For Your Tomorrow (18 page)

Like Mrs. Ross, and my grandmother, and the millions of mothers before and after them, Marion had to say goodbye to her son as he left for a war on the other side of the world—knowing, but trying not to know, that this farewell could be their final one. When Jeff got back from his two-week FOO course in England, he had two days in Toronto with Sylvie and Ry before he left to board the Airbus at CFB Trenton, Ontario. He didn’t want his parents, or Sylvie and Ry, to accompany him to the airport. He didn’t like goodbyes, especially public ones—the paparazzi zooming in, exploiting private moments of anguish.

But the day before he departed, he received a letter.

I
N THE MIDDLE OF
February, Jeff flies from Trenton to an “unknown” staging area in the Middle East. All deployed troops touch down here at Camp Mirage for two days before heading on to Kandahar. The worst-kept secret in the Canadian Forces, this acclimatizing point is at Minhad Air Base, just south of Dubai on the Persian Gulf. Adjacent to a vast runway, clusters of flat white portables and grey hangars shimmer mirage-like in the middle of the gravelly desert. Around the outskirts of the fenced-in Canadian section, large one-humped dromedaries graze on thorny tufts of grass. A lone acacia tree leans windward, dusty green against a brilliant blue sky.

At this desert base, the only hazards are the searing sun, jumping spiders and snakes. Soldiers eat at a five-star dining hall with exotic fresh fruits and lobster on the menu. They can work out at a well-equipped gymnasium or play beach volleyball. Dressed in their civvies, they can take a bus into Dubai, lounge in deck chairs under fanning palms, float in turquoise sea water—their last chance to chill out with a beer for at least three months.

The camp is a liminal zone, a place in between training—“playing” at war—and being at war. And like his comrades, Jeff exists in a liminal state, wavering between fear and anticipation. After the long, hard preparation, he is eager to put his skills into practice. He has read every book he could find about Afghanistan—its history, politics and the present conflict. But an unknown world awaits him, all the trials and tests of a war zone:
How will I handle the stress of combat? Will I be afraid? What if I make a bad decision that endangers my crew? What if something happens to one of them? Or to me?

Outside the dining hall, he sits in the baking heat at a picnic table and reads the names his comrades have carved into the wood. Most of them came back. Some of them didn’t. But he knows he has to return, to raise his son—a purpose he is surely meant to fulfill. And the words of Castaneda’s Yaqui shaman resurface: “A man goes to knowledge as he goes to War, wide-awake, with fear, with respect, and with absolute assurance.”

J
EFF STEPS DOWN FROM
the Hercules aircraft onto the Kandahar Airfield. A glaring noonday sun assaults his eyes, and he pulls his Ray-Ban aviators out of the breast pocket of his uniform. The NATO base sprawls before him—an expansive monochromatic maze of brown buildings, tan tents, grey prefabs, white portables. Dust-covered military vehicles, ATVs, SUVs and golf carts drone across gravel lanes. Beyond the walled and wired perimeter, a stony desert extends to distant craggy mountains—an arid moonscape, like Luke Skywalker’s desert planet at the beginning of
Star Wars
. Even the few scraggly mulberry bushes and patches of grass are dull with powdery dust. A parched wasteland leached of colour, but for the wide cyan sky.

He strolls across the wood-planked boardwalk; wind whips sand into his eyes and mouth. Diesel smoke fills his
nostrils. He nods to passing soldiers, many with rifles slung over their backs. They wear varied camouflage-pattern uniforms, all with ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) badges, but with different flag insignias on their sleeves—United States, Britain, France, Australia, Romania.… Men in khaki shorts and T-shirts play a raucous game of basketball in the square, their shouts and laughter mingling with the roar of engines and the whirr of helicopters. He peruses the boardwalk shops selling carpets, pashmina shawls, lapis jewellery. Familiar signs pop out: Burger King, Subway, Pizza Hut and … Tim Hortons. He yearns for the touchstone taste of a triple-triple, and joins the long lineup—
just like at home
.

High-pitched screams resound from the other end of the boardwalk. Skinny barefoot children push and shove each other, rummaging in and around the overflowing garbage bins buzzing with flies. “Where do those kids live?” he asks the Brit in line behind him. “Is there a village nearby?”

“Oh—the garbage kids,” the soldier says, craning his neck. “No, they don’t live anywhere.”

“How do they survive?”

“They’re orphans. Most of them don’t.”

Coffee in hand, he sips and savours the familiar flavour, ready to head over to Canadian headquarters. The penetrating wail of a siren, then “Rocket attack … rocket attack … rocket attack” blares around the square. Everyone around him scrambles for cover, scurrying to one of the concrete bunkers. Jeff vaults the railing and dives beneath the boardwalk
onto his belly, his duck-and-cover training reflexively kicking in. He knows it’s an insurgent missile launch from the surrounding mountains, a daily and nightly occurrence at the base. Most rockets miss the airfield and explode in the desert. But some have crashed in laneways, smashed into buildings—white-hot chunks of metal slamming into walls, wounding soldiers and civilians. Face down, inhaling the earthy smell, he hears the distant thud of a dud missile hitting the ground. A long two minutes until the all-clear sounds. He crawls out of the dark recess, brushes the dust off his uniform. He grins at the large black-and-red sign hanging at the far end of the square:

