Authors: Elliot Ackerman
Issaq kicked the door open, just missing my head.
You flush! You wipe! Then you flush! Yes?
My bare ass still squatted above the hole. I couldn’t shift my gaze from his scarred chest. Above it, his green eyes stared wildly at me. His face was like a worn-in hide pulled tight over high cheekbones. His pants were the same American uniform I’d seen on Taqbir, but the burning red henna painted onto his fingernails and dyed into his hair, in the traditional way, made it impossible for him to be mistaken for anything but the Pashto warrior he was.
I said nothing, followed his instructions, and rushed back to the recruit barracks, where I would be cold but safe.
A little while later, just before the sun rose, Issaq pulled the blanket from our door. In the dim light, he lifted four sandbags inside. I crouched in the far corner. He knifed open the top of each. A splash of dirt flew across the room as he tossed the contents on us. All the while he shouted: Up! Up! Spey zoy! Sons of swine! Get out of your own filth! Clenched in his teeth was a whistle. He blew it with all the muscles of his stomach. The other recruits jumped from their blankets. I stood frozen in the back corner, using the great defense of the powerless—anonymity.
We dressed quickly. I stole glances at the other recruits, wondering what type of men they were. In truth, they were barely men. Like me, most were not past twenty. I felt a kinship, but also a distrust of them. A misfortune, like mine, had surely brought them here, but I remembered those first two winters in Orgun and what Ali had taught me about the
boys we’d slept among in the hills. Just like before, I would be a fool to trust someone as poor as me.
We jammed through the door and into a small, dusty courtyard. The firebase was little more than ten plywood huts surrounded by HESCO barriers. The dawn fell in shadow along the mountains and Issaq chased circles around us, his energy rising with the sun. Issaq’s voice awoke the feral dogs that slept between the huts. They stretched their limbs in the cold morning air, offering us curious looks. A tall and skinny recruit with sandy hair ran outside in bare feet. He clutched a pair of sandals to his chest. When he bent over to put them on, his trousers slid down his waist. This was Tawas. Issaq! he shouted, calling our tormentor by his first name only. I soon learned there was no rank in the Special Lashkar. Everyone’s position was known by an unspoken authority, the idea being that anyone who relied on rank to lead was unfit for the role.
Issaq rushed over to Tawas and thrust his chest at him, his ribs pressing into what must have been, at best, Tawas’s stomach. What? Issaq said, spitting out the words.
Tawas stood at attention. With one hand he grasped his waistband. I’ve forgotten my belt, he mumbled.
Issaq reached up and struck him with an open palm across the face. Go back and get it! he shouted.
Short commanders are the most difficult. They carry disappointment too openly. If they turn their disappointment on themselves they become timid. If they turn it on others they become tyrants.
Issaq was a tyrant.
Through the rest of winter, he taught us the foundation of all soldiering—repetition. That first day was like every other. After we awoke, we ran to the empty helicopter-landing zone. Soaked and gasping for air, we crawled through the wet mud and gravel while Issaq stood over us.
We did push-ups and sit-ups on the loose rocks that scraped our palms and cut our backs. We wore only our thin shalwar kameez, uniforms being a privilege we’d yet to earn. Between exercises Issaq paused and pondered how to increase our agonies. He lacked imagination, so we often did more of the same. Had he been creative he could’ve designed no better torture than the sameness of this routine.
Always Issaq taunted us. He’d hold his head back, asking the sky, or perhaps God, how we’d be ready to fight Gazan’s men in the spring. How will I convince a fierce commander like Sabir that these darwankee are soldiers, he’d mutter to himself, spitting in the dirt, as if in the cold muck he’d found our faces. When Issaq got bored, he made us run laps inside the HESCO walls of the perimeter. The feral dogs trotted alongside us, as if in solidarity.
Once Issaq tired of this, he lined us up in formation. We stood covered in mud as he brought over his beloved motorbike, a small red thing with tan stuffing that bulged from its duct-taped seat. Tawas later told me the bike had been confiscated on a raid two summers past. A man had tried to escape on it. He’d driven right in front of Issaq, and Issaq had shot him in the face with his pistol. Issaq insisted this made the bike his. After the raid, and against Commander Sabir’s wishes, he’d driven it eight hours back to the firebase.
