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

  “Oh, boy,” he said, and began to laugh.

  “Why are you laughing?” I asked.

  “It’s just that Afghans are volatile, emotional, and expressive, and so are Italians. And so are Argentineans. I don’t envy your neighbors. You’re going to be screaming and yelling one minute and making up the next. Your friends will never know if you two are getting a divorce or going to live happily ever after.”

  “That’s pretty much it,” I said. We sat for a moment without speaking. I asked him who had told him I was getting married, and he said that Judy had sent him. She was concerned and wanted to help. During those early weeks, it was empowering just to feel that I’d made a friend who cared about me.

  TWENTY-ONE

  In 2005, Ramadan, the month of fasting, began on October 4. It started with an unsettling occurrence. I was sitting in the yard when a soldier on desk duty in the Tactical Operations Center came to get me because Judy was looking for me. There was a fight in the bazaar that some were saying was instigated by the Taliban. Judy quickly told me what had happened. A teenager who’d refused to honor the fast had been beaten. All Muslims are required to fast. It doesn’t matter how observant we are the rest of the year—for one month we must go without food and drink from sunrise to sunset, the better to empathize with people who are less fortunate, who don’t have a choice about when they can eat and drink. It’s also meant to strengthen the community. Each day after dark we invite people into our homes to break the fast; or we take food from the home to the mosque. It also cleanses our bodies to fast from food, and to give them a break from eating. During Ramadan we’re also supposed to refrain from lying, stealing, or having impure thoughts.

  Judy’s CAT I, Jawed, went into the city to see exactly what had happened. The boy, who was clearly old enough to be fasting, had been chewing gum—another indulgence prohibited during Ramadan. The locals called him out. He shot off his mouth, saying the Taliban was no longer in power and that he could do whatever he pleased. According to Jawed’s report, shopkeepers then tackled him and beat him severely.

  It was the talk of the tearoom that day. I said to one of the CAT I’s that I felt conflicted about it. “That boy was old enough to have an opinion and to speak his mind. And he was right—ultimately fasting was his own choice, something between him and God. At the same time, I can see how his behavior was insulting to traditional and fasting Muslims.”

  The CAT I looked at me coldly. “He deserved it,” he said. “If you choose not to fast, then don’t fast, but don’t show it in public. We don’t have that kind of freedom in Afghanistan.”

  In October Judy was called away to a meeting of PRT commanders. I loved my job and I loved staying busy, but I felt relieved when I heard she would be gone. Her absence would give me time to go on missions with the Civil Affairs Team and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), where I would meet villagers, and not just attend the governor’s meetings.

  During the month of fasting, Muslims are encouraged to read the Koran from start to finish, a little bit every day. Mosques in the cities use public speakers to read the Koran in Arabic, as it is traditionally read by Muslims worldwide, but they go a step further; they not only read out loud the translation in the native language but also preach in between the verses. Because it was in Arabic and Pashtu, the soldiers could easily block it out. But I knew what they were saying and I was tormented by it.

  The morning it happened I was lying in bed, listening to the Qari (one who has memorized the Koran) talk about hellfire and how everything we do here on earth will be judged by God, and how we will be held accountable for it. Even though the rational side of me knew better, I couldn’t help but feel that the Qari was talking to me directly, telling me that for marrying Eric, an infidel, I would burn in hell for eternity.

  Then, at 8:50, the ground started shaking. I saw the time on my travel clock just before it fell to the floor. I could feel the earth’s roar in my joints and bones. I leapt up from my bed just as it was being heaved into the air, causing me to stumble when my feet hit the floor.

  My room was on the second floor. I ran down the curved cement stairs, petrified as they groaned and swayed with each step, filling the air with dust. By the time I had staggered to a bench near the edge of the swimming pool, the shaking had stopped. Soldiers were streaming from their rooms, barefoot, shirtless, cussing.

  A little boy, who worked as a janitor at the MWR, sidled up to me and whispered, “Do you know you’re not wearing any shoes?”

