The Profession of Ghosts
They stand in two lines facing the airfield. A mix of camouflage and police uniforms facing the MI-8, which slowly begins to crank its engines. There is sadness in the air, as palpable as the smell of 2 bodies left murdered to rot in the sun. These men and women of fierce reputation, with a history of warfare and bloodshed wear their emotions on their faces, in their eyes, and in their gestures. They weep openly.
God is close by here. He looks down from above on this procession. The reproachful glare of the relatives of the dead men falls upon me. Perhaps someone has told them that I am the last American to have seen his brother alive? Perhaps I am just an American face they attribute blame on? I cannot say for sure, but I make sure I keep my back to the metal of a Russian truck. I stare up at the clouds, wanting to be far away, but as always grateful to bear witness to lifes small tragedies. I have often felt that those of us here in these places are receptacles of things which others were not meant to see or bear witness to. In this way we have become the chosen who bear the torch of the worlds sufferings year after year until God himself passes the torch to a new generation of men and women who are molded from the same stern casings.
I am reminded of a similar scene from 2 years ago. A funereal farewell on the airport tarmac known as Baghdad International Airport. On that day Sergio made his last flight from Iraq to his final home far away on the Mediterranean Sea. The somber mood, the hodge-podge of faces come to pay respect, the heat, the dingy air, the sounds of life continuing on around, while here we contemplate the end of life. I comment on this to one of my teammates. He nods and says "Oh really? It is always difficult to relate the concept of dying to others, even as we stand in it's midst.
6 days ago we had risen early, and headed to the compound. We drew pistols out of the armory; I clean several global positioning systems of prior coordinates. I count the money out in crisp twenty-dollar bills. As usual there are some frustrations. These Afghans do not always fall into our concept of time schedules. They make their own. I have a formula. Multiply everything by 4. If they say they will fix in one day, it will take 4. If they say they will be there in 15 minutes it will take an hour. If I want them to be on my time I have to tell them American time. In this way they know I mean business. I didnt set up this operation; hence they are on Afghan time. I chafe at the repetitiveness of it all. They will never catch up with the rest of the world. I wonder of they even care?
I call our contact and inquire where my charges are. He says their names and the names of their units and I venture into the bunker again to try and find them. On cue they both materialize. I am not surprised that either one of these 2 were chosen for this mission. They are good men, strong, bright, and eager to accomplish the mission. However, the early hour makes my patience short, and I tell them to hurry or we will be late. I hand them their equipment, a pistol, a GPS, money. They place it in their pockets, or in their waistbands. I give them the information I have for them. They ask questions, but I have no answers. I am only the final handler. I have nothing more to offer. I have done my part, except to send them on their way.
We drive them to the pickup location and send them out to wait. My companion and I sit in overwatch. The appointed time comes and goes, so we wait some more. A stray mongrel dog jumps onto the door of our police vehicle wagging its tail. He barks at another stray in his territorial manner. We are in his domain at the moment. We watch over our charges from a distance. A Hilux truck hits the speed bump at about 80 Kilometers an hour and goes airborne. It continues on at break neck speed. These people have such little apparent regard for life or health. Their lives are hard, boring, depressed at times. They express this in their driving habits, which border on reckless to suicidal. Finally, frustrated we begin to make calls to get this show moving. We have our inner reservations about this job, but we mostly keep them to ourselves.
"Dude, this is ****ed up".
"Yeah man, I think so too".
"Hey, there's a taxi sitting down the road".
"Watch it...see if that is the one".
"Thats not it.
Damn, Id like to go catch some more Zs.
Me too.
The phone rings. The buzzing of it against my shirt pocket alerting me.
"Yes".
"The driver is on the way"
"Roger. Out here"
And then seemingly out of thin air a truck appears next to us. A man gets out and flashes a badge.
Who are you guys he asks,
"No, WHO are you?" we ask with a little surliness. We are not used to being the ones questioned.
The man identifies himself, and we point down the road to our charges present location. I see them standing in apparent innocence on the side of the road. 2 men waiting for a ride to work, but what work they perform; one of the most dangerous jobs in the world, undercover narcotics officer in Afghanistan. We wait for him to drive down and they get in the pickup. We drive away. As I turn onto airport road I look in the rearview mirror as they pass by us on their way, starting their 10-hour drive. 10 hours through rough roads, in Indian Country. We are the last friendly faces who will see them alive.
