News From the Red Desert (25 page)

This time the A-10s came in even lower. The earth shook so hard that dust rose from the ground immediately under them and most of the men were coughing even before the cannons opened up. And they did open up and the whole earth erupted in man-high dirt geysers, shrapnel flying like sideways hail. She felt steel splinters bounce off the Kevlar of her helmet so hard and so many times she tried to crawl up inside it.

And then they were gone.

Fortin designated some of the men—all new guys or reservists—to remain with the dead and wounded; he formed everyone else into an assault party, and prepared to advance to the treeline. The belt-fed weapons—the 5.56-mm Minimis and the 7.62-mm GPMG—opened up, splintering the splinters further, atomizing wood into a pale haze of dust and cellulose. After a minute he halted them, then sent the platoon across in sections, the soldiers diving into the trees and searching for evidence of the enemy. After a moment they found a man, a boy, really, lying on his back and coughing up bloody froth. His smock was a mat of congealing blood. Beside him was an RPG. He had had no rifle, or it had been taken. He looked at the soldier who found him with wide eyes, and mumbled something between coughs. The terp was brought up. He knelt beside the boy and asked him something in Pashto. The boy replied in a couple of short phrases. The terp said something else. The boy looked away. Fortin asked the terp what the boy had said.

“He said, ‘Please don't leave me here.' ”

The platoon had by now stretched out along the ambush site, crawling through downed trees and branches. There were no other bodies alive or dead. When the terp asked the boy how many men he been with, he just looked away. Deirdre had by now caught up with them. She asked Fortin, “Can I take his picture?”

“No, ma'am.”

“Okay.” She put her camera away.

Fortin got on the radio and spoke in crisp, controlled words to the OPS O at KAF. A drone was in the vicinity now and they could see the platoon alongside the road, and the men guarding the wounded. “Can you see any enemy?” Fortin asked. There was a long pause.

“Affirmative. Wait out.” Then, a long minute later, “We have twelve personnel in traditional garb headed north and away from your position.” A moment later, “They appear to be armed.”

“Can you deal with them, or shall I pursue?”

“Wait.” Then, “We can target them.”

“Roger.”

Fortin looked up and down the narrow road. He saw nothing. Deirdre had positioned herself behind him, keeping out of his field of vision, but close enough to hear everything. He did not pay her any attention. “McLeod! Get your men under cover! Everyone away from the road!” The men began crawling into the trees. Then they heard an explosion about a kilometre north of them. A black cylindrical cloud rose slowly into the sky. The radio squawked: “The enemy appear to have been destroyed.”

“What is their location?”

“Grid reference: two three niner eight four eight.”

“Roger. Will investigate.” Eight hundred metres north-northwest of where they were.

“Understood.”

“We need a medevac for my wounded.”

“Roger that.”

Fortin crawled through the treeline until he came to the field on the other side. He could see a smoke and dust plume at the northern extremity of the field. The platoon advanced along the edge cautiously, pausing frequently to listen. It was very quiet. When they reached the far corner, they could see the crater the Hellfire missile had made.

He set up flanking positions on either side of the explosion site. Then he sent in alpha squad. McLeod radioed back a few minutes later. “Objective secured. Not much moving here.”

When Fortin got there, Deirdre trailing close behind, he saw McLeod facing away from the impact site, scanning for threats. Excellent. A less experienced squad leader would have been preoccupied with what was before him.

Which was twelve shattered men, who had bunched up as they had been preparing to cross open land, making a perfect target. Their weapons were strewn around a hundred foot radius. Shining bloody bone jutted out of trousers and brains out of skulls. An older man carrying a radio, possibly the commander, had been eviscerated. Deirdre began taking photographs. She forgot to ask permission. No one said anything to her.

Two men were still breathing. Adults, at least, this time. Beards as thick as brown brambles. One man's femur made a seventy-degree angle in his mid-thigh. The soldiers removed the AK-47s and the RPGs the dead and wounded had been carrying and piled them a few paces from the impact crater.

