1
Marjan reaches for her water bottle only to find it empty. She’s drained it more from nerves than thirst. Zarifa notices.
“Hey,” she calls, getting Marjan’s attention. Zarifa snaps a plastic water bottle in her direction, her half dozen bangles
clinking on her wrist. Marjan grabs the bottle just before it hits the floor and mumbles a word of thanks.
“Well,” Elaha begins, drawing their attention back to the reason they have all returned to this base, empty now that their
American counterparts have gone. “Jenna called me from over there yesterday. You know I didn’t like how direct the Americans
were in the beginning, but now I appreciate it, even if it’s bad news. She says the United States won’t grant us any special
visas. We don’t qualify.”
Six months have passed since the platoon’s last mission, but Elaha maintains the authority of a captain, leading the conversation with Jenna and the other American women soldiers, their mission partners until not too long ago.
Even when the platoon was at its most active, Elaha’s leadership extended beyond the Hesco barriers that border the base.
It was Elaha who decided which soldier needed additional target practice or extra sessions with the weights.
She would check on her platoon members before and after missions and always volunteered to step in when needed.
Now, with no missions ahead and no Americans around, Elaha has been keeping the platoon communicating via group texts.
When one platoon member goes quiet, she messages individually.
And when her messages go unanswered, Elaha knocks on doors.
Marjan looks around the room. The six women are spread out, some seated on folding chairs and two leaning against the wall.
They are only a fraction of the entire platoon, but these are the women Elaha managed to gather to strategize around their
options. Some have gone into hiding. Some are plotting their own escape routes.
When Marjan first joined the Female Tactical Platoon, she had felt utterly out of place in this training camp. She wondered
if they’d made a mistake accepting her, even though she had passed their tests, physical and mental. She looks out the window.
In the distance, she can see the tower that nearly undid her. She’d stood under its looming frame and heard the jeering, taunting
voices she had to mute every morning. Those echoes threatened to violate the fragile barricades she’d built.
Worthless girl! Who do you think you are? You make a mess of everything you touch. Just look. You think you can climb this
tower? Ha! You couldn’t even take care of—
Elaha had pulled her aside and broken through the din.
If you have changed your mind, say so now and leave, she advised. We will find another to wear your uniform. But I saw something in your eyes the first day you showed up that makes me think
you have fight in you. So lace up and start climbing that ladder, because you need to learn how to get out of a helicopter without breaking those twiggy
legs of yours.
The ghosts are revisiting Marjan today, the ones who took her childhood from her. They are calling her by a half-dead name,
clawing to pull her attention away from Elaha.
Marjan twists and untwists the cap on the water bottle.
As a soldier, she has learned that nothing is clear in war.
There are nebulous beginnings and endings to every battle and no clear winners or losers.
The fight for this country started long before she donned a camouflage uniform and strapped herself into tan boots, and for a long while, she could have sworn she was on the side of the victors.
Now it’s evident she couldn’t have been more wrong.
When did the tables turn? Can anyone really keep score?
Did they ever have a chance? Useless questions, all of them.
“What does she mean?” Zarifa asks. “My cousin worked as an interpreter for the Americans and he qualified. He and his family
will be going to America as soon as they get through their interview. He wasn’t even a soldier.”
Marjan sits with her legs crossed, tapping out an anxious rhythm with one laced-up boot. Some days, she cannot believe she
and Soraya dared to apply for the platoon positions. She thinks about where she was when she learned of the platoon, how miserable
and broken she had been. Naseeb is her only answer, because now she cannot imagine doing anything besides this. This job might just have saved her life.
Soraya had been working at a fabric store, helping customers flip through bolts of velvet and linen and lace to pick out the
right material for gowns or curtains. She spent her downtime sketching gowns she hoped would one day become couture pieces.
She wanted to dazzle. She wanted to make others dazzle. She’d insisted on visiting the store with Marjan and Hawa on her day
off to pick out fabric for an Eid dress.
They’d paused in front of an electronics store, one TV screen playing a rerun of a children’s program and another running
an advertisement for a female platoon. I’m not a soldier, Marjan had cried to her friend just a few days before. Neither woman had ever heard of such a platoon. Neither woman had
any military experience. They’d never even held a firearm.
