In My Father's Country: An Afghan Woman Defies Her Fate Read online

  LIKE SEVERAL PROVINCIAL reconstruction teams all over Afghanistan, JBAD, as it was known by soldiers, had several dogs, and I befriended a yellow puppy with dark eyes. I love dogs, but remembering how hard it was as a child to let go of our cat when we had to leave the city, I had refrained from getting pets. In Muslim societies, dogs are allowed only as outdoor pets and even then should only be used for protection purposes.

  But in Jalalabad, for the first time I wanted a pet, something that I could take care of and talk to, knowing there would be no talking back or advice giving. I was lonely, having only Judy to talk to, and she was my boss. I saw the appeal of that unconditional love, that look in a loyal dog’s eyes. Like everyone else, I fed the puppy pieces of steak from the chow hall and used to tell him that he was the most spoiled dog in the whole of Afghanistan because most Afghans could not afford to feed steak to their kids, much less their dogs, if they had any dogs to begin with. Soldiers weren’t allowed to have pets in their rooms, but there were no restrictions on me, a civilian. I wanted the puppy to sleep in my room at night, but no food bribes could coax him into the courtyard, past the swimming pool, and up the stairs at night.

  I didn’t think much about it, until one evening when Judy hosted a dinner for Colonel Hussein, the liaison officer from the Ministry of the Interior. Colonel Hussein wore his green-and-brown camouflage ANA uniform. His hair was shiny and well groomed. You could tell he enjoyed his job, and Judy liked hosting him. The PRT was believed to be there, in part, to mentor the government, and sharing some roast lamb and rice was proof that that was happening.

  Somehow the topic turned to the number of dogs on base and how much Americans loved them. Jokes were made about how even though dogs weren’t technically allowed on the PRT, the sergeant majors tended to look the other way, because even they needed someone to whom they could unburden themselves without having to worry about being asked to write a statement about it later. I reported that in the true American spirit I had made friends with the yellow puppy with the dark eyes, but that in the true Afghan spirit he was only my friend during the day. At night I was all on my own. Both Judy and the colonel got the inside dig at Afghans. The villagers said that during the day they would come out and talk to us, and even host us, but at night, when we Americans went back to our bases, leaving the insurgents to come out and rule the area, they would tell us we were on our own and would not be seen as our friends.

  Both Judy and Colonel Hussein laughed hard, and Colonel Hussein wagged his finger at me. “It’s not you, Miriam, it’s that swimming pool. The little dog knows what happened there.”

  “What happened there?”

  “Horrible things,” he said, and then elaborated. He had been involved in Afghan politics for many years. “During the Soviet occupation that very pool was the site of hundreds of executions. The Russians would gather up the mujahideen, line them up in the bottom of the empty pool, and execute them. Then they would order more mujahideen into the pool, forcing them to step over and onto the bodies of their fellow fighters, and then execute them as well. This would continue until their blood reached the lip of the pool, at which point the Russians would haul off the corpses and begin again.”

  I should have known it was something like this. Most Afghans would tell you that the country is haunted by the ghosts of lost mujahideen from decades of wars. Some would even claim that the dead Russian soldiers roamed the land they had tried to conquer. I stopped trying to coax the yellow puppy to come to my room. They can smell fear, love, despair, and also—if the yellow puppy was any indication—the terror of the long-since dead.

  THE MORNINGS WERE difficult. I was awakened every day at four o’clock by the crackling of the loudspeaker, then the call for prayer. Once awoken, I would stare at the ceiling until sunrise. The underside of my eyelids felt like emery boards, and there was a heavy feeling in the pit of my stomach. I spent my nights at the MWR, chatting with Eric on one of the few computers or talking to him on the phone. Noon in Flordia was nine o’clock at night for me.