The next time I see them they lay side by side in separate wooden boxes. I smell them from a distance. I see that their bodily fluids are draining, staining the soft wood bottoms of their temporary coffins. I think of brown grocery bags I have carried in which the bottoms ripped out after the cooking oil burst inside. It is a grotesque image, but it comes without conscience thought. They have lain in the hot Afghan sun for 5 days. I recall stories the Russians wrote about their own dead in this dry highland desert. I remember the tales of Rudyard Kiplings from this same foreign land. Always the stories are of woe, suffering, of intense thirst and burning sun. In this space and time I feel their words succinctly.
There is hesitancy in everyones movements. It is peculiar to be in the presence of the dead, particularly in the company of so many who are closer to the deceased than the small groups of British, Americans, Uzbeks, et-al who congregate on the tarmac. I feel like an intruder in their world at this moment. One by one their fellow officers file by, they raise their hands in farewell, some look straight ahead. Others turn to see, but there is nothing to see but two wooden boxes in the back of a gray Russian built helicopter. The women weep openly, but I am told they weep not for the deceased, but for humanity in general. Then, the family members come. They have grown in number since I met them this morning. Where they asked me if I could get them all on the helicopter to attend the funeral. I tell them I am only small man, but I will ask. Like all things Afghan they have already been told the answer, but they will push it time and time again. They will ask me, and receive a response. If it is not the desired response, they will ask another American. If the answer does not suit them, they will go to a third. If the third repeats the same answer as the first and the second, they will return to the first and the process starts all over again. I find these people frustrating, yet compelling at the same time. The family members pry the lids off the coffins with their bare hands. The wood is soft, like pressboard, and the lids come off easily. They reach inside and remove the white sheets, which cover the faces and the bodies of their brothers and cousins. Our interpreters grab the bag of perfumes and smelling crystals R.C. bought for this eventuality. The corpses reek as always corpses reek. The three of them begin spraying the contents onto the bodies, but this does little to help. I stand a few feet off the ramp and try to will myself to step inside the fuselage. I am curious about their decomposed state. I have seen bodies before, but there are many faces to death. The terps come back out and hand the bottles to M, our medic, so that he can cut them open so they can pour the contents inside. It is taking too long to spray them. M does so and hands the bottles back to these grim taskmasters. I step back away from the ramp into the air. Im alive; I am filled with those small petty things that make us the living. I do not want my clothes to reek of these dead men. Just today I received this new shirt in the mail from my wife back home. I am aware that this is a ****ty thing to think. I stand next to Aziz.
Aziz, have you ever seen a dead body before I ask,
Nooooo, Dis is da firss he explains in his accent.
The Afghan guard comes over and they talk about the state of the corpse. I ask who is who in which box. Jamshid tells me that the first is Rah, and the second is Muhammad ****. Rah he explains is Covered with the worms from the knife cuts on his face. His head has been severed from his body. Mohammed he explains Is black from the sun, like skeleton, throat cut. Jamshid explains that this is because Rah has fought the enemy hard for his life, but Mohammed was scared for his life and his went easily. Ironic I think to myself. Just a few hours earlier I had gone to M*****a, the Christian female member of the unit, to speak to her openly about this thing that has passed. Through the interpreter she relates to me the goodness of the man known as Rah ******. Rah spoke openly to the other members of the unit about the sin of them having to kill other Afghans. Although his chosen profession placed him often in the path of just this eventuality he preached peace and love for his fellow Afghans. Furthermore, she tells me that he would often tell the search teams on operations to Not look that hard for drugs or money. He said these were the only means of survival for these families. They had no other options, but to sell the opium. It is ironic that Rah, this man of dichotomy has been felled in this manner. He fought in the end, probably realizing that this was the final option. Or maybe because his friend, and coworker, had been murdered before his very eyes. Perhaps Rah ****** saw in those last few moments this irony and fought to deny it. Finally his life taken by those he empathized with in a strange symbiosis of life and death. Only he, God, and those who murdered him can ever know these things. We, the living, can only speculate.
