by Rana Bose
I noticed that many buildings I passed had blue mosaic tiles on their dome-like roofs. The colour, apparently, had remained fashionable for centuries. I was becoming exhausted and my shins hurt. The man continued ten feet ahead and the tall woman fifty paces ahead of him. I looked to the sky for drones carrying hellfire missiles. I knew they had become the standard operational procedure: several hits per week, all of which—or so it was claimed—only killed terrorists, the worst of the worst, but then a day or two later it inevitably emerged that someone’s extended family had been wiped out. This was followed by routine denials, then apologies, and then a reaffirmation the forces would be more careful.
After we had walked through another small village and left it behind too, I saw we were headed straight towards a blue ridged mountain. The sun was setting and the mountain cast a long dark shadow on the ground in front of us. Above, birds flew around in large circular orbits. I was now visibly in pain. My escort slowed down. It was only then that I noticed the woman who had been walking fifty paces ahead had been replaced with another guide who marched with similar vigour. He wore a long Afghan salwar kameez, which was black. He also had a black shawl wrapped around him that covered most of his upper torso. I suddenly felt a wave of apprehension. Only the Taliban wore black.
We reached the crest of a hill where five elderly men sat overlooking a cliff. I noticed that they had not lit a fire, despite the fact it was getting cooler. Thermal cameras hovered in the skies. What a state of siege! The coming darkness and cold made me shiver. Plumes of smoke rose from a peak high to the north, twisting like Pashtun headgear in the skies. The large, billowing, genii-like, ayatollah clouds coiled up and hovered over the mountain capturing the colours of the sunset. The man in black pointed toward that direction and talked to the four elders as they looked up at the horizon. One of the elders didn’t care to look, his face disdainfully turned away, preferring to stare at the pebble-strewn soil around his feet.
Somewhere in the sky a fighter went supersonic and the Mach cone came down with a series of thunder claps that rattled the entire valley. The man in black had a compact sub-machine gun hanging from his shoulder, which, until now, I hadn’t noticed. It had a folding butt stock and a pistol grip, and was a new variant of an AK-56. I had diligently studied weaponry, including improvised explosive devices, as preparation for this trip. I had crawled the web, fearful, cautious, and a bit excited. Wires, detonators, battery packs, Semtex, C-4, packaging, colour codes were all new concerns in my current life.
My guide, who by now I knew as “Ten Paces Ahead,” broke the news that we would be spending the night right there. When he said “here,” I had the inclination to look around and say “where?” but restrained myself. It was then I noticed a small shed built of bricks and tarpaulin against the side of the cliff.
One of the elderly men looked like Fidel Castro with a high nose and a full beard. He was fair complexioned and his blue eyes were sad and droopy. Another had no moustache, but wore a well-rounded and precisely trimmed beard. He was scratching the top of his head after removing his Afghan hat. They all looked from the sides of their eyes and no one seemed to have any inclination whatsoever to engage me in any discussion.
A thick blanket hung down like a door to the shed, the floor of which was surprisingly well prepared and smooth. Several rolled up blankets had been neatly arranged inside. Ten Paces Ahead, whose real name he told me was Hameed, pulled out an aluminum container from under his shawl. It was a food hamper with bread and roasted meat. No fires were lit. We squatted down on the floor and attacked the food. The man in black stayed outside briefly and then he, too, disappeared, as had the elders. I thanked Hameed for dinner. There was a canteen of water with which I washed my hands.
The sun had finally disappeared and the distant mountain rose like a restless jinn in the dark. The dull thump of explosions continued. I sat outside and looked at the hills. As my eyes adapted to the darkness, I saw sand bags along the edges of the hill-top and beside it an old generator with handle grips lying on its side. I walked over and picked up two shiny 7.62-mm spent cartridges among the many lying about and put them in my pocket.
As I looked across the valley I saw no lights anywhere.
I went back inside and Hameed was reading a book with the help of a Swiss Army flashlight. It seemed everything was well planned and he knew why I was there. There was no reason to ask him the plan. I covered myself with the musty smelling blankets and quickly fell asleep.