  Eric had left the army after seventeen years and was living with his parents in Florida, waiting for me to come home and marry him. He was anxious; he had all the time in the world to correspond. At night, after we’d logged off or hung up, I had my walk past the swimming pool/execution spot and my three hours of shallow sleep to look forward to. He wanted to talk about our wedding, about the guest list, our outfits, the menu, the kind of house he would buy me in Florida. Mostly he talked about how amazing our life together would be. Eric had so many fantasies he’d never been able to fulfill because of his dedication to the army. I had told him that I didn’t want to be married to someone who was already married to the army. He had completed every mission he’d ever wanted to do and, after being a commander of a successful PRT, was open to changing things around. When he talked about leaving the army, I encouraged him cautiously, not wanting him to resent me later for supporting it too loudly. We talked about our shared desire to come back to Afghanistan someday to work and to live here with our family—a desire that I think I knew even then would always be a fantasy.

  To celebrate the fulfillment of these dreams in our future, he’d bought several pieces of jewelry at BAF. There was the jade set he was going to give me for our second anniversary, and the gold-and-ruby bracelets I’d admired that he said he planned to give me when I gave birth to our first child. He hoped the baby would be a girl, a little Saima. I said if he couldn’t handle one Saima, how was he going to live with two of us?

  “Our daughter will always be on my side and will force you to be nice to me,” he said. I could hear the yearning in his voice.

  All these conversations about kids, houses, and special celebrations should have made me feel excited to hurry back to the States, but for some crazy, totally Saima reason, they didn’t. I felt uneasy, and the more Eric talked about our magical future, the faster I wanted to get off the line. Then he would get hurt and say that I was changing. I didn’t argue. He was right, I was changing. For a crazy minute in Farah, I had thought I could find the kind of eternal happiness found only in marriage with Eric, my perfect partner. But the minute was over. I was turning back into the Saima who knew that she was going to have to look for her happiness independent of any man. For a second, I had indulged in the type of romantic daydreams I had always scorned in the movies or in others’ lives. But once I had distance from Eric, I grew frightened of and repelled by the power he had had over me. I saw that if I didn’t break it off, I would end up in a home in Florida, taking care of five children, in full makeup, waiting for Eric to get home every day. That was not what my father had envisioned for my future.

  This was much like what had happened with Greg, with one big difference: Now I knew what I needed to do to make myself happy. I had to find a way to get out of the marriage that Eric was waiting for. I knew that in the end Eric was not going to like my transformation, but I hoped that I would at least find a way to be at peace with myself.

  One morning I walked into Judy’s office. She looked at me and sighed heavily.

  “Do I remind you of those pushy Pashtuns you have to deal with, and that’s why you sighed so loudly?” I asked.

  She laughed. Over the weeks I had come to realize that she was not going to fire me the first chance she got, and I’d grown comfortable enough with her to tease her. Whenever we went to one of our many meetings with Sherzai, before he made his grand entrance, we’d engage in small talk. When she began to joke with me during meetings, I felt even more relaxed.

  That morning Judy had been waiting for me to arrive. Her green scarf was folded over the back of the chair beside her desk. “There’s a park opening today,” she said.

  “Oh, good,” I said. “I could use a picnic in the park.”

  “Oh, this will be no picnic!” she said. “We’ve got that meeting with Hazrad today, too.”

  Hazrad was the other larger-than-life Pashtun in Jalalabad.

  In every province in Afghanista
n the same ridiculous relationship existed between us and the governor, the chief of police, or the chief of the border police. Every time a new PRT commander rotated in, each of these men was eager to be the first to meet with, impress, and convince the new commander that the other two were corrupt beyond measure. The reason they were so eager to make an acquaintance is that word had gotten out, all across the country, that Americans tended to trust the first person they met.

  Thus, the governor would swear on his children’s heads that the chief of police and the chief of the border police were high-level smugglers of car parts, television sets, or opium. And the chief of police would show up and plead with us not to be swayed by the lies told by the governor and the chief of the border police, who were robbing the people of Afghanistan blind, and providing a safe haven for the insurgency, and anything else he could think up that sounded disreputable and corrupt. The chief of the border police would show up and tell the same tales about the governor and the chief of police.

