The Donkey

Photo credit: W. Greeson, USMC

افغان

“Yes, kaka zoi, I’m coming!”

Hamid had been awake for an hour when he heard his cousin Kadir’s whistle. He had already revived the dying embers in the mud-brick fireplace, put a kettle of water on a grate above the flames, and kneaded some tasteless dough into a ball, leaving it in an old tin bowl for the others to tear off pieces and bake into fresh bread when they awoke.

He had put some pomegranates and a few chunks of yesterday’s bread in his keffiyah. Along with the food Kadir would bring, this would be enough to last for the two or three days the boys planned to spend in the hills tending their goat herd.

A cord strung through the sheath of a knife was fastened around Hamid’s waist. His older brother had given it to him months ago while on a visit, before leaving to rejoin the mujahadin fighting the Russians somewhere to the north. The knife was an American bayonet with a leather handle and a blackened blade. It looked both sinister and elegant, and its heft against Hamid’s hip made him feel manly. While he watched the goats grazing in the hills, he’d finger the knife’s handle and imagine joining his brother.

Fighting the Russians would give Hamid the chance to prove his túra (bravery) and nang (honor), some of the Pashtunwali values he’d been taught since childhood. He often plucked at the scant whiskers on his chin, convincing himself he was ready for war and glory. But he knew that his father would never let him go. Hamid was about seventeen—birthdays weren’t usually recorded or celebrated in Afghanistan’s hinterlands—and he was now the oldest child at home, needed there rather than on the battlefield. And although he was loath to admit it even to himself, perhaps he wasn’t as ready as he wanted to believe.

Laila, one of his five-year-old twin sisters, squinted at him, feigning sleep. Hamid knew she watched him during his morning routine, so he played along with her game, moving about with exaggerated movements to coax a giggle. When he’d finished his tasks, he knelt beside her while waiting for Kadir, contorting his features and moving his hands to make fluttering shadows on the wall—soaring eagles, springing antelope, crowing roosters—to break her pretense of sleep. Hamid always won the mock battle of wills, as he did now. Laila snickered and reached toward him for an affectionate squeeze and to give him the small doll he always took to the hills because she had said it would keep him company. Almost as if on cue, Kadir’s footsteps sounded on the gravely path outside, and Hamid’s mother silently crept into the room as she did most days, to sit on her haunches by the fire and smile at her children’s antics.

As Hamid rose to leave, he tugged on his other brother’s ankle to wake him and tucked Laila’s doll into his keffiyah. The rusted hinges on the rickety door squeaked when he opened it, and coldness entered the room. He looked at his mother and patted his hand on his chest, a sign of love and respect, and as he stepped outside, his mother murmured, “Hodai paman”—“Go with God.”

It was still dark as Hamid and Kadir shooed several dozen goats out of their pen and onto the path that ran up the hills, snapping them on the rump with slender sticks. Two dogs that loitered in their village but had no certain owner trudged along with them. The boys welcomed them; the dogs’ natural herding instinct kept the goats close, and, on nights in the hills, curled against them, the boys appreciated their warmth.

Kadir had strapped several wool blankets, cooking utensils, and other gear atop a small donkey that always accompanied them. Like the dogs, the donkey had no name—the animals were always just “the donkey” or “the gray dog” or “the brown dog.”

After two hours of trekking into the hills, they reached a meadow by their favorite grove of fir trees. They hung their keffiyahs from a branch and laid the blankets and equipment on the ground. Watching the goats meander around the grassy hilltop, the boys occasionally made whipping sounds with their sticks by swishing them through the air, though the goats paid no attention. As they gazed at the mountains standing between them and Kabul, wisps of steam rose from their shoulders, sweaty from the morning trek. Above the tree line, the snowy peaks in the distance shifted colors as the sun rose at their backs, thawing the morning chill.

