The Taliban Shuffle_ Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan - Kim Barker [131]
“Kim!” he whispered. “I think that man is a gay.” He nodded toward an American guy.
“Yep,” I said, slipping into Farouq lingo. “He is a gay.”
We danced a little more. Farouq, the macho Pashtun, then leaned forward again.
“Kim!” he whispered sharply. “The gay just pinched me.”
“OK, let’s get you out of here.”
I walked him outside, and soon he left for home. We always covered each other’s backs. Within weeks, Farouq would be on a plane out of Kabul.
Over the next four days, I said my goodbyes, the painful ones, the easy ones, the ones I had put off for years. I visited my embittered Afghan grandpa, Sabit, the country’s former attorney general and failed presidential candidate, who sat in his almost empty seven-bedroom eyesore, complaining about the election.
“There was so much fraud, so much fraud,” he said, after berating me for disappearing for years. “I tell you, if this was a fair election, I would have won. I was the most popular candidate, everywhere I went, crowds of people, thousands of them, would come on the streets.”
Oh, Sabit, who still had no idea how his popularity had plummeted, who lived in his own Sabit universe. Officially, he won only 5,791 votes, placing nineteenth. Before I left, he asked me whether I knew any foreigners who would rent his house for $5,000 a month.
I packed up my belongings and got ready to fly home. The day I planned to execute my exit strategy, my phone rang. And the caller was the other eccentric older man who had dominated my time, from the other side of the border. Nawaz Sharif. His timing was always impeccable.
“Is this Kim?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, shoving Afghan tourism guides from the 1970s into a suitcase. I was hesitant, unsure of what he wanted.
“So. It’s been a long time,” he said, awkwardly. “What are your plans to come to Pakistan?”
“Actually, I’m moving back to the U.S. New York, in fact. I’m leaving in a few hours.”
“Oh, congratulations. I will have to come see you when I’m in New York,” he said.
“That would be great,” I replied.
“We’re still friends, right?” he asked, tentatively.
“Always,” I said.
“We’ll stay friends, right?” he said.
“Sure.”
We said goodbye. I had about the same level of intention of being friends with Nawaz Sharif as I did with Sam Zell. But I figured I could just end our relationship through the inevitable ennui of distance and time, and through the likelihood that he would never get his hands on my U.S. number. (He was more resourceful than I thought.)
I soon finished packing. Then I looked around my bedroom, grabbed my backpack and two large suitcases, shut off the lights, and walked away, closing the door behind me. In the corner, I left a gray plastic trunk crammed with the things I needed only in Afghanistan. My long-sleeved, pajama-like shirts. A dozen scarves given to me over the years. Packets of wet wipes and a camouflage water bottle for embeds. Maps of Ghazni and Helmand, random electrical cords, and even the T-shirt proclaiming TURKIYE. A sleeping bag. Books on Pashtun tribes and the Taliban. Unused notebooks and ballpoint pens proclaiming AFGHAN PEN on their sides, as if that were some mark of pride and quality, as if Afghanistan were known for its ballpoint pens. I left all of it behind, waiting for me, gathering dust almost as soon as I shut the lid, in a house filled with similar boxes in different rooms, forgotten by people like me, foreigners unwilling to fully commit to leaving Afghanistan but unable to figure out how to stay.
EPILOGUE
TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT
In December 2009, President Obama decided to send thirty thousand more U.S. troops to Afghanistan. At the same time, he announced that he would start pulling those troops out by July 2011. In other words, the West continued to send mixed signals to Afghanistan and Pakistan: We love you, we love you not. America’s ambivalence was likely because of its amorphous goal—with Al-Qaeda long on the run