Moving

Today I am flying in a LITTLE plane across Afghanistan. Of course, I am totally overloaded with luggage, and so imagine my shock when we pulled onto a gravel parking lot. My driver, none too willing to help me, unloaded my humonga bags and set them on the gravel only fifteen feet away from a concrete walk. I asked the gatekeeper if the driver could help me get the bags in, and though the gatekeeper assented, the driver remained reluctant.

Eventually, he found his more generous side and assisted me in pulling my poor bogs up to the concrete walk. Remembering my arrival just 10 short days before, I panicked, thinking I was going to have to pull all my luggage, now increased by a 40+ pound Kevlar vest, lovely sand color helmet, and another laptop computer, over 100 yards. I had not a clue how that would take place. I started to shake. Frantically, I asked the gatekeeper yet again if my withering, vanishing driver could help me.

“Eet ees not fahr. We weel help you,” he replied. So I loaded everything up for a long drag, turned the corner, and right there was the luggage screener. All we had to do was put it through the X-ray machine. Then they would take the two humonga bags and the body armor and load them on the plane.

But when my carry-on went through, the gatekeeper stopped. “You haff wine?” I nodded, but it wasn’t wine. It was two bottles of Jameson: one lighter than the original, the one I brought in from Dubai; and a 1780 bottle, a litre, a gift from my friend Ara, and the one bottle still untouched. I really didn’t think the gatekeeper would know the difference. “You cannot carryon. You can make chicken.”

Puzzled and becoming wary, I asked him to repeat himself.

“Cannot carryon. Make chicken.”

I was stumped.

“You English? Is English word!!!”

I know very well that “chicken” is an English word, and I know what it means, and chicken had nothing to do with this flight other than to be the way I was feeling at that moment. Bock bock bock! I was chicken!

Fortunately, right about then, the British gatekeeper showed up to explain that I was not allowed to carry on liquor. Either I would have to check the bag or put the bottles in my checked luggage.

Oh! “Check in.” Not “chicken.”

Well, I wasn’t going to check my computer, which was in the same bag as the Jameson, so I put the bottles in the new humonga Samsonite bag, praying that they would hold together long enough for me to at least TASTE the 1780.

Then I was patted down by a young Muslim woman who seemed somewhat embarrassed to be touching me in places that her religion says should not be touched or seen or even thought about.

After such stress I walked another four or five yards into a lounge of sorts, rudimentary by Atlanta standards, but still comfortable with huge rugs on the floor, and several of what we would call “Oriental” rugs draped on the walls. The same ubiquitous air conditioners that cooled my rooms at the two camps also cooled the waiting area. A bottled water dispenser offered cold and very hot water, and so I made myself some hot tea and tried to relax.

I must add that the reason I was so stressed in the first place was because the night before, I was trying to call one of my colleagues to tell her of my flight time, when I got a message saying that all my minutes were gone. This was impossible. I had not made calls from my phone that totaled even 60 minutes, and while I had sent some e-mails and some texts from my phone regarding business that I needed to attend to, I certainly had not spent 25 HOURS on the phone! This was my initiation to what happens when a phone owner buys minutes rather than a plan.

When Max and I first got phones, Emily was a young teen, at the age where all teens do is talk by text. We knew that minutes meant nothing, because she and her friends would rather text than hear each other’s voices, whereas we, at that age, would watch entire television shows as we were glued to the phone with our friends who were watching the same shows. We bought an unlimited plan – a huge number of minutes per month, unlimited text, unlimited e-mail and data (I hear that such plans are no longer available, and so we will continue to pay money to AT&T to my chagrin, knowing that if we lose unlimited, we lose it).

I was hysterical. How could this have happened? I was sure to be fired the next day! And if I were not fired, I would be the laughingstock of everyone who might find out of my stupidity – which is YOU, since I am SO stupid that I am telling you (but it is funny). I started looking at the phone’s settings, and that is when I figured out that even when I am not ON the phone’s e-mail setting, the phone is looking for my e-mail. And looking. And looking. I was up three or four times during the night, sweating, having hot flashes, wondering how in the world I was going to make it right. How much could those minutes cost? I was certainly going to have to replace them, but I was not going to tell anyone about this incident.

And so, when I woke up, shaking from lack of sleep, I stumbled to breakfast and ran into my current supervisor, the one I call Bruce. I sounded just like my mother when I sat down and told him he would be well rid of me that day. He laughed, and said, “What have you done?”

