyed, and sincere, he looked far too young to be there. It seemed that his baby face had not yet seen its first shave, but here he was, an infantryman in a cruel and complex war.

  I smiled and scooted to share a seat on the splintering wooden bench. His unit had seen too many casualties, and he almost certainly had lost comrades. “Would it be alright if I went ahead and asked you something?” he managed with shyness.

  “Of course, buddy. What’s up?”

  “So, did you have to fight yesterday?”

  “I did, but I didn’t get hurt, and I managed not to offend anybody either.”

  “See, Ma’am, that’s just what I don’t get. Those guys attacked you, right? Why would you be so worried about their feelings? Do you want us to hold their hands and all sing Kumbaya while they try to blow us up? What are you doing here? What the hell are we all doing? I signed up to fight terror.” The hurt of disillusion now shone in his eyes.

  I struggled to find the answer for him. “It’s all so difficult, Soldier, but there really is a reason for everything we’re doing. There are a lot of different kinds of wars, and this one has particularly complicated rules, since our effort right now is a counterinsurgency.”

  “I’ve heard that fifty times already, but what is it supposed to mean to soldiers actually here? Why take stupid risks when we have the superiority in arms to kill them all? They don’t hesitate to kill us. They didn’t hesitate to kill my brothers out here.”

  His bravado dissolved and the boy in him sobbed. At the same time, I suddenly saw him as more of a man. I put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, my friend. I am so truly sorry.”

  He stiffened. “No, I’m serious!” he snapped against my coddling. “I want you to answer me.”

  For a moment, I was at a loss. I looked around the chow tent at the rows of perfectly matching soldiers. There was a place to begin. “I’ll tell you how I learned to understand it, for what it’s worth,” I sighed and forged ahead.

  “See, except for special reasons, when we fight, we make extremely clear who it is we are. We wear uniforms for instance, and our hair’s all the same. That helps to protect innocent people. It says to the other side, ‘Hey, I’m your enemy. So, if you want to shoot at somebody, shoot at me.’”

  “That doesn’t seem too smart,” he said, suddenly looking at his own fatigues uncomfortably.

  “It’s not smart, but it is sort of, well, honorable, if you will.”

  “Like saying, ‘pick on someone your own size.’”

  “Very much like that, as opposed to what they do. They, like the cowards they are, conceal themselves in the midst of innocent people. They do everything to blend right in and hide in the villages.”

  “But they don’t have money for uniforms,” he said, thoughtfully. “I guess they could do something more identifiable though.”

  “It’s not that, it’s that they try to hide with civilians. They make it their goal. In that way, they basically use the good people in the villages as shields for themselves.”

  “It’s sick when you put it that way.”

  “Sick is right. These extremists really don’t care at all who they hurt in the furtherance of their cause--their own people included.”

  “So they hide with women, and babies, and kids and teachers and frick’n bread bakers and farmers who mean no harm… and hope we kill some of them instead?”

  “That’s the idea. Or, that we won’t fight at all because we don’t want to kill those good people. That’s why we need a different way to fight. That’s why a counterinsurgency works with the d
ifferent rules you were asking about.”

  “And you’re still not explaining how we are actually supposed to fight with our hands tied like that.”

  “Okay, so, even though most the people we meet won’t be bad guys, they also won’t be sure who to trust.”

  “Right…”

  “So we need to convince them that we’re the good guys--that we’ll keep them safe and help them take back the power that the Taliban took away. If we don’t convince them, they’re going to side with the Taliban, because it will seem safer to them. It will make them our enemies when they could have been our friends.”

  “Great,” he snorted, “We’re all about making friends now? I came here to fight and win.”

  “We are fighting to win. I’m certainly here to fight and win. The thing is, a counterinsurgency is not won or lost by shooting, though as you know too well, plenty of shooting is sure to occur. A war like this is for the thoughts, feelings, and attitudes of the people—their hearts and minds, as it is often put rather poetically.”

  “See, now you’re singing Kumbaya.”

  “Soldier, you’re a bright guy, what do you want to do with your life once we’re out of here?”

  “I want to be a cop, maybe even join the FBI someday.”

  “I think you’ll do just that. So, figure you are a cop and think of this a sort of like fighting gang members in an inner city. You wouldn’t want to shoot up the neighborhood, because there are lots of innocent people.”

  “Of course not!” he exclaimed, suddenly a little horrified at his earlier comment about having the firepower to “kill them all.” “That’s totally the opposite of a Soldier’s job!,” he continued hotly, slapping the table and getting a splinter.