Sam watched him. “Do you always think of them?” he wondered.
“You know, it’s funny,” Bono replied. “When I’m out there in the fight, I don’t think about my family. I don’t think about my wife, my kid, nothing like that. I don’t think about going home, the reason I’m fighting, the idea of freedom or America or any of that. All I think about is the guys in the team. Protecting each other. Keeping each other safe.”
Sam didn’t answer. He felt the same way.
“We are the only men in the world who know what that means, to fight and die with your brothers. It’s a huge privilege, man.”
Sam held his cold soda bottle to his cheek, feeling the condensation cooling his skin. The lounge wasn’t air-conditioned; despite the strong wind, it was hot inside.
“You know what I’ve been thinking?” Bono asked, staring blankly ahead.
“What’s that?” Sam replied.
Bono crushed his plastic soda bottle, walked to the fridge, pulled out another soda, then came back and sat down. “People say American soldiers fight to protect their freedoms,” he started. “Some people write us letters and thank us for keeping them safe. The politicians back home always thank us. Some are even sincere in their thanks. They say we are fighting for their freedoms. But I don’t think that’s true.”
Sam laughed. “You going ‘Jane Fonda’ on me, baby?”
“No, really,” Bono answered. “Think about it, man. When was the last time Americans were actually fighting for their freedom? You might have to go back to the Revolutionary War. That might have been the last time.”
“I don’t know, Bono. How about the Civil War, boss?”
“I understand the North was fighting to preserve the Union, but I think most of those men were fighting for something else. I just don’t believe, I can’t believe in my gut that men were laying it on the line there, laying it down like they did, just to protect the Union. I think there was more to it than that.”
“What do you think it was?”
“They were freeing the slaves. Fighting to free other men. Either that or trying to keep the Union indivisible by preventing Southern secession. Take your pick.”
Sam remained skeptical. “What about the First and Second World Wars?” he asked.
“World War One was plainly and simply a fight to save Europe. We had no national interest, nothing really at stake. World War Two? The Japanese were our enemy, the ones who attacked. We could have confined our war to the Pacific and won easily. We could have let Stalin and Hitler divide Europe, knowing they would eventually turn on each other and devour themselves. But we put our own interest aside and saved Europe first. Again, another fight to save other men.
“I know a lot of people like to talk about the Vietnam War, but can anyone make a serious argument that we were fighting for imperial power? I mean, come on, man, what did the Vietnamese have to offer if we had conquered them? Nothing. Nada. Not so much as a bowl of rice. So why were we there, if not to save the South Vietnamese? And if you want to know what happens when we fail, you should look no further than Indochina. How many million Vietnamese and Cambodians were slaughtered because we failed in that war!? The killing fields should haunt for the next hundred years.”
Sam didn’t answer, he just listened, content to sip his soda for now.
“Kuwait?” Bono continued, his voice rising now. “Afghanistan and Iraq? Yeah, we needed stability in the region, but if all we were interested in was the oil, we could have been like the Germans and French who propped up Saddam to keep the oil rolling. Heaven knows he would have sold us all we needed. That isn’t the reason we came here. There was more to it than that. Yeah, I think we needed to double tap the Taliban and kill Hussein, and yes, I’m glad that happened. In that sense, you might argue that we went into those countries to protect the freedoms we had. But though that might have been why we came in, it is not why we stayed. We could have eliminated the threat, then skipped out of town. But that’s not how we work. We stay to protect the freedoms of those left behind. We stay to help them build a government that will keep them free.
“Now think about that, Captain Brighton. I believe it is true. We don’t fight for our freedoms. We fight for much more than that. We fight for the freedom of others.”
Sam was shifted on his chair, adjusting the sidearm in the drop-down Kydex® holster that was strapped to his thigh. “I guess that makes us the good guys,” he said.
“Which is what makes it so hard.”
Sam looked confused. “I don’t get it,” he said.
