• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 531 0

eastern town that bordered the tribal areas of Pakistan, to visit the family of the dead man he had mentioned—Shayesta Khan, who had been about seventy-five, a village elder with a long white beard. This was the other side of the war from my embed in Paktika, the side of “collateral damage,” the U.S. military term for unintentional injury caused while pursuing legitimate targets. Increasingly, such damage was becoming a problem throughout southern and eastern Afghanistan, the areas dominated by the ethnic Pashtuns and home to most insurgent activity. Anger about so-called “civilian casualties” and house raids was starting to bubble up there. Outside Kabul, in the places where public opinion mattered most, the mood toward the United States was shifting. It was not just the hostility displayed by Afghans upset at U.S. soldiers bursting into their compounds. It was the new willingness to believe the worst, even the most outrageous claims, without question. No one yet understood that what mattered in Afghanistan was not reality—it was rumor, the stories that raced from village to village.

The raid on Shayesta Khan’s house was nothing like the compound visits I had observed, where the U.S. soldiers drank tea and tried to respect Afghan culture. This was a nighttime, kick-in-the-door, suited-up raid. An informant had allegedly told the U.S. military that bombs were being made in the compound where about sixty members of Shayesta Khan’s family lived. Who the informant was, I could never find out, nor could I find any other evidence that the claims were true.

In the early morning hours, U.S. soldiers had broken down the compound’s side door, near steps that led to an open area outside Shayesta Khan’s bedroom. Family members said they heard shouting, then gunshots. Everything was a blur, and everyone had a different story. The local Afghan intelligence deputy said Shayesta Khan was shot reaching for a shirt. His sons said their father was shot trying to light a gas lantern. In their initial news release, U.S. military officials said an Afghan man was shot after he ignored a warning from an interpreter and a warning shot. The U.S. officials said the man was in the home of a known bomb-maker and kept moving toward a container on a dresser despite warnings, acting “aggressively” and making “threatening actions.”

Who knew which version was right? But I learned certain facts—Shayesta Khan was old, and he was partly deaf, and bullet holes and shattered windows indicated that he was shot from outside his window. Afghan officials who had seen the body said Khan was shot several times, on the left side of his head and body. Afghans we met in the province thought he was innocent, a defenseless village elder who liked to throw rocks to make kids laugh. (Yes, that passed for entertainment in these parts. Still no TV.) His older brother, eighty or so, had no teeth, could barely walk, and didn’t realize his brother was dead. His younger brother, seventy or so, said God had willed it.

“That was the decision from God,” he said, then shrugged.

Part of me wanted to yell at the man and even shake him. I found the blind acceptance of tragedy maddening in this region, the whole idea that God or fate inextricably decided one’s life, that free will had nothing to do with it. I had heard that argument from Hindus and Buddhists about the tsunami; I had privately wondered whether God might want people to use their wits to protect themselves, for instance building their homes more than ten feet away from the water’s edge. But in some ways, such unquestioning acceptance was probably the only way to get through mind-blowing tragedy. God was the answer; a peaceful afterlife was the only reason to go through the pain of living.

I stood with Farouq, Nasir, and the photographer inside the narrow room where Shayesta Khan once slept, with two lone black-and-white pictures hanging on the wall—one of him and his wife decades earlier, another of his former boss, a military hospital official from the Communist regime. His prized Holy Quran was wrapped in cloth,