 |
Reshmina blinked awake in the bright sunshine. She lay on the ground by the river, near the fields with their corn and barley and rice that had yet to be harvested. Her ears rang and her body ached, but she was alive. So was her mother, who was sitting by her side.
Her mother wrapped Reshmina up in a hug so tight it hurt.
“That was a very brave and very foolish thing you did,” Mor told her.
Taz stood behind them both, smiling. “What happened?” Reshmina asked him.
“A big boom,” Taz told her. “That wall you hid behind took the worst of it. The mine blew a hole in the outer wall just big enough for us all to climb through. Too tight for me to make it with my battle belt on though.” The belt he had worn with all the pouches on it was gone, and he tucked his thumbs into his beltless pants. “Had to leave it behind.”
One more artifact for the shrine to failed conquerors,
Reshmina thought.
She sat up suddenly. “What about the others? Zahir, Marzia, Anaa—”
“They’re all right,” Reshmina’s mother told her, and Reshmina saw now that there were other American and Afghan soldiers among them, treating the survivors for cuts and bruises. Taz was bandaged up too. Reshmina put a hand to her aching head. How long had she been out?
“Your eyes—” Reshmina said to Taz. He was cleaned up and looking directly at her, and for the first time she saw that his eyes were a brilliant blue.
“Oh, yeah,” he said with a smile. “I’m beginning to see the light.”
Anaa, Marzia, and Zahir crowded around her. Reshmina’s grandmother, sister, and brother squeezed her hands and touched their heads to hers.
“Baba!” Zahir cried, waving at someone behind Reshmina.
Her heart leaped, and she turned. Coming around the bend in the road was her father, along with other men from the village. Baba was alive! Marzia and Zahir ran to hug him, and after Reshmina was able to get to her feet, she and her mother followed.
“Baba! I was so worried about you!” Reshmina cried, giving him a hug.
“And I you, Mina-jan. We couldn’t find you, but then we heard the explosion.” Baba looked around. “Where is Pasoon?”
Reshmina felt the blood drain away from her face. Pasoon. Had he been with the Taliban during the gunfight? Was his body lying on a hillside somewhere, filled with American bullets?
“Pasoon went to the Taliban,” she told her father.
Baba sagged against his crutch. “Yes. I worried he might.”
“I tried to stop him, Baba. I followed him. Tried to talk him out of it.” Reshmina fought back her tears. “Nothing I said would change his mind.”
Baba put a hand on her head. “I know, Mina-jan. I know.” “I wanted to do the right thing,” Reshmina said, “but all I
did was lead everyone to their deaths! Everyone in the village is dead because of me!”
“No, no, Mina-jan,” Baba said. “Come and see.”
He took her by the hand and led her around the bend, where dozens of villagers had come out of the front entrance to the cave. The cave-in had only separated Reshmina and the others from the rest of the villagers, not killed everyone on the other side!
“A few died, yes,” Baba told her. “To God we belong, and to God we return. But many more survived, and thanks to you.”
Reshmina buried her face in her father’s tunic to hide her tears.
“We are safe now,” Baba said. “The Americans are clearing the village of the last of the Taliban.”
Reshmina turned around. Taz had been standing off to the side, and now three more American soldiers came over to join him. One of them playfully swatted the little brown stuffed animal strapped to Taz’s vest. The white strip on the soldier’s vest said his name was CARTER. He wore his body armor over a jacket with the sleeves cut off, and Reshmina saw the word INFIDEL tattooed on one of his muscular arms. Infidel was what the mujahideen called anyone who didn’t follow Islam.
Carter shook his head. “What a mess, huh, Taz?” “I know,” said Taz. “And today of all days.”
“Oh,” Carter said. “Right. Jeez.”
Reshmina remembered Taz saying that exact same thing when she’d first brought him home. “What do you mean?”
she asked him. “ ‘Today of all days’?”
“Today’s 9/11,” Taz said, like that meant something. “I don’t understand,” Reshmina told him.
“Nine-eleven,” Taz said. “Nine for the month, eleven for the day. September 11th. Today’s the anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center.”
Reshmina shook her head. “I don’t know what that is.” “Are you serious?” Taz asked. “The Twin Towers? The
airplanes?”
Reshmina still had no idea what he was talking about. Taz frowned, and he and Carter shared a confused look.
“How could you not know about 9/11?” Carter asked Reshmina. He was almost angry about it.
“9/11 is … it’s the whole reason I’m here,” Taz told Reshmina. “The whole reason any of us are here.” He ripped open another Velcro pouch on his vest and pulled out two pieces of paper. One was a thin, glossy page from a magazine. It showed a photograph of two gray, rectangular buildings, each twice as tall as the other buildings around them. Black smoke poured from both, blowing sideways in the wind.
Behind the buildings was bright blue cloudless sky, like today.
Taz showed her the picture like it should mean something to her, but it didn’t. She’d never seen these buildings in her entire life.
“She’s a kid,” said Carter. “She just hasn’t learned about it in school yet,” he told Taz.
But when Taz showed the picture to Mor and Baba, they’d never heard of 9/11 either. Neither had Anaa, nor an elderly couple who’d been with them in the cave. Baba called the other villagers over, but none of them knew what 9/11 was, or why the Americans were so angry about it.
“That’s the World Trade Center in New York City,” Taz told them, tapping the photo. He was scowling now. He looked a little like Pasoon when he was angry, Reshmina thought. “Terrorists flew two planes into the Twin Towers, one into each building. Three thousand people died in the attacks. My dad died in the attacks.”
“Your father?” Reshmina said.