I blurted out the whole story, and he laughed and gave me some of his minutes to tide me over until I could replace what needed to be replaced, and then he gave me sage advice regarding buying SIM cards for phones with two SIM card slots so that I could call home occasionally, which sounded pretty good by then. My travel experience began about an hour after that, which explains my level of stress.

Anyway, back to the lounge area. Just as I was getting comfortable, a young man strode through the lounge and said something that sounded like “Hurn passage.” The other person in the room got up and followed him out. It then occurred to me that the young man had said, “Herat passengers,” and I, too, should have followed him. So I ran to the door, opened it, saw no one, hollered, “Hello?” and kept walking until I found him. I explained that I was going to Herat. Should I be with him?

He smiled, and brought out a clipboard. We looked at it and found my flight, which was not this one, but the next one. “No worries,” he said. Right.

I sat back down, fixed myself another cup of hot tea, and waited patiently. Two men in traditional Afghan dress walked in and sat down. One of them made himself a cup of instant coffee with fake cream. I don’t drink coffee at all, but I can’t imagine how hideous that must have tasted. Eventually, I took some pictures of the lounge and then sat back down and waited for the announcement of my flight.

It came.

I got on a van and rode out to the tarmac, where the three of us, the two men and I, got on an 18-seat prop jet. The co-pilot was friendly and helpful; he carried the bag that used to hold the Jameson, and now held only my computer and iPad, and set it down on the seat next to the one I had chosen. I loved his British accent. I pretended that this flight was with British Airways and the booze would be free. Too bad. No booze.

If you have never been on a prop jet, they are something to behold. The propellers go so fast that a human’s sight is not impeded. Though I was looking THROUGH the whirling propellers, I could see beyond them as if they didn’t exist. And that is how I viewed the Afghanistan countryside during this flight: as if I were looking directly at the ground, much nearer than had I been on some huge Boeing 770 or something. Again, brown was the dominant color; however, here and there, I think I saw patches of green that wound about, which made me think a river was close at hand.

To pass the time, I read Horse Soldiers, by Doug Stanton, which tells the story of US Special Forces who entered Afghanistan after 9/11 and did the job that the US needed, until someone got the idea that the fight was not in Afghanistan, but in Iraq. I was captivated by the tale of all the soldiers, and I decided right then and there that whatever hardship or lack of comfort I was dealing with, those men had it over me by about 1000%. I hope that anything I do comes close to what they accomplished in their short time in this country. I hate to say that I don’t want to finish the book because then it will be over and I will not be able to sweat with them as they, big American men, ride teeny tiny horses that have a Genghis Kahn pedigree, and fight battles that give me the heebee jeebees - if that’s how to spell it.

We finally arrived at our destination, and to my surprise and delight, a friend from my first stop, Ron, was there to greet me, as were his security people, Huge and Ferocious. As I struggled to right my bags, which were treated well by the crew, Huge picked up one of the suitcases as if it were a box, and carted in the 50 feet to the armored vehicle in which I would be riding to my new home.

I started to ask if he didn’t want to roll it, but then stopped. Why ask? The bag was at the vehicle.

I had spent two hours on a plane, and so I had to find a bathroom. Right away. Many people in this area speak Italian, and darn the luck, all I could think of to ask was, “Donde es el bano?” which is Spanish for, “Where is the bathroom?” We wandered, Ferocious and I, through the graveled pathways, and we finally found a bar. There had to be a bathroom there, right? There was. It was either a man’s bathroom, or a unisex bathroom with two stalls. I didn’t care. Poor Ferocious. I don’t think he knew what to do.

His reaction was not unlike Max’s, when, after we were married and I don’t think he even then understood what he was in for, we were in Kansas City, maybe south of the Plaza or somewhere, and I had to go to the bathroom, and there were three women in line for the ladies’ room and no one in line for the men’s room (can you imagine, ladies?). I made Max scope out the men’s room for inhabitants, and then went inside for my purpose. Although not apoplectic, Max was speechless for a while. Then I asked him what he thought I should have done, and of course, he had no answer. From then on, he was my willing guard if I needed one.

I have to say that Ferocious did himself proud.

We then followed the winding road to my new and somewhat permanent digs out in a desert, and I dropped the humonga bags and the Jameson and my computer in a container that has been modified to be living quarters. Okay, sleeping quarters. Maybe. But it's still better than what the horse soldiers had.

Tomorrow, I begin work. I will see, up close and personal, the people who are hoping and trying to make sure this country will follow the law. It’s like you’ve heard: The United States is a country of laws. We follow the law. We don’t bow to power or corruption or undue influence. Our lawyers, our judges, our entire judicial system: the rule of law.