On The Road Again

Today has been an emotional roller coaster. I got up and took my laundry to the man who has been so sweet to not only wash and dry my clothes, but also to iron them on occasion (I must remember to give Max a tip for doing the laundry each week) and tried to tell him that I was leaving by noon. Finally, I gave up and went to the dining hall to find Esman or Hasat to ask one of them to please explain that I needed the sheets before noon.

Then I tried to stuff all my things into my two humonga bags and my little carry-on and my purse. Everything went in except my laundry detergent and one pair of shoes that I forgot to take out of the wardrobe (the first time I called it an armoire) closet. The good news is that one of the guys from Kabul is going to Herat on Thursday, and he will bring those things to me. So here I was with these bags, each weighing as much I as I weigh, a small bag stuffed to the gills with my computer and other electronics, my body armor and helmet, my work computer, and a cross-body bag that carried my iPad and everything else I couldn’t get into another place. How did this happen? Two boxes from Max and two from Emily, and I was over my limit!

I went upstairs to work, and talked for the last time to Esman and Hasat, trying not to cry yet again, and then we had a staff meeting at 10. But it was a party. The boys had gotten me a cake, and Jawad had brought some chocolate candy bars celebrating the birth of his new little girl on October 19. I was very surprised but also touched. I had asked Esman to bring some cookies, and he said he would bring a cake, but when I arrived in the office and saw no cake, I thought he had forgotten. When he told me that on the first day of Eid, one of his friends had died of stomach cancer, I wasn’t concerned that he forgot the cake, but understood why my moving on wasn’t the first thing on his mind. It turned out, though, that he hadn’t forgotten, and I felt wonderful.

At the meeting/party, I told them all how much I appreciated them and how much I had enjoyed each of them and hoped to stay in touch with them. Esman spoke for everyone and told me that they had enjoyed their time with me and were sad to see me go but wished me the best. He said that they felt as if in me, they had a friend. On the way back to the office, he told me that I was the first person who had worked there whom EVERYONE liked. I felt very special and very humbled.

And then it was time to go.

Ferocious came to the office a little before noon and asked if I was ready, and all the guys carried all the suitcases out. Because our camp is on gravel, the suitcase rollers did no good, and two guys had to carry one bag! It was pretty funny. I gave all of them a hug and told them to go back to work. I wasn’t really concerned about the propriety of hugging them; I just did it, and I don’t think any of them was shocked.

Now, if you haven’t been reading my story from the beginning, I will go back here to remind you about how I arrived in Herat two months ago:

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.

So today, Ferocious completed the circle and took me to the airport, where we arrived on time and waited an hour for the plane. When it finally got there, he carried each bag as if it were a little box from the truck to the plane and LIFTED it about five feet off the ground to the plane’s cargo hold. I stared in amazement. Those bags were heavy. And he did the same thing with my body armor, which by that time had to feel as heavy as a cereal box. He gave me a hug and told me that he was sorry to see me go, and asked me to stay in touch. And of course, I will. E-mail is so darn easy!

And while I am on the subject of Ferocious, I have a picture of him that I am trying to figure out how to post – and darn the luck, I forgot to ask Esman to help me. I actually sat down with Ferocious to ask him some questions, because I can’t fathom the kind of life he and Huge and Substitute Huge lead. They have all spent so much time away from home, and they plan to spend more years away. It’s something I just don’t understand. Most of the people I know have roots and want to keep them. These guys, on the other hand, don’t really have roots, nor do they seem interested in putting any down.

Ferocious joined the British Air Force when he was 19 and stayed in for four years. After that, he began working construction and couldn’t stand it. He heard from a friend about being in the security business, and he thought that sounded pretty good. He liked “soldiering,” and thought that security would be similar. And for him, it has been.

