Farishta (4 page)

When the excessive drinking, which had started in Leningrad, the pills, and the parade of unsuitable men caught up to me and were about to drag me into a hole from which I would never emerge, I locked up my emotions, threw away the key, and buried myself in a series of inconsequential diplomatic assignments.

Intellectually, I knew that my anxiety about going to Afghanistan was irrational. Although it was technically a “war zone,” the possibility that I would be wounded or killed was minuscule.

Mazār-i-Sharīf was on the north side of the Hindu Kush, where the only fighting in the past year had been between competing Afghan warlords and their militias. All U.S. and allied combat operations were in the south along the Pakistani border.

By December 2004, the flood of U.S. government employees and contractors going to Baghdad was getting most of the attention inside the Department of State. All Green Zone–bound volunteers were required to attend a security course, which included several days of first-aid training as well as weapons and explosives familiarization. There had not been any similar preparation available for civilians headed to Afghanistan. Hoping that some training—any training—would help to calm my fears about going, I managed to talk my way into one of the classes two weeks prior to my departure.

Despite the fact that even in combat zones American diplomats are not authorized to carry weapons, the Department of State had decided that its civilian personnel going to Baghdad needed practice firing some of the small arms used by our military. It was never clear to me what untrained civilians were expected to do with weapons they had handled and fired only once, but I was hoping the afternoon “shooting party” would help me overcome my pre-deployment jitters.

“All right, gentlemen—and lady,” said our bearded instructor as we filed into the armory next to the firing range, “today we’ll be loading, emptying, reloading, and firing an AK-5 assault rifle, a Sig Sauer pistol, an AK-47 or Kalashnikov—that’s the one the bad guys use—a Colt M4 submachine gun, and a Remington shotgun. Any questions?”

There were none as we stared in silence at the well-oiled firepower arrayed on long metal tables before us.

“Have any of you ever fired a weapon? ” he asked. Two of us raised our hands. The other fellow was a former Marine gunnery sergeant. The instructor turned to me, “Ma’am, would you like to share with us which weapons you have fired? ”

“My brother and I used to go rabbit hunting,” I said, regretting immediately that I had raised my hand, “with an air rifle.”

I didn’t mention that I was a pretty good shot. That became apparent when we filed outside with our loaded weapons and I began blasting away at the targets and ripping out their center circles. I channeled my fear about going to Afghanistan into each shot. My classmates were impressed.

The next three days of first-aid training had quite the opposite effect. Our instructor, Mike, a gruff but compassionate former Special Forces medic, had a genuine desire to prepare us for what we might face in a war zone. He also kept us in a moderate state of terror so we would pay close attention to everything he said.

Mike was a gentle giant, with skin the color of polished ebony and a shaved head that glowed like an eight ball under the fluorescent lights in our crowded classroom. He showed us how to assess swelling and discoloration, when and where to apply pressure, how to treat a sucking chest wound with a credit card and duct tape, and some very creative ways to use Super Glue.

On day two, we held a drill where groups of four practiced conducting triage after a bombing. Our job was to determine who would be given immediate first aid, who could survive for a while without treatment, and who would be left to die.

Carrying notepads, several of us followed Mike through a simulated disaster site, stepping carefully over the prone bodies of our moaning classmates in the auditorium of the training facility. The victims had covered themselves with realistic pools of latex blood and anatomically correct wounds.

I was moving along at a good clip, bending over each victim, and shouting, “Can you hear me?” before checking them for breathing, bleeding, pulse, and broken bones. The fifth victim was a man in his mid-twenties with shaggy blond hair and soft brown eyes. Just like Tom.

It was too much. I doubled over and broke into a sweat.

Mike was next to me in seconds. He knelt at my side, placed one hand on my back, and began to talk me out of the panic attack that had overwhelmed me. My eyes were closed and I was gasping for air. I bit down on my tongue to keep from screaming.

“Morgan!” he shouted. I whipped my head around and looked him in the eyes. “Check the shadows. Do you see a second bomber hiding? ”

I scanned the perimeter and saw only the walls of the auditorium.

