Waiting for it

The prisoner, is he happier the night before he is released, or the night after?

I've been thinking my whole life that nothing trumps satisfaction. We are conditioned to believe that, perhaps. But satisfaction fades, and a low follows a high.

I have one great passion right now, an obsession. Home. I want so much to see Bagram again, because the next time I do, I'll be closer. Kuwait, even in scorching springtime will be a relief. Germany, then Kentucky. Then what? This great growing hunger, this desire to be back home will be sated and I'll be happy. I know that won't be it. I'll have fresh troubles then, but they are unforseeable to me now.

But this is the moment of perfection, and I haven't realized it. I have three glorious months to contemplate a moment beyond criticism, unable to dull until it passes.

Now I am as a young man, made plans to meet a new lover. What feeling on earth is better than waiting for her knock? The minutes tick by, dreadfully slow. Books and television are worthless diversions. You cannot give them any concentration, for your arms ache for her and your chest is hollow awaiting her arrival. How would any mere diversion fulfill such a hunger?

And no matter how glorious the rendezvous, which is better: the hour before the knock on the door, or the hour after?

The Attack

I eased onto the passenger seat of the gator behind the barracks and propped my feet up on the dash. I raised my paper cup in the direction of the charred crater to the southwest. 

It had started different from any other. What woke me was the sound of a man's death. The moment that started my day ended his.

The explosion shook the walls of my room. After a confusing half minute, the loudspeaker started wailing, then followed by the calm voiced announcer. I kicked my feet into my sandals, grabbed my rifle, and dove into the squat concrete bunker. 

God, that was a loud one. Was it a mortar, an RPG, what? My comrades and I all looked at each other like grinning imbeciles. A few nervous jokes were exchanged, then a head poked into the shelter and said "Gear up!"

We ran back to our rooms and shimmied into our armor and helmet and met up at the company. The explosion was a car bomb trying to breach our wall. The plan was that after a hole big enough was made, the bomber's friends could crawl in and start their business on us. I was told to post next to some cover in front of the wall and be ready for another explosion, and kill anyone that climbed through the breach. 

I saw a spindle of black smoke rising in the air to the south, and our towers were firing their 240s, but where? Then I heard my first AK-47 bark. It was directly in front of me, just past the wall. My opponent and I were facing each other. He still fired at me, his bullets whistling over my head. I heard the tower firing, and saw some of its rounds kick up dust on the wall in front of me, but I could see nothing of my enemy past it.

And then the hornet's nest was shaken. The Kiowas chains were unclasped and they roared through the air, past the wall. They turned about and swooped low and loosed missiles from their bulging quiver. Each rocket echoed in my chest as it struck upon the earth. At least two other comrades and me pumped our fist into the air and let out a simultaneous cathartic yawp. 

The firing and explosions died down after a while and then stopped. We were all alive, without exception. Our would-be murderers were not. We were released from guarding the wall, and I went to my room and stripped my armor from my soaking limp body. Normalcy returned. But this was my first attack. I had never been under fire before. My God but it was potent stuff. And thus I came down from this high.

The loudspeaker proclaimed an "all clear" after a while. I took a shower and shave and went about my day.

A new sensation entered my system. Elation. I was beaming. I felt I was stifling a laugh at a funeral, like an emotion unacceptable and best to be hidden was trying to escape.

The cruelty of it all was that I had no way to celebrate. I wanted a giant bottle of wine that would stain my lips black and stick to my tongue. I wanted warm bread and cheeses and black unpitted olives served across a big square bed and a woman with fire in her eyes and hunger in her touch.

I had one luxury, but it would have to wait until after work. I had 3 left over from a care package. The work day finally came to an end, and I found a box of pineapple juice and a paper cup of crushed ice at the chow hall. They had plums and apricots, and the fruit is always good in Afghanistan. In American chow halls, the apples are mealy and the oranges are dry and the grapes are soft. But here... oh but here.

I brought my feast behind the barracks and unsheathed a black cigar. I had changed into my black shorts and gray shirt. Sitting on the gator seat, I squeezed the juice out until my cup was full of the sweet vintage. I swirled it round to get it cold, and the first sip coated my tongue with the delicious sweet stuff. 