Photo credit: W. Greeson, USMC

The cousins laid small rugs on the ground and went to their knees for their morning prayers in postures they assumed faced Mecca. In the hills, they weren’t under the watchful tutelage of a village elder, so they performed the ritual with mock seriousness, often stifling laughter as one of them mangled key phrases or farted at a moment that was supposed to be marked by quiet reflection. Sometimes they’d perform the routine several more times through the day, not so much out of piety as from a need to interrupt the monotony of watching goats graze all day. Just as often, though, they’d sneak off alone to a dip in the terrain or behind some shrubs to masturbate, a pastime that both boys had recently discovered and that now consumed them with lust, wonder, and guilt. They usually skipped the evening prayer, huddling instead beside a small fire they’d made from fir branches plucked off the ground.

From the grove, they could make out plumes of smoke drifting from open fires in the village nestled in the valley below. Hamid used to venture there several times a year to trade goats for produce and other goods. He recalled how it was much like his own village—about a dozen mud-brick compounds, stone-walled livestock pens, and some crops growing in step-like plots carved into the hillsides. A coarse dirt road cut through it, providing access to the more developed roads that led to Kabul or beyond.

In a straight line, the village was about three kilometers away. But to walk there with the donkey and some goats in tow, up and down the crags and ridges and slopes of the hills, would take several hours. The village was sometimes invisible if the valley was shrouded in fog, but on other days it seemed vivid and alive, even from a distance. When Afghans had lived there, sharp sounds from the village sometimes echoed off the hillsides, barely audible by the time they reached the boys’ hilltop pasture.

But the Russians were there now. Three months earlier, Hamid had been with Kadir in the same meadow watching a swarm of Russians storm into the village. The boys didn’t know if any mujahidin fighters were there, but from their vantage point, it appeared that the Russians faced no resistance. Hamid was incensed, seeing and hearing the flash and crump-crump-crump of rockets and grenades, the kak-kak-kak of machine gun fire. After the gunshots and explosions stopped, a burning livestock stable belched flames and thick black smoke. Hamid shuddered as he heard—or perhaps imagined—the cries of animals afire rolling up the hills. About fifty of the Russians lived there since.

“I will kill them one day for this,” Hamid said more than once. The Pashtun code required him to exact badal—revenge—on the men who had murdered his people.

*

Night came. The goats clustered in the fir grove, and the donkey was tethered to a tree. The boys huddled by a fire, the burning fir branches giving off a sweet aroma and an occasional pop when the sap inside boiled, sending up a burst of sparks. They had settled on the east slope of the hilltop, both to protect against the wind that whipped up the mountain from the west and to cloak the glow of their fire from the Russians. From a pot, they took handfuls of rice they had cooked at midday. This evening, they roasted a trio of partridges Kadir had caught in a snare, a talent he’d mastered years earlier. Hamid was grateful for Kadir’s trapping skills; he hadn’t the patience to sit motionless, waiting for the birds to step into the ring of twine laid around breadcrumbs and fennel seeds.

The boys peeled off strips of meat from the wings and thighs and tossed them to the two dogs, then threw their bones in the fire while the dogs devoured the meat, a welcome change from the field mice they’d flushed out of the grass or the sun-bleached goat turds they’d chewed on during the day.

Finished eating, the boys draped a blanket over their shoulders, stared at the fire’s hypnotic glow, and talked. The dogs propped their heads in the boys’ laps and gazed at the fire too. The cousins were close, having been born within a few months of each other, and they spoke of private things. Each had an older brother who had left their village over a year ago, with vague notions of finding honor and glory fighting the Russians who had invaded the country nearly a decade earlier. Now, Hamid and Kadir were the oldest children at their homes. But they did not yet feel as if they were men.

“Do you think we will get to fight?” Kadir asked.

“Inshallah,”—God willing—“yes,” answered Hamid. “Someday.”

“Have you ever fired a gun?” asked Kadir.

“Yes,” answered Hamid.