It must have been about four in the morning when he woke me. Once again, the man in black stood paces away in the distance. This time we walked down the hill with Hameed using his flashlight to show the way. He aimed the light in such a way that he could see the path and his legs were silhouetted so I could follow. We walked like that for an hour before we came to the outskirts of a small town. I believe it may have been Pir Zadeh or Per Zidah. There was a sign, but I’m pretty sure the writing was in Pashto.
The sun had begun to bob on the horizon when we reached a small enclave of houses. We entered one and I was asked to sit in a room with an open door. The man in black remained outside. Hameed left. He never said good-bye, just disappeared. I put my backpack down and sat on a wooden bench. Once again, a young boy appeared out of nowhere. He gave me an empty mug and flashed me a smile. As I held the mug he poured the strong-smelling tea from a pot that was twice the size of his head. He lifted it up deftly and tilted the curved spout and the milky tea came out in a gush of steam. It cleaned the insides of my mouth and generally felt good going down the throat.
“Taliban key ma key chut! That’s it, that’s all.” The Taliban’s mama’s cunt, that’s it that’s all. I was in a relaxed state of bewilderment when I overheard this conversation between the guy in black and someone else outside. I had learnt a few choice Urdu words from Indian and Pakistani friends when I was at Concordia University, but I thought this a frightening exchange in a country under the firm grip of the Taliban. Immediately, a Pakistani man wearing salwar kameez and an Afghan hat stepped in. His Guevara beard was a handsome contrast to the long beards or the orange-tinted trimmed ones prevalent in the town centre. He had a shoulder holster with a sub-compact machine gun hanging from it. It was partially covered by his shawl but clearly visible. He stepped in and said “Salaam Walekhom” to me and plunked himself down on the opposite bench. The sun had risen and was funnelling its first rays in long spikes over the Afghan mountains. I greeted him back, “Walekhom Salaam”.
He introduced himself as Shaheed and held out his hand. I shook it. “You are looking for your friend. He’s with us. He knows you’re coming and is looking forward to seeing you. There are certain rules to be followed and both you and I are going to follow them to the letter. Okay? Otherwise the behnchoot kuttey drones will send the fireball up our arses and that, I’ve heard, is unpleasant. You will cover your head with your shawl completely and you will not speak unless you are spoken to. We are going to make a very short trip to the other side of town in the van.”
“Sure,” I said calmly.
We got into a small van waiting outside. I considered it a perfect target for a drone. It had a noisy diesel engine, no windows and at least five people already packed in, as well as the man in black. I got into a rear passenger seat and dipped my head to the people sitting next to me. Everyone smelt of unpasteurized goat milk. The van roared off and left the little enclave behind in no time. It climbed the side of a mountain and then, after about ten minutes, Shaheed drove it straight into a narrow pass and parked it under a cliff overhang expertly carved out of the side of a rock face, large enough for a number of cars. The men in the back all trooped out and went down a hill. We got out and entered another cliff-top settlement, but this one with signs of family activity. I saw a man playing with a child. There were huts carved into the sides of a hill and I thought I saw women in the distance, their faces exposed but their heads covered. In the middle of the settlement
there was a clearing, like a plaza. It was composed of dry, red clay and at the edge of it, standing still, with the rays of the morning sun bouncing off his teeth, was Nat, a huge smile on his face.
He was lankier and had grown a long beard. He was wearing a salwar kameez with a large shawl wrapped loosely around his head and neck. All about were small groups of men, dressed somewhat similarly, with sophisticated weapons slung over their shoulders, a few with rocket launchers on their backs. Shaheed swung over to the other side of the car and said a few things to the man in black before coming around and leading me to Nat.
We stared at each other and I maintained the discipline of not speaking till I was spoken to, when Shaheed in his boisterous style said “So—like man!—this is a Montreal party!” He had quite the character, flamboyant mannerisms married to a refined appreciation for danger.
I said to Nat as gently as I possibly could, “Hey!”