They stand in two lines facing the airfield. A mix of camouflage and police uniforms facing the MI-8, which slowly begins to crank its engines. There is sadness in the air, as palpable as the smell of 2 bodies left murdered to rot in the sun. These men and women of fierce reputation, with a history of warfare and bloodshed wear their emotions on their faces, in their eyes, and in their gestures. They weep openly.
God is close by here. He looks down from above on this procession. The reproachful glare of the relatives of the dead men falls upon me. Perhaps someone has told them that I am the last American to have seen his brother alive? Perhaps I am just an American face they attribute blame on? I cannot say for sure, but I make sure I keep my back to the metal of a Russian truck. I stare up at the clouds, wanting to be far away, but as always grateful to bear witness to lifes small tragedies. I have often felt that those of us here in these places are receptacles of things which others were not meant to see or bear witness to. In this way we have become the chosen who bear the torch of the worlds sufferings year after year until God himself passes the torch to a new generation of men and women who are molded from the same stern casings.
I am reminded of a similar scene from 2 years ago. A funereal farewell on the airport tarmac known as Baghdad International Airport. On that day Sergio made his last flight from Iraq to his final home far away on the Mediterranean Sea. The somber mood, the hodge-podge of faces come to pay respect, the heat, the dingy air, the sounds of life continuing on around, while here we contemplate the end of life. I comment on this to one of my teammates. He nods and says "Oh really? It is always difficult to relate the concept of dying to others, even as we stand in it's midst.
6 days ago we had risen early, and headed to the compound. We drew pistols out of the armory; I clean several global positioning systems of prior coordinates. I count the money out in crisp twenty-dollar bills. As usual there are some frustrations. These Afghans do not always fall into our concept of time schedules. They make their own. I have a formula. Multiply everything by 4. If they say they will fix in one day, it will take 4. If they say they will be there in 15 minutes it will take an hour. If I want them to be on my time I have to tell them American time. In this way they know I mean business. I didnt set up this operation; hence they are on Afghan time. I chafe at the repetitiveness of it all. They will never catch up with the rest of the world. I wonder of they even care?
I call our contact and inquire where my charges are. He says their names and the names of their units and I venture into the bunker again to try and find them. On cue they both materialize. I am not surprised that either one of these 2 were chosen for this mission. They are good men, strong, bright, and eager to accomplish the mission. However, the early hour makes my patience short, and I tell them to hurry or we will be late. I hand them their equipment, a pistol, a GPS, money. They place it in their pockets, or in their waistbands. I give them the information I have for them. They ask questions, but I have no answers. I am only the final handler. I have nothing more to offer. I have done my part, except to send them on their way.
We drive them to the pickup location and send them out to wait. My companion and I sit in overwatch. The appointed time comes and goes, so we wait some more. A stray mongrel dog jumps onto the door of our police vehicle wagging its tail. He barks at another stray in his territorial manner. We are in his domain at the moment. We watch over our charges from a distance. A Hilux truck hits the speed bump at about 80 Kilometers an hour and goes airborne. It continues on at break neck speed. These people have such little apparent regard for life or health. Their lives are hard, boring, depressed at times. They express this in their driving habits, which border on reckless to suicidal. Finally, frustrated we begin to make calls to get this show moving. We have our inner reservations about this job, but we mostly keep them to ourselves.
"Dude, this is ****ed up".
"Yeah man, I think so too".
"Hey, there's a taxi sitting down the road".
"Watch it...see if that is the one".
"Thats not it.
Damn, Id like to go catch some more Zs.
Me too.
The phone rings. The buzzing of it against my shirt pocket alerting me.
"Yes".
"The driver is on the way"
"Roger. Out here"
And then seemingly out of thin air a truck appears next to us. A man gets out and flashes a badge.
Who are you guys he asks,
"No, WHO are you?" we ask with a little surliness. We are not used to being the ones questioned.
The man identifies himself, and we point down the road to our charges present location. I see them standing in apparent innocence on the side of the road. 2 men waiting for a ride to work, but what work they perform; one of the most dangerous jobs in the world, undercover narcotics officer in Afghanistan. We wait for him to drive down and they get in the pickup. We drive away. As I turn onto airport road I look in the rearview mirror as they pass by us on their way, starting their 10-hour drive. 10 hours through rough roads, in Indian Country. We are the last friendly faces who will see them alive.
