roaring up, up, up and away, and small packs of tired men, walking together and talking: off-duty soldiers from Jordan, Romania, Holland, England, Estonia, France, Canada and twenty other places—including the Great Satan—together with the local and Pakistani and Bangladeshi workers. Always there were some of us kicking at the dust and whinging about women and money. There were two things to do in KAF—work and complain.
Once I was admitted into the camp, my new boss conducted me to his café. It was truly a small place, only fifteen tables and eighty square metres, including the public area and the back, which is where I was to sleep at night, along with the rest of the staff, among bags of coffee beans and crates of non-dairy creamers. Dividing the space was a narrow counter of espresso machines, overtaxed refrigerators and questionable pastries. The punctured building they call Taliban’s Last Stand was on one side of us and the hospital on the other. Behind was the flight line; we could almost always hear the steady whine of jet engines.
Rami Issay showed me the hook where I could hang my bedding during the day and then gave me a quick lesson on the operation of the espresso machine. He forgot to tell me about steaming clear the nozzle. My co-workers watched him with skeptical sparkles in their eyes as he clumsily tightened and untightened the knobs of the gleaming stainless steel product of Puglia-by-way-of-Taiwan. He would have introduced me to them if he could have remembered all their names, but he spared us all that embarrassment by announcing that he would just let everyone get to know one another, he said, “without undue formality.” Then he wandered off vaguely in the direction of the boardwalk.
None of the others would speak Pashto or even Urdu with me at first; every time I tried they shifted into English. I was puzzled by this but, later, as I understood the psychology of KAF better, I learned to share their caution. They had heard that I had studied in America from Rami Issay, I think. He felt a kinship with me, he said, because we both know the size of the world. And after the planes had hit the towers, the world had tossed us both back on our cancelled-visa asses to a country we had never wanted to see again.
Fazil was the head baristo, as he termed himself; he had a wife and two sons in Peshawar. He had been here nearly continuously since the shop was opened in 2003. Then, he’d handled the place by himself most of the time. The preparation for the invasion of Iraq had seen the numbers of soldiers in Kandahar drawn down, and for months he had expected his position to be eliminated. Within six months of Baghdad falling, the idea of IEDs was evangelized and bombs started exploding everywherearound Kandahar. Since then he and his wife have slept easily every night, he said, knowing his job is secure. Both his boys are in a good school and they will become engineers, he thinks. His wife has paid off all the debts that drove him to Kandahar in the first place and soon they will purchase a modest home with an electric washing machine.
The next man to introduce himself was Fazil’s friend, the one-eyed Amr Chalabi. Men in groups instinctively establish a hierarchy of who could, if it came to it, beat whom to death and Amr, tall and powerfully muscled, occupied the apex of our list. He had worked at the café nearly as long as Fazil, but he maintained an entirely different posture. Where Fazil was solicitous and engaging, Amr preferred rarely to speak, and then only to Fazil or the boy, Mohammed. Amr did his work quickly and helpfully—he was the first up every morning, washed, shaved and sweeping away the previous night’s insect accumulations while the rest of us were still blinking at the bare bulb overtop us. When he worked the counter he usually operated the espresso machine, nodding as the orders were called to him and handing the paper cups of milk foam and coffee out with precision. He was
Once I was admitted into the camp, my new boss conducted me to his café. It was truly a small place, only fifteen tables and eighty square metres, including the public area and the back, which is where I was to sleep at night, along with the rest of the staff, among bags of coffee beans and crates of non-dairy creamers. Dividing the space was a narrow counter of espresso machines, overtaxed refrigerators and questionable pastries. The punctured building they call Taliban’s Last Stand was on one side of us and the hospital on the other. Behind was the flight line; we could almost always hear the steady whine of jet engines.
Rami Issay showed me the hook where I could hang my bedding during the day and then gave me a quick lesson on the operation of the espresso machine. He forgot to tell me about steaming clear the nozzle. My co-workers watched him with skeptical sparkles in their eyes as he clumsily tightened and untightened the knobs of the gleaming stainless steel product of Puglia-by-way-of-Taiwan. He would have introduced me to them if he could have remembered all their names, but he spared us all that embarrassment by announcing that he would just let everyone get to know one another, he said, “without undue formality.” Then he wandered off vaguely in the direction of the boardwalk.
None of the others would speak Pashto or even Urdu with me at first; every time I tried they shifted into English. I was puzzled by this but, later, as I understood the psychology of KAF better, I learned to share their caution. They had heard that I had studied in America from Rami Issay, I think. He felt a kinship with me, he said, because we both know the size of the world. And after the planes had hit the towers, the world had tossed us both back on our cancelled-visa asses to a country we had never wanted to see again.
Fazil was the head baristo, as he termed himself; he had a wife and two sons in Peshawar. He had been here nearly continuously since the shop was opened in 2003. Then, he’d handled the place by himself most of the time. The preparation for the invasion of Iraq had seen the numbers of soldiers in Kandahar drawn down, and for months he had expected his position to be eliminated. Within six months of Baghdad falling, the idea of IEDs was evangelized and bombs started exploding everywherearound Kandahar. Since then he and his wife have slept easily every night, he said, knowing his job is secure. Both his boys are in a good school and they will become engineers, he thinks. His wife has paid off all the debts that drove him to Kandahar in the first place and soon they will purchase a modest home with an electric washing machine.
The next man to introduce himself was Fazil’s friend, the one-eyed Amr Chalabi. Men in groups instinctively establish a hierarchy of who could, if it came to it, beat whom to death and Amr, tall and powerfully muscled, occupied the apex of our list. He had worked at the café nearly as long as Fazil, but he maintained an entirely different posture. Where Fazil was solicitous and engaging, Amr preferred rarely to speak, and then only to Fazil or the boy, Mohammed. Amr did his work quickly and helpfully—he was the first up every morning, washed, shaved and sweeping away the previous night’s insect accumulations while the rest of us were still blinking at the bare bulb overtop us. When he worked the counter he usually operated the espresso machine, nodding as the orders were called to him and handing the paper cups of milk foam and coffee out with precision. He was
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