Homeward Bound

The medic, the soldier and the girl had made four stops, that morning, and they were going to get back on the road after the fourth, when they heard the noise. Clogs, voices that shouted orders and other sounds, brought by the wind. And all those sounds came from the road they had left behind.

"A convoy. Or a caravan," the man said.

"Where?" the woman asked.

"Behind that turn. They are quite far, yet," the man said. How came those people were behind them? A caravan is slower than three people walking. If they were going on the same road, they should be following that group, closer and closer, and not vice versa. Maybe that group came from a trek which led in the road, just some kilometers back from where they were now, so they did not see it before, nor any trace of its passage. And it came from a place close to there, doing less stops than they. However, now they were coming in there.

The girl said something in Russian to the soldier and started climbing the slope on the roadside. The soldier followed her.

"There's no need to hide. The boy and me had met another caravan some days ago. I speak the language, I'm a medic, and... "

"We have to waste them!" the girl said, abruptly.

"Why?" the medic wondered. The girl reached a flat patch and looked at the medic.

"Because they come from Pakistan. And we need food. And they have it. And there is war!"

"I have nothing to do with this war! I will not shoot!"

"Nobody asks you to shoot! We need food! If you want go, go!"

The medic climbed to the flat patch, behind the soldier. He too needed food...

They lay on their belly, behind some bushes, and waited for the convoy to pass in front of them. The medic was upset. He did not want to shoot, not that way... It was not to defend himself...

The soldiers got the picture. He looked at the medic.

"Wait to shoot, till we have to reload. Then shoot. So you will shoot just to defend us. Right?"

"Right... " the medic nodded. Yes, to shoot to cover them while they changed the mags... That was acceptable!

The convoy passed. It was a group of warriors, no merchants, no civilians. Better off that way. But they were too many...

"They are a lot," the medic said. "We cannot kill all of them..."

"We need food," the girl said. "Think something well!"

"I thought," the medic nodded after a while. "The mules."

"What? To shoot the mules?"

"The mules carry crates. Maybe there have weapons inside, maybe ammunitions. If we hit the ammunition crates, or some fuel, there will be an explosion, some deads, they will be shocked for a while..."

"And we can kill them all!" the girl said. Yeah, straight to the point, the medic thought.

"Then it's easy!" the soldier said. He aimed at a crate on the back of a mule and pulled the trigger...

That crate had no ammunitions inside. It had anti-personnel mines.

The soldier remained stunned for a second by the huge explosion, but then the girl started shooting, and other crates blew away. This woke up the soldier from his stupor, and he too started shooting again.

In less than a minute, the whole convoy was destroyed. They came down by the slope with no haste. All the men on the road were dead or dying. The medic was the first to talk, with no exaltation at all.

"Strike!" he said.

Nobody asked him what it meant.

They collected all the magazines still intact and the food that was not burned or become inedible anyway. The medic looked for medical stuff, but he did not find so much useful. Better than nothing. Well, so this is an ambush, he thought. Ambush is killing, killing is fun, so they said in that movie. Yeah, really fun... My foot...

When the night came, they stopped close to a small mound along the road. The girl was not sleepy, so he sat on top of the mound, without a word. The medic and the soldier lay down to have a nip.

The medic did not sleep so much. He was not used to sleep after a fight, especially a fight like the last one he had seen. Yes, he had not shot a bullet. But hey... War is hell, really...

Was it really necessary? Could he manage the thing differently, with another talk with the Afghans? Yes, this time they were "mujahideen", maybe from some fundamentalist party, not looking for a mediation, at all... Quite a difference... But even so...

He decided that, since he would not sleep anyway, he could let the girl sleep a little more. So he got up and went to her. She was surprised to see him.

"Why you came? You must be tired. Boy could come!"

"Let him sleep," he said. Sometimes he forgot he was the oldest one in that bunch. Maybe ten years older than the boy, and five years older than the girl. "He need to rest. He is a good guy, but if he doesn't sleep now, he will be too tired tomorrow."

"And you? And me?"

"I am used to this place. It's the third year I come here. And you... You are the kind of woman who would stop a running horse... "

"Oh, you know Nekrasov!" she snorted. ""She stops the running horse, and storms in the burning "isba""..."