Men, and women, I suppose, who aspire to be in the security business, can take training seminars toward that end. The one Ferocious attended was about five or six weeks long, and enhanced his soldiering skills, by including instruction on being a bodyguard, which employs the same skills as the military, but in a different way. He said that a particular seminar in South Africa, which is highly desirable, includes a week in an ambulance ride-along, giving the participant hands-on experience in the possibilities of what can happen in the security business. At one point in his seminar, Ferocious took real fire, as in real bullets, as he passed what I would call a final readiness test. And that preparation has taken him now for about 10 years into war zones.

I asked him if he had ever been afraid, and he said he has, but he just keeps on going. He said that one time in Iraq, his buddy was killed as they stood next to each other. He said that was a sobering moment – but it wasn’t enough to keep him from doing what he likes.

I, of course, homebody as I am (as I am sure you recall), cannot imagine being so footloose and without a home base. He, however, enjoys that about this job. He says that the job provides him with a good salary and a great deal of freedom, and he never feels tied down. I asked him about his relationship with his family, and he told me that his father had died before he turned a year old, and that he and the rest of what is now his family had not been particularly close. I imagine that gives him a certain ability to allow himself to wander, although he does talk frequently with his two siblings.

His job is to keep me safe, to make sure that where I am going is safe, and to make sure I stay safe when I get there. The first time I rode with him in the truck with him as shooter, I watched him watch the road and traffic. He never took time to watch the herds of goats and sheep as I did. He watched the rearview mirror; watched traffic; watched the outside rearview mirror, making sure that we were not being followed, that we did not drive too closely to other vehicles or that other vehicles did not drive to closely to us - which could put us in a dangerous situation - and watched all the pedestrians who could have walked in front of us and have been hit. He is the leader of the team, and he hires and fires the drivers and sets the schedules of the other men who also make sure we are safe. He decides whether it is safe to go out of the camp on a particular day. And the one time someone fired shots outside the camp, he and Sub Huge came to get us, put us in a bunker, and stood watch outside the bunker until we heard the all clear. We were never in any danger, but I felt completely safe because they were there, and I knew they wouldn’t let anything happen to me.

At 33, he has benefited from his job in that he has what I would call a partnership with some friends back in England, and they own a lucrative franchise, and he owns real estate in three different countries. I asked him if he was attached, and he had been, but is no longer. It seems that the last young woman in whom he was interested was ready, as women are wont to do, move forward, and he was not. He said that he never had been really interested in marriage because he couldn’t imagine someone telling him what to do all the time. I assured him that I didn’t tell Max what to do all the time (okay, I kind of stretched the truth a little there), but even if I did, Max didn’t always do it, and we worked those things out. I have a feeling that someday, some woman is going to get really lucky.

And as we spent our hour together, he brought home the fact that these men, whose job it is to really put their lives on the line for someone like me, are really just people, doing a job in a faraway place, away from their friends and family. Last night, as a kind of farewell, Julie, Will, Sub Huge (who for now I will call Tim), Ferocious (who for now I will call Maurice), and I went out for a pizza. We hadn’t gone out very much, and this was a real treat. Tim was telling me about his parents’ retirement, and how he was going to visit them for Christmas, and how he was looking forward to their retirement and to their traveling and just enjoying life. And while we were on our way to the airport, Maurice gave me the news that Tim’s mother had been killed in a car accident, maybe while we were enjoying our pizza and he was looking forward to his trip home. He had put Tim on a plane at 10 that morning, after Tim awoke him at 3 to tell him the bad news. I listened as he talked to Tim on the phone, encouraging him to stay home as long as he wanted, that he, Maurice, would give Tim his leave so that he didn’t have to come back early – Maurice was supposed to leave day after tomorrow for the month of November, and was willing to give that up for his “mate.”

So tonight, I sit here in my slightly larger real room that is in a real building outside Kabul, instead of a connex outside Herat, feeling the pain that goes along with leaving someone or someones behind, and recognizing my absolute good fortune that in such a foreign and fearsome land, so far from home, I have managed to fall in with a number of stellar people, I have cared about them and they about me, some have worked with me and laughed with me and told me about their lives, and a couple have kept me safe. I am truly a lucky girl.