He had fired an old Enfield rifle once, one of several the elders in the village kept after one of the British invasions decades earlier. The guns were rarely used, because ammunition was scarce and—being as old as the rifles—unreliable, and there were few times when they were actually needed. Hamid had fired one of them once when his father let him try his luck at an antelope that wandered near their village. To everyone’s surprise—especially Hamid’s—when the shot rang out, the animal, nearly three hundred meters away, raised its head curiously, paused for a beat, and then dropped dead; the bullet had pierced its heart. The village feasted well that night, though some remarked that the exotic animal tasted just like their own goats. And from that day, some of the village elders good-naturedly called Hamid “Hunter.”

“I know you have,” Kadir answered, knowing Hamid was thinking of the time he’d fired the Enfield. “But have you ever fired a real gun?”

“No,” said Hamid. “But I think it will be easy.”

“Shooting it, yes. But killing—even a Russian—maybe not?” said Kadir.

Hamid faced Kadir for the first time in the conversation. The Russians weren’t Pashtuns, and that was all Hamid needed to be certain that killing them would be easy.

“Maybe at first, but after that, inshallah, not so much,” Hamid said.

Kadir shrugged and grunted tiredly, and Hamid felt it was time to stop talking and sleep. He lay down on a folded blanket, pulled another blanket over himself, and looked into the starlit sky. Kadir did the same. Each dog curled up beside a boy. The donkey stared at the fire’s glow from a short distance away, chewing calmly on a mouthful of grass.

The boys were quiet for several moments until Kadir broke the silence.

“Good night, O Great Hunter,” he said.

Hamid turned his rump toward his cousin and farted.

Kadir laughed, and Hamid farted again. Then, in the familiar aromas of their wool blankets and teenaged sweat, they drifted toward sleep.

Hamid savored these quiet moments between the end of conversation and his surrender to slumber. As his eyes grew heavy, he watched the cosmos and imagined the battles that would define his manhood.

Русский

“Faggot! Get over here!”

“Yes, starshi serzhant, I’m coming!”

Andrei stood from behind the rock pile where he had been squatting in vain for several minutes, fumbling with his trousers. Since arriving in Afghanistan eight months earlier, constipation and diarrhea had alternately tormented him with equal vigor. He belted his ill-fitting trousers and shuffled as quickly as he could toward Senior Sergeant Kharkiv.

Andrei was always “faggot.” Never “Andrei” or his surname “Mironov” or “ryadovy”—private—his rank. Kharkiv bestowed nicknames like “shit bag,” “dog turd,” or “pig fucker” randomly among the other members of the platoon. Often they were light-hearted, pronounced with an almost affectionate smirk by the apish senior sergeant. Only one soldier besides Andrei had an exclusive nickname—a particularly well-endowed soldier admiringly dubbed “donkey dick.” But Andrei—and only Andrei—was always just “faggot.”

He was slender, pale-skinned, and whiskerless, younger-looking than his eighteen years. Plastic framed glasses and a quiet, observant manner made the other conscripts think him nerdy and meek. He wasn’t gay, but he fit Kharkiv’s image of what a gay man looked like, so the nickname stuck.

“Where’s your rifle?” the sergeant demanded as Andrei approached him. In his hurry, Andrei had left his AK-47 at the latrine. He sprinted back to retrieve it and returned, out of breath, to face Kharkiv.

“That’ll cost you your life someday,” Kharkiv said, before barking out a list of tasks for Andrei to begin.

Andrei nodded obediently, occasionally muttering “Yes, senior sergeant,” to confirm his understanding. The tasks were always the same, but Andrei knew that war required routines, so he listened stoically. He knew that if he made a mistake, Kharkiv would assign him extra night watches or longer shifts burning the platoon’s shit in a steel barrel with a mix of kerosene and diesel fuel.

“Get the others and get started,” Kharkiv said when he finished, then turned and walked away. The “others” were the six other privates in the platoon, and despite the sergeant’s sneer, Andrei took quiet pleasure in Kharkiv’s recognition of his organizational skills by putting him in charge, confirming his status as the “senior” private in the platoon since Private Gagarin had been killed two months ago.