"Yeah... " the man nodded. He would have felt ashamed if he had to admit that those ones were the only lines of Nekrasov he knew... The girls nodded, smiling.

"So you know, we are not a pack of assassins, blood-thirsty barbarians... Whe are able to write too... "

"You are not more barbarians that any other people. And surely, not more than them... " he said, nodded to the darkness with his chin. The girl nodded again.

"And then, why you are here?"

"Oh, it depends... " he shrugged. "The first year, the second, or the third?"

"Let's start from the beginning... "

"Well... the first years... " the man started saying. Then he snorted and shook his head. "The first year I thought they too were on OUR side... "

"On your side... "

"Yes, you know... "They fight even for our freedom", and other craps like that... ", Then he took a deep breath, and said, without looking at her. "At the end of that tour of duty, I knew that they were fighting just for THEIR freedom... And the freedom of some guys who thought that a war can be a holy thing, and women had no right to education and all the rest... Who cares?"

"And then? The second year? Why did you not stay home?"

"The second year I let someone convince me that even an invasion made by YOU is an invasion... Even if I never understood why an invasion made by you is an invasion, and an invasion made by the Americans is an "intervention"..." he snorted.

"Do you think yet so?"

"Yes... I mean, I know, you are Europeans, your system has a lot of leaks, but is very better that the system they would like to impose in this country, and not only here... And then I KNEW what a system they want to impose here: "Sharia", some democracy... But this is THEIR home, not YOUR home... If they want to ruin their life, to remain illiterates for the 90%, it's up to them... So I came here... And then, they killed my assistant, my nurse... And I thought that, well, even if this is THEIR home and not yours... Who cares?"

"I think... WE did NOT kill her... Right?"

"Right!" he nodded. "It was not your fault... That is, yes, it could happen, you could do it. We both knew about that. A burst, and that was that. A fast thing. Or maybe, some months or some years in Siberia, and then, an exchange with a couple of agents of yours... Something civilized, after all... But it has been NOTHING civilized..."

"How it came?"

"How... You were right. If you don't wear the veil, many people here think that you are just a whore. That you are used to open your legs on demand. Some guys don't mind, they let you live, but some other ones want to... have a slice of the cake... And she did not wear the veil: she thought it was not necessary. Big mistake... "When you are in Rome, do what the romans do"!" he nodded, sarcastic.

"So they... someone has tried to... " she said. He nodded again.

"Yes... I was far out of the "aul", for a routine visit in another place... And someone assaulted her. She tried to defend herself, but he had a dagger ,and she had not... You know how much it takes to die, with a dagger in your belly? If you are lucky, half an hour, if not, two, three hours... And there's nothing nobody can do... Just wait... "

"How could it happen? You were here for them... "

"Yes, but for someone this was not enough to leave us alone... What can I see... These are fact which push you to neutrality!"

"And then? What happened then?"

"Well... That guy who did it... They took him and cut him... " he said, passing two fingers on the side of his neck, to be clearer. "After all, the chief of the "aul" was a man as it takes... But later he died, rest in peace... And even if that shitty bastard was dead too, this really did not solve anything... This did not give me my nurse back... "

"She was more than a nurse... for you... really?"

"Much more than this... " he nodded, his eyes lowered.

"But then you came again... Why?"

"Other "even"," he breathed. "Because EVEN here, there are women and children... And for each son of a bitch who gets the ticket to Heaven dying in battle, seven or eight of them die too, but in a less glorious way... "

"What that means?" the girl asked. He shrugged, then turned towards her.

"Once there was a bombing in an "aul" close to the one where I live. And I was there. I don't say you did it for the sake of it, I know it was not that way. There was a lot of ammunition there. With them, they could target practice on your boys. you HAD to sweep it all away. And I don't give a damn, how did you know that all that stuff was there. Even if they said that you had mistreated some prisoner to get information, it would be the pot which says black to the kettle. But there were women and children too, there, and they just got in the way..."

"It always happens, in a war."

"I know. But I could not stay out of it."

"But why HERE? There are many place in the world where there are women and children, and there is war. Nicaragua, Angola, Ceylon, Salvador..."