  In Jalalabad, one of the busiest crossing points between the two countries, Hazrad held the very powerful position of chief of the border police. He oversaw the comings and goings across the Khyber Pass. He was tall and movie-star handsome, with fine, dark features. The moment I met him I thought, Eric would have hated this guy. With Judy I could whisper, in English, “Wow, he’s handsome,” and she would agree. If I had ever ventured such an opinion to Eric, he would have told me to go wait in the Humvee until the meeting was over.

  Hazrad’s money came from smuggling who knew what. Every few months he built himself a new house somewhere in the leafy Jalalabad suburbs, and each time he completed a house he would have a house-warming party. I went to at least four of them in the short time I spent there. The thing he loathed most about Sherzai was that occasionally he would wear a nice double-breasted suit, with a dress shirt, cuff links, and shiny Western loafers. Hazrad mocked Sherzai’s fancy suits, believing they proved that he wasn’t a true Pashtun and was dressing just to impress his Western allies. Hazrad was never seen without his turban. Come to think of it, I never saw him in his Afghan Border Police uniform, either.

  By late morning we were on our way to the park. The PRT was obligated to show support for any and all reconstruction projects, and we assumed our appearance was going to be the usual formality. But Sherzai was Mr. Last Minute. He believed in whims and spontaneous inspiration, the importance of carrying out every stray idea that entered his head. It was part of his charisma. Before we left the PRT, Judy got word that the park opening had become a celebratory picnic for the local villagers. Sherzai wanted to see squares of colorful blankets dotting the newly sodded lawns, lamb kebabs grilling on open fire pits dug just for the occasion. He wanted what he usually wanted: a photo op, music, and good food, in that order.

  The park had new sidewalks that glinted in the midday sun, rose beds newly turned with dark, rich earth, a grove of cypress and orange trees. Of course, no women were anywhere to be seen. In the more conservative Pashtun areas, such as Jalalabad, it’s highly unusual to see women in the parks and other recreational arenas. It is too much work for their men to protect them from harassment, and thus, to protect the virtue of their entire families. It is easier for the men to prohibit their women from going to parks. Even Sherzai, with his grand ambitions for his province, could not bring any Afghan women, other than me, to this picnic. So, as usual, Judy and I were the only women there.

  Big sand-colored tents had been erected, and inside were rugs, blankets, and bright silk pillows. They were places to recline, to chat. Sherzai circulated, shaking hands, patting shoulders, doing the universal politician’s duty. He wore a bronze turban, flowing white shalwar pants, and a white embroidered Kandahari-style kameez beneath a black vest. He was in high Pashtun mode.

  He saw me and rushed over, his big hands in the air. “Miriam. My decorator tells me you want to buy a chandelier just like the one I had put in.”

  “You’re talking about that seventy-five-thousand-dollar chandelier, right?”

  “No, the expensive one!” he exclaimed, before rushing off to greet someone else.

  My exchange with his decorator had been in Pashtu. I often thought that whenever Sherzai saw me he said the first thing that came into his head. Judy looked mystified. She leaned into my shoulder. “What was that?”

  I told her. Sherzai had an interior decorator, a Pakistani with gold-rimmed teeth, who was overseeing the remodeling and renovation of the Governor’s Palace. During our last meeting at the palace, when we broke for prayer, I had wandered into the vestibule where he was supervising the creation of an elaborate ceiling mosaic. A dozen workers labored on the scaffolding that lined the walls, reaching to affix the postage-stamp-sized tiles. Other workers were hanging a huge crystal chandelier, like something that belonged at Versailles.

  “I love that chandelier,” I said to the decorator.

  “It’s one of a kind,” he replied, watching while the workmen tugged on the ropes that would hoist it clear to the ceiling. The chandelier swayed, its crystal prisms tinkling.

  “How much did it cost?” I asked.

  “Seventy-five thousand,” he said.

  “Not bad,” I said. “Where did you find it? I’d like one for myself.”

  Suddenly, his gaze shifted from the chandelier to me. “You must make a lot of money.”

  “Not that much,” I said.

  “Enough to buy a seventy-five-thousand-dollar chandelier like it is nothing!”