Deirdre photographed the shattered Taliban one after the other. The wounded men looked up at her, embarrassed at being seen in such a state by a woman. They covered their eyes with their arms. She moved on. The dead were mostly quite young. Farmers' sons, presumably sent to fight in lieu of the parent. The oldest were two men who could have been in their thirties, and she photographed these with particular care. They were hardly marked—the explosion had tossed them twenty feet from the impact area—and looks of nearly comic surprise were etched on their immobile faces. Deirdre had seen men dead of blast injuries before. IED dead were often unmarked and were unnerving to look at. She wondered what that felt like, to have a shock wave passing through you, scrambling your insides until all was hemorrhaging mush. Did that kind of death take long?

If she were to be killed, she would prefer being shot. Bullets were honest in their bloody piercing. No mysterious startled looks with intact
skin containing a pulped interior. She would want the means of her own death to be apparent. These perfectly intact but lifeless bodies had an obscene absurdity about them that repelled her.

The platoon divided the enemy's weapons into twenty-kilogram bundles and distributed them among themselves. The intelligence guys had asked that any recovered weapons be brought to them. There was some question of recently manufactured Chinese weaponry entering the country and they wanted to establish how significant an issue this was. Then the soldiers turned and made their way quickly and carefully back to the men they had left at the ambush site. As they headed out, Deirdre looked back to the wounded Taliban. One of them waved. She waved back. Sergeant Major Fortin gave her a glance that required no verbal elaboration.

When they got back, the wounded were still alive, though the gutshot man was pallid and losing consciousness. The medic told Fortin he needed to get to a surgeon immediately. Deirdre took her place in the centre of the defensive perimeter. She could see a farm in the distance that she hadn't noticed before. There was no movement visible in or around it. The family would have retreated inside the moment they heard the first shot. Some of the young men she had just watched die might have grown up there.

In the distance, the sound of helicopters. Then they were visible. Two Chinooks and two Apache escorts. The Apaches circled around the position, hovering and inspecting, before drawing back and allowing the Chinooks in. When the Chinooks landed, the rear doors gaped open and medAs ran from them.

Deirdre was pushed into the helicopter as soon as all the wounded were aboard. The platoon collapsed its perimeter as if it had been inhaled by the great noisy beast, and then they were all aloft and on their way back to KAF.

The Chinook settled down on the tarmac a hundred metres from the Green Beans. An ambulance drove up the moment the helicopter was stationary. The back doors opened and the medics carried the stretchers down the ramp and into the ambulances. Deirdre thought about
the Taliban fighters they had left to bleed to death in the dirt. Then she thought about the schoolteachers who had been lined up and shot outside their school in the Panjwai the week before. She hoped the men lying out in that field now were the men who had shot the teachers.

There were medical officers with the ambulances, and they immediately set to inserting more IVs and running in saline. They had blood waiting for the wounded. They moved in an urgent and precise way that reminded the soldiers not at all of their chaotic crises. No one was shooting at the doctors. Within seconds the ambulances were headed off to the hospital, whose ambulance bay opened up to the flight line. The soldiers watched the ambulances back into the bay and then the whole hospital seemed to vibrate, lines of men and women moving to surround each ambulance.

The soldiers lined up on the flight line and walked off together to their after-action debriefing, with the young intel officer from the fancy university. Deirdre turned left when the rest of them turned right and walked to the gate leading to the base. She needed a shower and then she had a piece to write. She noticed bit of flesh on her arm—someone's skin and fat. She brushed it off. She took two more steps toward her room. Then she stopped and leaned over, her hands on her knees. And tears welled up and ran down her face noiselessly. Soldiers walked past her on both sides. They looked at her with concern and embarrassment but did not approach her.

After a long minute she straightened up and carried on.

