News From the Red Desert (36 page)

And as she sat down, beaming unselfconsciously, Mohammed walked up her, grinning to see her so happy. He carried with him a chai latte. “Oh, thank you, Mohammed, that's very kind of you.”

“Is madam having an especially good day today?”

“How can you tell?”

“You are smiling, if you will permit me, like a quarter moon on its side.”

“That is beautiful. Did your teacher teach you that?”

“I read it on the computer we keep in the back.”

“The internet is full of treasure.”

“And many other things.”

She laughed. “Yes, and many other things. Mohammed. How are you?”

“I am well. And you?”

“I, too, am well. I have been making arrangements to return home, to my family, in Thailand.”

“For a vacation?”

“No, for good,” she said carelessly and too quickly, and then she saw his face.

“Well, that's…” was all he could muster, and then he ran into the back of the café. Rami Issay looked up to see the boy disappear. He glanced around, mystified. Fazil glowered at Just Amachai from behind the counter. After a few moments he wiped off his hands and followed Mohammed into the back. Just Amachai was dismayed. She had been so callous. She could not follow him into the back of the café. She had to speak to him again. Maybe when he came out.

The first three drafts were too obviously exculpatory. ‘ “You have to understand,' the general said, ‘these men are in the field three hundred days a year,” ' was the lede on the first go-round. It wouldn't fly. The comments section would hear from thousands of people who did not know the rudiments of rank structure but would hold forth with absolute certainty about war and rules of engagement. Editorial boards across the country, which had thundered their approval of all proposed wars for years, would take the opportunity to seize the moral high ground of uninformed hypocritical condemnation. And worse, the only voices to compete with the critical ones would be the worst possible: “Give 'em two, boys.”

The only way forward was to just go pure
AP Style Manual.
Facts, events, statements, one upon the other without comment or inflection. Describe what she knew, what had happened, what was said to her. Let the reader make up her mind.

And, with every word, she would sink a knife deeper into the men she respected most in the world.

Green Beans café, KAF

Rami Issay

The lady journalist is distressed by something. She argued with the general yesterday and has not been the same since. Perhaps he is unhappy with her and this depresses her.

But such a glorious day today, and the auguries could not be more favourable. It appears that this television show has widespread support. Sara Miller and Ms Simpson are very optimistic. Already they are talking of spinoffs! Their last effort,
Firefighters' Hoses,
they told me, ran for two seasons. This discussion of me going to Los Angeles is pretty exciting, I must say. I did tell them that obtaining a visa may be challenging, as, for that matter, is merely getting me on an airplane. How long do people stay on no-fly lists? If those on it are all people of as little danger as I am, it must be quite long, indeed. Could it just get longer and longer forever, until every faithful brown man is included? I must ask more questions about this. One hopes they will not be put off involving me when they learn of my difficulties in the UK.

I must also do something nice for Rashid. He has been my muse in these efforts and to him must go at least a little of the credit for the success of the film screenings and of the chess tournament. I will suggest to my superiors that he assume the mantle of command when I move
to California. Fazil will object, of course. But that man lacks vision. He does not understand the poetry of running a café. He does not grasp the significance of the chess and the movies, the shelter a café provides from a difficult world. He understands what the place earns, but he does not see what it nurtures.

But my wife will, when she sees the reality television show. Maybe not
Stars Earn Stripes
—my appearance will be too brief to change anyone's mind about anything. Mine will be just a cameo and cameos must not hijack the production, I understand that. But this spin-off show they are planning could become a vehicle to communicate an idea. And it might allow us all to live together again, and permit me to support her and my daughters.

I get so ahead of myself sometimes. The thing to think about now is the movie tomorrow night. Sara Miller's boss will be there and it will be useful to inspire in him the same level of enthusiasm.

Just Amachai

It is like I touched the boy with a live wire. Dismissed by his own mother, alone on this insane base, one child among twelve thousand adults. He and I develop a friendship that seems very warm—and then all of a sudden I announce that I am leaving. I am a fool.

And now he will not even look at me. Fazil had to bring me my tea. With the disdain of a missionary, but still. It would be easy to just leave. But I think I must put things right with Mohammed. I would take him back to Thailand if I could. But that it is not possible and, anyway, this is where he is from. Like my home is where I am from.

This is exactly how you make a boy grow up to hate women. There are enough of those already.

Perhaps I could write him a letter. I did not make his mother abandon him. I was simply friendly to him at the café he works at. But he is a child and he is lonely and unhappy. We all have an obligation to help
him if we can. I think a letter would be good. Does he read English as well as he speaks it? I've seen him write out the chalk menu—so probably. But a letter. I'll never even know if he read it. And he'll know that.

Mohammed Hashto

I cannot look at her. She thinks I am upset that she is leaving but I do not care at all. It is the obscenity of that Jessica Alba movie that torments me. I shut my eyes and pray but the picture of her and her rope stays with me. It was like Satan was sitting in my lap and holding my eyes open and pointing my head at her. She was so beautiful she could not possibly be real, and Satan held everyone there that night and came to us all as we sunk into those impure thoughts.

