thing: It’s impossible to doze off while trying to cover your ears with your hands.
The transport plane landed in the middle of the night at a U.S. Air Force base in Bishkek, in a blizzard. Almost twenty hours of flying to get there had given me plenty of time to doubt my decision to return to this war-ravaged country, where it seemed that there was a price for everything and everything was for sale. For a few dollars, people would sell you anything, even their grandmother—or at least that is what I had been told during orientation by a couple of the guys who had spent time in Afghanistan as interpreters. Would the country my father sacrificed his life for be a country where the very values—friendship, loyalty, family—he gave his life to were for sale? On that long flight to my motherland, I made two promises to myself: one, that if ever I saw that Afghanistan had become a country my father would be ashamed of, I would leave that same day. The second was inspired by my paranoia, a true American quality, that I would be stranded without my American passport, which guaranteed my rights and gave me freedom of movement: I would guard my American passport with my life. I feared that the men of Afghanistan would suck me back into a life with no rights, a life that I thought I had escaped—the shackles that so many Afghan women accept as their fate.
Did I expect to come out of it alive? Was this a rational decision? Or had I been guided by a greater force? Had it been my destiny from the beginning to be an Afghan woman in Afghanistan, one that I had only postponed by going to America? Is it foolish to try to run away from your fate?
I had not slept for hours, with these answerless questions racing through my head as I sat in that loud cabin, surrounded by very young American men in uniform who had the ability to fall asleep before the plane had even lifted off. Did they not worry about what lay ahead of them? How I envied their acceptance of whatever was coming their way. Later, I would find out that, in reality, most of them didn’t know what was coming their way.
As the engines were turned off, I still had the buzzing in my ears that would persist for a couple of days. I lugged my duffel bags across the icy tarmac to a Kmart-sized tent where I joined the other soldiers and civilians waiting for a flight to Afghanistan. I sat in a cold metal chair. Three televisions broadcast the same football game. There was no sound. I thought the volume of the TVs was just turned down, then a soldier offered me a bottle of water and I was forced to read his lips. I was temporarily deaf from the roar of the engines. At least I hoped it was temporary.
I sat and waited. Morning came. The day passed. If there is one thing that Pashtuns excel at, it’s waiting. All around me soldiers slouched in chairs, watching TV, listening to their iPods. Some slept with their heads thrown back, snoring as if they were in their own beds at home, and I’m sure in their dreams they were.
The tent was overheated to compensate for the frigid temperature outside, but a burst of cold air came in every time one of the soldiers entered or exited. I slept on one of the hard sofas in my turtleneck, my arms wrapped around myself. On the morning of the third day I wondered if I’d been forgotten. Was it possible? Would someone have noticed if I’d boarded the military transport in Atlanta and had never arrived at Bagram Airfield? I could have asked someone, but I was too intimidated. I’d spent all my time in the United States in Oregon, a state withno major military installations. The only experience I’d had with people in uniforms was signing for packages from the cute UPS man who’d come to my office every day. The young soldiers with their brush cuts, desert fatigues, and weapons made me nervous. Had they used those oiled black guns, which they strapped to themselves so casually, to kill an enemy? Could they tell I was an Afghan? Would they consider
The transport plane landed in the middle of the night at a U.S. Air Force base in Bishkek, in a blizzard. Almost twenty hours of flying to get there had given me plenty of time to doubt my decision to return to this war-ravaged country, where it seemed that there was a price for everything and everything was for sale. For a few dollars, people would sell you anything, even their grandmother—or at least that is what I had been told during orientation by a couple of the guys who had spent time in Afghanistan as interpreters. Would the country my father sacrificed his life for be a country where the very values—friendship, loyalty, family—he gave his life to were for sale? On that long flight to my motherland, I made two promises to myself: one, that if ever I saw that Afghanistan had become a country my father would be ashamed of, I would leave that same day. The second was inspired by my paranoia, a true American quality, that I would be stranded without my American passport, which guaranteed my rights and gave me freedom of movement: I would guard my American passport with my life. I feared that the men of Afghanistan would suck me back into a life with no rights, a life that I thought I had escaped—the shackles that so many Afghan women accept as their fate.
Did I expect to come out of it alive? Was this a rational decision? Or had I been guided by a greater force? Had it been my destiny from the beginning to be an Afghan woman in Afghanistan, one that I had only postponed by going to America? Is it foolish to try to run away from your fate?
I had not slept for hours, with these answerless questions racing through my head as I sat in that loud cabin, surrounded by very young American men in uniform who had the ability to fall asleep before the plane had even lifted off. Did they not worry about what lay ahead of them? How I envied their acceptance of whatever was coming their way. Later, I would find out that, in reality, most of them didn’t know what was coming their way.
As the engines were turned off, I still had the buzzing in my ears that would persist for a couple of days. I lugged my duffel bags across the icy tarmac to a Kmart-sized tent where I joined the other soldiers and civilians waiting for a flight to Afghanistan. I sat in a cold metal chair. Three televisions broadcast the same football game. There was no sound. I thought the volume of the TVs was just turned down, then a soldier offered me a bottle of water and I was forced to read his lips. I was temporarily deaf from the roar of the engines. At least I hoped it was temporary.
I sat and waited. Morning came. The day passed. If there is one thing that Pashtuns excel at, it’s waiting. All around me soldiers slouched in chairs, watching TV, listening to their iPods. Some slept with their heads thrown back, snoring as if they were in their own beds at home, and I’m sure in their dreams they were.
The tent was overheated to compensate for the frigid temperature outside, but a burst of cold air came in every time one of the soldiers entered or exited. I slept on one of the hard sofas in my turtleneck, my arms wrapped around myself. On the morning of the third day I wondered if I’d been forgotten. Was it possible? Would someone have noticed if I’d boarded the military transport in Atlanta and had never arrived at Bagram Airfield? I could have asked someone, but I was too intimidated. I’d spent all my time in the United States in Oregon, a state withno major military installations. The only experience I’d had with people in uniforms was signing for packages from the cute UPS man who’d come to my office every day. The young soldiers with their brush cuts, desert fatigues, and weapons made me nervous. Had they used those oiled black guns, which they strapped to themselves so casually, to kill an enemy? Could they tell I was an Afghan? Would they consider
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