Bono looked away, and then rolled his neck to crunch out the kinks. “Going home,” he answered. “I mean, I want to see my family in the very worst way. I want to hold my daughter. I know that she needs me, and I want to be there for her. But I can’t reconcile the way I feel at home with the way I feel about being here too. This mission. My comrades. The thrill of the fight.” Bono leaned forward awkwardly and looked into Sam’s eyes. Sam could see that this was his confession, he was getting it out, and Sam let him talk. “I would give anything in the world to be home right now. But when I get there, I know I’m going to miss being here. I’m going to miss the battles. I’m going to miss the thrill. But mostly, I’m going to miss the feeling of doing something right, something that helps another. I’m rock-solid on that, Sam. I know what we’re doing here is part of a good work. And I’m going to miss it. Now tell me, is that wrong?”
Sam thought a moment, and then raised his head. “I don’t know, captain. I think maybe you’re asking the wrong guy.”
Bono sat back and waited, and so Sam went on. “Is it wrong to be a warrior? Maybe it is. We are so steeped in violence, it can be offensive sometimes. Americans like their heroes soft now, you know, soft and cute. I don’t know, but it seems there’s almost a victim mentality in our heroes today: A POW who was taken captive and suffered, a soldier who died for his friends—these are the heroes Americans are most comfortable with. They don’t like their warriors too battle hardened. That scares them now. But that’s you and me. That’s who we are. We find and kill the enemy. That is a day’s work to us. Is that evil? It can’t be. Not when it’s for the right cause. So you want to go home, but you want to stay in the fight. You feel the claws of this mission because they have latched into you.
“So I don’t know, Bono, but this much I believe. There aren’t many people in the world who get to do something like this. Most will miss it. Most are never given the chance. But you and I, and a few others, have been given this opportunity to do something for others that they can’t do for themselves. Are you wrong to appreciate that? I don’t think you are. Some day you’ll go home to your family and hold each of them close, and you’ll know you did your duty. How many people can say that?”
The two men fell into silence, listening to the wind blow. “You know what I look forward to more than anything else?” Bono said after they had sat for a while.
“What’s that?”
“There are a thousand things I miss: my wife, my own bed, watching the Yankees on TV, getting up in the morning without having sand fleas in my hair. But there’s nothing I miss more than holding my little girl. More than anything else, I miss picking her up and holding her in my arms. She lays her head on my shoulder. She clings to my arms. She has a way of molding to my body, like she was meant to be there. That’s what I look forward to more than anything else, when I step off that airplane and she runs to my arms. When that happens, I will feel like the luckiest man in the world.”
Sam took a drink of his soda, which had grown warm and a little flat. “You are lucky,” he answered.
Bono nodded and smiled.
“Fifty-two days,” Sam muttered.
“And counting,” Bono said.
ELEVEN
One measure of any tyrannical government’s willingness to control its people is the thoroughness with which it suppresses the rights of its most vulnerable citizens. Throughout the entire Persian Gulf, the ruling mullahs, presi
dents, and kings have enforced humiliating and sadistic rules on women and girls, enslaving them in a system that, at best, demands segregation and second-class status and treats them no better than beasts of burden, and at worst, kills them without fear, remorse or shame to protect the family’s “honor.” In far too many places, women cannot be educated, work, or drive. In far too many places it is illegal and immoral for a woman to be examined by a male doctor, but since there are no opportunities for education, few female doctors can be found. And there are too many places where lashing and stoning are appointed for the smallest infraction of law.
It would be easy to presume that a thriving sex trade inside a theocracy would be an unsustainable contradiction. Most would think that a country founded and ruled by Islamic fundamentalists would decry such a practice. But a substantive look under the surface reveals why just the opposite is true. Exploitation is not only possible, it is almost inevitable in a culture that tolerates repression, a lesson that has been demonstrated repeatedly.