  “I’m just glad I’m wearing clothes!” I replied.

  “I didn’t feel anything!” he said. He sat down next to me. “You should put some shoes on.” The earth rocked and shivered again. I grabbed the side of the bench. The boy giggled and ran off. God, how I wished that I was so fearless about death.

  THAT SAME MORNING, Judy’s deputy commanding officer, Captain Christopher Malm, asked me to accompany him to the hospital in Jalalabad. We wanted to know how many people had been injured or killed in the earthquake and he thought the hospital should know. Much later we would learn that the epicenter had been in Kashmir. It was said to have been as big as the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco. In Pakistan, close to seventy-five thousand people were killed, but in Afghanistan only four died. In Jalalabad a small girl was crushed beneath a crumbling wall.

  At the hospital there weren’t as many injured victims as we’d feared. A handful of men with bloodied foreheads sat in the small waiting area. Chris and I waited with the hospital director. Chris had barely uttered one sentence when suddenly it felt as if the building had been hit by a massive truck. It was yet another aftershock, the worst one so far. I cried out. I hated that I was acting like a scared little girl, but earthquakes terrify me like nothing else.

  The director cleared his throat anxiously and folded his hands. We began again. Chris repeated his sentence. I cannot remember what it was. Distressed and distracted, I couldn’t keep my eyes off a crack in the wall. It was a delicate crack, winding its way from ground to ceiling like a lazy river. It wasn’t new, but I knew with complete certainty that the next time the earth shook, the room would split in half right there, and our skulls would be crushed by chunks of falling concrete.

  Just as I was thinking that, the earth rumbled again. Now my knees were shaking. I am an educated American woman who speaks five languages. I know how to drive a car, hop on a transatlantic flight, manage my credit, purchase my own property, and choose my own husband. None of that mattered. Suddenly, I was the little girl who knew beyond all doubt that God was angry with her. Earthquakes mean one thing in Afghanistan, in Islam: God is angry. God has had it with you. God had had it with me. He was on the side of the CAT I’s: I was marrying a non-Muslim and it was wrong. This earthquake was my sign from God.

  Chris passed me his water bottle. My hands were shaking. I couldn’t drink without spilling. “Let’s get you back to the PRT,” he said with real concern.

  There was a basketball game in progress in the empty swimming pool as I made my way back to my room. The men called to one another, passed the ball, couldn’t have cared less. They weren’t being shot at, so life was good. I envied them then. I thought of Eric, and wondered whether his Catholic god was as angry at him for marrying me.

  I lay down on my bed, on my back, my arms folded over my chest like a dead person. I stared up at the ceiling, relieved to see that there were no cracks. I tried to close my eyes, but every time I did I felt the room shake. I was comforted slightly by the basketball game outside, the rhythmic sound of the ball bouncing on the pool floor. I’d start to drift off but would catch myself. If I could just keep my eyes open, I convinced myself, the earthquakes would stop.

  And I needed to stop them. Even though I’d already moved my bed away from the window, I knew that if another quake hit, the glass would shatter and the entire side of the building would collapse on top of me. Who knew how well it had been built? The Soviets had constructed it using local workers w
ho had probably wanted the building to fall on top of the Russians and kill them all. Who knew what shortcuts they’d taken, what interior beams and joists and whatever else holds up buildings were missing? It could be a death trap. I had a little deck off my room. I would never step out onto it again.

  A few days passed. I was fine in my room during the day. As long as I could hear soldiers outside, playing basketball, or talking as they sat around, I could at least rest. Napping was out of the question. I felt that if I closed my eyes for an instant, there would be another huge aftershock. It wasn’t rational—but knowing that feelings are irrational does not give you the power to control them.

  In the evenings, after sunset, there was a heavy presence in my room. I knew it was there when the air became heavy and cold. Sometimes it smelled like roses gone bad. I told myself for the first few evenings that my mind was playing tricks on me and that I was all shaken up about the earthquake so was imagining the eerie presence as a result of lack of sleep and stress. I tried not to think of the ghost stories I’d heard, stories told in the chow hall or tearoom before the quake, when I could still find that dark enjoyment in a good, scary ghost story.