He put his arms around me and we hugged as brothers. “Hey,” he finally replied, “I’m known as Azmat around here.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
It’s Over
I felt I had just walked through a dark tunnel at night into a desert, through a hopeless arid valley and an endless descent into a dark hole with hostile elements and then—there was sunshine. And yet, inside me, I already sensed that this was edging toward catastrophe. I imagined an explosion happening at any moment and our bodies flung in a hundred pieces through the air to land in splotches on the sloping valley.
In the dark dress of Azmat with his tanned, tawny skin, Nat stood like one of his Hollywood heroes, Sir Alec Guinness or maybe Peter O’Toole. I was not sure.
I put my arms around him and we went into a hut, Shaheed accompanying us. After tea had been placed in our hands, Nat asked about his mother. I told him all I could. Then I went on to tell him what had happened to me in the last year and a half. “It’s been hard, especially the slow recovery while in hiding.” He looked at me. “You’re grown, man! Don’t go back to the hood. It’s over.”
Suddenly, “What’s Myra up to?” Looking at me directly with his penetrating eyes.
“We’re thick as thieves! I would have rotted in hell if she hadn’t been around.” I explained how she had settled down, with Gerry in the picture, and that she was working part-time at a production company while still going to the occasional audition.
Now if he had said, you’ve gotta be kidding, I wouldn’t have been surprised, but he simply said, “Yeah,” as if, somehow, he already knew. I went on to explain how I had applied for the job with the Enterprise and how nervous I had been.
“You know what I think? I think they knew you were after them the moment you applied. But they wanted to confirm it, so they took you on. You look good, man! Not the same guy. You’re kind of changed.” Shaheed smiled knowingly.
I was taken aback by his certainty. But I knew as well that I was no longer the same. I had changed. He took a deep breath, clenched his fist and punched the palm of his other hand, then looked away in disdain. Sipping tea, he finally opened up and spoke with a subdued rage. “Let me tell you, I know stuff I didn’t before. It’s all connected. Connected!” He webbed his fingers together. “You know what I mean? I was just hanging out, lazing on the Main. The fuckin’ Plateau Mont-Royal! Right? Nothing really bothered me. I just wanted a break in acting. Doing this, doing that. Nothing of significance. I wasn’t into any of the serious stuff. My mom was disappointed that I wouldn’t talk history with her. I wasn’t like you.”
“She needs someone to talk to,” I said. “You know how it is, she has her feet in two worlds and wants to know how one fits with the other.”
“Your grandfather had it right. He changed my thinking. He changed me. I’m really sorry about him.” He lowered his head.
The mention of RK cut a blowtorch through me as usual. Nat understood. Tears swelled up in my eyes.
He continued, “RK knew what was going on. It ain’t about terrorism or retribution. 9/11 etc. That’s all bullshit! There’s a thin layer of moral superiority on top, to hide a thick layer of business and military interests below. We’ve sanitized our terrorism to make it look good. You know what I mean? Every freakin’ day a drone hits a village and kills innocent people. Every day! Little kids blown to bits.” I stared into his eyes. He was not the same either. I saw a weathered fighter. His skin was furrowed. The parallel lines on his forehead reminded me of the tram lines that still pop up on Montreal streets, steel rails emerging through old asphalt. Deep trenches had formed beside his mouth and the speckles of sand within them glistened like sparks.
It was weird to hear Nat talk like this, angry. During all our years in Montreal, we had never spoken about these things. We might have joked about them, but never really spoken about them. I read stuff and discussed it with RK; but Nat was right, we had both preferred to have a good time gawking and dreaming. That had been good enough. I now knew what he was talking about because I had changed, too. The writer in me had ceased to exist. The guy who wanted to document had died. We had started to live in each other’s lives. In the lives of our neighbourhood, our parents and grandparents. Everything had become a composite of everything else that we shared. The characters, the relatives, and the folks we liked or disliked. We had absorbed them all. That is what it was all about.
“Nothing we do here is right, man! We piss on their religion, on their corpses, kill the wrong people in combat and then slay the innocents in psychotic fits and pretend like it never happened.”