*

Maksim Gagarin had been the only person in the platoon Andrei considered a true friend. Gagarin was also the only junior member of the platoon whom Kharkiv always referred to by name and rank, never applying one of the crude insults he used with the other soldiers. Gagarin was Soviet royalty of sorts—the son of one of Gorbachev’s senior ministers. Because Kharkiv was Ukrainian, Andrei guessed that he’d hoped favorable treatment of Gagarin might yield rewards, as if he expected that an appreciative remark from Gagarin to a senior bureaucrat could propel a sergeant into the Russian elite.

Gagarin’s pedigree, physique, and handsome features made him a propagandist’s dream. It was rumored that, before joining the army, he had dated ballerinas at the Bolshoi, but he was always coy about what he had done and with whom. His fellow privates speculated that he’d be judged a good catch, especially if he returned from Afghanistan a decorated war hero, like his older brother had three years earlier and like several of his forebears before him in the Great Patriotic War.

Return a hero, attend the prestigious Lenin Military-Political Academy, marry a ballerina, and rise through the ranks of power and prestige—that seemed to be everyone’s plan for Private Gagarin. But chance chose otherwise.

Andrei’s unit was an artillery platoon tasked with lobbing cannon rounds onto targets several kilometers away. Its forty-five soldiers never had to get whites-of-their-eyes close to their enemies, but they had supported enough missions to feel they were battle-hardened warriors. They would follow an infantry battalion, set up a position, and rain dozens of high-explosive rounds onto their targets, softening them up so the infantrymen could get close enough to kill the muj with rifles, pistols, and grenades.

Between missions, Kharkiv kept his troops occupied with tedious but necessary tasks. Though interspersed with moments of ferocity, Andrei thought, life in a combat zone could be maddeningly boring. One of Kharkiv’s regular orders to his men was to clean the AK-47s they kept slung over their shoulders, so Andrei and his platoon mates often sat in a circle on foldable stools, disassembling their rifles and swabbing out the persistent Afghan dust from the nooks and crannies. During this ritual, the junior soldiers shared rumors about the course of the war and bragged about their sexual exploits. Whether their tales were true or not (and most were not) was beside the point: in a war zone, truth is an unnecessary burden for a good story. Andrei enjoyed the stories and was always relieved not to be called on to share one of his own sexual conquests. He had none and was certain he’d fumble the details in any he invented.

During one of those sessions two months ago, another private, Balakin, stood in the center of the circle describing the time he’d groped the tits of a classmate in the custodian’s closet at his school. Most of the others had heard it before, but they didn’t mind a repeat performance. Balakin was an entertaining storyteller, and the other privates guffawed as he emphasized key moments by squeezing imaginary breasts and thrusting his hips between imaginary thighs. This time, Balakin played mostly to the attention of a new private who had joined the platoon a few days before, and the newcomer laughed and exclaimed at the right moments, never really concentrating on his weapon. Toward the end of Balakin’s tale, the new private—whose name no one had bothered to remember—reassembled his weapon, inserting the magazine while it lay across his lap. He released the bolt catch, which pushed a round into the chamber, and absentmindedly nudged the trigger with his thumb.

The recoil propelled the rifle out of the private’s lap into a small fire at the feet of two soldiers sitting to his right, knocking over a pot of broth one of them was heating. At the same time, Gagarin, seated to the private’s left, threw back his head, sat stiffly erect, and kicked his legs out in front of him while staring upward with wildly open eyes. He held the position for a moment as if transfixed by a falling star and then, eyes open, collapsed in a lifeless heap. The bullet had entered at the crook of his neck and jawline, leaving a relatively small opening, and traveled through his skull to exit above his left ear, leaving a fist-sized hole through which much of his brain exploded, splattering across Andrei, who was seated next to him.