Although it is impossible to determine the number of victims, U.N. officials who have worked inside Iran say there has been a nearly 500% increase in the number of teenage prostitutes since the revolution. In Tehran alone, there are nearly 100,000 women and girls in prostitution. Most of them live on the streets. The “lucky” ones live in brothels. Many Iranian girls, some as young as ten, have been sold into slavery in various nations around the world. The Interpol bureau in Tehran reports that the trade in young women and girls is one of the most profitable business activities in Iran. Many of the young women who find themselves caught in this evil web are girls from the countryside, where poverty and ignorance abound. Worse, slave traders seem willing to take advantage of any tragedy to fulfill the demand. Following the earthquake in Bam, a disaster that claimed some 50,000 lives, orphaned girls were swept up and transported to slave markets in Tehran.1
And Persian women aren’t the only victims of this flourishing trade. Young women from the ghettos of Gaza, the remote villages of Egypt, and crowded city streets of Kuwaiti have been taken from their families, some even sold by their parents, and forced into prostitution in other areas of the world. Victims have been found in Qatar,2 Kuwait,3 and the United Arab Emirates.4 In the northeastern Iranian province of Khorasan, local police report that girls are being sold to Pakistani men.5 In the southeastern border province of Sistan Baluchestan, thousands of Iranian girls reportedly have been sold to Afghans. Perhaps the most creative justification of prostitution takes place inside Tehran, where, to control the spread of HIV, officials of the Iranian Social Department of the Interior Ministry have proposed setting up “morality houses.”6 There, using the traditional religious customs, a couple may be married for as little as one hour.
And the West is not free of this crime. Police in Tehran have uncovered prostitution and slavery rings with ties to France and Germany, England, and Spain. Turkey is a hotbed of trade heading to the United States, with underground auctions not unlike those that operated in northern Africa some three hundred years ago. And the prices are astounding. A young girl may be bought for as little as a few thousand dollars. But, as with everything else, beauty commands a much higher price. Someone with just the right look might fetch ten to fifteen thousand dollars, maybe more.
Ghesha Ghetto, East of Kirkuk, Iraq
The store was a dilapidated slab of concrete floor and plywood and cement walls situated in the southeastern ghettos of Kirkuk. It was a dark, mean place, a place where the light didn’t shine and the darkness of evil settled on even the brightest day.
The Ghesha ghetto was a small, isolated triangle created by a fork in a slow, brackish river and some low hills to the north. There were only two roads leading to the ghetto, and a wall of rundown buildings and old warehouses formed a broken barrier that concealed most of the occupants within. The ghetto was off-limits to the U.S. military—the area was considered too dangerous and without any tactical interest—and even the local police rarely strayed between the banks of the river. Occasionally, when the sniping or pirating became entirely untenable, the regional Iraqi leaders would send in a heavily armored patrol, but the patrol never stayed more than a few days before fleeing again, leaving the ghetto to feed on itself. Like a starving rat snake that was slowly swallowing its own tail, the ghetto consumed all its young in turf battles and hate until there was very little left that was worth fighting over.
There was no law or authority in the ghetto, and the insurgents and foreign mercenaries took advantage of that, creating a world of darkness and pain for all of the residents. The business deals that were done here were nearly unspeakable. Everything was for sale in the ghetto: weapon, drugs, old women slaves, little girls, stolen pieces of art, counterfeits and other things. And the prices were cheap.
The store owner sat near the back wall of his shop, alone, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. The shelves were mostly empty though there were a few things to buy: cigarettes from Europe and Turkey, a few canned goods and household supplies. Outside, the streets were cluttered and noisy with the sound of smoke-belching autos, tiny motorcycles, and many people, their shoes thumping along on the ancient cobblestone streets. Children could be heard laughing and calling to each other from where they played down the narrow street, and the store owner couldn’t help but scowl at the sound.
