In Search of Safety Read online

  A few days later, one of our relatives was delivering wheat from Mazar-e Sharif to Kabul in a jingle truck. A jingle truck is a big decorated truck. He knocked on our door, and my dad answered. “What’s going on?”

  “I saw Mujahideen fighters just behind the mountains, maybe five kilometers from Kabul City. They’re going to capture Kabul tonight.”

  We were like, “No way.”

  “Yes, just remember this.”

  The next morning when we woke up, Kabul was completely changed. Kabul was taken over by Mujahideen and Northern Alliance fighters. And the streets were filled with dead Taliban bodies. Every street we walked, we saw ten, fifteen, twenty, dead Taliban. One lady — I believe she works for the U.N. now — took off her burka and burned it in the middle of a street. She was the first of many women to do this.

  The dead Taliban were not buried like Muslims are supposed to be buried. No graves. No. No. No. No. They were thrown in a valley and left to rot. There was that much hate.

  The people of Kabul completely changed. When the Taliban were in power, males were not allowed to shave. All the men shaved. They put on suits. They walked like kings. Oh, that was the greatest time. We had good times those early days because we thought we would have peace and peace and peace. The Taliban had run away. Al-Qaeda had run away. The Americans were here. We had no more concerns. Most people were happy that the Americans stayed here. We said, “Oh, they’re going to bring everything for us.”

  The U.S. troops cleared most of the big cities of Taliban. Most Taliban went to Pakistan, but some small groups stayed in villages to fight against the U.S. troops and the Afghan National Army.

  In 2003, I graduated high school. My father encouraged me to join the Afghan military, become a soldier, and do something to serve my country. I heard that the United States Army in Bagram [an American air force base] was hiring linguists who speak English. I thought to myself, that’s a great job. I could serve my country from the other side. I could help another country who is helping my country.

  One of my friends, a classmate, and I went to the Bagram Airfield gate and talked to the American soldiers. That was the first time I had ever spoken to an American soldier. I asked him if they were hiring linguists. He said, “Yes. There’s a company called Titan hiring people.”

  I waited, along with maybe fifty other people, at the main gate of the airfield. They opened the gate and asked, “Who wants to be a linguist?” Everybody raised their hand. They asked us who spoke Dari, English, and Pashto? The Americans were hiring Pashto translators because most Taliban are Pashtun. They were hiring us to talk with the villagers who only spoke Pashto. “Do you speak Pashto?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  They gave me an English exam, a polygraph test, and a medical exam. That was a Thursday. They said, “Come back on Monday and we will give you the result of the tests.”

  I went back on Monday. “You passed.” They made a badge for me and took me inside to meet my boss, Barbara. Barbara was from the USA, a good lady, a really good lady. She said, “We would like you to work here, while the other guys go on missions outside Kabul.”

  I’m not the kind of person who likes to sit behind a desk. I wanted to be part of the military. “No,” I told her, “I would like to work outside. Let those other guys work inside.” If you are part of the military, if you are on the first line of the war, you get to fight against terrorism. I told her, “Bagram is a safe place, a forty-five-minute drive to my home. I would like to go to the first line of the war.”

  “Okay, get your stuff together and come back.”

  I went home, but really I had nothing much to pack. A week earlier, I had graduated from high school. I was planning to go to college. Instead, when I passed the English exam, I joined the military. I never went to college.

  My family had known nothing about this. I sat down with my mom and dad, my sister and brothers, and said, “I’m going.”

  “Going where?”

  “I’m going to one of the provinces where security is not good.”

  “Who are you?” my dad asked. “Who do you work for?”

  “I am a linguist.”

  “Really?” my dad said. “Did you pass a test?”

  “Yeah, this is my badge, and I’m going on a mission tonight.”