The next moments were a blur of panic and resignation. The platoon’s medic crouched at Gagarin’s side and went through the motions of staunching the blood spurting from the entrance wound while packing gauze into the gaping hole in the skull. But he and the others knew the outcome. After a few minutes, the medic put his hands on his thighs, pursed his lips, and uttered, “Nyet.”

Andrei had wiped a sleeve across his face by then and dully noticed how Gagarin’s brains and blood had congealed on his clothes. He had expected Kharkiv to unleash his fury at the new private whose negligence had killed Gagarin—and dashed Kharkiv’s naïve hope of advancing his standing. Instead, Kharkiv stared at the pale corpse for a moment and then directed the others to put it in a body bag and pack Gagarin’s belongings.

Kharkiv turned to Andrei and said, “Private Mironov, clean yourself up and stay with him until the helicopter comes.” The brutish Kharkiv knew “Faggot!” was the wrong way to address Andrei in this moment. Before he walked away to give the platoon lieutenant the news and radio for a medevac helicopter, Kharkiv put a hand on Andrei’s shoulder and gave it a short, almost affectionate squeeze, with the respect of one military man to another who has lost a comrade.

Andrei stood by the bag holding Gagarin’s body for the next two hours. He was emotionally drained, and no one would have begrudged him if he’d chosen to sit instead. But he felt that would have spoiled the moment’s seriousness, so he stayed on his feet.

When they heard the thump of the inbound helicopter echo through the canyons, Kharkiv hastily organized the platoon into a formation near where it would land. The helicopter touched down, its rotor wash kicking up dirt and pebbles that pelted the assembled soldiers, then slowed its engines to allow four of them to carry their burden to its cargo door. Andrei carried Gagarin’s other belongings behind the group and handed them to the enlisted man leaning out of the helicopter. Kharkiv shouted a few words at the crew over the helicopter’s idling engine noise while the bag was strapped like cargo to its deck. The private who had shot Gagarin lingered just behind Andrei, and when Kharkiv gestured toward him, he hung his head and climbed aboard.

Andrei took a last look at the lumpy bag holding his friend’s body and then joined his platoon standing nearby. As the helicopter powered up, Kharkiv called them to attention and ordered a salute as it became airborne. They watched it move through the sky until it banked behind a mountain peak out of sight. As the helicopter’s clamor receded, Andrei felt a surge of tranquility as he glanced at a pair of finches frolicking in the thorny branches of a locust tree, burnishing their nest. He marveled at the birds’ indifference to the war around them. A moment later, Kharkiv turned to the platoon and mumbled, “Dismissed.”

Private Gagarin’s war was over. Andrei knew that Gagarin would make the trip back to Moscow packed in ice in a zinc-lined box. The gaping hole in the back of his head would be stuffed with fabric and patched over with flesh-toned plaster during his embalmment. He’d be decked out in his best uniform, nestled in a casket and put on display for his family and other mourners. The pillow under his head would be placed to cover the ragged exit wound, lest anyone look too closely. A gallantry medal would be pinned on his chest, validating the rumors of the heroism that cost him his life. The truth, of course, would have been unpalatable. Andrei knew that Russia needed heroes to emerge from its futile war in Afghanistan, and his friend Maksim Gagarin would serve that purpose well.

*

Andrei’s war, however, carried on, with all its shit jobs and monotony. But not all the jobs were actually shitty. One that Andrei particularly didn’t mind was the radio watch, during which he’d sit on a ridge several hundred meters away from the platoon—and Kharkiv—listening for orders from headquarters.

The battalion’s command center was nearly ten kilometers away from the mud structures in the village Andrei’s platoon had called home for the past two months. They had set up camp there after an infantry platoon had attacked it, killing all the fighting-age males and a few women and children for good measure. The Russians gave the survivors less than an hour to gather what they could carry out on their backs—the Russians shot all the donkeys in the village—before Andrei’s platoon moved in.

