It was about 2PM on a Monday afternoon. The Captain had finished his lunch and was lounging on a twin sized mattress in the corner of his command post…and by command post, I mean a small room with a single hand held radio, a desk, a chair, and his bed. His green beret gripped tight around his wrinkled forehead. His skin was coarse and furrowed from nearly three decades of warfare under the Kandahar sun. He was an old man for a soldier, I’d guess in his fifties. But despite his age, his hair was as black and as thick as mine. Like a lion, his hazel eyes burned with a fiery will to survive. He was the king of his jungle; not the weapons my platoon carried, nor the technology we had at our disposal, could faze him.
“Asalaamu Alaykum,” I began with a nervous crack in my voice. I had barely left puberty, and yet here I was: a 23 year old Platoon Leader representing the military might of the United States to a Company Commander in the Afghan National Army.
“Wa Alaykum Asalaam,” he whispered in a tight-lipped glare as he shook my hand and invited me to sit down. His demeanor was uninviting, which surprised me. On one level, I expected incessant flattery in attempts to wheedle equipment or even money from American forces. On another level, I figured he would recognize the unmistakable Indian name on my uniform and find common ground in our ethnic roots. The cold welcome was disheartening. Was he insulted that the Americans sent a meager Lieutenant to engage him rather than the typical Major or Colonel? Whatever the issue, I needed to be careful. Losing his loyalty would have severe repercussions for my entire battalion. The Captain lit a cigarette.
Company Commanders in the American Army are usually in their late 20s to early 30s. They command between 80-120 soldiers and tens of millions of dollars worth of accountable assets. On the other hand, Captain Abdul Kalam Kalay was nearly twice as old, commanded a Company of about 50 Afghan soldiers, and probably had more money in his wallet than his unit had in its entire budget. But despite his Company’s destitution, the Captain held the power card in this engagement, and he knew it. You see, no matter how little money Captain Kalay had or how weak his Company, he knew the Americans could not leave Kandahar until he could secure this sector without us. And he was in no rush.
The Captain blew a smoke cloud, filling the room and my lungs with the disgusting aroma of moldy tobacco and body odor. “Okay…so what do you want from me?” he asked. Though he spoke in Pashtu as my interpreter translated to English, Kalay’s body language spoke louder than his words. He crossed his arms. He did not smile. He didn’t look me in the eye. As far as he was concerned, I was a pest.
“Well,” I began in the most diplomatic voice I could conjure, “I’m here to check on you and see how things are with your unit…how are your patrols going?”
“Why should you care?” He shot back.
I leaned forward, “I just want to know how we can help you, and how we can work together. What are the issues you all have here?
“You want to know what issues we have? What do you care? You know my soldiers live here with no water, no electricity?” The Captain grew emotional. “How come no one has come to see me in so long? It’s been almost two weeks.”
“Well, there have been some other important missions going on that have taken the other commanders’ attention. But rest assured I have their full confidence and authority to speak on their behalf.”
“Well, let’s just get to the point,” said the Captain, “Where is it?”
“Where is what?”
“You know what I’m talking about…my generator?”
“I don’t understand, Sir. What happened with your generator?” Captain Kalay’s arms pulsated upwards with the rising intonation in his voice.
“My generator!” he yelled, “It broke! You took it and told me you would fix it! It’s been almost three months now! What is the hold up?! You come in wanting all this help, but you haven’t given me anything! You only come around when you want something, but never give anything up for me! You are the rich Americans. We are a poor people. You could have my generator fixed immediately if you wanted. I see your helicopters flying in and out of the FOB every day. You have plenty of parts to fix it. You delay it because we’re not important to you!”
I was growing impatient, but before I could lose my senses, something happened. I felt a conscious shift in my demeanor, followed by a subconscious effort to pacify it. I was one angry soldier. I didn’t want to be in Afghanistan. I didn’t want to help this asshole, and I certainly didn’t want to put up with this sort of nonsense from anyone. It was completely unprofessional, and every bone in my body wanted to get up and leave the room. I wanted to dump this crazy horse on someone else.
I don’t know if it was the smell of the room, our matching skin-tone, or my sympathetic nature, but my heart was not ready to step away from him. The soldier inside me wanted to leave the room, and I’m fairly certain most commanders would have tried to find a way out. But I pacified that urge. I flipped a mental switch. It was time to stop approaching this man as a soldier, and start approaching him as a cultural brother. I re-postured my legs on the concrete floor. I sat Indian-style…pun very much intended.