I applied the torch lighter to the end of the cigar, lighting it without drawing. After it glowed orange I blew out, ridding it of unpleasant burnt taste. It was glorious. I lustily bit into the apricot, letting the juice run down my arm and then I lay back in the seat. Blue smoke was rising from the cigar tip, and the stars were shining brilliantly. The crescent moon was blood red off in the distance and I was alive, and was going to live until I took my last breath.

I held the cigar between sticky fingers and savored the comforting dark tobacco and sat smoking in glorious reverent silence.

Hero photos

"You need to go get another hero picture taken," I was told after a long day of work.

The hero pic. A stoic photograph of you in uniform standing in front of the flag. Why? In case you get killed and they can hang your shot on the wall with the other heroes. Sure, he died for a good cause, the ninth year of providing the warm blanket of freedom to 300 million people by supporting a narco-trafficking family that were busboys in Maryland a decade ago.

Back in the states, it was a solemn affair. I fixed my eyes on the camera lens and tried not to blink. I was going to make a respectable face beyond the grave if the photo ever needed to be hung.

Then a long trip to Asia, settling in, and getting used to a small living arrangement and constant work hours. The LT lost the camera, so everyone in the company had to take another hero photo. I didn't care as much this time around, repetition robbing the solemnity from the occasion.

A month later: "Go to the CP, you need to take another hero picture. Sergeant so and so lost the memory card on the camera."

I stood in front of the flag like some criminal too familiar with the mugshot. I gave a toothy grin, unzipped my blouse a few inches and slid a hand into the breast. I thought it looked damned good and added a touch of history and flair to the whole grim business, but the unsmiling sergeant photographer shared none of my enthusiasm. "Stop screwing around, do you want the Division to think you were some kind of jackass?"

"First, I don't think I'll care too much what people will think if this picture ever gets framed, and second, I'll be back in a few weeks after you realize you're pointing the camera the wrong way."

I get a lot of counseling statements.

The Soviet Resort

We had a meeting the other day with some UN representatives, and had to travel to their small base nearby. The chopper ride lasted 4 minutes and 12 seconds, but the differences were profound.

There were trees and old hotel buildings, gardens filled with fragrant and colorful flowers. I could smell savory Afghan cuisine being carried by the breeze. There was an old drained swimming pool, and the sounds and smells of livestock just out side of the gate. Turns out, this is an old Soviet R&R base. The hotels were for the higher-ups, and I heard a rumor that the Russians used to throw mujahideen into the pool and watch them drown. When the Afghan fighters took over the base, they said the pool was empty, and some Soviets were marched into the deep end and shot. "There were still bullet holes and stains on the concrete in 2001," someone told me. It's probably untrue, but I still strained hard at the walls looking for any trace of previous atrocity.

I found it odd that the godless Communist Soviets almost 30 years ago had more sense of the aesthetic than the leading world's power does now.

Julie What's-her-name

Not every Christmas, but occasionally, when I am feeling reflective or nostalgic, I hear a song or see someone that reminds me of her. It was my first year at University, and I was playing baritone sax in the Jazz band. We borrowed a girl from the choir department for the lead vocals. She had hair like corn silk, and a youthful round face, dimples on each full cheek, and a small beauty mark above her upper lip. Her eyes were a haunting transparent green, and I fell in love with her the first moment I saw her.

We started up a bouncing "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town", and her quiet nature she possessed while the director introduced her vanished. Her voice was strong, but soft and comforting. She was a beautiful alto, and had a broad and easy smile. I was sick with heartache. She was from Seattle, cultured and interesting and cruelly out of reach. I was terrified of her. I know I would ruin any chance with her by being so intimidated, so I cut my losses early and ached for her while being safely out of reach.

She wore a simple black dress the night of the concert. She sang with her fingers lightly touching the microphone stand, and her soft voice filled the air with warmth that echoed through the auditorium. We all shook hands after the concert and I never saw her again.