  Most of my family was happy. My dad had been in the army and knew what was going to happen. My mom was kind of upset because this would be the first time I would be away from her. She was, like, “Oh you might be . . . might . . . something might happen to you.” My dad interrupted: “The soldiers come all the way from United States to bring peace and prosperity to our country. Let him go help.”

  Being a Muslim person, I respect my family, especially my mom and my dad. We Muslims believe that if you do good things for your mom and dad, and they pray for you, you’ll be alive forever. No one can kill you.

  My mom and dad prayed for me while I picked out some clothes and put them in a bag. On April 4, 2004, at nine o’clock at night, I went back to Bagram Airfield to translate for the Americans.

  As soon as I arrived at Bagram, I was given some uniforms, a sleeping bag, and shower stuff, everything. Until that step, I wasn’t scared. Now that it was about to start, I got scared.

  At one o’clock in the morning, they woke me up, put me in a car, took me to a helicopter, and flew me south, to Ghazni Province. Ghazni is one of the biggest provinces in Afghanistan. The Taliban were there, in the mountains, away from the city. As I speak about this, it is still unsafe.

  Two hours later, we landed inside a PRT [Provincial Reconstruction Team] run by U.S. military forces. The PRT was doing construction projects. Next to them was a large military base for fighting against terrorism.

  Later that morning, I met the American soldiers. They had big helmets, body armor, and guns. I didn’t know what to say to them because I never knew anybody from the United States, civilians or military. I was younger than they were, and I wondered, like, hmm, what’s going to happen now?

  Three days later, for some reason, they selected me to work for the THT [Technical Human Team]. The THT was an investigating team that did top-secret work. When local spies brought information to the soldiers, my job was to translate what they said. Mostly I translated phone conversations. The callers gave us important information that led to finding caches of weapons and enemy activity.

  The American soldiers and I became good friends. They called me Fred. We went on missions together. We ate in the chow hall together. We shared the same food and bottled water. It was like we had been friends for years.

  I learned that the Americans were completely like us. Maybe we speak a different language, but we are the same. We had one aim: to fight against terrorism.

  I worked with the soldiers for forty-five days, then went home for twenty days. When I went back to Ghazni, I was assigned to the battalion commander. I have no idea why they selected me. I was, like, hmm, he’s a high-ranking person. He will be talking with very high-ranking people all the time. How can I work for him?

  The battalion commander was a lieutenant colonel from 116th Virginia National Guard. Working for the battalion commander was hard, because once a week I had to go on TV and translate into Pashto what the commander said in English. Whoever saw me on TV, both citizens and terrorists, knew that I was working for the Americans. At the time, I didn’t pay attention to it.

  I worked for the lieutenant colonel for one year. When he and his battalion left, another group showed up. Then another group. I kept talking, talking, talking, learning a lot of things from the different units. I moved from one location to another location, from south to east.

  In 2005, I was twenty-one years old and had been at war for over a year. I was working with the Tenth Mountain Division from New York. We climbed a hill where there was a big group of Taliban. The U.S. dropped bombs and killed some of them. We ran up the hill to see if any Taliban were still alive. We thought we were safe.

  As soon as we neared
the top, a Taliban fighter threw something at us that looked like a rock. “Hand grenade! Get cover!” I dove behind one rock, while another soldier took cover behind another rock. A piece of shrapnel hit him in the eye. He was bleeding.

  A helicopter landed, picked him up, and took him to Bagram. He was blind in one eye, but he was alive. Times like that made me so sad, because the soldiers were my family. I respected the older ones as I would my father. The younger ones I respected like my brothers. I got so mad if anyone hurt them. It didn’t matter to me that the soldiers were from a different country. They were in my country. They were there to help my people.

  I was a bridge between the American soldiers and the villagers. If the villagers told me the truth, it helped the soldiers. If they told me lies, it would hurt the soldiers. All I cared about was getting truthful information.

  In 2007, I was listening to my scanner and heard Taliban music in a nearby village. The next morning, we went there and found some cassettes. We were trying to find out why they were playing this music. I saw an old, old guy coming back from the bazaar. I asked him, “Do you have a house?”