Afterward I looked Jessica Alba up on the computer. There are many photographs of her, all of them hard to not look at for a long time. The day after the movie, I went to the bazaar and bought
Into the Blue
and the
Fantastic Four.
I watched them that night on Rami Issay's DVD player while he slept. I felt like I loved her. That was Satan, sitting in my lap.

I have not understood how powerful his magic is before. But when I watched those movies it seemed to me that she was no nice and kind and tender that it would simply be impossible not to love her. And however immodest she is in these movies, this is just the wickedness of the men who make those movies. She does what is asked of her, and in that world, women wear bathing suits and revealing clothes. Surely she deserves some praise for her obedience, even if it is to requests pure men would not make of a woman? This is how I thought, because I am young and still learning.

I know now that Jessica Alba is the vessel that Satan has chosen to reach me. He wants me to excuse her, to love her, and to want her.

And it was Satan who brought these soldiers here to kill my people. On the internet this morning, they say that, out in Panjwai, they shot down twenty boys my age who were praying in the house of their uncle,
just because they were wearing turbans. And Satan also made me weak, made me want the friendship of the Thai woman and made me cry about my mother with my pillow over my head at night.

Rashid Siddiqui

Poor little Mohammed, in love with Jessica Alba and the Thai masseuse both. How did anyone think that this was a good idea? One boy among all these suspect men and a few women. How could that not be a disaster?

Bright and yet not hot today—a rare combination here. It affects the mood of the whole café. Everyone except Mohammed seems cheerful. Rami Issay is so convinced that he will become an American reality television star that he hardly talks about anything else. Which is fine by me.

Chayse Simpson

I have to admit Rashid is cute. I heard him speak English to some customers earlier this week in an unguarded moment and he sounded like Ben Affleck, all Boston drawl. Issay says he studied at Harvard but I'm pretty sure that is hyperbole. BU, maybe. We'll need to find out, for sure, for the writers. That raises a delicate point: if Homeland Security saw fit to deport him, then what will be said about us if we use him on the show?

Deirdre O'Malley

So it's written. Seven thousand words of nothing-but-the-facts. I sent it to Lattice. I imagine he'll show it to his PA people. They'll be aghast. I'll probably be asked to get on a plane pretty soon.

Yes, twelve dead Taliban sympathizers or recruits are bad. But how many girls will have acid poured on their faces for going to school when this all goes to shit and the Taliban take over again? More than twelve, I'll say that. So what have I accomplished here, really? I preserved my fucking
credibility.

I want him to just deny it all. Deny the quotes that look so damning in light of the shooting. Refuse to confirm anything I've written. His people might tell him to do that. If they do, and he does, then fine. I've done what I needed to do. Whether the piece runs or not, whether it even survives fact checking, is not my problem.

He kept saying he'd confirm everything though. I'm pretty scared he'll do just that. Like he's prepared to let his career just blow up. He thinks he's this country's best chance to emerge from all this tragedy. And he is. Rolling over for this will be betraying that chance, and this country we invaded. I want to tell him that. I tried to. I called him, but he didn't take my call. Then the press release came out a couple of hours ago about Foscart being under investigation for events surrounding the shooting deaths of suspected Taliban in Panjwai. That would be his PA people who drafted that. “Suspected Taliban.” You start lying in these things and you lose all chance of recovering. But he didn't stop them and he could have. Inexplicable.

Captain Robert Waller

So after sifting through every record we have of internet traffic on and off the base in the months prior to the publication of those leaks, the best we can do is admit that we just don't know.
After
the leaks were published, that interpreter sent some of the same files to an address in Lahore. But nothing about him suggested he was involved before that. His email accounts were all clean. And his interrogation—which still makes me nauseous to remember—seemed pretty clear-cut. Fuck. I remember those guys back in 2001, and the things they got up to with prisoners then.
I thought it was just an excess-of-the-moment, buildings-still-smoking sort of thing. Who would ever have thought that would become normal? Sick fucking puppies get into that. The twist is that they sent me here in the first place because I was SF and I was here at the start. It's not like this is intelligence work so much as it is police work. Which is why my working group involved FBI, DHS and NSA, as well as CIA. Who all consider me not enough of a cop to be leading the team. But still I'm enough of an SF infantry sergeant not to put up with that for long.

Anyway. The other lead was that large late-night upload from a week before the first publication, from here in KAF. But we weren't copying all files coming in and out yet. So we just can't say for sure. I am told there are also suspicious-looking uploads recorded on a couple dozen other bases over here and stateside. In retrospect, we were pretty lax. Unless the leaker gets loaded and starts confessing his involvement on some chat platform or something, I can't see this case going anywhere.

What I try to remember is that, big picture, this has been a great opportunity. Now I have field experience in combat arms, traditional intelligence assessment and in counter-espionage investigation. So the thing to do is wrap up the assessment and file the report. Whoever sent me here is looking after me.

The guys I run into over at the SF compound that I knew from my days with them think I did the smart thing moving to intelligence. That's a relief. They say they can't see the years coming up having a patch on the ones just passed. Meaning: the wars are going to shit—but also that we are, too. Which they can't say out loud. My stepdad would agree with that. Anyway, he would if he knew what I spent three days watching and listening to. I won't be able to bring myself to tell him about that.

I lift a hand and order another coffee. Nice to have a little downtime.