Our Nights of Gethsemane

I STILL CRINGE after all these years, but at least I have now developed the capacity to say, "you're welcome," when someone thanks me for my military service. Until not so long ago, I would stare blankly at the person thanking me and do nothing else. They would nervously smile and quickly walk away, not entirely understanding what had transpired. That's the way I liked them to feel. It was my way of implanting a small dose of the FU* in their lazy, crooked, timid, and sheltered little minds. These American "patriots" had little investment in the war as they enjoyed the luxuries of my erstwhile Home. Their clueless political representatives openly hid their ineptitude by parroting words popular with the "patriotic" Americans. Sure, the "patriots" would gladly stick "Terrorist Hunter" and American flag stickers on their cars as they drove to the movies or thump their chests about the 2nd Amendment as they hung out with their retrograde friends. They would gleefully tie yellow ribbons around tree branches and jump at the chance of thanking military members for their services. They'd even occasionally offer to buy coffee for some miserable sod in uniform. All just to feel good about themselves. However, in reality, they remained utterly unaffected by the war. Consequently, their shamelessly self-serving support was a mile wide, sure, but only an inch thick. The unqualified hell caused by the utter mishandling of the war effort by the driveling idiots, their representatives in Washington D.C., was easy to ignore for the American "patriots." But we were paying the ultimate price for trying to survive in that hell. 

"L'absurde naît de la confrontation de l'appel humain avec le silence déraisonnable du monde."

I WOULD WALK IN for the night shift in a dusty room with an old door that served as our office. The small building was almost hidden behind a vast dish antenna placed on the ground. As I walked toward the entrance, I never quite knew if I should shield my nuts from the dish's radiation or jump into the damn thing to amass some superpowers. Regardless, walking past the nut-frier, the office was our place to find some civilization and any available computers to write out our reports and other paperwork. I distinctly remember a little yellow post-it note stuck onto a whiteboard that declared, "11 days left." At one point in time, long before I got there, there had been discussions of us leaving Afghanistan in 11 days! There, the post-it had remained. Just as we did. We had already gone well past the 11th day, then 30th, then 48th, until all the days had blurred into an eternity. This eternity was full of unnecessary casualties and equally unnecessary survivors. As long as we were part of the latter category, monotony reigned supreme, manifesting itself in forms that changed but remained the same. Each day or night would be different for the first few minutes of our waking. Then dark truth would quickly reimpose itself on our existence, laughing at our brief moments of hope.

I WAS QUICKLY becoming well-acquainted with the feelings that Sisyphus must have felt. Even things intended to break the futility of our existence slowly lost the ability to do so. For example, boxes we received from Home were supposed to cheer us up. And they initially did. Then we realized that the distant world the boxes symbolized was not based on a reality that we could relate to any longer. The boxes started to feel other-dimensional. I would love the things they contained, baby wipes (we couldn't shower for a month and a half), mithai and papad from India, desi snacks, and more, but I began to forget why I loved them. The context, connections, and memories usually recreated by the food went missing. I was quickly starting to resemble the comment about Sisyphus by French philosopher Albert Camus** "A face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself!"

IN ADDITION TO packages from Home, most days, we would get hand-drawn cards from school kids telling us how much they appreciated our sacrifice. The cards documenting their childish belief in us initially brought anguished smiles to my face. But over time, I started to get terrified of those kids, not knowing what I would do if we survived this mind-numbing eternity. How could I ever show them my face? How long could I continue to justify being the recipient of the kids' love-filled drawings? What about the sacrifice I was supposedly making? Were my meaningless existence and accidental survival adequate proof of my sacrifice? If so, who set such a low bar on sacrifices, then? The kids' cards had unbeknownst to them started to crush me slowly under the weight of their unfulfilled expectations, only made worse by my absolute inability to affect any change, much like Sisyphus. I'll not answer any of these questions as I still have not figured out any complete answers. Biden's half-assed withdrawal from Afghanistan did confirm at least that I was correct in posing those questions to myself, and now to you, my dear reader. Instead of answers, I'll leave you to reflect alone with a few more lines about Sisyphus from my man Camus: "I see that man going back down with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never know the end... when the images of earth cling too tightly to memory, when the call of happiness becomes too insistent, it happens that melancholy arises in man's heart: this is the rock's victory, this is the rock itself... the boundless grief is too heavy to bear. These are our nights of Gethsemane." 

* FU = Fear of the Unknown. This is discussed in greater detail in a previous episode.

** Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays. translated by Justin O'Brien. New York: Vintage Books, 1991. Translation originally published by Alfred A. Knopf, 1955. Originally published in France as Le Mythe de Sisyphe by Librairie Gallimard, 1942.