Thrilling Thirteen

by Ponzo, Gary

  At that moment, the boy emerged from beneath the pile, having somehow wiggled out. Instead of running, he laughed, wiped a trickle of blood from his nose, and shouted something to the others. Mark couldn’t understand the words, but he needed no translation for the tone. The boy was clearly saying the Pashto equivalent of ‘Suckers!’

  Embarrassed, Mark shrugged. “I guess you were right.”

  Mo nodded as his face split into a grin. “You know I always am.”

  “Shut up.” Mark smiled and lifted his camera, snapping a succession of shots of the boys as they kicked a new clod to begin a new game.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a flash of movement and pivoted, surprised to see a woman peering at him from an open gate to one of the compounds. Years of photography had honed his ability to react to a good shot, and without thinking, he zoomed in and was able to squeeze off several frames of the young woman. Her eyes, wide and green, were unguarded for a split second before a veil of fear dropped down and she lowered her gaze and ducked back within the compound. It was too late. All Mark had required was that split second. He had the first of the photos for the book. Elated, he grinned at Mo. “Did you see that?”

  It wasn’t Mo who answered, but rather Faisal as he gave Mark a shove. “What are you doing taking photographs of a woman?”

  Stumbling sideways, Mark caught his balance and suppressed the impulse to shove the guy right back. It only took a second for his temper to cool and then he closed his eyes briefly and shook his head. Here he was, their guest, and he had already broken the rules. “I…uh…I was taking a photo of the house and I didn’t see her until afterward. I apologize.”

  Faisal glared and Sayeed stood a step behind him, arms crossed.

  Mo moved close, shooting Mark a dark look before he turned to his cousins, a smile replacing the scowl as he put a hand on Faisal’s chest. “It was an accident. I won’t use that photo. It’s just that Mark sometimes gets too focused on his work and doesn’t pay attention like he should.” Then he grinned. “Focused. Get it?” He gave his cousin’s shoulder a light slap. “Come on. I want to see the new well.”

  Mark capped his camera in frustration. Sweat trickled down his back as he trudged after the small group and tried to work up the enthusiasm to marvel at the well. He appreciated the significance of it, especially for the women, as it made their lives easier, but he just wished he wasn’t hogtied in regards to his photography. As the day wore on and women scurried into their respective compounds when Mo’s group approached, his frustration mounted. Faisal and Sayeed never mentioned them, and Mo ignored them too.

  How was he going to photograph ghosts? Because that is what the women seemed to be to him. Blue colored ghosts. Even their feet were almost impossible to see beneath the yards of cloth and it gave the impression that they floated over the ground.

  As the day progressed, it was more of the same. The only women he saw served them food in bowls and retreated to another area to eat. At least, he assumed they ate. He took countless photos of the homes, sheep, gardens, a few young boys roughhousing, and the men of the village, but he never had an opportunity to take another photo of a woman in that village.

  * * *

  Mark lay on the pad and scratched his chin, cursing the beard Mo had suggested he grow to fit in better. It made sense to grow it, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. In the ten days they had been in the country, he had acquired a deep tan and with his dark hair and green eyes, he could be mistaken for an Afghani. At least until he spoke, but he learned to keep his mouth shut and observe. He had picked up a few words and Mo translated when he could, so he wasn’t totally lost in the conversations, but after a while, he found that the other men forgot about him. This worked to his advantage and allowed him to occasionally catch a glimpse of the women.

  With a last satisfying scratch, he turned onto his side and yawned. He pushed aside the worry that they wouldn’t obtain enough photos for the book. It had plagued him to the point he feared that his obsession with spotting the women would be noticed and misinterpreted, but Mo didn’t seem to have the same problem with the lack of opportunity. In fact, he had hardly taken any photos of anything the whole trip and when Mark had asked him about it, Mo had shrugged and said all in good time.