Revenge, like most cold dishes, is not satisfying

A few weeks before deployment, my idiot roommate had his idiot friend over late on a Sunday night. They were playing a video game on the giant tv and had courteously turned the volume of the speakers down (a point of etiquette wildly uncommon). After a while, I turned my lamp off and dog-eared my book, and drifted off to a peaceable slumber.

Then around 1am I was awoken to a drunken roar alongside an increased volume exposion blasted through the speakers. The beer had been flowing, and my companions had become whipped into some masturbatory war fever. They were on the brink of their grand adventure, and it was going to be a thrilling and rewarding experience, much, if not exactly like the video game they were playing.

I pried open a dry eye and asked them to keep it down.

The friend, a person I'd never seen before, immediately threw down the controller, pitched his beer can to the ground and charged toward me. I stumbled up out of bed, ready to give him a worthy effort, and just as he approached me, the roommate came between us. He pushed and shoved him out of the way, apologizing to me while the friend knocked dishes off the counter, tried to topple my dresser, opened the 'fridge door and hollered threats at me the whole time.

I slinked over to the cabinet and took a shot from my small Irish whiskey bottle. I punched a kid in the nose when I was in 8th grade, but other than that, I've never been in a fight. He looked like a wild animal, unconcerned with any consequences of his behavior, living in the moment, completely convinced of his right to thrash me.

After I calmed down, and lay back down in my bed, I opened the book again. After a few pages, I heard a scratch outside my window. There was a block of wood that locked it from being opened from the outside, but I saw it start to shift. I heard him muttering and cursing under his breath at me. I swept the block away, opened the window and saw his bloodshot eyes staring at me through the screen. He jumped down off the ledge and ran away.

I stood there dumb with, I don't know, admiration of his imbecility? Who the hell was this savage? To have the insolence to threaten someone in their own home after screaming and hollering in a drunken state, then come back and try to break back in through the window? It was a stunning feat of self-assuredness.

I felt a red hot hatred for him, a lust that visited me at night. I wanted to see him embarrassed and beaten, and I wanted to do the beating.

I came home once after work and reached into the fridge to get a beer, and they were all gone. I asked my roommate what the deal was, and over his shoulder, (concentrating on the video game), he said "C. drank them all". He came in during the day and finished off 5 cans of beer!? Hot coals were being heaped upon my head. I fought him nightly in my mind, the madness of this sociopathic brute incensing me. I was obsessed, but not for long.

We mobilized, packed up our things, moved out of the building and caught the plane to Afghanistan.

I hadn't thought about him for months, and then one day, there he was.

He walked with tight legs, like he was flexing his gluteals. His rank was crooked on his chest, and his eyes were wide. He looked like a cart-pushing homeless man in some metropolitan gutter. He muttered under his breath and continued on with his strange gait towards me. He looked at me, stopped, and asked where the flight terminal was. I pointed out a direction, and then saw that he recognized me. The last time I saw him was through the window screen back in Kentucky. He said his hello, and I asked if he was all right. He told me that he was in an ambush recently, and saw an RPG round come at him and miss. He had just come back from R&R and had gotten arrested for domestic abuse and gotten a DUI on top of it all. He thanked me for the directions, and continued down the walkway with that stiff, gun-shy half-trot.

Orwell said revenge is never satisfying. He wrote of an SS man being beaten after the surrender in '45, and even though the man had no doubt committed countless atrocities, he could not gain any pleasure from seeing him supine and submissively absorbing a beating.

This man once bought a hot hatred from me, and then I would have been happy to see him suffer, but now... now he is a shadow. It is beside the point to say I felt no pleasure from his suffering. I felt despair for him. Psychological damage plus a penchant for drink and an eagerness for violence. I don't want to think what will become of him in the future.

New Haircut and an Army jam session

According to my personal system, it was time to get another haircut. Army regulation states that one’s hair must be neat and orderly and conform to the outline of your head. My regulation says that one sergeant per day telling you to get a haircut is ok, but two per day is tiresome and leaves one vulnerable to an unauthorized instance of self-defense.

I walked up to the barber shop and saw a paper on the door.

“Closed until further notice by order of base commander.”

