“It’s a great story,” Trainor says. “Stumblefucks on the Arwal.”
I smile to myself. “Try me.”
Robyn Trainor was raised on a ranch. It was a hand-to-mouth existence for her family, no matter how hard her father and brothers worked. Ranches are a lot like corner stores. They have to finance their premises, they have to finance their inventory, and they have to sell their inventory.
The rancher’s inventory is his livestock. He breeds them, births them, and at the end of the season, sells them. That’s the deal, it’s seasonal. A grocery store buys and sells inventory year round. Each year, a ranch succeeds or fails on one roll of the dice.
The Trainor ranch was small. It was a family-run affair. Robyn’s father and two brothers did most of the work. Her mother and grandmother ran the house. Her father hired extra hands when necessary, and Robyn helped out at branding time. Those were happy days. Branding time was a big party, where everyone came together.
Robyn’s parents pushed her to get good grades in school. She loved to read, and she read everything she could get her hands on. The books she loved most were the Kipling books she borrowed from her brothers. She imagined herself a street urchin in Lahore, playing the Great Game against the Russians. Spying for Mahbub Ali, the Afghan horse trader who worked for British intelligence. In more fanciful moments, she imagined herself trading her dusty Levi’s for the sensuous attire of a harem dancer.
She cursed her inability to move with the requisite sensuality.
When she looked at herself naked in the mirror, all her pieces seemed to be in the right place. The problem was, she walked like a rancher. She rode, shot and roped. Sexual bouts with cowboys resembled combative athletic events. Harem dancing was not in her skill set.
“Robyn,” her father said to her, “you are going to college. You are going to get a degree.”
“I don’t need to go to college. After school, I want to help you around here.”
“You’re going to school, girl. We’ll pay for it. Don’t much care what you study, but you are going to get yourself a degree.”
“Why?”
“You know about hedging with cattle futures?”
“In case the price falls?”
“Call that degree a hedge.”
Robyn had a gift for languages. In fact, the first language she learned was Farsi, spoken in Iran. While her grandmother was alive, she and her mother spoke it at home. The second language was Dari. Related to Farsi, Dari was spoken in Afghanistan. She then learned Arabic. Finally, she developed a working knowledge of Pashto.
“You have a gift for languages.” I step around a pine tree. “Why not German or French?”
“Like normal people?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“My grandmother and mother got me started. Middle Eastern languages. My grandmother passed away, and I practiced with Mom. I read the Arabian Nights and imagined myself as Scheherazade. Studying the languages was like travelling.”
“You got here.”
“Not right away. One day after I graduated, my Dad called me in and told me he was selling the ranch. He was sick and my brothers couldn’t manage it. I begged him not to, but he said it was time. My brothers moved to the city and got regular jobs. When Dad died, he left what little money he had to Mom, so she could live in the city near my brothers.
“Dad thought it would be easy for me to get a job with a degree, but it wasn’t. I joined the army. It worked out well.”
“As all can see.”
Trainor laughs. “It worked out well... for a while.”
“How did you get this assignment?”
“I was able to get into a program for interpreters. It wasn’t specific to this region. But I also qualified infantry, and that allowed me to go on patrols. I joined a Cultural Support Team. As troop strength was reduced, so was the number of CSTs. I asked to stay, but I was the only woman working a handful of patrols.”
“Didn’t patrol activity decline?”
“It did. The ratio of local troops to Americans rose every month. Back in the day, there were exclusively American operations. Then it went to one-to-one. Now it’s six-to-one.”
“Was it six-to-one the day you were taken?”
“Worse. There were three of us, and an understrength platoon of Afghan National Army.”
The ANA inspire little confidence. During the war against the Soviets, whole divisions deserted, often taking their weapons with them.
The visit to Arwal village did not go well. The ANA officer and three Americans sat with the village elder in his hujra and spoke of the aid the government would bring. Fertilizer and improved irrigation. The elder was cold to Trainor, despite her wearing a headscarf and her introduction as Second Lieutenant Elwyn Beatty’s translator.
“My forces will protect you from the Taliban,” the young ANA lieutenant told the elder.
“Your presence brings us great comfort,” the elder purred.
The Americans sat cross-legged, eating from plates laden with a suspicious-looking stir-fry. It was a poor village. Their hosts were not serving their best meal, but it was rude not to partake. Trainor loaded her dish with pita bread that had the taste and consistency of rubber. She choked down a bit of goat meat.
“Tell him,” Beatty said to Trainor, “we finished much work, but have had to wait for more supplies. Construction crews will return next month to complete the irrigation system.”
Trainor translated the lieutenant’s message into Pashto. The elder smiled and nodded. Jabbered for a full five minutes. The lieutenant gave Trainor a quizzical look.
“It’s a shopping list, Sir.” Trainor kept her expression neutral. “He’s trying to get as much as he can from us.”
“The fucker’s selling our aid on the black market,” First Sergeant Otis Cray grunted. “Ask him where all the young men have gone.”
Trainor translated, edited out the truculence in Cray’s tone.
“The young men are in the mountains, grazing the goats.” The elder smiled and