A few days later, Jeff and his Lucky 13 team make their first foray outside the wire, outside the relative security of the KAF compound. Their LAV joins the convoy heading west down Highway 1 into the Panjwaii Peninsula south of the Arghandab River. The paved two-lane road is flowing with taxis, mopeds, bicycles, donkey carts, gaudily painted pickup trucks jingling with sparkling baubles, and pedestrians—children, and men talking on cellphones. On this main artery—“Ambush Alley”—IEDs are common. Perched in the commander’s hatch, Jeff scans the trees, ditches and mud walls, alert for anything suspicious. His cells thrum on redcode alert:
This is for real. Someone out there wants to kill me
. He watches and waits for the unexpected. Every approaching vehicle and person undergoes threat assessment—a rusty
white Toyota Corolla, a burka-clad figure, an innocent-looking boy. They’ve all been suicide bombers.

The convoy veers south off the highway onto a gravel track. They pass lean-tos, ragged tarps ravaged by the wind. Roaming camels tug on clumps of grass. Carcasses of military vehicles, residue of two decades of futile war with the Soviets, litter the landscape. Black-haired boys shimmy up the gun barrel of a rusted tank and swing off the end. These are children who’ve known only war; the sounds of gunfire and bomb blasts have been as familiar to them as the blazing sun and sifting sand. They shout and wave, and Jeff returns a smiling salute.

His neck and shoulders are taut with tension, his skin clammy with sweat under his body armour as they wind up a jagged mountain trail and reach the summit of Ma’Sum Ghar. Canadians and the Afghan National Army occupy the two-hectare forward observation base (FOB), one of the central posts of Task Force 1-07’s operations. Its commanding view of the villages, roads, and river crossings allows them to monitor the most crucial area of Kandahar province. He dismounts, removes his two-kilogram steel helmet, and empties a canteen of water over his dust-smeared face. It’s the longest thirty kilometres he has ever driven.

At six the next morning, he emerges from the fetid tent—fifty male bodies in a cramped space—inhales the cool mountain air. The rising sun gilds the brown bluffs with a copper sheen. The cloudless cobalt sky unfurls like the wide prairie skies back in Manitoba. Outside the front
entrance of the compound, turban-wearing men with shaggy beards wait to begin work for the day—filling sandbags, emptying outhouses and packing garbage. A mangy feral cat slinks around the Dumpster by the gate. It’s calm, even peaceful; just as its Pashtu name denotes—
Ma’Sum
, “quiet,” and
Ghar
, “mountain.” Then the chopping of a helicopter slices the silence and reminds him why he’s here. Today they’ll patrol in a nearby village to establish their military presence and secure the area so the provincial reconstruction team and international aid agencies can do their work. He has already observed the results of their efforts—repairs to roads, bridges, schools and irrigation systems.

Jeff and his team march through mud-walled villages that could harbour Taliban cells—most of them do. They tramp down maze-like alleys, their combat boots raising dust along the narrow footpaths. Striding in single file, eyes wary, slowly sweeping a wide arc, they inspect the dirt for wires or signs of tampering, look over the earthen walls, check to the rear, and scan the distance. It’s like being in a time warp, Jeff thinks, like stepping back hundreds of years. The low flat-roofed houses made of mud bricks have no electricity or running water. He’s reminded of the mud huts his Scottish ancestors lived in three centuries ago.

Old men with brown ancient faces—moulded by sun, wind and war—lean against the sandy walls of the compounds. The bright inquisitive eyes of children stare at him. But there’s an eerie absence of women. Sometimes he glimpses one through a small window, a shadowy figure
peeking through the screened mesh of a black veil. For them, he knows, it’s more like the Dark Ages—forbidden to appear in public without a male relative, routinely physically abused. He thinks about academics with their “cultural relativism” rhetoric, claiming that all social beliefs and customs are equally valid and dependent on the cultural environment. Beam them down from their ivory towers, he thinks, to walk a mile across the scorching sand in a burka.

A month later, in mid-March, Jeff and his crew transfer six kilometres west to Forward Observation Base Sperwan Ghar, a sandy outcrop at the base of the Panjwaii Peninsula. Pashtu for “dusty mountain,” Sperwan Ghar was created by the Russians, who trucked in thousands of loads of sand from the southern Registan Desert. Here in the Taliban heartland, their forward observation team will provide artillery support to Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry. As they twist up the gravel road to the FOB, Jeff thinks they could be entering a fort in the Wild West. Thick walls of mud and sandbags, topped with barbed wire, fortify the border. Soldiers keep watch in a lookout tower that flies the red Maple Leaf alongside the black-red-green-striped flag of Afghanistan.

The Lucky 13 team are manning the observation post isolated on the steep summit of the mountain. They settle into their sleeping quarters beneath the OP, a bunk room built into a round concrete reservoir once used for collecting rainwater. They spread their sleeping bags on the green canvas cots lined along the plywood walls. A large
Canadian flag hangs on the end wall; a calendar tacked to another—X’s marking off the days. A corner table holds a kettle, tea bags, coffee grinder, coffee beans, bottled water; above it a wooden sign—
SPER BUCKS
. With electricity and air conditioning, it’s deluxe by outpost standards. They call it “the Hotel.” Outside the entrance, Jeff nails up a plywood shingle:
HOME OF LUCKY
13.