Despite fighting the impulses of the geek inside me, I looked at this situation as a math problem. People always wonder why Indians are so good at math, so good at logic. It’s not that we have some genetic calculator in our brains. It’s about patient persistence. It stems from our roots in Yoga: the art of deliberate, methodical movement of the mind and body. We exude it in everything we do; in the way we cook our food, the way we contemplate mathematics, even in the way we approach love, marriage, art, religion, child-rearing, and yes Bollywood. Everything about the Indian identity is about slow, deliberate, and methodical movement forward. It was time to move forward with Captain Kalay. I sat up straight, took in a deep breath, and entered a state of diplomatic meditation.
“Sir,” I replied in a serene voice, looking him in the eye. I did not smile, I did not frown. It was just me. “I’m sorry we’ve kept your generator. Can you tell me a little bit more about it…what was the problem with it? What do you use the generator for?” And so began thirty minutes of torrential complaining as the Captain poured his fighting heart out on the ground. I listened as attentively as I could. I needed a lead. I needed to connect with this man. I needed to find the ledge on my bank of the divide where a bridge could be built to his.
“The generator powers everything. It keeps us warm at night. My men are cold in their guard towers. We only have daylight to cook our food, and they haven’t been able to eat a warm meal. I am unable to communicate with my men when they are on missions because we cannot charge our radios. The generator powered our pump, and now my men do not have drinking water—“
“Hey Sir,” interrupted my platoon sergeant who sat beside me. He spoke directly to the Captain, “We can give you water. We can give it right off our trucks. That’s no problem.” I smiled and nodded at my senior enlisted advisor. I was so fortunate to have a platoon sergeant who was both resourceful and thoughtful. He found the ledge. I turned to check the Captain’s reaction. He was staring at me with cautious enthusiasm.
“Okay…” he said with a mildly confused tone. He sounded like a child on his birthday unwrapping an oddly shaped gift. We stepped outside of the command post into the bright blue sky. The air was still chill, but fresher than ever before. Our security detail had been waiting outside, monitoring suspicious movements
“What’s going down?” asked SGT Mack, the squad leader.
“You’ll see,” I replied. I knew my Platoon Sergeant already had a plan. I told the commander to bring a truck and follow my soldiers to our vehicles’ position at the bottom of the hill. The Captain’s tan Ford Ranger pick-up, the most elite combat vehicle the ANA could afford, pulled up next to each of my three vehicles as my soldiers unloaded dozens of boxes of bottled water for the ANA soldiers.
The commander’s driver and aide were dumbfounded. They could not believe their eyes. I had never seen such happiness in the eyes of grown men before. The Captain was almost in tears. He held out his hand.
“Do you have a camera?” he asked.
“Sure do,” I whipped out my point-and-shoot and enjoyed a taste of celebrity status as the ANA soldiers took turns throwing their arms around my shoulders, posing for their personal portraits with me. Ten minutes into the photo shoot, the Captain grabbed my interpreter and started frantically begging for something.
“What does he want?”
“He wants you to write down your name and unit so he will know to ask for you when he visits the Colonel.”
“He can’t read English, can he?”
“No…only Pashtu.”
“Well, I’m about to rock his world,” I snickered. Luckily for me, I studied Arabic at the Academy which uses the same alphabet as Pashtu. I wrote my name down in Arabic script on a scrap piece of paper and handed it to him. The Captain giggled with excitement. He turned to my interpreter, speechlessly. My interpreter simply nodded his head.
As my soldiers began unloading the last few boxes of water, I decided to dig into the old man’s mind. He’d no doubt seen so much history in his years as a soldier. “So, Sir…you were in the Northern Alliance before you joined the ANA?”
“Yes, I was.”
“You know, I studied Ahmed Shah Massoud when I was in college…what an amazing man.”
“Yes, he was brilliant. I loved working for him.”
“You actually worked for him?”
“No, but I was an intelligence officer for the Northern Alliance.”
“Oh really? What kind of work did you do?” The Captain turned and looked me square in the eye. He quietly whispered in a grave tone. I turned to see if my interpreter heard what he said.
“…the Commander says, ‘don’t be shy Lieutenant Srinivasan…you know just as much about being a spy as I do’.” I paused for a second before it hit me. The Captain’s mouth was now shaped in a sly grin as he continued to stare me down…he thought I was a spy.
“Aright, Sir. We’re ‘bout done here,” sounded the platoon sergeant.
“Sounds good. Let’s mount up, get REDCON1.”
I turned to the Captain whose once steely eyed glare was now a warm, grandfatherly smile.
“It was an absolute pleasu—“
“Stop,” he interrupted, “In Pashtu culture, we never say goodbye. We will only continue this friendship later. I can’t wait to work with you in the future.” There would be no handshake with this officer. There would be no ceremonial left-hand placed over the heart. Rather, Captain Kalay opened up his arms and gave me a vicious bear hug before nonchalantly turning back towards his truck and moving back to his post.
“I think you made a new friend, Sir,” mocked my Platoon Sergeant.
“Yeah…It’s about time.”