At this point Shaheed took a loud slurp of the tea and interrupted. “We’re not the fucking Taliban in case you’re getting worried. The creepy madarchods. We are with no one, which is, by itself, a problem, wouldn’t you say brother Azmat?” Saying that, he slapped his knees and then slapped Nat on the back and let out a shrieking laugh.
I smiled, finally beginning to relax.
Nat took the shawl off his head. There were streaks of premature grey in his beard. “I came here with Blue-Sky to protect government installations, including a couple of field hospitals. The company liked me. You know, they were impressed by my martial-arts training, my physical fitness, and I guess they liked my engaging personality.” He winked and for a split second the old Nat was back. “In the beginning, I worked on the perimeter defence near the airport, setting up the bollards mainly, to prevent suicide bombers. I designed some of the installation as well as worked on security detail.”
“What’s a bollard?”
“They’re like solid cylinders. They can be permanent upright or designed to retract into the ground. They can take a lateral force of a 15,000-pound vehicle at 50 miles per hour and bring the vehicle to a stop in three feet. Sometimes, when there’s no space to use hydraulics, they’re physically pulled up from buried canisters and then locked by a bayonet-style pin arrangement. You put a farm of these on the ground and it’s a strong deterrent.”
I said nothing.
“But then things started to happen and I wanted to leave. You know about the friendly fire incident. Well, some dumb-ass pilot, very friendly no doubt, dropped two laser-guided 500-pounders on our soldiers. Reckless sonofabitch. They don’t give a shit, man! Listen! I can tell you stuff that you’re never going to see on Global or on L fuckin’ TV.”
“How’d you join up with these folks?” I was looking at Shaheed.
“They’re different. They saved my ass from a Taliban IED. They pulled me out of a ditch and the device exploded a few seconds later. It was a crimson fireball going up and hot metal pieces coming down. Wherever they fell they burned right through. These guys aren’t no whacko fanatics. They’re plain nationalists who don’t want any of this Taliban sharia shit. Freedom fighters. And they aren’t working with any of the warlords, either.” Shaheed stood and said, “You two talk. We’ve a couple of hours left.”
Nat wanted to speak. “During one of my security details I realized some
thing screwy was going on. Gruesome. It wasn’t clear if our forces themselves were doing the roughing up, because they interrogated in rooms right adjacent to the rooms of the Afghan Security Police. Our military police had handed them over to Intelligence personnel who had come from Ottawa, and they had 96 hours to get whatever information they could. There was always a rush. The rush made them do things that were not right and then they handed them back to the Afghan police who are nothing but fuckin’ rogues. Outsourcing the torture. Most of the local soldiers aren’t Pashtuns. They’re Tajiks mainly and that’s a big friggin’ problem. We’re on one side of an ethnic conflict.”
Then I asked him the only important question I had to ask. I knew he was waiting for it. “So are you staying here or going back?”
He hesitated. “Not right now, for sure, man!” He wrung his hands. “What am I gonna do there in Montreal? I’m already too far away from all that! I took a couple of weeks to travel to Greece when I was with Blue-Sky and I was miserable, man. I couldn’t sit still. I was so restless I scared myself. My normal has changed. You know what I mean? What am I gonna do sitting in a bistro on Mont–Royal? I’ll want to empty a magazine. That’s not cool, is it? Who is going to help me when I get back? I dunno. I feel I got one foot on the platform and the other on the train.”
My insides knotted. Getting back to “normal” was probably out of the question.
“And I wasn’t even in direct combat. Can you imagine the kids from Valcartier and Petawawa? Some of them have never been out of their province and now they’re here, in over their heads. You think they can return to normal? There are no programs, you know? Just the chaplains and then flying visits from Ottawa by some PTSD specialists. What good is that? I know I have it! For sure I have it. That’s why I’ll never get out of here.”
He struggled with himself and then concluded, “Actually, this is better. I don’t have to deal with the shit in the normal world. Here I live the tension. You hear the thump and in your mind you see the blood gurgle out of a blown-out head. That’s normal.” And he smiled.