The owner’s face was rough, pock-marked and sunken under his eyes. His lips were fat and dry, with tiny specks of dry spit at the corners of his mouth. He glanced at his watch, and then turned his eyes on the door. Five minutes later, exactly on schedule, the two men walked in, one American, the other he didn’t know, maybe Middle Eastern, probably Afghan, judging by the way he was dressed, with his silk trousers, black vest, and thin canvas boots. The American was young and thick. He could be strong, or he could be fat, it was hard to tell, for he hid his body under a loose-fitting jacket and oversized shirt. His long hair was bleached and tangled, as if he spent a lot of time in the sun. A beach kid. Venice Beach. The owner had heard about them. Spoiled, rotten children with too much money and too much time, corrupted and carnal, thinking they could buy whatever they fancied in the world.
Yes, he knew about them. And yes, they were right. If they had enough money, they could buy anything.
The old man stared but didn’t say anything as he continued to smoke. The dark-skinned man pretended to shop, picking up a rusted can of potatoes stolen from a U.N. convoy, but the other one nodded to the shop owner, then moved to the back of the store.
“You Kiraddak?” the American asked quickly. Being the customer, the one with the money, the foreigner was in the superior position and he wasted no time with small talk or friendly conversation.
The other man, the dark one, watched anxiously from behind a low shelf, his black eyes always darting as if he expected disaster to strike. He was there to cover his master’s back, and he kept his head moving, searching for the ambush.
The shop owner didn’t answer but stared arrogantly. Yes, they were the buyers, and there were many other places these men could go, but he also knew that they were hungry and eager to close the deal. His contact had warned him. “These guys are amateurs,” he’d been told. So though they held the money, the Iraqi knew he was in a position to take advantage.
He stared at the American. “Who sent you?” he asked.
The foreigner reached into his pocket and pulled out his own cigarettes. The Iraqi recognized the red-and-white packaging of the American cigarettes, recognized around the world, and stared as the American flipped the pack with his wrist. A single cigarette protruded from the half-opened top, and the American extracted it with his lips, then took the cigarette in his hand and offered it to the Iraqi. The Iraqi reached up with brown fingers and took the cigarette, tucking it in his shirt pocket, saving it for a later time when he could enjoy the rich flavor by himself.
The American slipped the cigarettes back in his pocket. “You Kiraddak?” he asked again, this time more tersely.
T
he old man patiently placed his hands on his knees. “Who sent you?” he repeated as he leaned back against the cold wall.
The American fidgeted again, then answered. “Al Mohammad. From Istanbul. He said you would be waiting for us.”
The old man smiled slightly and nodded. “Sayid,” he said.
The American moved toward the Iraqi. “We want to see the product,” he said.
The old man scowled and answered, “I promise, you will be satisfied.”
“No. We want to see some pictures before we close the deal.”
The Iraqi grunted and pushed himself up. Moving to the front counter, he lifted a key from a pewter key chain hanging around his neck and unlocked the bottom drawer. Sorting through a stack of pictures, he extracted a few and threw them on the counter. The two men moved forward. They were obviously too eager, though they tried to hide their emotions behind their cold stares.
“These are from the territory we asked for?” the American asked.
The Iraqi grunted. “That’s what I’ve been told. They were e-mailed to me a couple days ago.”
The American leafed through the pictures quickly and tossed them aside. “No,” he said angrily, “none of these will do.”
The Iraqi grunted. Really, he thought, was it that big a deal? The shelf life of his product was just a few years anyway. Did it make that much difference? He grunted again. “What?” he asked sarcastically. “Too young or too old?”
The American looked away, a flash of anger in his eyes.
The Iraqi shook his head. Turning back to the pile, he sorted again, and then threw a couple more pictures on the counter. The American looked at them quickly and then pushed them aside too.
“Help me,” the old man scolded. “What are you looking for?”
The American told him, and the Iraqi snorted, then thumbed through the pictures again. “This is your last choice,” he huffed as he tossed a handful of black-and-whites pictureson the counter.
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