Radio signals didn’t travel well between units separated by the steeply ridged hills that surrounded them, so Andrei’s platoon had set up a relay station on a small plateau about three hundred meters above the village where the reception was clearer. From there, the soldier on duty could listen to the battalion’s orders on a higher frequency radio, then convey them to the platoon through a landline system that was nearly fifty years old. The privates assigned to monitor the radios at this perch did a twenty-four-hour shift. It was boring work, but Andrei enjoyed the solitude.

Like the other privates who rotated through this tedium, he spent the time there pacing back and forth on the small, flat space, thumbing through the dog-eared books that passed through the platoon. There wasn’t anything romantic about the task or the location, but all the privates acknowledged that a shift on the radio watch usually included several bouts of masturbation to help pass the time. Andrei frequently dozed off while on watch. With no one hovering over him, he’d tuck the handsets from the two radios he monitored under his beanie and nod off for several hours at a time. The squelch of an incoming radio call, whenever—or if ever—it came, would jolt him from his slumber, and he’d remember he was in a war zone as he conveyed the message from headquarters to his platoon.

*

A patina of dew coated the ground, and a blanket of fog hung just below Andrei, enveloping the village where the rest of his platoon was starting its day. He snaked one hand out of his sleeping bag to grab the glasses he had placed on the toes of his boots before he had gone to sleep. The dew had gathered on the lenses, and he rubbed a thumb across them before putting them on, then pulled his arm back into his sleeping bag and cinched the opening so only his face peeked out. Lying on his back, he stared up at the sky. A few stratus clouds paraded across, like luminescent sheets of gauze gently blown by an invisible giant.

As the sky lightened and the remnants of a crescent moon retreated behind the hills to the west, Andrei emerged from his sleeping bag, slid into the trousers he had used as a pillow, and pulled on his boots. He took some cardboard out of his backpack and tore it into pieces, making a tent of dried twigs for a cooking fire. The kindling took after the second match, and Andrei poured some coffee grounds and water into a blackened aluminum cup. Wisps of smoke danced from the fire as Andrei’s coffee heated, and an occasional pop from the burning fir branches punctured the otherwise silent morning. Andrei cherished these moments, musing on the irony that he could experience such serenity in the middle of a war zone. He glanced at his watch; just after seven a.m. In a few hours, his relief would trudge up the hillside, and Andrei would lumber down to the village where some real shit jobs awaited.

افغان

The sun hadn’t yet risen. Hamid was staring at the sky speckled by the stars that still shone in the fading night. He slid from under his blankets and was poking the embers of the fire, adding small fir twigs to revive it, when he glanced at the grove of trees where he’d left the donkey and the goats.

The goats were still there, bunched in a tight cluster to share their warmth. But the donkey was gone. The rope that had tethered its two front legs lay sprawled on the ground.

Photo Credit: W. Creeson, USMC

“Shit,” mumbled Hamid. A light coat of dew on the ground glimmered in the starlight, and a trail of hoofprints headed downhill along the narrow trail toward the village below. Remembering the times they had gone into the village before the Russians came, Hamid calculated how long the trip would take down and back up the mountain: a few hours, at least.

“Kadir, wake up.”

Kadir opened one eye and grunted, frowning up at Hamid.

“The donkey’s gone; it went down the hill,” said Hamid.

“Shit,” said Kadir. He sat up, immediately awake, looked to where the donkey should have been, and said again, “Shit.”

“I’m going to get him,” said Hamid.

By now, his boots—some well-worn hand-me-downs from an aid organization—were on and he’d slung his keffiyah and the donkey’s rope over his shoulder. He tossed a few more branches onto the fire, fastened the cord holding his bayonet sheath at his waist, and strode down the hill, following the donkey’s tracks.

Русский

“Wake up, faggot!” Kharkiv’s static-tinged voice squelched over the radio, shattering Andrei’s morning reverie.

“Yes, Senior Sergeant; I’m awake,” Andrei answered seconds later—grateful it was only seconds. Anything longer would have made Kharkiv question his attention, and he’d suffer the punishment later.

“We’re moving. Pack everything up and get your ass down here.”