Green Beans café, KAF

Rashid Siddiqui

Once again, it was impossible to sleep. The heat made every bit of my body that touched the wool blankets sting. The smell of the man who had slept in my bunk before me was pure ammonia—I think he slept about as much as I did. And then the Apaches and A-10s started taking off all at once. Something had happened out in the desert, presumably.

Never mind, there are things that needed doing anyway. Rami Issay is intent on recapitulating the
Fight Club
fiasco and wants me to pick the film for next week.

I wonder if Captain Tom Allan, officer commanding, Ramstein Base Cinema, as he titles himself in his correspondence, has any more intention of sending us what we ask for this time than he did last time. Oh, one mustn't get paranoid. Mistakes happen, and after all, it might not be the most fastidious souls who, in the middle of two wars, are attached to the base cinema.

So
Magnolia.
Umm, no. Not the right film for an outside show.
Pan's Labyrinth
? Okay, he's having us on. At least we're clear about that.
Borat
? Well, he has a sense of humour.
The Departed
? No. Too much dialogue.
Rambo: First Blood
? Could the same person have recommended this as the earlier movies?
Kill Bill: Vol. 2.
Possibly.
Pulp Fiction.
Pulp Fiction
! Dialogue heavy, to say the least, but lots of action, too. And Uma Thurman. This could work.

Rami Issay would have to agree, of course. He probably would, though. He has hardly been in the café for the last few days, so busy with getting the approvals for the chess tournament. And he claims some sort of television crew is coming to interview him about his attempts to lighten the lives of the brave soldiers here. No doubt, I shall be organizing that too.

Was he ever so happy running his curry shop in Leeds? Or his computer sales network, whatever that was, in Islamabad? I doubt it. Those were situations grounded in reality, and men like Rami Issay do not prosper faced with taxes that must actually be paid and competitors who work harder than they fantasize. War is unreal in a way that resonates with fabulists like him. So long as the general continues to find this café amusing, there will be no other opening across the street from it. It's the perfect arena for a man of his talents. Talent.

I have to spend more time thinking about what I am doing. My contract will be up in a year and the question is, were I to leave, where would I go? I am three-quarters of an engineer, persona non grata in America and a subject of interest to the secret police in my homeland. A return to Pakistan is not attractive to me and I may board no western aircraft, receive no western visas—all for reasons that cannot be discussed with me. Never mind, it is what I must face. The question is, what next? I must not get trapped by entropy here in this coffee shop. Next thing you know you're thirty and your life's trajectory is set. Next thing you know, you're Rami Issay.

Mohammed Hashto

Rashid is an impure boy. He helped Rami Issay, who is also impure, show that movie with the shameful women, Helena Bonham Carter. Rashid and Rami Issay are supposed to be faithful Muslims and they are not. They spend too much time with the ferenghee and care for nothing but
their approval. Rashid lived among them too long, I think, in America. And Rami Issay lived for a long time in Britain. The ferenghee bring only death. Before the Americans came, there was no war here. It was like in Pakistan. People grew their crops, fed their children, went to weddings and studied the Holy Book. Why can't it be like that again? I want to go home so badly I can't think about anything else. These people are not my friends. They are impure. The only faithful men here are Fazil and maybe Amr. Though Amr struggles, too.

As I do. I like Just Amachai, for one. But she is an unbeliever and she works in that shop of hers and I am told that what goes on there is wicked. Prostitution is an abomination to Allah. It is adultery and involves things that must only happen between men and their wives. Why would she do this?

As I learn more about my faith, I understand that the righteous life is a strict one. And that the devil wears a pretty face sometimes. She seems so kind. But you must look at the whole of someone's actions. If they cannot honour God then how can they honour your friendship? “Do not mix with the ungodly,” the religious men say, “and understand that they may not announce their ungodliness to you, for that is Satan's way.”