  We both laughed. I had thought he meant 75,000 Pakistani rupees, which is about $875. Then, since we were laughing, I wondered aloud where the governor got that kind of money for a chandelier. The average Afghan is lucky if he earns a dollar a day.

  “Why, Karzai gave it to him to build the palace!” said the decorator in a tone that suggested I should know this already. Anyway, he couldn’t care less where the money came from; he was happy to be hired and paid.

  It was difficult for the soldiers to pull security while Judy and I circulated through the crowd. Since we were going to be there for a while, we found a place in one of the big tents. The tent was open, with all the sides rolled up and tied beneath the roof. We sat down on one of the blankets and engaged the locals passing by in small talk. Some men wandered into the tent. Even in the heat they wore sports coats over their shalwar kameez and black plastic sandals. They’d heard there was a female Pashtu speaker at the PRT who could also speak English. We engaged in small talk, both the visitors and the conversation drifting here and there. No one was in any hurry. The park was close enough to the PRT that it was unlikely we would be ambushed if we took our time, and so we just sat chatting and drinking tea, and trying to connect with locals in a way we had never done before. The sun lazed across the sky; the breeze carried the medicinal scent of eucalyptus. Someone mentioned that they’d planted some on the other side of the park. A few men dozed, and I would have too, had I not become aware of something unexpected.

  The army’s standard approach to interacting with regular Afghans is to devise a mission: Let’s go to village A and see whether they need a school, and complete that mission in the shortest time possible, preferably the same day. The mission might include counting the number of school-aged children and figuring the distance to the closest school. Afterward, a storyboard of the mission is created, usually heavy on pictures and light on text, describing what happened on the mission and whether or not the goals set out were met. Most PRT missions are designed to be short, featuring a straightforward goal that can be measured at the end of the day. If the mission happens to be a meeting or public appearance, once the event is over, everyone hops into their Humvees and races back inside the wire to work on the storyboard that inevitably concludes with “Mission accomplished!”

  But this casual gathering was something else entirely. It didn’t seem to have anything to do with anything measurable. Judy, the commander, the soldiers pulling her security, and some local agronomists were just sitting around ta
lking, getting to know one another, becoming acquainted with one another’s culture.

  Sherzai blew into the tent and reached his arms wide, as if trying to gather up the scene for future reference. “I like this!” he cried.

  This may not sound like much. Today we have a greater understanding that building long-term relationships with the Afghan people is critical, but in 2005 it was very unusual. To most soldiers, Afghanistan was just a tour of duty. Their only goal was to get through it alive, so they could be promoted and move on. Even now it’s unrealistic to expect soldiers to think differently. I remember counting down days on my wall calendar a couple of months before my contract would end. And I was there by choice, not to mention the fact that I wanted to be among people with whom I share roots. The average American soldier viewed Afghans as poor, uneducated, and often crazy men who bullied their women. They wanted to do their time and return to their families and their regular posts, where they wouldn’t be shot at as much. If, in the meantime, they lost a buddy in a firefight, an ambush, or an IED explosion, they’d resent Afghans even more, failing to understand how allegedly innocent villagers—people whose lives the soldier was risking his own to improve—would allow the insurgents to plant IEDs in their roads.

  The missing link was a genuine relationship with the local population. If the villagers felt connected to us, they would be more likely to cooperate with our missions, warn us of any impending danger in the region, and avoid providing shelter and support for the insurgency.

  This tactic of forging relationships is part of the counterinsurgency, or COIN. In 2005 the U.S. Army was not practicing any COIN that I observed. The marine corps released its COIN Manual in 2006, with its focus on Iraq; and the special forces and the marines were practicing some COIN, but it was not yet the official policy of the regular army. Most army members at the time thought that COIN was unnecessary in Afghanistan because the regular army was there on a reconstruction effort, and not just chasing the bad guys. I imagine the thinking went something like this: Since the United States had been invited to Afghanistan by the government, COIN wasn’t necessary because GIRoA is a democratically elected entity, meaning, essentially, that the Afghan populace wanted us there and we would and should not have to fight for their hearts and minds.