From the formation’s front Issaq shouted: Right turn, march! Forward, march! Double quick, march! His motorcycle puttered into gear. We ran after him, out the candy-striped gate and down the dusty hilltop that wore our firebase like a crown. We set out on the north road, a pounded ribbon of gravel cut into the mountains, wide enough for one truck. The road took traffic in both directions, but the locals called it the north road because nothing of value or good traveled to the south.
We climbed and descended the road’s narrow switchbacks. We passed over endless ridges and found ourselves standing in the shadow
of a long valley. We stopped here, heaving and sweating from our journey. This was our rifle range.
Naseeb drove a white binjo ahead of us. He parked next to a shipping container that had been left on the range. He now worked at a large combination lock bolted to its front. The metal shackle popped loose. He walked inside.
Issaq shouted: What are you waiting for! Get in line! Get in line!
We lined up. Naseeb handed each of us an old bolt-action rifle, British Lee-Enfields and German Mausers. The weapons were in poor condition. Their wood hand guards had petrified, their stocks were chipped and some of their barrels bent. The best rifles, Kalashnikovs, were saved for the soldiers, not us recruits. And a man, even a recruit, cannot separate his worth from his rifle’s.
All morning we shot from the valley floor, our targets the rocks and the trees. We grasped the steel globe on the bolt handle’s end. We levered it up, sliding the bolt back, opening the rifle’s breech. Into it, we placed fat, old bullets, their cartridges dented, their once sharp slugs worn down to lead nubs. We fired from every position—sitting, kneeling, lying down, walking, running. Whether or not our bullets hit anything appeared to be of little interest to Issaq. He seemed to care only that we followed his instructions. Most of the time I was too frightened to fire in case I missed badly. I only pretended to shoot.
At midday Naseeb brought us lunch. We could hear the wheels on his white binjo scrape its chassis every time he hit a bump. He parked next to our firing line and stepped outside. I smiled at him and he at me, but when Issaq marched toward him, he turned quickly to his duties.
What have you brought for me today, my fat friend? Issaq asked.
Naseeb nodded toward the passenger seat.
Issaq lifted a thermos from the binjo and inhaled its steaming contents. Ah! Excellent! And for them? he asked.
Yes, yes, the usual, said Naseeb.
Serve it up, Issaq told him. Then he sat with his lunch in the shade of the trees and forgot us. Naseeb pulled two black trash bags from the trunk. Our squad formed a broken line next to him. Inside one bag was leftover naan
from the soldier’s mess, in the other raw white onions. The cursing began, just soft enough so Issaq couldn’t hear it.
Not again.
Bowli
,
Piss.
How can we fight on these rations! shouted someone.
This met with many grunts of approval.
Stop your whining! interrupted Mortaza, the season’s first recruit, who’d endured this existence longer than any. There is plenty to eat, he scolded. Whether it’s good is no matter.
I took my meal and sat next to Tawas and his brother Qiam. Most of the squad could grow at least the wisps of a beard. Like me, these two couldn’t yet. Unlike the others, the brothers laughed as they ate.
This is a feast, said Qiam. Such luck we recruits have!
The onions are a little undercooked, but the naan more than makes up for it, replied Tawas from under his sandy brown curls.
The black-haired brother, Qiam, smacked me on the back and asked: How about you, my friend? Any recommendations for the chef?
Not knowing how to answer, I was silent.
Qiam shrugged the bony knobs of his shoulders. He gave me a hard stare as though perhaps my silence were an insult. Tawas grinned and grabbed his brother by the elbow. Ah, a mute! he said, looking at me. He is perfect!
Some branches thrashed above us as Mortaza climbed a pine tree. Brown needles rained down as he brushed against them. He separated himself from the squad, leaning along a thick limb to eat. He watched over the brothers, and me, and the other soldiers who grumbled.
We finished the naan and onions, and were full enough. Our training resumed. When the sun broke the ridgeline, Issaq hiked us back to the firebase for dinner. We always had training at night so we kept our rifles during the meal. This was important. Dinner was the only time we’d see the nearly thirty soldiers of the Special Lashkar. To possess a rifle was the only connection we recruits had to them. I envied their uniforms and learned to hate the loose shalwar kameez I’d worn all my life.