I was shown a hadith about this yesterday and I thought of Just Amachai and then I wept. To me she does not seem wicked. Is everyone who does not appear wicked, wicked? Is my teacher wicked? Maybe Rashid is in truth holy, because he does not pretend to be? There would be a long list of holy people around here, if that is the way it works. It cannot be. We must use our eyes and our ears, even if they may be deceived. For what else are we to use to look upon Allah's wonders? To listen to them? To think about them?

Just Amachai

That boy has such light in his eyes. Short and quick and with a shock of black hair as thick and upright as a shoe brush. He moves like he thinks
every critical eye is upon him. He is so quick to smile when he discerns tenderness. Constantly I have to stop myself from touching him.

These days he is trying to figure out his religion and is full of powerful feelings. His adult person is bursting out like a lily. He thinks for himself and this is where the turbulence comes from. Most people just accept what they're told and pray for prosperity. His adolescent sincerity is what reminds me so much of my own boy. They would enjoy one another, I think.

Any day now he will start falling in love with girls and women. He should get back to his home village—this is an unnatural place for him to be at this age, with no girls and only a few women around. Me and the other masseuses. The nurses from the hospital, the women soldiers. No other children.

This is a childless place. Except in the hospital, I suppose, where the wounded children are brought. But there are no children walking these roads, playing, laughing. Maybe I have stayed long enough. I have made some money and it is time to go back to my son. My parents are kind but they belong to another century and my son must learn about this one. With the money I have made here, he can go to secondary school and university, if he gets in. It is tempting to stay a few more months and put a bit more away. But every day I stay is another I will not spend with my boy. I must make some decisions, I think. No doubt my supervisor, the Russian woman, will make it difficult to leave. But the Americans oblige the employers to get us home when we are finished working. I must time it so no pay is owing to me when I tell her I am done working here.

If only I could take the boy back home. I could send him to school, I could find him a mosque to attend. It is a daydream, I know. But he is trying to make his way in this world without a family and it seems so unfair. He just wants to be loved and to be safe. I would love him and I would keep him safe.

I have been away from my own family far too long. This will have to be my last month here. I don't care if they do keep some of my pay. I will tell my employers today.

Deirdre O'Malley

That ambush messed me up. More than it should have. Ever since getting off the Chinook that brought us home I've felt like I'm swimming in clear jelly. It was the first time that the war here felt dangerous to me, in the way that Iraq was, continuously and unpredictably. Was I like this there? Anxious and rattled and unable to sleep? At the end I was, I guess. After the abduction. Was that why Kenwood sent me here? For a fucking break?

It's not like I even got scratched. I do need a new pack. But that's happened before. What I can't stop wondering is what it would take to break the will of the Taliban. They took twelve dead, against two dead and two wounded. And they had all the advantages. We walked into an
ambush.

No matter how resolved they are, though, the Taliban can't sustain a loss ratio like that any more than the Iraqi insurgents could. I heard from Lattice's aide-de-camp this morning. They're going out on a long patrol in three days and I can come along. He was cryptic about where we'd be going or even how I should pack. “I suggest you prepare for all eventualities, ma'am. We'll go through your pack before we leave, and prune what needs pruning.”

I wonder what Jeremy will think about this. He's bound to see whatever I write. I'd let him know, but we have hardly spoken. A handful of nods across rooms at press conferences and a couple of crossed paths around the base. He'll have an opinion. He'll think I'm being manipulated—or set up. He'll think it's an effort to get at him, narcissist that he is. But the senior generals are all that way. They're easy to love, these people with the light inside them. The rest of us deep-sea creatures move toward it by reflex. Which serves their purposes.

I could use some of the Thai woman's equanimity. I could use a massage. She must be tired of being here. The only person she talks to here is the boy. She puts up walls for the same reason I do, I think. The difference is that I need to be able to open those walls from time to time in order to do my job, and she really doesn't.

