Zinky Boys (22 page)

Well, I was a paratrooper and the army, as I soon found out, was divided into paras and the rest, known as
solyari
(a term whose etymology I never discovered). Many of our soldiers and NCOs, as well as some officers, had their arms tattooed. These tattoos were mostly rather similar, usually featuring an Ilyushin-76 with a parachute beneath it, but there were some variations: one I saw was a romantic scene with clouds, birds, a para hanging from his 'chute and the touching inscription ‘Love the sky!' Among the unwritten rules of the paras was the following: ‘A para kneels for two reasons only — to drink water with his hands, and to pay his respects to his dead friend.'

My war …

‘Atten-shun! Your route will take you from your camp here, via the district party offices in Bagram, to the village of Shevan. Speed of the convoy will be dictated by the leading vehicle. Distance between vehicles to be dependent on speed. Code-words: I'll be known as Freza, the rest of you by the numbers on the sides of your vehicles. Stand at ease!' This was the normal routine
before the departure of one of our agitprop expeditions. The CO might add, ‘You are forbidden to remove your helmets or flak jackets. Keep your gun in your hands at all times.'

I jump into my vehicle, a small, lightly armoured and easily manoeuvrable affair known over there as a
bali-bali. ‘Bal'
is Afghani for ‘Yes'; when Afghans test their microphones they always say ‘bali-bali' instead of our One two three four testing'. As an interpreter I'm interested in anything to do with language.

‘Salto, Salto, this is Freza. Let's get this show on the road!'

Behind a low stone wall we find a single-storey building of brick and plaster. A red sign proclaims, ‘District Party Committee'. There to greet us on the porch stands Comrade Lagmaan, dressed in Soviet khaki.

‘'Salaam Alekum, raik Lagmaan!'

‘Salaam Alekum. Tchetour asti! Khud astil Dzhor astil Khair asti?
He intones the familiar phrases of traditional Afghan welcome, thereby indicating his intense concern with our state of health. No reply to these questions is required, although the identical phrases may be repeated.

The CO doesn't miss the opportunity to utter his favourite phrase: ‘
Tchetour asti? Khub asti?
Afghan's nasty.'

Comrade Lagmaan doesn't understand and, bewildered, looks at me. ‘It's a Russian proverb,' I explain.

We are invited into his study. Tea is brought in metal teapots on a tray. Tea is an indispensable aspect of Afghan hospitality. Without tea work cannot begin and discussion is unthinkable. To decline a cup of tea is no less a snub than to refuse to shake hands on meeting.

In the village we are met by the elders and the eternally dirty kids (the youngest are never washed at all, in accordance with the Sheriat, their faith, which maintains that a layer of dirt protects them from evil influences). They are dressed in whatever rags they can find. Since I speak Farsi they all insist on testing my knowledge of the language. The test, as ever, is in the form of the question, ‘What's the time?' My reply evokes a storm of pleasure: I really do speak Farsi, after all!

‘Are you a Muslim?'

‘I am,' I lie.

Proof is required. ‘Do you know the
kalema?'
The
kaletna
is the special formulation one utters to become a Muslim.

‘La ilyakh illya miakh va Mukhamed rasul allakh
', I declare. ‘There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his Prophet.'

‘
Dost! Dost!
(A friend!),' the kids mutter, stretching out their skinny hands as a sign of acceptance.

They often ask me to repeat these words, and bring their friends, who also admiringly whisper, ‘He knows the
kalema!'
Afghan songs blare out from the loudspeakers, which even the Afghans call ‘Alla Pugacheva' [a universally popular Russian singer]. We soldiers hang out visual propaganda materials from our vehicles — flags, posters, slogans — and unfurl a screen for the film show. The medics put up tables and unpack their crates of medicines.