At dinner we ate well, a korma of stewed beef or goat, the meat loose and tender, and rice baked with oil, salt, and butter in the style of a chalow. We sat almost as equals with the soldiers of the mess. Not trusting us, they said little about the fighting season to come. Instead they’d remember old friends, laughing at stories from years before. Weeks passed, and the winter wore on. We suffered its depths. The more the other soldiers saw us, ragged and bleary-eyed, tromping into the mess, the less guarded their words became.
Not long before spring, Gazan’s men set off another bomb in Orgun. It destroyed the ground floor of a building where Ali and I used to beg. Six people had died. The soldiers spoke of it openly. They wondered how Commander Sabir would respond. Gazan was said to be hiding in the hills south of Shkin, in a stretch of isolated border villages. The Americans wanted Gazan captured or killed. Mr. Jack would supply Commander Sabir well to go after him, delivering new rifles and uniforms, and, it was whispered, increasing the Special Lashkar’s budget for this next fighting season. Each night at dinner, we learned more of what was to come. This meal and the morsels of information we gathered gave us the energy and patience to endure the torments of our training.
Issaq always ate in the corner at a small table with the other squad and team leaders. At its head, Commander Sabir leaned back in his chair, his arms folded across his slender body, staring at his food like
a contract’s fine print. Now and then he chewed a mouthful, his face clamping into a resentful look, as if he wished he relied on nothing for nourishment.
Passage to Commander Sabir’s small table was through achievements in combat. He wore this violent reminder across his disfigured face. He had a mangled bottom lip. It looked like the blown-out end of a firecracker. Behind it, rows of teeth, some gold, some rotted, some still white, stuck out at the world with an underbite and snarl. This disfigurement, as well as the scars, paunches, and calluses of the other men gave the group an honest authority, one greater than shining medals and rank.
After dinner the night unfolded just like the afternoon except that Issaq met us with his motorcycle and wore a helmet with night-vision goggles. None of us had night vision and we struggled and scraped to keep up with him as he puttered back to the range. Heaving and sweating, we arrived and began our work, firing through our bolt-action Lee-Enfields and Mausers, their barrels bent, and missing our targets always. In the cold night the steam from our warm bodies rose and mixed with the smoke of our shots, covering the range in a haze. My mind wandered, and with it the haze seemed to clear—my mother’s secret, her brown and green eyes, my father’s rifle hidden in the woodpile, what Gazan took from Ali—it all appeared vividly. My life as a soldier loomed, though, the haze returning. That winter, had I seen the future as clearly as the past, I might have run away.
Eventually the days became warm. In the mountains the needles on the pines thickened and we knew spring would soon arrive. After a while longer the nights became warm too. On one warm night we returned from the range and each of us had a fresh green uniform waiting on our blanket. The next morning Issaq didn’t come for us, Commander Sabir did.
II
O
utside the barracks we lined up in two rows for our final inspection. Mortaza stood in front. He was most senior among us. This was a very little thing, but Mortaza was proud and so were we. Our new uniforms rested stiffly on our bodies, whose muscle, sinew, and bone were knotted more tightly after the weeks of training.
Commander Sabir wore the same uniform, but his was faded and soft. He carried it with an ease, as though he were the first person ever to put on a uniform. He approached us. Issaq attached himself to his shoulder, desperately speaking some last point. Commander Sabir nodded patiently at his boots as they walked. Issaq was still talking as Commander Sabir planted himself in front of Mortaza. Then he silenced Issaq just loud enough for us all to hear: Yes, yes old friend, but you’ve done your job well and they are ready.
Commander Sabir grasped Mortaza by the arm. Mortaza threw up his narrow chest in an effort to fill his uniform. You have been here the longest, said Commander Sabir. I remember when you arrived in the fall, just as the weather turned. You almost left when we said you’d have to train all winter. Now summer is here. When the weather turns again, Gazan will know the suffering he caused your family.
With these words, Mortaza tensed the weave of muscles in his arms
and legs as if wrestling down some part of himself. Commander Sabir stepped away. He moved through our ranks, finding Tawas and Qiam, who were unable to stop glancing down at their oversized uniforms, worn like clothing from a season they’d yet to grow into. Ah, the two brothers Taqbir discovered destitute in the north, he said. Who would call you orphans now?