  Other than Mo, the only people Mark could speak to directly were Faisal and Sayeed but neither man was the talkative type, moreover, they didn’t seem to like him, and he had no idea why. More than once, when he approached while the two had been deep in conversation with Mo, they had stopped speaking or switched to Pashto. If they were talking about him and had a complaint, he wished Mo would clue him in, but whenever he asked, his friend laughed and said the conversations had nothing to do with him. Mark wasn’t so sure, but he had to take Mo’s word for it. Besides, he couldn’t think of anything he had done that would cause the men to take offense except for the one incident when he had taken the woman’s photograph and the cousins had caught him. He just wished he had a little more freedom to explore. The villages had compounds and the women stayed within the walls most of the time except to come out and get water from the central well a few times a day. Even if he felt comfortable shooting those images, there was nothing inherently tragic about a woman drawing water from a well.

  * * *

  Mark exited the car, glad to stretch his legs after a few hours in the cramped vehicle that probably hadn’t ever had new shocks. They had stopped in front of mud fort on a hill overlooking a city. Squinting at the map, he picked out their location, Kunduz. Their travels had taken them to the northeast corner of the country. He folded the map and stuck it in his camera bag. Other than Kandahar, it was the biggest town he had seen. Beyond the rows of squat tan buildings interspersed with straw huts and even tents, he made out hazy hills. Kabul was to their southwest and would be the next stop, before they completed the roughly triangular travels. They would spend their last few days in Afghanistan in Kandahar to give them a two day cushion to make their flight.

  Mo had another uncle who was some kind of leader in Kunduz, but Mark wasn’t quite sure what post he held. He turned as Mo shut the door and moved up beside him.

  As they were apparently within walking distance of their destination, Faisal and Sayeed drove off in the other direction with plans to meet them later. Mark breathed a sigh of relief. It was rare to be out of their sight, and Mark had felt a constant tension whenever they were around. He hoped they took their time doing whatever it was they were going to do.

  “It’s not quite Chicago, is it?”

  Mark smiled. “I didn’t come here to see Chicago.” He swept his arm out. “This whole place is incredibly different from what I’m used to and that’s what I’d hoped—what I expected. If it was just like Chicago, I could have stayed home.”

  “True. While it is not Chicago, someday, I pray it will be great again. Did you know Marco Polo traveled through Afghanistan on his route to China?”

  “No. What little I know of Marco Polo comes from a Gary Jennings novel,” He laughed.

  As he and Mo descended the hill, kicking up plumes of dust with every step, he tried not to be disappointed with the ugliness of the town.

  The main road was paved, but the side street they took was just dirt and they had to skirt several broken down vehicles abandoned on the road. If Jennings had described Kunduz anywhere in his book, it must have been described much differently. Of course, he would have tried to depict the town as it might have been five hundred years ago. As they passed a square mud brick house, he somehow had the feeling it probably hadn’t changed all that much.

  The heat pressed down on them, and Mark guessed the temperature had to be close to a hundred. He thought by now he would be used to it, but he wasn’t. Sure, Chicago had its share of hot days in the summer and the humidity could make it stifling, but there was always an air conditioned restaurant, home or even a store close at hand where someone walking could go to get out of the heat. Here, it was just hot all the time. Mo t
old him the winters were cold, but that was hard to believe.

  Thankfully, their visit to the town would be short, only a day, but that made Mark wonder why they had bothered. They stayed with Mo’s uncle on his father’s side, and he supposed that was why they had come this way instead of going directly to Kabul.

  If Mo’s uncle had a wife, Mark never saw her in the day they spent in Kunduz. They ate a meager meal and Mark felt guilty for eating any of it and possibly taking food out of the mouths of the few children he spotted. Mo’s uncle spoke English and asked Mark about Chicago while they ate.

  “Mohommad tells me that Chicago is beautiful. Someday, maybe I will go there.”

  Mark finished chewing and nodded. “It is beautiful. The lake and the skyline are amazing.”

  “Do you live in a skyscraper? Sears Tower, maybe?”

  Grinning, Mark shook his head. “No. I have just an apartment above my studio. I like it though. It’s an older building converted to lofts.”