It was only a matter of time before Lai’s place got shut down. My only option now was to go to the other shop. I did so grudgingly. I’d never been, but I’m the kind of man that enjoys rituals and things familiar. I don’t like change, and especially don’t like new barbers.

“Assalamu alaykum” the young man greeted me. He wore a starched long white shirt, flawless. His face was round and his thick black hair was wavy and down to his shoulders. Afghans have probably the best hair I’ve ever seen. Thick and shaggy as lions’ manes, only a few bald scalps, and never any sickly thinning tops.

I mumble my response and lay my rifle on the ground and take my blouse off. We haggle over what I want done, and he asks me what number attachment for the clipper. I hate it when barbers ask me that. He picks up a snaggletoothed #2 and every mean swipe leaves a bunny trail for him to “eyeball” with his dull scissors. They squeak and grind and the hair is more ripped out than it is snipped off. I squint and flinch and he “tsk”s me. My mood worsens, and my eyes narrow into a half squint.

He has what looks like a straight razor, but it holds a tiny razor blade. He employs a used one and scrapes and drags it against my dry skin around my ears and nape. He chats and gossips with his mate, and they’re having a grand old time now they’ve lucked into a monopoly.

Finally, the mean charade is come to an end, and just as he motions to release the apron from my neck, he places his thick butcher’s hands on either side of my head and says “crack”. Not a question, not a warning, but a statement. I tense up just in time for his hands to wrench my neck to the left and right, loosening any vertebrae from their impertinent holding places.

I stood and reached into what moments before was my back pocket, and spitefully peeled off four limp dollar bills and stuffed them into his fist. He slapped me on my chest, which was now my back, and bade me well.

Of course Lai had to go. Of course we don’t have the South Korean goddesses they do in Bagram.

Later I saw a friend playing guitar at the Green Beans coffee shack. Black fella from Alabama, glorious bald shiny head. He had a few old wooden-combed harmonicas splayed out on the table, and was looking over some chord charts. He said he was just learning and loved the blues. He offered me the guitar, and I started picking around with some old Delta Blues chords. It was a Pakistani or Chinese guitar, muffled, cardboard sound, but I hadn’t played in months and it felt good.

At the beginning of a chord progression, he lets out in a clear, pure voice an old Muddy Waters lyric. It repeats and comes around for the payoff. We play and stomp our feet together, lost in the mystical purity of two brothers in music.

I used to have long jam sessions back in my brief stint at college. Folk songwriters, guys that made their own guitars, white guys with laser precision in their licks, and black guys that seemed to breathe an all-encompassing stream of music through their fingers. And me, a clunky hayseed kid doing his best.

My friend picks up an “A” harp and plays alongside me. He warbles and shakes the low register, reaches into the high and nearly breaks the notes from bending them so far. I lose myself in the intoxicating rhythm. We stamp our feet and I try not to sound so wound up alongside this vocal master. People start to look, girls start to look.

And then he sits down across from us.

He has veins coming from his forehead. His skin looks rough as leather, and his shirt is tight against his ridiculous muscles. He has tribal designs crawling up his neck, and a giant green spiderweb on each elbow. He looks like he just got back from the yard from his weekly Aryan board meeting.

He puts down a plastic GNC cup sweating with fresh protein shake. And he has a guitar. His ID card strapped to his half-cantaloupe bicep tells us he is a Staff Sergeant. “Hotel California” he says, not a question, not a warning.

The scent soon travels and there is another Sergeant with a guitar and another. And another. Soon there is a drowning wall of strumming in unison and hoarse throaty voices. Someone starts “Every Rose has a Thorn” next, and another guitar approaches. Someone pulls out a video camera and shoves it in the singer’s face, then sweeps to his guitar neck to document the 3 chord gymnastics. Then two Privates in the back strike up some Tenacious D and then venture into Dave Matthews for a bit of sincerity after the comedy didn’t work.

I handed my friend his guitar back while he was massaging his temples and told him we had to get together again and play some blues without any Sergeants around.

I snuck out, then went to a run after I heard the first bars of “Gimme Three Steps”.