Still, look at her. Such perfect posture as she sits in the corner with her tea and looks out the window. She looks completely at peace with herself and the world. I want that. When she notices me, what does she see? Frenetic journalist-bitch, typing fast or reading her email, glowering at people who sit down with her uninvited. No one is ever invited. When she wonders what I am doing here, what I want to achieve, what does she guess? That I am ambitious and aggressive. That I keep colleagues away, for reasons she, as a woman, understands. That I submerge my loneliness in work.

How is she not lonely, too?

Fazil Palwasha

The Thai woman should just leave the boy alone. She is not his mother and even if she were, he is too old to be treated the way she treats him. He should respect her and be kind to her but not familiar with her. He has not made the progress he needs to. I will speak to him about it.

I myself am sounding like his father. I am not his father, he has no father. He has become his own father. And Amr, evidently, his uncle. They play chess constantly. Three or four games a day. I would say that time should be spent more productively, but how exactly would that be? Those two work harder than any of the rest of us.

It is such a strange bubble we all find ourselves in. Cappuccino and streusel muffins and mocha frappes. This will only go on so long. I will work here while I am able. It is humiliating but I am making more money for my family here than I would be selling magazines on the street in Islamabad. I am being excessive. I would not sell magazines in the street—they prefer boys for that, anyway. But my prospects are limited at home. The problem is my children. I must not allow them to go astray in the manner of the boy here. My wife has them going to a good school and they go to the mosque often; I spoke to the Imam before I
came here. He will watch over them and their instruction. My brothers will also help. But they need their father, too. They don't matter as much to anyone else as they do to me.

What I wish my co-workers to understand is that they should not be envied, these ferenghee among us. They are not happy. They are far from home and they miss their children, too. They are rich—there is no denying this. But listen closely to their explanations for why they have come here and you can hear their self-disdain. They know their lives are degenerate, that their wealth is stolen from poorer people, poorer countries. They come here, as individuals, to escape that wealth, when the reason their countries are here is to expand it. They feel that contradiction and it makes them unhappy. Look at the reporter. She could break into tears any moment. What she needs is faith. They all do. A single person is too small a thing to be worth caring about. Which is what draws them into armies. They seek the community we have in the House of Peace by going to war. I will look for a hadith that addresses this.

Amr Chalabi

Fazil is a difficult man but it is good that he is taking an interest in the boy. He needs to have educated men in his life, to show him the importance of learning. I cannot do that but Fazil can. And if the boy is saving his money the way he says he is, then perhaps when he goes home he can attend school. Though I wonder how long he will hold onto his money when he has no family to live with. If Fazil could take him with him that would be the best thing of all. But Fazil has his own family and his own sons to look after. What will probably happen is the boy will end up back home, spend all his savings and be back where he was before he came here. I would take him back to my village if I was sure my brothers would give him work and be kind to him. I have no land myself. Being poor is one thing when you're just looking after yourself.
It is much worse when someone needs your help. If he were a few years older he could join the army. But he isn't. He needs to go to school. He needs to be a boy. And have a father.

We must get him home. I will speak to Fazil about this.

Rami Issay

I thought having to take this job was the low point of my life, but now I wonder if it won't prove to be the biggest opportunity I have ever had. The more I hear about this reality television show idea, the more I think that this could be my redemption. Sula may yet forgive me.

It's a brilliant idea, really. If you're going to make a reality television show, what could be more real than war? I told Major Horner I thought that was profound and said of course I would be interested in helping. Rashid thought I was joking, though. He'll see. Nick Lachey himself is coming! He has his own page on IMDB. And Picabo Street! She competed in the Olympics!

They are interested in my attempts to bring culture to the war zone, the major tells me. They are planning a segment called “Stolen Information.” They want to have a mock interrogation, maybe have me play an interpreter. Or portray the man being interrogated. I have not done any acting before. I asked them if there would be lines to memorize. Major Horner thought they would probably prefer a more organic approach. Perhaps I will bring them some suggestions. I wonder if I should attempt to lose some weight.