  My room had two beds, the bed I slept in and the daybed, where I sat and read, worked on my laptop, and talked to Eric on the phone. One night, as I was sitting on the daybed reading, I suddenly sensed another presence in the room. The feeling was so intense that I swear I could hear it breathing. The daybed was by the door. I didn’t even look around the room to confirm that there was a ghost I could see. I was sure that there was, and I didn’t want to see it. Grabbing my cell phone, I bolted out of my room, down the stairs, and past the empty swimming pool to the MWR. My hands shook as I called Eric. It was after midnight, and the moon was high in the sky.

  “Why are you up so late, honey?” he asked in lieu of a hello.

  “Eric, there’s a ghost in my room! I can’t sleep there. And I’m afraid there’s going to be an earthquake again. And that’s what brought out the ghost, and there will be more!” I blurted out.

  Normally this would be Eric’s cue to tease me without mercy. My fierce Pashtun is afraid of a ghost? Ha-ha! But he could hear, for the first time, genuine fear in my voice. “Honey, you need to come home to me,” he said.

  But I realized then that I wasn’t sure I wanted to go home, or to him. I didn’t like having a ghost in my room or the feeling that God was angry at me, but I wasn’t ready to face Eric and our wedding, either. I replied that it was good to hear his voice, that I’d just needed to talk to him, that I would be fine, and that he shouldn’t worry.

  So back to my room I went. I never should have said the word ghost aloud. I cautiously walked back past the swimming pool. Judy would be back soon. She was the voice of reason; she had more common sense than anyone I knew. But she wasn’t there now. What was still there, in my room, was the ghost. I spun around and bolted back to the MWR. I decided I would sleep there until Judy returned.

  The next evening after dinner Haaroon and the other interpreters showed up at the tearoom as if nothing had happened. Earthquake or no earthquake, tea must be drunk. Ahmad, who liked to badger me, said, “Miriam, you look distraught. Are you dumping your American boyfriend after all?”

  “There’s a ghost in my room,” I said.

  “They’re all over the place here. Think of all the mujahideen who were slaughtered steps from where you lay your head each night. The ghosts were probably sleeping until the earthquake woke them up.” Soldiers and CAT I’s alike swore they’d seen at one time or another someone in all white walking among the narange trees. When they’d called out, asking who was there, the spirit disappeared.

  I covered my ears, told them to stop. I confessed that I’d slept on the couch in the MWR, which started them on a chorus of “Miriam, that’s just not right.”

  I couldn’t bring myself to pass the swimming pool and climb the stairs, so I didn’t return to my room that night. I was like the yellow puppy. I sat up all night in the MWR. There was a small lending library there. I curled up on a nice sofa and read The Da Vinci Code, which I had been meaning to read.

  A version of this night repeated itself several times. By the time Judy returned, I’d convinced some female medics to sleep in my room, occupying the ghost’s bed. The three of them had shared small quarters and were happy for the additional elbow room. Judy was upset when she discovered this arrangement.

  “That’s not going to work,” she said. “There is the issue of accountability, in case of emergency. They have to go back to their room. We assigned them a spot, and that’s where they need to be.” Instead, she sent me to the medic, who prescribed some herbal sleeping pills that did nothing but upset my stomach—or maybe it was the stress that did that.

  I became nocturnal. There was a landing outside my room, big enough for a chair. One day I asked Haaroon whether he would mind sitting there for a few hours so I could take a nap. He agreed without a word. He sat on the landing all afternoon, reading a book or playing a game on his phone while I tried to sleep. Finally, having finished his book and grown bored with solitaire, he said, “Look, you need to get over this. The ghosts won’t do anything to you. They’ve been here for a long time.”

  “Haaroon, you’re not making me feel better, talking about this like it’s real.”

  “It was the earthquake that got them agitated, not you,” he said with a sigh.