  He said, “I live right here.”

  “Okay, show us your house.”

  “Why?”

  “Just nothing.” He took us to one house and said, “This my house.” Then he changed his mind. “Oh, this is not my house. The next one is my house.” He was playing with us. He showed us five or six different houses. I knew he was lying. Finally, he took us to a new location and said, “This is my house.” The commander sent one of the soldiers to check what was inside. The soldier yelled very loud, “There’s a big cache of enemy arms here.” We found ten AK-47s, one PKM [a Russian machine gun], one RPG [rocket-propelled grenade], and thousands of rounds of ammunition. They could have killed maybe at least five hundred people with these weapons. A PKM is a big weapon, bigger than an M-4 and an AK-47.

  I’m going to tell you the story about one guy who changed my life. That same year, 2007, I was working for the Arizona National Guard. We were looking for a top leader of the Taliban. His name was M.D. [For Fraidoon’s security, only the person’s initials are being used here.] M.D. and his men had attacked us many, many times. Many.

  It was a rainy spring day. Me, two American soldiers, and an Afghani soldier went to the front gate of the compound to take pictures in front of the scenic mountains.

  That night, the pictures were printed. The platoon leader who printed the pictures ran to my room and said, “We have to talk right now.”

  “Why? What’s going on?”

  “Do you know this guy, the guy in the background of the picture?”

  “No.”

  “This is M.D. We have to find him and catch him right now.”

  The enemy was right there with his soldiers, walking, just walking, from one village to the other village. We had taken the picture for fun. We didn’t know that he was in the background. I couldn’t believe it! “So, let’s go find him,” I said.

  Next morning, when the local workers came to the base, I asked one who had been a good source for me, “Hey, if you find M.D. for me, I will give you anything you want.” We had a lot of things at the base: radios, food, oil, clothes.

  He said, “Okay.”

  He went to the bazaar, came back, and said, “He’s sitting in the butcher shop right now.” I put the picture in my pocket and informed the soldiers. Everybody was ready. We went to the town. As soon as we got close to the town, M.D. tried to run away. Someone must have warned him that the Americans were coming.

  He ran inside a nearby cornfield. “Stop!” I shouted. “Come here! I need to talk to you.” Because I had a picture of him with me, I knew what he looked like. The clothes he was wearing yesterday were the same ones he had on this day. “Come here,” I said.

  He came to me. “What’s your name?” I asked him.

  “My name is M.D.”

  “Okay, M.D., do you have a couple of minutes to talk to me?” The ten or fifteen Americans who came with me were locked and loaded, ready to shoot if anything happened. Had I been alone, I would have been killed right away.

  He was, like, “Yeah, sure.”

  “Okay, come to the side.”

  His family already heard that he was going to get captured by United States forces. They climbed up on a roof and watched us. I took him to the side, handcuffed him, and put a cover on his head. “Let’s walk,” I told him. “Don’t do anything stupid. Just walk with me.” Both sides of the road were covered by U.S. soldiers. In thirty seconds, the U.S. military convoy took him away.

  A few days later, I heard the news. The Taliban had put a fatwa on me. The company commander said to me, “We have heard a report that the Taliban were planning to kidnap you and trade you for M.D. Make sure you do not go anywhere alone.”

  The timing for this was not good. Here I was with a fatwa at the very time I was trying to get engaged to be married.

  I only told two people in my family that there was a fatwa on me. I told my dad because he was a retired military officer and knew how to handle this kind of situation. I told my brother because he was trying to get a job like mine and is very smart. In Afghanistan, we try to keep sad things from women. What happened to me when I was at work with the American army, what happened to my dad when he was at work with the Afghan National Army, we keep quiet.