The next time I see them they lay side by side in separate wooden boxes. I smell them from a distance. I see that their bodily fluids are draining, staining the soft wood bottoms of their temporary coffins. I think of brown grocery bags I have carried in which the bottoms ripped out after the cooking oil burst inside. It is a grotesque image, but it comes without conscience thought. They have lain in the hot Afghan sun for 5 days. I recall stories the Russians wrote about their own dead in this dry highland desert. I remember the tales of Rudyard Kiplings from this same foreign land. Always the stories are of woe, suffering, of intense thirst and burning sun. In this space and time I feel their words succinctly.
There is hesitancy in everyones movements. It is peculiar to be in the presence of the dead, particularly in the company of so many who are closer to the deceased than the small groups of British, Americans, Uzbeks, et-al who congregate on the tarmac. I feel like an intruder in their world at this moment. One by one their fellow officers file by, they raise their hands in farewell, some look straight ahead. Others turn to see, but there is nothing to see but two wooden boxes in the back of a gray Russian built helicopter. The women weep openly, but I am told they weep not for the deceased, but for humanity in general. Then, the family members come. They have grown in number since I met them this morning. Where they asked me if I could get them all on the helicopter to attend the funeral. I tell them I am only small man, but I will ask. Like all things Afghan they have already been told the answer, but they will push it time and time again. They will ask me, and receive a response. If it is not the desired response, they will ask another American. If the answer does not suit them, they will go to a third. If the third repeats the same answer as the first and the second, they will return to the first and the process starts all over again. I find these people frustrating, yet compelling at the same time. The family members pry the lids off the coffins with their bare hands. The wood is soft, like pressboard, and the lids come off easily. They reach inside and remove the white sheets, which cover the faces and the bodies of their brothers and cousins. Our interpreters grab the bag of perfumes and smelling crystals R.C. bought for this eventuality. The corpses reek as always corpses reek. The three of them begin spraying the contents onto the bodies, but this does little to help. I stand a few feet off the ramp and try to will myself to step inside the fuselage. I am curious about their decomposed state. I have seen bodies before, but there are many faces to death. The terps come back out and hand the bottles to M, our medic, so that he can cut them open so they can pour the contents inside. It is taking too long to spray them. M does so and hands the bottles back to these grim taskmasters. I step back away from the ramp into the air. Im alive; I am filled with those small petty things that make us the living. I do not want my clothes to reek of these dead men. Just today I received this new shirt in the mail from my wife back home. I am aware that this is a ****ty thing to think. I stand next to Aziz.
Aziz, have you ever seen a dead body before I ask,
Nooooo, Dis is da firss he explains in his accent.
The Afghan guard comes over and they talk about the state of the corpse. I ask who is who in which box. Jamshid tells me that the first is Rah, and the second is Muhammad ****. Rah he explains is Covered with the worms from the knife cuts on his face. His head has been severed from his body. Mohammed he explains Is black from the sun, like skeleton, throat cut. Jamshid explains that this is because Rah has fought the enemy hard for his life, but Mohammed was scared for his life and his went easily. Ironic I think to myself. Just a few hours earlier I had gone to M*****a, the Christian female member of the unit, to speak to her openly about this thing that has passed. Through the interpreter she relates to me the goodness of the man known as Rah ******. Rah spoke openly to the other members of the unit about the sin of them having to kill other Afghans. Although his chosen profession placed him often in the path of just this eventuality he preached peace and love for his fellow Afghans. Furthermore, she tells me that he would often tell the search teams on operations to Not look that hard for drugs or money. He said these were the only means of survival for these families. They had no other options, but to sell the opium. It is ironic that Rah, this man of dichotomy has been felled in this manner. He fought in the end, probably realizing that this was the final option. Or maybe because his friend, and coworker, had been murdered before his very eyes. Perhaps Rah ****** saw in those last few moments this irony and fought to deny it. Finally his life taken by those he empathized with in a strange symbiosis of life and death. Only he, God, and those who murdered him can ever know these things. We, the living, can only speculate.