  The uncle’s eyebrows knit in confusion and Mark realized he had used terms probably unfamiliar to someone in Afghanistan. “It’s nice. A few miles from the Sears Tower, but I’ve been up in it before. The view from the observation deck is incredible.”

  “Maybe someday you can send me a picture of it, no? My nephew says you are a great photographer.”

  Mark shrugged. “Your nephew exaggerates, but sure, I could send you a photo.”

  After the meal, Mo excused himself to go visit with some of his uncle’s friends. “I hope you don’t mind, Mark. I know you came all the way here and I feel like I am abandoning you. I can stay if you want.”

  “No, it’s fine. I’m exhausted. I think I might hit the sack early.” He had no desire to explore Kunduz.

  The next morning, they left for Kabul. In the car, Mo seemed preoccupied and spoke only a little on the long drive. Mark tried to start a few conversations only to receive one word answers. Finally, he turned away and stared out the window as the mountains slid away in the distance beyond the dry steppes and wondered if he had done something to offend his friend. Had he said something inappropriate to Mo’s uncle?

  In Kabul, Mo seemed to come out of his funk. While they walked, Mark became aware that he finally had a chance to take photos without the watchful eyes of the cousins, who had remained in Kunduz. He pulled his camera out of the case and unzipped the top of the bag that held his three hundred millimeter lens so it would be handy if he found he needed it.

  Blue burqas accompanied by men that Mark knew must be a male relative dotted the long stretch of road, but all seemed to be on missions from one place to another.

  Mark jumped when a truck roared down the street, the bed full of men carrying guns. “What the hell?”

  The truck swerved to the side of the road near a lone woman. Mark was sure a man had been with the woman a few seconds ago, but now he was nowhere to be seen.

  Mo pulled Mark into an alley. “Better not to catch their attention.”

  Mark nodded, but peered around the corner, feeling in the bag for the lens. He screwed it on and began snapping photos as two of the men shouted at the woman. She cowered, but didn’t attempt to flee. Hampered by the burqa; she had no chance against them.

  He flinched in shock when one of the men lifted a club and brought it down across the woman’s back. The thud of wood against flesh wasn’t loud, but it in his mind, the sound was amplified until it resonated like a gunshot. He lowered the camera and took two steps around the corner. He had no plan of action in mind but he couldn’t just stand here and watch a woman being beaten by two men.

  Mo grabbed his arm. “What are you doing?”

  Yanking his arm out of Mo’s grasp, Mark glared at him. “What does it look like? We have to go help her.”

  Moving close, Mo put an arm out blocking Mark’s way. “No, we don’t. Think of yourself as a reporter—you can’t be part of the news, you just have to record it.”

  Frustration, anger and helplessness battled inside of him. Part of him realized Mo was right. They were here to record this exact kind of treatment. Knowing Mo was correct was one thing—accepting it was a different matter. Even as he watched, people on the street walked past the commotion. Men would stop to look for a few seconds, but the women would pass without faltering. Were they so used to these scenes that they were no longer affected? Mark didn’t see how that was possible and guessed they were terrified of being the next victim, and that ignoring it was their best defense.

  “You can’t help, Mark. You are a foreigner and your ‘help’ could end up getting her killed and you arrested.”

  For a split second, he didn’t care about getting arrested. It was gut response, but common sense finally slapped him upside the head. If he was arrested, it would defeat their purpose. Resolutely, Mark nodded, but the muscles in his jaw tightened as he lifted the camera and caught the end of the conflict.

  The woman tumbled to the ground.

  Click.

  Another blow with the club.

  Click.

  The men shouted at her, prodding her with their feet.

  Click.

  Shakily, she stumbled to her feet, and made her way to the truck, where she was loaded in the back. She huddled in a shapeless blue heap in a corner of the bed as the men jumped on the running boards. The vehicle sped away. Click. Click. Click.