  Even though I pretended that everything was fine, I walked around feeling that I could die at any minute. I didn’t trust anyone outside my family. Everyone looked suspicious to me. Is that man coming on the street going to kill me? Are those guys walking past our house coming for me? To be safe, I moved me and my family from location to location. I made up all kinds of reasons to relocate. “Okay,” I would say, trying to look happy and positive, “we’ve lived here long enough. Let’s get a new house.” A few months later, I would say, “Let’s move to another neighborhood to see what it’s like.” My brother who knew the real reason for the move always backed me up. “That’s a good idea,” he would say. We did this over and over again.

  Every time I went home on leave, my family said, “Hey, you have a job, you have money, you have a house, you have everything. The only thing you are missing is a wife to make your future better. Make a family for yourself.” I thought long and hard about who to marry.

  Homa is my relative on my mom’s side. My mom and Homa’s father are cousins. I always liked her. She looked so beautiful. She was fifteen and still in school. Homa knew me a little bit. We had never spent time together.

  Homa’s father was like a second dad to me. He’s a great person, a nice person. Things I could not say to my mom and dad I could say to him. He would then pass along my message to my mom and dad. He was my best friend. One thing I was shy to say to my parents was that I would like to get married.

  Homa’s father always told me, “In the future, if you want to marry someone, just let me know, I’m going to help you out. I’m going to help to get that girl for you.”

  I was like, “Okay.”

  Here’s the problem: How could I tell my best friend that I wanted to marry his daughter? How could I say, “Can I marry your daughter?” How could I tell Homa’s mom, who is a really good mom, that I wanted Homa? I was not shy in front of the United States Army. I was not shy in front of the enemy. But to marry? That’s another story.

  One of my uncles on my father’s side is the same age as me. I said to him, “Uncle, tell my mom and dad that I would like to marry Homa.”

  In 2008, my family went to Homa’s family and asked, “If it’s possible, we would like these two to get married.” Her father said, “I don’t have any problem. I know Fraidoon for a long time. I like him as my son. I would like to do it. Let’s ask Homa.”

  There were a few other guys who were trying to marry Homa. Her parents asked, “Which one do you want? You have Fraidoon, you have this guy, you have that guy.” And Homa said, “I would like to marry Fraidoon.” We were all happy.

  While this was happ
ening, I was away on a fifteen-day mission. I called home, hoping to get an answer from my uncle. “What happened, Uncle? It has been fifteen days. Did you talk with Homa’s family or not?”

  “Congratulations,” my uncle said. “Your mom is here, your dad is here, all your uncles are here. You are now engaged, and we will celebrate when you get home.” I never told Homa or her family about the fatwa. If her family had known, they never would have let me marry their daughter.

  Weddings take time in my country. The male’s family must save a lot of money to pay for the wedding. They must build a house for the wife.

  Throughout their engagement, Fraidoon continued to translate for the Americans. He did not tell Homa about the fatwa.

  The same year Homa and I became engaged, I was working with different units of the United States Army. One of the people I met was Dave, a retired FBI agent who worked for a security company. Dave was doing some secret stuff and needed a translator. While I was translating for the Pennsylvania National Guard, I also worked for him.

  As an FBI agent, Dave had worked on large-scale international drug-trafficking cases in Central America. His strongest skill was an ability to develop informants. Dave was well liked and well connected, a charming character whose self-effacing stories were peppered with irony and a strong sense of justice. After Dave retired from the FBI, he became bored. Having led such an active life, he thought about how he could continue to use his highly developed skills. “I had never served in the military. I felt an obligation to sign up because I knew I had the skills they could use.

  “In Afghanistan, I would get calls from informants all hours of the day and night, but I couldn’t talk Pashto or Dari. I’d run down to Fred’s tent, yelling, ‘Terjiman, terjiman,’ which means ‘interpreter’ in Pashto. I’d wake up Fred and hand him the phone. He’d do the interview and take notes while I stood there, doing nothing. When it was over, Fred would write up the notes in English, and from them I’d write my report.