“Yes, Senior Sergeant,” said Andrei.

“And don’t forget your rifle,” said Kharkiv.

The radio wasn’t by itself particularly heavy: about fifteen kilograms, with two leather straps that allowed it to be carried on a soldier’s back. It would take an hour to disassemble the radio’s thirty-foot antenna system. The landline radio looked like a clunky telephone system, with a shoebox-sized receiver and a handset connected by a coiled cable. Altogether, the equipment weighed over forty-five kilograms, and Andrei wished Kharkiv had sent another private up the hill to help him, but he was afraid to ask. It wasn’t the weight he minded. Time in the war zone had built his strength and endurance. It was the awkward clumsiness of carrying it all, along with his rifle and personal gear, down the uneven trail that led to the village. But he knew he’d have to do it alone, so he’d take his time and enjoy the quiet he’d have as soon as he turned off the radios and disconnected the antenna.

افغان

With no goats to mind and no distracting conversation, Hamid moved quickly down the switchbacked trail. The dew made the rocky path slippery in places, but there was enough light for Hamid to navigate the familiar path. Just over an hour after he’d left, he rounded a bend and nearly bumped into the donkey’s ass as it stood in his way, placidly chewing on some grass.

“Fucking donkey,” Hamid said, but he was more relieved than angry. Though the morning fog hadn’t yet lifted, he knew he was close to the village where the Russians encamped. If the donkey had gotten too close to the village, Hamid might have had to hunker down for the day, waiting for the sun to set before he could go back uphill with the donkey in tow. And if it had gotten all the way to the village, there would be no more donkey. The Russians would have adopted it as a mascot or—just as likely—killed it for sport.

Hamid tied a slipknot in the rope he’d brought with him, placed it over the donkey’s head, and coiled its loose end around his forearm. The knot in the twine around his waist holding the bayonet had slipped, causing the knife’s handle to rest just below his hip. He pulled the cord tight above his navel before retying it, putting the handle high enough for him to prop his right hand on its pommel, where he liked it.

Before turning to walk up the hill, Hamid took a last look toward the village, still shrouded in the fog. He did a double take when he saw smoke tufting from a small plateau a hundred meters beneath him, and he followed the path of the smoke to the cooking fire from which it came. Then he saw the Russian.

Русский

Andrei took his time taking apart the antenna. The village below was still engulfed in the morning fog, so he tossed a few more twigs on the fire.

He laid the antenna’s parts on the ground and confirmed all were there by going through the checklist that came with it before securing them in a canvas bag. He did the same with the two radios. He propped his AK-47 against a pile of rocks and opened a small tin of meat he’d taken out of his backpack, picking at it with the flimsy aluminum fork he kept in his pocket. While eating, he took out the baby shoe he also kept in his pack. It belonged to his nephew, who was just two months old when Andrei went to war. Holding the shoe made Andrei smile as he thought of the family he’d see in a few months when his tour was over.

افغان

Hamid tied the end of the donkey’s lead to the base of a small tree where the animal was content to stand in place and munch on a honeysuckle bush, then peered over a pile of rocks to watch the enemy.

A soldier, just like those his brother was fighting somewhere else in Afghanistan, was right there, a hundred meters away. After all the stories Hamid had heard about how fearsome the Russians were—all two meters tall, with enormous hands and hair the color of dried wheat—he now had a chance to see his avowed enemy in the flesh. Hamid wanted to get a closer view of the Russian, so he hunched over and began to creep down the mountain. He knew the hillside well enough to keep his bearings while staying off the main trail, and every twenty meters or so, he’d peek out from his cover to eye the Russian. It appeared to Hamid that the Russian was alone and distracted. Each time Hamid felt he was close enough, he convinced himself he should get a bit closer.

When he was fewer than twenty meters away, crouched behind some shrubs and small boulders, the Russian didn’t look so fearsome to Hamid.

“What if . . . ?” Hamid wondered.