The meeting opens. A mullah in a long white robe and a white turban comes forward to read a
sura
from the Koran. Then he turns to Allah, begging him to protect believers from all the evils of the universe. Bending his arm at the elbow he raises his palms to Allah and we all copy his movements. Now Comrade Lagmaan begins to speak. His is a very long speech, a characteristic feature of Afghan life. They are all capable of making speeches and love to do so. There's a phenomenon known in linguistic jargon as ‘emotional colour'. Well, an Afghan speech is not only coloured but highly decorated — with metaphors, epithets and elaborate comparisons …

(Afghan officers frequently expressed their surprise that our political workers used notes in their talks and discussions. At party meetings and political seminars our lecturers and propagandists relied on the same stiff and tired old phraseology and vocabulary learnt from countless books and pamphlets; for example, ‘in the avant-garde of the wider communist movement', ‘the importance of setting an example at all times', ‘ceaselessly to put into practice', ‘as well as successes there will be setbacks' and even the sinister ‘some Comrades do not understand'.)

Long before I arrived in Afghanistan such meetings as ours in the village had become meaningless obligations; the villagers came for their medical check-ups and a free packet of flour each. The ovations and friendly shouts of
‘zaido bod!'
— ‘Hail to the April
Revolution' — were a thing of the past, as were the raised fists which invariably accompanied every speech in the early days, when the people still believed in our aims — the splendid ideals of the April Revolution and the brilliant future that it seemed to promise.

The children do not listen to the speech — they're waiting for the film. As usual, we have cartoons in English followed by two documentaries in Farsi and Pushtu. Their favourite movies are sentimental Indian love stories and adventures with lots of guns and violence.

After the film-show we distribute presents — today, toys and bags of flour. In fact we hand them over to the village headman who is meant to share them out among the poor and the families of war-victims. As he swears publicly that all will be done honestly and properly his son begins to carry the gifts to their house.

‘Do you think he'll share things out fairly?' the CO worries.

‘I doubt it. The locals have already warned us he's a grafter. Tomorrow it'll all be for sale in the shops.'

Command: ‘Prepare to move off!'

‘Vehicle number 112 ready, 305 ready, 307, 308 … ' The children see us off with a hail of stones. One hits me. ‘“From the grateful Afghan people”, as they say,' I observe.

We return to our unit via Kabul. The shop-windows are hung with signs in Russian: ‘Cheapest vodka'; ‘Any goods at any price' and ‘Russian Friends, Come to Bratishka [brother] for All Your Purchases!' The merchants call out in Russian: ‘T-shirts!', ‘Jeans!', ‘A Grey Count dinner service for six places!', ‘Trainers with velcro!', ‘Lurex with blue and white stripes!' We pass barrows laden with our condensed milk, cans of peas, thermoses, electric kettles, mattresses, blankets … It's all so utterly, totally different from home.

Private

I don't recall any particular scenes from my life in Afghanistan. There were 200 of us in the plane; 200, all men. A person on his own and the same person in a group are two different people.

During the flight I wondered what I'd have to go through in the months to come.

I remember a piece of advice from our CO's farewell talk. ‘If you're in the mountains and have a fall, don't shout! Fall as silently as a stone. It's the only way to protect your comrades.'

When you look up at the sky from a high crag the sun seems so close you could catch it in your hands.

Before I went into the army I read a book by Aleksandr Fersman called
My Memories of Stone.
I remember being struck by some of the expressions he used, such as ‘the life of stone', ‘the memory of stone', ‘the voice of stone', ‘the soul of stone', ‘the body of stone', ‘the name of stone'. I'd never realised that you could speak about stone as though it were alive. Over there I learnt that stone was as fascinating to look at as water or fire.

One of our instructions:

‘When shooting an animal you should fire slightly in front of it so that it runs into your bullet. The same applies to a running man.'

We are in the mountains from early morning until late at night. You literally vomit from tiredness. First your legs, then your arms turn to lead, then they start to shake at the joints.

One of the lads had a fall. ‘Shoot me! I can't walk!'

Three of us grab him and drag him with us.

‘Leave me, you guys! Shoot me!'

‘We'd shoot you all right, you fucker, but you've got your Mum waiting at home.'

‘Shoot me!'

Thirst was a torture. You drink your water-bottle dry before you're half-way to wherever you're meant to be going. Your tongue is so swollen it sticks out of your mouth and won't go back — but you still manage to smoke. You get to the snow-line and look for melted water. You drink from a puddle, crunching the muddy ice between your teeth, forgetting about all those chlorine tablets and manganese ampoules you're supposed to take, oblivious of anything but crawling and licking the snow. A machine-gun's clattering away behind you but you go on lapping up your puddle. You gulp it down so as not to die thirsty! There's a body, lying face down in the water — it looks as though it's drinking too.