Taz showed Reshmina the other photo he carried, this one of a man and a boy in nice clothes. A father and son. The father had a broad chest, brown skin, and a nice smile—just like Taz. The little boy in the picture had high cheekbones, brown hair, and blue eyes. Also like Taz.
“I was there that day,” Taz said. “In the North Tower. I made it out, but my dad didn’t.”
Beside him Carter looked at Taz with a kind of reverence.
Almost awe.
Taz traced his fingers over the man in the photo. “That’s him. My dad: Leo Chavez. He worked in a restaurant all the way at the top of the North Tower.”
“Chavez?” Reshmina repeated. “Your name is Lowery.”
Taz nodded. “That’s my adopted name. I took it in honor of the guy who helped me get out of the towers. He adopted me a year later. Richard Lowery. My name’s Brandon Lowery now.”
“We just call him Taz,” said Carter.
Reshmina looked again at the photos. If someone had done this to her village, to her baba, she would feel the same anger, the same sadness. She explained the pictures to her family and the other villagers in Pashto, and they nodded with understanding.
“So it is badal, then. That is why they are here,” Anaa said.
Reshmina sighed. The Americans didn’t follow Pashtunwali, but apparently revenge was something they
knew and practiced as well. And who could blame them? “Afghans did this to you?” Reshmina said sadly. “The
Taliban?”
Taz shifted and looked uncomfortable. “Well, no,” he admitted. “It wasn’t the Taliban. The men who flew the planes into the buildings, they were mostly from Saudi Arabia. A group called al Qaeda. But the Taliban hated America and the West as much as al Qaeda did,” Taz explained. “The Taliban let al Qaeda set up their terrorist headquarters here. The al Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden, he planned the September 11 attacks right here in Afghanistan.” Taz glanced around. “The Taliban government wouldn’t hand bin Laden over to the US, so we invaded.”
Reshmina’s anger flared like a brush fire. “Wait,” she said. “This Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, they destroyed these buildings, killed three thousand people. That is terrible. Unforgivable. The curse of God and all his angels and of the whole people upon them.” She spat on the ground. “But how many more of our buildings have you destroyed in return? How many more Afghan people have you killed?”
Taz was quiet. Beside her, Reshmina’s family looked on with concern. She knew they didn’t comprehend her words, but they could hear the anger and confrontation in them.
“You said yourself,” Reshmina continued. “Afghans did not do this attack. You are seeking revenge against the wrong people! Did you find and kill this man? This Osama bin Laden?”
“Yes,” Taz said quietly. “When?”
“Almost ten years ago. In Pakistan.”
“Then why are you here?” Reshmina asked again.
“Hey, if you’re not with us, you’re against us,” Carter said.
Taz looked away, and Reshmina waited. Did Taz agree with his friend? Or was his answer still “We’re here because we’re here”? What kind of excuse was that when people on both sides were dying? When Hila was dead?
“So if the United States does to my country what this Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda did to yours,” Reshmina asked, “does that mean Afghanistan now gets to invade your country in retaliation for your attack?”
Carter laughed. “What? No.”
“Of course not,” Reshmina said bitterly. “Because the rules are different for the United States. You make your own rules.”
“Damn right we do,” said Carter.
Reshmina looked at Taz, but he couldn’t meet her eyes. It wasn’t right, and he knew it.
The walkie-talkie on Carter’s body armor squawked to life. “Carter, this is Pacheco,” the voice on the other end said. “We’ve got a house at the top of the village with at least five insurgents holed up inside it. No civilians in range. Over.”
Carter held a button on his walkie-talkie and stepped away to respond, but Reshmina could hear what he said. “Acknowledged. Pull back and I’ll call in a bird. Over.” Carter waited a moment, then spoke into his walkie-talkie again. “Base, this is Carter. We need a strike on a building with at least five insurgents in it. Pacheco will call in coordinates. Over.”
In moments, Reshmina heard the familiar thrum of an incoming Apache.
WHOMP-WHOMP-WHOMP-WHOMP. The helicopter thundered up along the river and hovered right over their heads. Everyone ducked and backed away from the downdraft, and a second later came the hiss and whoosh of a single missile streaking out from under the metal
grasshopper’s wings. The missile struck a house at the top of the village, and it exploded in a burst of fire and rock.
Reshmina let out a breath. It was over now, right?
Suddenly, there was a loud CRACK, and Reshmina watched in horror as the house beneath the shattered building crumbled and fell. The house underneath that collapsed under the weight of the first two, and the demolished buildings took out the next house, and the next, and the next, until the whole village became one great avalanche, falling down on itself.
Carter cursed and turned to everyone standing around watching. “Run! Get across the river!” he cried.
The villagers ran from the landslide, into the fields. Taz ran with Reshmina and her family. When they were safe, they all turned and watched as the village slid down into nothing, swallowed by a great brown cloud of dust that came roaring at them like a lion.
The helicopter hovered a moment more, then lifted away. Its blades churned the smoke and dust as it left, and through a brief gap in the cloud Reshmina saw the empty hillside where her village had once been.
Everything she had ever known was gone.
“Dadgum,” Carter said. “Bombed ’em back up to the Stone Age.” He clapped Taz on the shoulder. “That’s for 9/11,” Carter added.
Carter and the other American soldiers headed back across the river while Taz waited behind.
“Reshmina, I’m sorry,” Taz said. He looked horrified. “That was not supposed to happen.”
“And yet it did,” Reshmina said.
“I’m sorry,” Taz said again, and he left to join his people. Reshmina’s legs gave out, and she sank to her knees.
Around her, the other villagers cried out and sobbed.
If the Americans had named their helicopters “Apaches” for some tribe they had defeated in battle, Reshmina thought, they should call their next helicopters “Afghans.” Because the United States had surely destroyed Afghanistan.
