The Afgan Campaign

14

On the ninth day, we rotate back to column. A parcel is waiting for me-small and heavy-delivered, I am told, by a courier from Headquarters Expeditionary Force. The litter presses round. I undo the tie.

To my astonishment, the packet holds six golden darics — half a year’s pay. Next to the coins nestles a Bronze Lion, the decoration awarded to soldiers wounded in battle. My name is on it. “This must be a mistake.”

Flag reads the citation. The medal is for the night in the cordoned village, when I failed so ingloriously in the hovel with the old Afghan. Only the actions ascribed to me by headquarters are outrageous fiction, painting me a hero.

“Well, I can’t keep this,” I say.

“Why not? You were wounded in action.”

“I stabbed myself!”

“What difference does that make?”

The squad howls. Flag and Tollo stifle laughter. Clearly it is they who put me in for this counterfeit commendation. Tollo divides the gold, setting one daric in my fist and distributing the rest to the litter.

“One month’s pay belongs to you, my boy, and the rest to your mates. That’s only fair. As for the Bronze Lion, the time will come, believe me, when you’ll earn one for real, and the army, rump-stuffed as it is, won’t stand you up for a gob of spit.”

And he pins the medallion to my cloak.

“Take it now, while you’ve got it.”

I USE THE daric to buy freedom for the girl Biscuits. We are back on the trail when Ash again puts the whip to her. I will not bear this a second time. I haul him off, declaring to him (an argument I have rehearsed in my head) that he has no right to render his property unserviceable to the army, which has contracted for it in good faith, and that if he disables the maid by his mistreatment of her, I will see that he loses his hire-pay.

“Then, damn the army,” says Ash. “It must buy this property.”

“It will, you wretched villain!”

I pay him the whole daric. Of course, the army won’t make it good. In the end I am disciplined for exceeding my authority-ludicrous, as the only elements I outrank are mules and slaves-and endure several perfunctory stripes, delivered by Lucas in his capacity as second-from-the-bottom in the litter, much to Ash’s gratification. “Now,” says he, “you own a mouth to feed. May it eat you out of house and home.”

I cut Biscuits loose on the trail, stuffing her kit with kishar, dried goat meat, and lentils; Ash chips in a swift kick to get her started back down the mountain. I watch her booger off and congratulate myself on a deed well turned.

Ten minutes later she’s back in line, packing her same sack of sesame. No threat I can offer will make her wing away.

It turns out to be not so simple, purchasing a woman’s liberty. Strictly speaking, Biscuits is not a slave; she belongs to no one, not Ash, not even herself. In the Afghan lexicon of tor — matters concerning the honor of women-every female must be az hakak, “in the guardianship of” a male-her father before she’s married; then husband; finally brother, uncle, even son if her spouse dies or is killed. The tail of the shirt is I’m now that guardian. “You are her husband,” Ash giggles. “She is your wife.”

My predicament becomes a source of amusement to Flag and Tollo, who warn that I have violated the Afghan code of nangwali. If the girl’s male kin show up, I’ll have to kill them or they’ll kill me. My mates regard this as great sport.

“What you must understand, Meckie” (this is what Ash calls all of us, his version of Mack, for Macedonian), “is that a woman like this”-and he elevates both palms as if warding off a curse-“is nawarzal, unclean, and affir, unacceptable.”

“Then let her work on for pay.”

“I am but a poor man.”

“You are a pirate.”

What can I do? I leave Biscuits with Ash and let him continue collecting her pay from the army. I can’t get him to give her even a tenth. Such an arrangement would set, he declares, “an unwholesome precedent.”

Through the course of this clash I come to appreciate the old gaffer. He begins sharing his table with me, or I should say his rock by the side of the trail. I am not so insensitive as to be unaware of the compliment.

One night I write a letter to my fiancee. Ash looks on. “You tell her everything, Meckie?”

“Everything she needs to know.”

And he cackles gaily.