Now I look at the whole thing from a distance. What sort of person was I over there? I never answered your first question: how did I come to be in Afghanistan? I volunteered to ‘go to the aid of the Afghan people'. Radio, TV and the press kept telling us about the Revolution, and that it was our duty to help. I got myself ready for war by learning karate — it's not easy, the first time you hit someone in the face, and hear the bone crunch. You have to step over a certain boundary inside yourself — then smash!

The first body I saw was an Afghan boy aged about seven. He was lying there with his arms out as though asleep. Next to him was his horse, completely frozen and with its stomach split wide open. What had the kid done — or the animal, for that matter — to deserve that?

A couple of lines from one of our Afgantsi songs:

‘Why, and for whom, did they give their lives

Cut down by bullets and mines and knives?'

Two years after I got home I was still dreaming I was at my own funeral … or else waking up in a panic because I had no ammo to shoot myself with.

‘Any medals? Were you wounded?' my friends asked. ‘Did you kill anyone?' I tried to explain what I'd been through but no one was interested in that. I started drinking, on my own, to ‘absent friends,' to Yarka, for example. I might have saved him. We were together in hospital in Kabul. I had a shoulder wound and shell shock, but he'd lost both legs. There were a lot of lads there with legs and arms missing. They'd smoke and crack jokes. They were OK there, but they didn't want to go home. They'd beg to stay until the last possible moment. Going home was the hardest thing of all, starting a new life. The day he was due to fly home Yurka cut his wrists in the toilet …

I'd tried to cheer him up a bit while we played chess of an evening.

‘Look on the bright side, Yurka,' I'd say. ‘What about Alexei Meresyev in “A True Story”?
‡
You've read it, haven't you?'

‘I've got a beautiful girl waiting for me,' he'd say.

Some days I just hate everyone I meet in the street or see through the window. I can hardly stop myself … well, let's say it's just as well those customs officers confiscated our guns and grenades. We did what we had to do, and are we now going to be forgotten about? Yurka, too?

I wake up at night and don't know whether I'm here or back there. Who was it described the insane as ‘those whom life has taken by surprise'? I see my own life with an objective eye now. I've got a wife and a kid. I used to love pigeons, and early morning. Yeah, an objective eye. But I'd do anything to find happiness again.

NCO in the Security Service

My daughter comes home from school and said, ‘Mama, no one believes me when I tell them you were in Afghanistan.'

‘Why?'

‘They're just amazed. They ask me who sent you there.'

I'm still not used to this sense of safety and I'm enjoying it. I'm not used to not being shot at and bombed, to being able to turn on a tap and drink a glass of water which doesn't stink of chlorine. Over there everything — bread, macaroni, porridge, meat, stewed fruit — tastes of chlorine.

I can hardly recall a thing about these two years I've been home. I do remember meeting my daughter again, but the rest just escapes me. It all seems so petty and trivial and irrelevant compared with what I went through there. OK, so someone bought a new kitchen table and a TV, so what? But that's the height of excitement here.

My daughter's growing up. She wrote to the CO of my unit in Afghanistan. ‘Please send my Mummy back to me as soon as possible, I miss her very much.' Apart from her I can't get interested in anything now.

The rivers there are incredibly blue. I never realised water could be such a heavenly colour. Red poppies grow there like daisies do here, the mountainsides are like bonfires. Big camels
gaze at everything like old men, and they never get frightened. A donkey got blown up by an anti-personnel mine — I used to see him in the market, pulling a cart full of oranges.

Damn you, Afghanistan!

I can't live at peace with myself any more. I feel different from everyone else. When I came home my friends and neighbours — all women — were forever inviting themselves over. ‘Valya, we'll only pop in for a moment,' they'd say. ‘Tell us, what kind of china can you buy there? What about carpets? Are there really lots of clothes and videos available? What did you bring back? Anything you want to sell?'