“No,” I responded, my breathing still ragged.

“Look again and tell me exactly what you see. Every detail!” He was shouting over the bedlam in the auditorium.

I began to describe the color of the walls, the shape of the windows, the size of the doors, and the length of the curtains. My breathing became more regular.

His hand was now resting lightly on my neck. He was subtly monitoring my breathing and heart rate.

“When did it happen? ” he asked softly.

“Beirut, ’83,” I said, my voice barely audible.

“The Marine barracks?” he asked.

“No, the embassy, my husband. The building collapsed. I couldn’t help him.” I was sobbing.

“Jesus, Morgan,” he said sitting down on the floor next to me. “And I’ll bet you haven’t talked to anyone about this.” I shook my head.

“Are you sure you’re ready for Afghanistan? You’ll probably be the only civilian at that PRT, not like the rest of this bunch who are all headed for the overpopulated and well-stocked confines of the Green Zone in Baghdad.”

“It’s in the north—Mazār-i-Sharīf—there’s no fighting up there. I’ll be fine,” I replied. “And yes, I’m ready.”

“Okay. If this happens again, you’ll know what to do? ”

“Yes.”

“You see someone else freeze, you’ll know how to bring ’em out of it? ”

“Thanks to you, I will.”

“Morgan, you can’t keep this bottled up forever. We are only as sick as our secrets, sweetheart, and this one’s eating you alive.”

“I know. I’ll talk to someone when I get back.”

“Good. Now, let’s get the rest of these Green Zone weenies squared away.”

December 20, 2004
✦ LONDON

The State Department had ordered me to break my December trip to Afghanistan with a stop in London, where I was to meet with a desk officer at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Since I was being dispatched to a British PRT, it would be useful to hear their perspective on the political situation in northern Afghanistan. And I’d get to spend a few days pretending I had been posted to London instead of Mazār-i-Sharīf.

A colleague told me off the record that there had been a heated debate regarding the need to even assign another American Foreign Service Officer to the PRT in Mazār now that the Brits were in charge and had one of their own diplomats there. So why were they sending me?

Gray skies and a stiff breeze greeted me when I landed at Heathrow Airport, where the thermometer hovered just above freezing. After a cramped overnight flight in economy class, all I wanted was to crawl under several blankets and sleep off my jet lag.

I switched on CNN in my hotel room, programmed the TV to shut down in half an hour, and was beginning to doze off when a loud advertisement for the Royal Beirut Hotel shook me awake. Two minutes later, the timer hit the thirty-minute mark and the screen went black. As I lay awake in the darkened room, I remembered how excited Tom and I had been when we learned about the assignment to Beirut after our year in Yemen. It would be a great career move, and we were both relishing the challenge of another hardship post. Although the ongoing Lebanese civil war would restrict our movements, we knew there were still riding stables near Beirut and, of course, the extra pay would come in handy—perhaps to start a college fund for those three kids we planned to have.

It took several more hours of switching between CNN and BBC before I fell asleep.

 

 

Walking to my meeting at the Foreign Office, I tried to ignore the last-minute holiday shoppers, muffled against the damp cold and crowded into department stores that shimmered with lights and hummed with tinny Christmas carols. I had traveled to New Mexico the previous week for an early Christmas celebration with my father, brother, and their young wives. Unlike the days when Mom was alive, the house had no decorations except for a small tree my brother had festooned with a few of her homemade ornaments.

I had set my watch incorrectly when I arrived in London, and was an hour early for my appointment with Mr. Smythe, a British diplomat who monitored activities in northern Afghanistan. I’d been waiting for thirty minutes on a couch near his secretary’s desk when at eleven fifteen she poked her head into his office and reminded him that I was here. She left his door wide open, promised me I would be seen in just a few minutes, and dashed out for an early lunch.

Mr. Smythe’s phone was ringing nonstop. He concluded another call and stepped out to greet me. “Miss Morgan, so nice to meet you face-to-face. I have just one short meeting before ours. I hope you’re not in a hurry.” I assured him I was not.