He unsnapped the leather clip holding the bayonet in its sheath and caressed its handle. The Russian appeared absorbed in boredom, leaning against a boulder, idly poking at the food in a metal tin he held and staring at something in his other hand. His rifle was propped against a rock a few meters from him.

Hamid watched the Russian for several minutes, planning his attack. He gripped the bayonet and flexed his fingers around its handle, poking the tip into the meaty part of his left hand.

The Russian stood, turned his back to Hamid, and stared into the fog over the village below. It was the moment Hamid needed. He would move swiftly, but not at a sprint, and when he got close enough, he’d drive the knife into the Russian’s ribs. Then do it again. And again.

Here was an opportunity to avenge the murdered villagers—badal. He imagined bringing a piece of the Russian’s blood-soaked uniform back to his village. He imagined the hero’s status, the honor—nang—bestowed on him when he and Kadir returned. His nickname—the Hunter—would take on a new meaning. He would be a man. He would be a warrior, like his brother.

While the Russian’s back was still turned, Hamid stood erect and strode toward him, his footsteps deft and quiet.

Ten meters away, Hamid’s foot scraped some loose gravel. The Russian turned at the sound, and Hamid stopped. The Russian flinched when he saw the Afghan, his eyes wide. The two boys locked eyes. Andrei darted a look at the knife in Hamid’s hand, then at his rifle a few meters away. Hamid looked at the rifle too, then back at Andrei.

Русский

Andrei thought about screaming. He could hear the commotion of his platoon as it prepared to leave the village, and he knew they’d hear him. But if this Afghan attacked, no one could mount the hill in time to stop him. Andrei knew that if he scrambled for the rifle, the Afghan would do the same, and he wasn’t sure he’d get to it first. In fact, Andrei wasn’t sure there was a round in the chamber, so the rifle might just end up being a club he’d use to fend off the Afghan’s knife.

“Shit,” thought Andrei, “Kharkiv was right.”

افغان

Hamid regarded the Russian’s whiskerless face and soft-looking hands. He was close enough to see that the object the Russian held in his hand was a baby shoe. It reminded him of Laila’s doll tucked in his keffiyah, snug against his ribs.

The Russian wasn’t fearsome. In fact, while he stood there motionless, he looked fearful. Hamid felt, suddenly, as if he were staring at himself. The violent confidence he’d felt moments before was gone, and he—like the Russian—was scared.

Hamid’s grip on the bayonet handle loosened, and he reflexively eased the bayonet into its sheath. When it was seated, he squeezed the button on its clasp, which popped at the same time as one of the fir branches in Andrei’s fire. The tension of immediacy had eased, but the two boys continued to stare at each other.

*

“Faggot, get moving!” Kharkiv’s voice ricocheted off the mountains from below and echoed back. Andrei moved his gaze in the direction of Kharkiv’s command and paused for several seconds.

“Yes, starshi serzhant! I’m coming!” he yelled back and faced Hamid again. Hamid’s glare was now more curious than fierce, and his shoulders relaxed. As the sun rose, it pulled the shadows up the mountains, and the blanket of light cast over the boys and the valley beneath them felt like an awakening. A pair of finches emerged from their nest, and for a moment, the only sound was the short bursts of their wings as they flitted about.

With the awakening, Hamid’s aspirations of war leaked into the sun’s emerging glow. He had seen—and faced—what was supposed to be his enemy, but in the seeing, had discovered a newness. In an instant, Hamid’s notion of manliness and the violence he sought to attain it receded from his conscience, and he felt a heavy burden lift from his spirit. He felt a loathing of his old self, and a craving for future joy—the sting of rain on the face, the majesty of a sunrise, the grasp of a child’s small hand on his finger—and realized that he was, indeed, a man.

Hamid kept his gaze on Andrei but shifted his body. He put his hand over his heart, locked eyes with Andrei, and murmured, “Hodai paman,” before turning to trek back up the mountain to get the donkey, to rejoin Kadir, and go home a man.