  Mark lowered the camera, shaking with anger as he stared after the truck. He recapped his lens and dropped it back in the case, jerking the zipper closed. Ignoring his natural instinct to intervene had been like trying to ignore the instinct to breathe. An empty bottle caught his eye and with a muttered curse, he kicked it into the side of the building. The explosion of glass against the bricks didn’t satisfy his anger, but the shards scattered on the ground added to his guilt. He had seen dozens of kids running around the town, rooting around in the garbage and now one might cut their foot because of him. He bent, sliding his arm into the camera strap so that it draped diagonally across his chest, and picked up the pieces.

  “Leave it, Mark. It’s not going to matter.”

  He would have argued, but a glance around him showed no trash receptacles anywhere around and Mo was right. It wouldn’t matter. His wasn’t the only glass around. He dropped the shards, disgusted with himself, the men who had beaten the woman, and the country in general.

  He tried to reason in his mind that at least he had captured the beating on film. When people saw the photographs, maybe he would help shed some light on the atrocities committed. Change seemed like it was an unreachable goal and impossible for him to achieve. Tradition and culture was ingrained over hundreds, if not thousands of years, and he was just a guy who took pictures. It wasn’t like he had any real power to make things better.

  He straightened, brushing his hands together and slanted a glance at Mo. “So now what’s going to happen to her?” he asked, inclining his head in the direction of where the beating had taken place.

  Mo regarded him for a long moment and then his eyes slid away. “I’m not sure.”

  His friend’s evasive action hinted at the truth. “Bullshit.”

  * * *

  Kabul was large and busy, but showed signs of the war that had torn the country apart. It wasn’t as scarred as Kandahar, but it was not untouched. Mo showed little interest in taking photos, so Mark stole away whenever he could and wondered where the material for a book would come from. His friend didn’t seem to be taking notes either.

  The lack of effort drove Mark to seek even more snapshots as he felt the more he took of this way of life, the better his chance of making a difference, with or without Mo. He learned to be stealthy, and pretended to photograph other objects, but shifted the focus at the last moment. None of the photographs were as brutal as the beating, but as the town was larger than the villages they had passed through so he was able to get more glimpses of women venturing to the market. What frustrated him was his inability to capture on film the sense that the women were basically invi
sible in their burqas.

  A few men glared at him, and once when he tried to take a photo of a woman, an apparent beggar with two small children, the mother covered the children’s’ faces with her own burqa. He tried to apologize to her, but she gathered her children and left the area. He cursed his stupidity as she hurried away. Of course she couldn’t acknowledge his apology. Not only had she probably not understood it, she wasn’t allowed to speak to strange men.

  The inequality struck him like a clenched fist and once he knew it was there, it was all he could see. Vendors would ignore a woman and take care of a male customer even if the woman was there first. Other little things stuck with him, like how the schools in the town were full of little boys. Groups of boys from very young to teenagers would trek alongside the roads, to the madrassa, but little girls were absent. He had known these things before arriving in Afghanistan, but it had been an abstract knowledge. Seeing it firsthand made it real, but also incomprehensible.

  Faisal and Sayeed seemed to have other duties in their hometown. In the evenings, they left the home. Mo said they were visiting other relatives. Mark didn’t really care, he was just glad they were gone.

  On the night before they left Kabul, Mo informed him that he had to go to a village far from town with the cousins. It was a family thing. Mo suggested that Mark ride back to Kandahar with a friend of the family and wait for Mo there. Mark got the hint. He wasn’t welcome, but he didn’t care. He finally felt he had some decent photos and their flight home couldn’t come quickly enough. He had experienced his fill of violence, heat, and dust. Chicago traffic and humidity would seem insignificant after this trip.

  The almost twenty-four hour long trip back to Kandahar had been uncomfortable. Physically, the nearly five hundred miles had seemed endless. There were no roadside oasis stops like in the United States. No McDonalds’ or Burger Kings and not even any truck stops. The roads took them through desert and mountains. They brought their own food and water and made only a few stops to refuel and take a quick leak.