  Once Eric had voiced his desire for me to come home, he started lobbying for it every time we spoke. He reminded me that I’d said that all I wanted to do was fulfill my contract, and I’d already done that. I’d signed on to interpret for six months, and it had been almost twelve. I’d had no break between my postings at Farah and Jalalabad, with the exception of the week I’d spent in the village with my family, which wasn’t much of a vacation. I didn’t tell him that I had been asked to do another three-month extension, and that I had been seriously considering it until the ghost appeared in my room.

  He was right, which I hated to admit. Still, I was secretly proud of myself for managing to continue my duties despite my lack of sleep and terror of ghosts and tremors. Life was difficult but not unbearable. Masoud, Sherzai’s stylish assistant, invited me and two other CAT II interpreters to break the fast each day down at the Kabul River, by the Darunta dam.

  The dam was built in the 1960s to provide hydroelectricity for the city, but with the buildup of silt in the river and the damage done during the various wars, it no longer produced electricity. Instead, the green, slow-moving river had become a popular picnic spot. Each afternoon fishermen went to work catching and cooking fish to sell up and down the riverbank. They served the fish with bread and chutney made of garlic, tomato, and mint. I wore a long tunic and khakis and would roll up my pant legs to wade in the cool, shallow water. The smoky smell of the fish and garlic, the chatter of people happy to be eating amid such beauty, the breeze that formed tiny white frills on the river’s surface all made it a heavenly scene.

  One CAT II from Kandahar, looking at my ankles and lower calves, said that I could get stoned for my behavior. I didn’t think so. I was a guest of Masoud and, by extension, Sherzai. Now such an outing would be too dangerous, but in late 2005, it was still safe. Or safe enough. At the time Sherzai was trying to get the dam fixed; he eventually succeeded, and today it produces all of the electricity for Jalalabad.

  These trips to the river each evening sustained me and reinforced my love for Afghanistan. While I was there, enjoying the freshest fish I have ever eaten, the sound of the pale green river, the birds chirping away in the last light of the day, and the company, I could comfortably straddle the horns of my dilemma: I missed Eric and felt anxious being so far away from him, but I was also relieved to be separated, because I was coming to the conclusion that I wasn’t ready to get married.

  Now that I’d been in Jalalabad for several months, it was clear that Farah had been an idyll, a time out of time. The PRT was so small, relaxed, and peaceful beneath th
e eternal gaze of the orange mountains. Eric and I were like two kids who’d fallen in love at summer camp, and now it was time to go back to our respective schools. The relationship had been amazing in fantasyland; would it be the same in the real world? Every time he asked how I was and I told him I wasn’t sleeping, he told me to come home. I heard something in his voice that sounded very much like an order. And I knew all too well how I felt about men ordering me around.

  One morning while getting ready in my bathroom, I looked in the mirror and realized that I looked as harassed as all the other women in Afghanistan. I had what had become permanent circles beneath my eyes and had lost weight. My hair, once lustrous enough for a shampoo commercial, was brittle and dry.

  Judy could also see that I was flagging, but she was angry with me. At the PRT conference she’d attended before the quake, someone had been gossiping about the PRT commander who had fallen in love with a CAT II interpreter, and Judy had put two and two together. When she returned, she was different. Her green eyes were cold. She stopped chatting and joking with me between meetings. Had I broken some kind of unwritten rule by seducing a man of her pay grade? Should only an 05, a lieutenant colonel, be able to marry another 05? Or was I mistaken about her disapproval, and was it just my sleep deprivation that made me feel that way? I would never find out, but I did know one thing: She was no longer on my side.

  Matters did not improve between us when Sherzai invited me to his Eid party. Eid ul-Fitr is a big three-day holiday that marks the end of the month of fasting. The Eid celebration took place in early November. Sherzai sent a personal invitation to me at the PRT. The note said, “Miriam, this is not work. I want you to not have to translate, so please, do not bring Judy. I will send my car to get you. The dish you love will be served.”