"Yes, I know, it's true... But there are some sanitary structures there, more or less they work... Here around, the sanitary structure was ME! And some other mad like me! And I am maybe the ONE surgeon who knows how to perform an operation in extreme situation AND speaks the local languages: Dari and Pashtu, and some words of Tadjik too. So I HAD to come. HERE, and nowhere else."

The girl looked at him, silently, then nodded, snorting. Yes, that was a good reason to come right there. Nothing political, at least.

"Did you cured many... "dushmany"?"

"Sincerely, no. When you hit them, you knock them around all right. There's not so much left to cure, to treat. You can just let them die in peace, many of them. And most of the other become unable to fight. Cripple, maimed, blind... But what they say? This is a holy war, if I kill the enemy, I go to Heaven, if they kill me, all the same. So let them die, and more power to them... "

"So you help... civilians?"

"Well, you do what you can... " he shrugged. "I have seen some children, which had the gut worms. But so many that they ate them alive, from within. I had asked many times for to get more medicines, but the convoys carried only weapons, ammunitions, explosives. Medicines and food were the last of the problems, for those who organized the things. And so people died: worms, typhus, infections... The childbirths were almost a suicide. And if you are a man, you can't touch the women in labour, not even if they need you: you can't even look at them... It's all a crap, war or not war: the only thing to do would be to let them stew... "

"Let them stew?"

"Let them get lost," he explained, nodding. Then he looked at her. "And I really don't understand, why you did not let them stew. This place has nothing. A bit of gas, some minerals, but do YOU need gas and minerals? You have everything: all the elements of the periodic table. This place is worth nothing. Even if you had won, you would have won a place that is worth nothing!"

"I guess, you don't believe we are here to help them, right?"

"No I don't believe that "brotherly help" stuff. And not because you say so. You say solemn lies and God's honest truths, as the Americans, as ours, as anybody... I don't believe it because I don't believe that a people goes to war for the pretty face of another people."

"This is not internationalism... "

"I've never been an internationalist in my life. Sorry to disappoint you... " the medic said, with a grin. The girls snorted and keep looking at him.

"And if you are not an internationalist, why are you doing what you are doing?"

The medic snorted, took the picture of the soldier's girlfriend from his shirt pocket and gave it to the girl. She observed it with attention. The moon was full yet, and without any clouds, the girl understood that was the subject of the picture was another girl.

"What's her name?" he asked. The medic shrugged.

"Never seen nor known."

"What? Isn't she your girlfriend?"

"Non MINE girlfriend: HIS girlfriend," he said, nodding to where the soldier boy was sleeping.

"And if she is HIS girlfriend, why YOU have the photograph?"

He snorted again and tell her all the story with all the details. At the end, the girl had her mouth wide open.

"And you have saved his life... are doing this journey... risk your life... for THAT? for HER?"

"Oh, yes, I'm a sentimental old man... "

"Ah!" she snorted, shaking his head. "Sentimental... How many people had you killed along the road, before today?"

"Oh... three!" he said, after pretending to count the Afghan he and the boys had killed, on his fingertips."

"Just three?" she wondered. He shrugged again.

"Just three... And however, it's another deal. They all wanted to KILL us. The skin is the skin... "

The girl did not answer immediately. She looked away in the dark, then nodded.

"Yes, that's it!" she said.

The night passed by without incidents, and the morning after, the group hit the road again. While he walked, the medic thought about the discussion of the night before, with the girl. He thought and walked, as if it was the most normal thing, the most normal situation in the world. Indeed, for him it was not so normal, especially for the company he was in. But there was nothing else to do. No way back. So walk, walk and walk...

The night before, he had persuaded the girl to go to sleep, after she had known his story more thoroughly. Maybe she thought he was kind of an enemy: he had helped the "dushmany". "Dushmany" means "enemy", in Pashtun language. Or was it in Dari?

However, now she likely had changed her mind. She had given him her hand, before she went to sleep. The hand of a woman, after so much time. A strong woman, yes. But her hand was so smooth, warm... sweet...

Tracks. Tracks that crush and shatter the ground. An engine. This time, not behind them. In front of them. Somewhere in front...

"A tank! It's a tank! They are our boys! "Nàshi rebyàta"!" the soldier boy cried. His eyes were wide open, he was happy as if he was home already.

