Doing The Two-Step

Here, there are times when even the most ordinary of days offers up a surprise. Case in point: I had a minor dalliance at the PX store today. I was standing in line along the candy aisle, waiting my turn at the cash register. A trooper walks in front of me, wanting to cut across the line so he could go to the next aisle. I step to one side, he does the same, I step back, and he steps back too. We do this two-step routine a couple of times, until finally, I stand still and motion for him to pass through.

He looks at me, smiles, and then says, “What? Oh, I thought we were dancing.”

What I Am Is Brave

“I’m not funny. What I am is brave.”  ~ Lucille Ball

It feels as though I braved a lot of airports just to get back here. I barely made it through two airports in the Philippines (oh the horror!), slept on stiff chairs in Singapore, suffered disorientation in Chennai, then rushed madly out of Dubai into crazy Kabul, and finally, this last sunrise ride to Kandahar. After 6 plane rides in 5 days, I am back in my little dust bowl. That long break already seems like a vague memory.

In Kabul, I woke up early to catch this 6th flight, and I was glad to find out that there would only be two of us on board the B1900. I’m so over the rock star feeling of being one of the few on board our B1900, I was just happy because it meant I could get some sleep. The guy on the same flight as me, blond and blue eyed with one of those painful-looking Caucasian tans, chats amiably for a few minutes, and then turns away to read a book when the plane is at cruise speed. Good man, I think, as I slump my head to the side, adjust my headphones, and drift off to much-needed sleep.

It was a smooth ride for most of the hour, until the pilots decide to swoop the plane’s nose sharply down as we make the descent into Kandahar Air Field (KAF). I think they do it on purpose, have a little fun in a day’s work, why not? I wake up to the sight of jagged mountains glinting in the sunlight. I still find it all strangely beautiful, the sharp edges and the deeply carved valleys of this Afghan landscape. Eventually, the horizon levels out and morphs into row upon row of military planes, helicopters, trucks, hummers, and other war transport arranged precisely on the ramps. Soon enough, our little corner of the flight line comes into view–I see the Logistics warehouse, a few of our helos, the little fuel truck. My sleepy heart skips, a little thump of excitement to see home and all that it holds for me.

This is a happy return, in more ways than one. I would be coming back to a life that I have developed a liking for, despite the unusual circumstances. I would be coming back to something other than just my self.

Kandahar is a place I want to come back to, imagine that. A year ago I wouldn’t have dreamed of writing that line, and now I am amazed by the simple truth in it. We make our home in the strangest places, when we carry home in our hearts. And God help me, I do put my battered heart out there on the line–again and again. My heart has found a home here, in a place of grays and browns, amid the swirl of dust, desperation, and death.

Dark thoughts to begin another year, yes. But I am not being pessimistic, I just see things more clearly now. With one year under my belt, I think I understand life here better than I did when I first arrived. It has been a most interesting year, to say the least.

Marking the end of this year, I understand that bravery is defined as beyond being able to endure the sound of blasts day or night, when you’ve never heard that awful sound before in your life. It is keeping calm in the midst of unfolding turmoil, even as the men around you arm themselves and get that tight-eyed look to their faces, their minds clicking back to terrible memories of combat you know nothing about, but can sense from the gleam in their eyes. It is bravery to befriend solitude, to embrace the bleakness that permeates everywhere, to be able to live with the terrible stillness that descends at the end of certain days. It is also bravery to be able to withstand the endless loop of days that seem exactly like the ones before, the sameness that can slowly but surely drive you mad.

I know another kind of bravery now–the kind that goes beyond facing one’s mortality. This year found me in a place where shedding all sorts of baggage was necessary. It spurred me to leave behind the wounds of the past and turn to face a new possibility. It required a measure of bravery I always knew I had, but have not quite put to the test. It was scarier than IEDs, ground attacks, rocket blasts, even the threat of Taliban invasion. But I am nothing if not brave, I always tell myself, and so I plunged in head first.

Do I get rewarded for this act of bravery? I’m not sure. I don’t know if there is a prize for falling head first into something, but I think the little bursts of happiness I get is more than enough reward for bravery. Whatever the outcome, whether or not I win this battle (or the entire war), the feat alone of going into it the way I did–open-faced, heart in hand–is an exhilarating experience, a powerful rush not soon to be forgotten.

And so I am back.