“Please feel free to sit at my secretary’s desk and use her phone to call the United States if you have the need,” he said before rushing back to his office to take another call. It was much too early to ring D.C. or New Mexico and I really had nothing more to say to anyone stateside, so I settled into the secretary’s comfortable chair to review the questions I had jotted down for our meeting.

“Excuse me, miss, my name is Davies, Major Mark Davies, is Mr. Smythe . . .”

I glanced up from my notes and into the electric blue eyes of a dark-haired man in a business suit. He tugged uncomfortably at his tie, which did not budge. Standing stiffly before me, he swallowed hard and cleared his throat.

Resting his fingertips on the edge of the desk, leaning forward and staring at me with his brow slightly furrowed, he began to study my face as though we’d met before but he couldn’t quite remember where. The intensity of his gaze rendered me momentarily speechless.

He was younger than me, but it was hard to tell by how many years. He had olive skin with a thin tracing of lines around those intense blue eyes. He was clean-shaven, but a pale shadow already visible across his chin emphasized the hard sweep of his jaw.

It was our similarities that fascinated me—silky black hair—although mine was loose and layered, his clipped and military. The planes of both our faces were angled with sharp cheekbones, and his nostrils, like mine, were slightly flared. And those incongruous eyes—mine so green and his so blue.

We had each inherited pale but permanent suntans from ancestors who had likely not fit well into polite western society. Mine had come from the Lopez side of my mother’s family, and from my father’s Comanche grandmother, who had married an Irish carpenter named Morgan. My green eyes, my last name, and a sprinkling of freckles across my nose were the only remnants I still carried of my Celtic heritage.

Our intense but wordless exchange lasted less than ten seconds. With his eyes still locked on mine, the major snapped to attention and his voice returned.

“I’m quite late for my appointment with Mr. Smythe. Is he in? ” he asked, shifting his gaze to Smythe’s open door.

“Yes, he’s . . .”

Not waiting for me to finish my sentence, and without a thank-you, he spun around and walked toward Smythe’s office.

“Mark,” said Smythe, rising to greet him, “how nice to see you again. Thank you for stopping by. So sorry to disrupt your final day in town, but I wanted to speak with you in person before you left.”

“Sir, shall I close the door? ” asked the major, glancing back at me with a look that I could not decipher.

“No need,” said Smythe. “This will be brief.” I could see Smythe through the open door, sitting at his desk and tamping loose tobacco into his pipe. It was lunchtime in London and his phone had gone suddenly quiet.

“Sir, my apologies for being late.”

“Not a problem. When are you leaving for Kabul?” asked Smythe, his unlit pipe clenched between his teeth.

“I leave tomorrow morning to spend the holidays in Brunei. I’ll be reporting to NATO headquarters in Kabul in early January.”

“Excellent. Listen, Mark, I’m aware that your preference was to return to Basra and continue the fine intelligence work you have been doing for our forces in Iraq, but as your commanding officer has hopefully explained to you, we need you right now in Afghanistan.”

These remarks caught my attention. Was Davies someone I would be working with? As Smythe began to review with the major the overarching political concerns of the British government in northern Afghanistan, I was grateful that I had arrived early and that Smythe hadn’t bothered to close his door.

“I presume you are aware the Americans have decided to post one of their diplomats to our PRT in Mazār for another year,” said Smythe at the conclusion of his briefing.

“Excuse me, sir, I thought the Yanks had decided not to send any more diplomats to Mazār. Don’t we already have one of our own up there? The U.S. Army turned that PRT over to us more than a year ago.”

I sat without moving, my hands folded in my lap, hoping the phone would not ring and the secretary wouldn’t return while I listened with increasing concern to Smythe’s conversation with the major.

“Yes, they did, but . . .”

The major broke in, “Permission to speak freely, sir.”

“Go ahead,” said Smythe—a slight sharpness in his voice betraying his irritation.

“I really don’t think at this point we need to muck up what is already a very delicate situation in Mazār-i-Sharīf with another Yank moving in and trying to tell our boys what to do. Is this a firm decision, sir? ” asked Davies.