"Well, good for you... " the medic said. He tried to turn and run away, but the girl took him strongly by his arm.

"Where you think to go, alone?"

"No worry, we will put in a good word for you!" the soldiers laugh. Then he turned his face toward the tank who had appeared behind a turn of the road and waved his hands, crossing his arm on his head. "Pazanì! My Rùsskye! Ni strelyàite!"

But the tank stopped, remained motionless for a while, then turned his turret and the gun towards the group in the middle of the road. Just the time for the medic and the Russians to get the picture and run like Hell, and then the tank did what the soldier had told not to do: it fired.

"No shtò vy dyèlaite!" the soldier boy cried, from the shelter he and the group had found. "Vy shtò, s'umà sashlì?"

"What did you say?" the medic asked. He felt still half-deafed by the explosion.

"They must be out of their head! I have told them, we are Russian!"

"But they are not!"

"What?"

The Russians looked at the tank. The medic nodded at it. There were the insignia of the Afghan army, cancelled by an "X", and two rags on the radio antenna. One rag was white and the other was green. The white one was for "surrender", the green one for "Islam"... What else?

"Desertiri!" the soldier boy said. Deserters.

"Good," the girl said "You see the periscope on the turret? Do you see it?"

"Ah... yes!" the medic said. The girl thrust her hand in the wide pocket of the medic's jacket, and took the grenade he had gotten the day before from someone of the destroyed convoy. A movement so fast that the medic, concentrated on the tank, did not notice it.

"Shoot at it!" the girl said.

And she ran away before the others could stop her.

"She is mad!" the medic cried to the soldier. And both started shooting at the periscope, an at whatever could look as a loophole in the armor.

The Afghans in the tank were not sure to have seen a human figure running away from a hole near the road. But before they could verify it, a rain of bullets fell on the tank, destroying the upper lens of the periscope. The tank was blind, to look around, someone had to open some porthole... The men swore. They did it for some second, but from the deep of their hearts, And they was too busy swearing to prepare themself to die.

The girls ran to the left of the tank, who had the gun aimed a bit on its left-hand side, so she could get close to the tank without risking to be gunned down. She had no time to think, so she had no time to be scared. She just recalled what her mother told to her. I know that the tooth powder sucks, you don't have to eat it up, you have to spit it out. But your teeth will be strong...

The girl took the ring of the grenade between his strong teeth, hoping they were strong enough, pulled the grenade away, spat the ring out, threw the grenade below the tank, and ran, ran, ran...

The medic and the soldiers ducked one second before the explosion, to hide from possible splinters, but they felt the wind it provoked very well. After one second of silence, they heard a metallic sound, a woman's cry and a short burst, then another, then another.

They lifted their heads. The back side of the tank was covered by a high and thick black smoke, and the girl was making sure that the only Afghan who pulled his head out of the tank was really, really dead.

The medic and the soldier kept staring at the burning tank, till the girl cried something in Russian, and they looked at her. She was moving his arms, showing them the road beyond the tank. No exaltation, no joy. As if it was business as usual, for her.

They moved towards the tank. The medic looked at he man with his body out of the tank. Absolutely dead. The grenade had blown up under some vital part of the tank, the fuel tank or something alike, or maybe beneath the emergency porthole, that could have been open, to refresh the crew inside... But if it was so, then even the ammunitions inside the tank should have been exploded... Nobody wanted to look into the tank to see if someone else could be still alive and dangerous. The odds were near impossible. And the spectacle could have been hard to bear with...

The man with his body out of the tank had no uniform. They were not regulars who changed flag: they were "mujahideen" with a captured tank. This could explain their absolute insufficiency as a tank crew. Nobody had thought to use the machine gun of the tank. They had used the gun as amateurs: just one shell. Maybe they all were unable to reload, or in the heat of the fight, they did not manage to do it? It could well be... What a luck, a tank full of incompetents...

If the tank crew had known his trade, they all were dead. Or maybe not. The surprise factor... Yes, the girl has got the job done, no doubt. Though he was reasonably sure he had broken the periscope lens, or damaged it, at least. It was the only thing he could do to protect her. She seemed so fragile, facing the tank. But maybe she did not see herself that way...