The Taliban Shuffle_ Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan - Kim Barker [130]
I could see the stories that stretched for years into the future, much like the ones that stretched back years into the past. More bombs, more sudden death, more adrenaline. Never had I felt as alive as in Pakistan and Afghanistan, so close to chaos, so constantly reminded of how precious, temporary, and fragile life was. I had certainly grown here. I knew how to find money in a war zone, how to flatter a warlord, how to cover a suicide bombing, how to jump-start a car using a cord and a metal ladder, how to do the Taliban shuffle between conflict zones. I knew how to be alone. I knew I did not need a man, unless that man was my fixer. But also, I knew I had turned into this almost drowning caricature of a war hack, working, swearing, and drinking my way through life and relationships. My brother now described me as 100 Percent Id, an epitaph I didn’t want. Maybe having these four months of unemployment in Kabul helped me figure it out.
After the running, the bombs, the death, the downward spiral, I had a choice—I could choose life, or I could choose to keep hopping from one tragedy to the next. Like any junkie, I needed to quit. I decided to go home, knowing full well that this decision was a lot tougher than staying in the warm bath of Kabul. I decided to get out while I could, to graduate from Kabul High. At this point, at least, the party was over. The disastrous election of Karzai was last call. The foreign community’s clumsy efforts to save this region so late in the day were like trying to recover from the Afghan rapper DJ Besho deciding to do an impromptu rap show at a Halloween party at 2:30 AM. There was no recovery from that, only the likelihood of some Afghan in his entourage stealing a cell phone on the way out the door.
Tom, my fellow journalist and former housemate at the Fun House, also decided to leave. We planned a going-away party, our last Thursday night throwdown before checking out of the Hotel California. That afternoon, a friend and I drove over to Tom’s house to drop off a dozen cases of illegal and therefore expensive wine and beer. As we unloaded, Tom’s phone rang.
“Oh, hey Farouq,” he said.
I looked at Tom.
“Yes, please come,” Tom said. “Yes, yes, it’s for her as well.”
“Is that my Farouq?” I asked.
Tom nodded. He hung up.
“Why hasn’t he called me?” I said. “Is he mad at me?”
Kabul High. Then my phone started ringing. Farouq.
“Hey you!” I said, extremely enthusiastically.
“How are you?” he asked.
I had figured that he had already left Afghanistan on his scholarship. He had figured that I was upset with him, or that I had fled the country when my job did. But after everything we had been through together, any hurt over money, over macho aggression, over perceived anti-Afghan slights simply fell away.
“You’re coming tonight, right?” I said.
“Of course.”
This was an old-school party, circa 2006. Tom and I decided against having a guest list. We invited our Afghan friends. The garden filled up quickly—predictably, about one-third of the people stumbling around knew neither Tom nor me, various random foreigners who heard about the party from the rumor mill at L’Atmosphère. But Farouq and my Afghan journalist friends showed up, along with various Afghan officials. And I ended up spending most of the party hanging out with the man who had really mattered here more than any other: Farouq. We danced in an oddly shaped hallway, filled with mostly women, a few straight men, a few gay men, and a few tactile British security contractors who were apparently on Ecstasy. Farouq used a scarf as a dancing implement, pulling it behind his