The Hurting

Sometimes, when I least expect it, when my mind is not willfully armed against the treacherous onslaught of memories, I suddenly see my boys. Out of nowhere, a series of pictures flashes in my mind’s eye:  my boys’ bright-eyed, smiling faces are always upturned, open and guileless, as only children’s faces can be.

It wrenches my heart and leaves me weak, gasping for breath. They all say it will get better. The pain and the longing? It will fade. The aching desire to reach out and hug them as tight as I can? It will pass, they say. The yearning to smell their warm necks, to hear their laughter? That too will subside.

Well, they all lie. It’s getting close to a year now, and it still hurts the same, every time.

Sirens With Your Coffee?

The rocket attack alarm sounds while a friend and I are having coffee and smokes at this outdoor French-style cafe on the boardwalk. A blaring siren wails, and then the grim pronouncement, “Rok-it, at-tack. Rok-it, at-tack.” The voice that accompanies the siren is female–dry, accent-neutral, and a little robotic–like the tinny voice prompts you hear on automated answering services. The standard operating procedure (SOP) for rocket attacks is to get small and seek cover, or find the nearest bunker and stay there until the All Clear is sounded. When a rocket hits, it explodes and shrapnel fly out, so you need to expose as little of yourself as possible.

In seconds, all of us cafe patrons grab coffees, sandwiches, cigarettes, and other stuff, then duck sheepishly under our tables. The first thing I notice is that all the Romanian troopers remain seated comfortably on their benches, unmindful of everyone else doing the sudden dry dive. I look inquiringly over at my friend Tata Su, and he says, “Ignore them, they are used to it.” We exchange grins.

I feel cramped and self-conscious under the table, mainly because crouching that low wasn’t very comfortable and I see that up close, the floor is very dirty. I question the wisdom of having only the thin wooden slats of the table for protection against rockets, and my friend says it is better than nothing. I don’t quite agree with that, but don’t really feel like arguing the finer points of rocket attack etiquette while bent in such an unladylike position. We puff away and make more morbid jokes for a few minutes.

An ambulance siren wails, loud enough for us to know that one is speeding nearby. Silently, I reassure myself that the ambulance is just ISAF being hyper-prepared, and not an actual necessity. It is much too nice an afternoon to contemplate the need for ambulances.

An uneasy little silence follows, as though everyone just ceased talking at the same exact moment. Not even five seconds later, as if on cue, we all stand up and go back to our seats, even though the All Clear siren has not sounded yet. The two heavily mascaraed women next to our table pounce on their sandwiches; the men in dust-streaked blazers across from us resume their cross-legged poses and take small sips from their coffee cups. The Romanians, still wondrously unperturbed, converse even louder in their guttural, hard-rolling consonants.

My friend and I place our  props back on the table: cellphones, coffee cups, stirrers, and the shared Marlboro reds pack. We light up and resume sipping our cafe Americanos, behaving as the others do, in casual (not even brave) denial of this brief dalliance with death.

La Flaca = Slim One

Sometimes the bleakness here is shafted by a little ray of sunshine. Just recently, this bearded Latino took me aside and whispered to me, “Hola, la flaca.”  He said it means, “Hello, Slim One.”  Haha! He’s an old guy, but quite the charmer. He told me I’m much more slimmer than when he last saw me some months ago. It feels good to be noticed and complimented.

This year, I am pushing myself to be healthier, stronger, more brave. I am actually surprised that I have such a strong resolve to see this through. I accept it now, the fact that for years I have been in a deep funk–denying my spirit, not taking good care of my body and my soul. It’s somewhat ironic that I had to be dislocated in such a bleak place to realize that. I think the spareness of this environment focuses me—away from the noise, the colors, and all other distractions you have no choice but to look a little bit longer inward and find the will to change things.

It’s been six months now, and I think I have come a long way. Not just because I lost some weight, although outwardly of course, that is the obvious change. Inside, I’m tougher, stronger. I have always been that, people tell me. But now I am sure of it. I can withstand so much more that I ever thought I could:  loneliness, alienation, confinement, the sameness of days. I can contend with the lack of physical contact, a dearth of conversation, the protracted human interaction, hidden and blatant prejudice, the sexual tension, the petty quarrels with small minds, the absence of all the familiar, everyday things one takes for granted.

I know a guy here who gets depressed when the kitchen doesn’t have the juice he usually has with his cereal for breakfast. Such a little thing, but when you are here, the little things get to you. It’s the sensory deprivation that wages war on the self. And I understand that, I get it.

I have survived it all so far, and I will continue to do so.