A few weeks before we bound their wrists with zip tie and told them to sit in the dirt and wait until the Afghani police arrived, a few weeks before their families came and begged us to let them out of jail, a few weeks before that, I met the truck drivers for the first time.
The day was breezy, sun-dappled, early September. The corporal at the gate radioed the Tactical Operations Center (TOC): “Trucks are here.”
I left the TOC to watch them arrive: a procession of white semis battered from miles of mountain driving. Their drivers were bringing us supplies from Bagram Airfield, all the supplies we needed to build houses and guard towers for Infantry soldiers living at this Army outpost in Jaji Province along the Pakistani border.
The drivers parked, exited, and squatted in the dirt while a soldier with a lock cutter ensured that the seals on the truck’s back doors were intact. This signified that the vehicles had not been opened—and their contents pillaged—for the seals had been put on at Bagram. Finding them intact, he broke the seals and beckoned a forklift operator to unload supplies.
I sat in the dirt next to the truck drivers and my interpreter Hassan and watched the forklift heave pallets of plywood, sandbags, and two-by-fours off the backs of the rigs.
It might have been the last day of summer. Or maybe the first day of fall, for fall comes early in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan. It was intermittently bright and dark as wispy clouds blotted the sun. A cool breeze whipped stray pieces of hair into my face. Because many soldiers were up the hill building houses and guard towers, it was uncharacteristically quiet.
Across the outpost, across a treeless valley, there was a mountain pass that belonged to Pakistan. The pass was cloaked in coniferous trees and strewn with boulders. Crevices ran all over it, zigzagging from the summit to the base. As I studied the crevices, I listened to the truck drivers’ Pashto, their voices low and laced with inflection. Although the language was foreign, the rumble of their voices was like a song.
I didn’t know that they were speaking about me until Hasaan said, “Lieutenant, Lieutenant.” I turned away from the mountain pass to look at him, a middle-aged man with rumpled hair and clothing. He was gesturing to a driver who appeared older than the others. “Lieutenant, this man he wants to know how old you are. And also how many children you have? And where you from? And also.” He stopped to ask the man a question. “And also, Lieutenant, he asks where your husband?”
I’d had never spoken about my personal life with an Afghani before. Even my conversations with Hasaan had been strictly work-related. My heart fluttered. Hasaan and the man had stopped speaking and were watching me intently. In fact, the entire gaggle of drivers had fallen silent.
I flushed, then laughed. “Twenty-four,” I blurted. Hasaan translated. The truck drivers reacted, their inflections implying disbelief. When it became quiet again I said, “I don’t have children.” And, “I’m from Minnesota. A state in the middle of America.” Hasaan translated. Again, I waited for them to finish talking. Finally, I uttered, “And I’m not married! But maybe one day.” I waited again.
“What are they saying?” I whispered to Hasaan.
“They can’t believe it,” he said. “They say they’ve never seen a woman with no children or husband before.”
I laughed. “And what about him. How old is he and how many kids?” I asked, gesturing to the man who had initiated the conversation. I was grinning; the exchange was unexpected.
“Six kids,” Hasaan said, after a moment. “Fifty-three years old.”
The man and I kept talking, Hasaan as our mediator. The trucks drivers listened. The sun shimmered, the trees swayed. The breeze upset the dust and it billowed toward us, blinding us in a reddish-brown haze. We squinted. When it passed, the man gestured to my face and pulled a white handkerchief from his shirt pocket.
He reached out, the handkerchief a peace offering. We brushed fingers. His handkerchief felt soft when I ran it over my cheeks. It came back dark. “Oh,” I said. “Thank you.” When I gave it back, I stopped to look at him. I’d never looked closely at an Afghani man. Before, they’d all looked the same to me.
The man had wrinkled skin, a gray-black beard, and green eyes.
***
Three weeks later, in early September, we realized that we were missing supplies. We phoned a logistician at Bagram Airfield.
“Yes,” he said. “You should have received all of your supplies by now. It’s almost winter. Were there any broken seals on the trucks?”
“No,” we said. “There never have been.”
A few days later, when trucks arrived on post again, a soldier who had climbed into the back of a vehicle began shouting and pointing upward. We crowded near him. There was a black ring on the ceiling.
We inspected each truck. There were black rings on every ceiling.
That’s when we understood that the trucks drivers had been breaking through the roofs of our trucks with welding torches all summer, taking supplies, and re-welding the ceilings closed.
Later, when we did the math—what Bagram Airfield had sent us versus what we’d actually received—we realized that the truck drivers had stolen over $10,000 worth of supplies from the US government.
***
When we bound their wrists with zip tie they didn’t protest. Nor did they protest when we told Hasaan to tell them to, “sit in the dirt” and “wait.” They simply looked dejected, averting their eyes or gazing forlornly into the dirt or off at Pakistan. There were ten or twelve drivers ranging from young to old. They wore the traditional dress: sandals, a billowy tunic, and pajama-like trousers that tapered at the ankle. We sent two soldiers up the hill in a humvee to fetch officers from a nearby Afghani police compound. It was a cold day with a heavy wind.
A few Afghani police officers arrived, and spoke gruffly to them. The drivers struggled to their feet and the policemen herded them into a line with their batons. That’s when I remembered the conversation I’d had in August, and I looked to see if the man who’d initiated the conversation and offered me his handkerchief was among the prisoners. But it had been three weeks, and I could barely remember what he looked like. And I realized that they all looked the same, again.
The policemen shouted some more and the men began to shuffle off post. I watched them toddle up the hill—tripping over rocks, righting themselves—until they disappeared behind a stand of pine trees and were lost to me forever.