Months later, in February 2007, the Taliban took over Musa Qala and jailed all tribal leaders who had agreed to the truce. It would be another ten months before NATO could reclaim Taliban Town.
CHAPTER 11
MY NEW HOUSE
The night was not one of those blind-drunk ones at L’Atmosphère, not one when couples kissed sloppily in the bushes or the bathroom, or when people kept drinking until the sameness seemed fun, or when someone fell asleep leaning against a tree, or when a security guy tried to convince women, some successfully, that he was researching Real World Kabul for MTV. About midnight, with the crowd winding down, we called a taxi from the leading taxi company that catered to foreigners in Kabul and charged only $5 per stop. These taxis were safe, and they knew every place that foreigners went. Kabul had no addresses, just bad roads and neighborhoods and directions like “the first house on the road with a bunch of sunflowers out front,” so every house had a nickname. We piled into the cab.
“Fun House,” my housemate said.
I’m not sure who named the house, maybe a driver from the taxi company. A cast of about ten people shifted in and out of the five bedrooms of the Fun House, a low-slung poorly laid out building where one bedroom spilled into another, severely limiting privacy. Lawyers, journalists, UN workers, a human-rights worker, a vague consultant, almost everyone had been in and out of Afghanistan for a long time, since the rockets on the rooftop of the Mustafa, Jack Idema, the toga party. And everyone else knew the Fun House. I rented a room and charged it to my company, which was much cheaper than staying at the Gandamack and, obviously, much more fun. The friendships we forged here, through adversity, curfews, and lack of power, were the quickest and most intense I had ever made. All of us were on the same acid trip, regardless of whether we grew up in London or Johannesburg or Billings, Montana. We were instant family—just add war.
How fun was the Fun House? So fun that the housemates bet on who would be the first to have sex outside on the daybed, so fun that grown men had been known to wear wigs and perform drunken somersaults in the living room, so fun that my housemate Tom and I procrastinated one afternoon by holding target practice on a melon with a battery-powered BB gun bought at the World of Child toy store down the road.
“I know you can shoot because you’re from Montana,” said Tom, the British freelance journalist I had traveled with to Kandahar.
I aimed at the melon. I shot Tom in the shin.
In other words, the fun at the Fun House was the kind that interrupted the monotony of life in Afghanistan like a sharp kick to the kneecap. (Tom was fine.) Even as the Taliban gathered strength in the south and the Afghans increasingly seethed against the foreigners, the foreigners in the capital pushed back. Restaurants like L’Atmosphère were in full swing. Thursday-night theme parties and Friday-afternoon barbecues were regular. There was a salsa night, a trivia night, and a fledgling poker night on which contractors would soon shrug off losses of thousands of dollars. It was junior year at Kabul High—a time when we knew all the different players and were no longer gawky freshmen in the wrong clothes but weren’t as jaded as we’d eventually become. It was party time, and this was the party summer, the summer of 2006, the Summer of the Fun House. Kabul was an oasis.
Adding to the fun, Sean had also just returned to Kabul from one of his earliest forays to meet Tango, a crapshoot that involved actual Taliban insurgents pointing guns at him and Sami, his fixer. While in Helmand, Sean had called me every few days. At one point, he complained that Sami had abandoned him in his hotel after announcing he just couldn’t work with Sean anymore. But Sami returned to Sean like the bad habit he was. Sometimes Sean wouldn’t answer his phone when I called, and once, he disappeared for a week. He spoke in whispers. He wouldn’t talk about what he was doing, convinced his calls were being monitored, so our conversations were perfunctory and laced with Tango.
“People are listening,” he said.
“Oh, like you’re so important.”
Out for his first Thursday night since coming back, Sean told us his story of meeting Tango. Even though I had heard the story a dozen times, it continued to be entertaining. He knew how to massage a tale. He’d tell it once, watch his audience’s reaction, and modify the story the next time, always perfecting his delivery.
None of us wanted the night to end, so we piled out of various taxis, walked into the Fun House garden, and collapsed on cushions on the daybed, a freestanding wooden deck covered in stained brown-and-cream Afghan carpets the texture of burlap. The power was out, as usual, but we lit gas lanterns, poured drinks, and put on music, a mix that featured the song “Crazy” by Gnarls Barkley. Tom and I occasionally shot his BB gun at various targets. At one point, I walked through the darkness of the house, using my phone screen as a flashlight, hunting for the bathroom. The door was open—I walked inside. But Sean was already there, washing his hands.
“Oh, sorry, didn’t know you were in here,” I said. He turned to me.
“Kim,” he said, looking directly at me.
“What?”
“Kim,” he repeated in a low voice, and then he started to walk toward me. “My little mathlete.” Sean knew that I was math student of the year in high school.
I could see what was happening.
“Oh my God. You’re not gonna kiss me, are you?”
“Oh. Yes. I. Am.”
As always, Sean knew how to punctuate a sentence. He kissed me.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” I said, breaking the spell.
Afterward, I walked out to the daybed. Sean was nowhere to be seen. Then he poked his head out of the kitchen door. “Kim, can you help me?”
I walked into the kitchen. He kissed me there, near the sink and the cabinets. Hardly romantic. Tom walked inside.
“Oh. Sorry,” he said, turning abruptly. After kissing me one more time in the kitchen, Sean called the taxi company and went back to his room at the Gandamack, which was a good idea. I kind of liked Sean in that vague way that many women kind of liked Sean. But we all knew Sean still loved his ex-wife, and he loved conflict even more.
I was also trying not to date in Kabul, as Afghanistan resembled Alaska if you were a woman—the odds were good but the goods were odd. Although some foreigners here had found love, I had found dead ends. Most of us were running from something, or running toward adrenaline, adventure junkies who when paired up were as combustible and volcanic as baking soda and vinegar. I was realistic. Most female foreign correspondents I knew were single. Most male correspondents, married or entwined. To do this job right took all my energy. And I was plagued by what-ifs. I was now friends with my awkward fling Jeremy, but what if I dated somebody in this aquarium and it went wrong? What if I traveled too much to sustain any relationship? What if I was a frog in boiling water, as overheated as anyone else who chose this life?
A few days later, just before I left for my first trip to the States in more than two years, Sean and I met for lunch near the pool at L’Atmosphère, a real change of scenery, considering we usually sat in the garden. As a woman, I felt the need to clarify what had happened, talk about it, hash it out, examine our relationship under a microscope, turn it over and poke it until dead.
“So that thing?” I asked.
Sean made his usual English attempt at avoiding confrontation—he looked down, shrugged, mumbled, and stared at his fingernails. I deciphered his meaning.
“Fine,” I said. “Friends.”
The party was winding down, and the Fun House was starting to seem like a rerun. When I came back from Chicago almost two months later, still suffering the culture shock of sudden immersion in billboards, skyscrapers, and constant noise, Sean regaled me with new romances, but with danger, not women, with stories of going off to meet militants in eastern Afghanistan, allies of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar who had ties to Al-Qaeda. He met with some Afghan militants, but their Arab friends said Sean couldn’t come to their camp, and Sami also thought it was a bad idea. Sean had also been pinned down by enemy fire while out with the Afghan army and a few British soldiers in Helmand. Clearly, he was gathering a lot of material for his documentary. He soon left again for Helmand, where he would almost get himself killed. Again. Sean could never get enough, would never get enough.