And yet.
Satin shimmers but I suppose camouflage has its own appeal, Soraya had mused.
Soraya’s brother had been unenthusiastic, of course. Since their father had passed away, he had eagerly stepped into the responsibilities
of being the man of the house, and to him, that started with restricting his sister’s activities.
It’s no place for a woman, Soraya, her brother had said.
Men rarely realize the great contributions they’ve made to emboldening women. Sparks of ambition had lit up Soraya’s eyes. Just a few months later, she was pairing her camouflage uniform with aviator sunglasses and a bold lip.
“It’s not the same for us. We worked for the Afghan army, not the Americans,” Elaha explains.
“We didn’t work for the Americans?” Soraya asks incredulously. “Who ran the base we trained at? Who trained us? They gave
us targets and planned our missions. In the helicopter, I had one American on my left and another on my right,” she retorts.
“For God’s sake, what did we ever do without the Americans?”
“I asked Jenna the same thing. She says she doesn’t understand it either.”
“Maybe Jenna needs to talk to someone else,” Soraya huffs.
“You know she’s doing everything she can,” Marjan says, and Soraya’s shoulders slump, her anger spent.
“I know she is,” she mutters. “But things are getting worse here.”
Marjan thinks of last night’s program on Metra Media, the channel that covers the news with a focus on women’s affairs. According
to the anchor, Mina Noori, Taliban fighters had invaded homes in the north of the country. By phone, an anonymous woman shared
that the Taliban had tossed a grenade into the home of a woman who refused to feed a dozen fighters. Her four children managed
only to drag their mother’s corpse out before the home was consumed in flames.
“Have any of you received last month’s salary?” Zarifa asks. The women shake their heads.
Marjan thinks of the bills waiting on her.
She is grateful to have a salary but wishes it weren’t always so late.
She budgets carefully, because everyone has heard that in some areas the soldiers haven’t received a paycheck in months.
Marjan keeps a notebook of expenses and income, a way for her to calculate precisely how worried she should be.
Besides rent and groceries, Hawa needs new sneakers.
She has grown since last year and will need a new winter coat soon.
On the last page of the notebook, Marjan has a separate ledger for the rubab she saw in a music store, a handcrafted instrument with intricate inlays and delicate keys.
Marjan had thrilled at the thought of this rubab in her daughter’s hands.
Hawa will bring you to life, she had thought, just before her eyes fell on the dizzying price tag dangling from a thread.
Drop by drop, the river is formed, her aunt used to tell her.
So on the back page of her notebook, Marjan wrote that number. Below it, she keeps a tally, a few bills stuffed into an envelope
from time to time. A gathering of droplets, dreaming of running. When she last checked, she was only a few notes short.
“I spoke with the guy from the ministry about that. He told me it might be another two weeks—maximum,” Elaha relays.
“Certainly. Maybe even sooner,” Zarifa repeats, with sarcastic confidence. She slumps back in her chair, arms folded and a
grim set to her jaw.
“How are your parents doing?” Elaha asks, because she knows Zarifa’s paychecks pay for the three medications that keep her
mother’s failing heart from giving up completely. Her father is a diabetic with vision so bad that he cannot discern a five-afghani
note from a five-hundred-afghani note.
Zarifa blinks rapidly, then sits up.
“They are managing,” she says, unwilling to complain when she knows every woman here has her own burdens. She stands and begins
to pace the length of the room. Marjan feels herself grow more tense as Zarifa tries to expel nervous energy. “They pray that
God will protect Kabul. But we’re the ones with the uniforms. Are we going to be called on to defend Kabul or not?”
Their missions continued after the Americans left but not with the same frequency. It has left Marjan with too much time.
She’s felt most unsafe when she’s alone with her thoughts.
“I hate doing nothing,” Soraya groans, then looks at Elaha. “It makes no sense to have us sitting around when we could be
helping.”
“I haven’t received any orders from superiors,” Elaha reports. “I don’t know anything more than any of you know and we’ve
all heard the same talk. We won’t know until the president himself tells us if he’s going to step down or if they’ll form
some kind of unity government.”