Глеб Бобров - The Torn Souls - An Anthology of Prose About the Soviet War in Afghanistan

However, when the choppers were close to Zaranj, unsupported information was released that the plane crossed over the Iranian border and landed near some village. Immediately the order to search for a plane along the border to the west and to the east was issued. A pair of choppers, which were led by board 10 one, were flying on the west, and after 20 minutes of flying in this direction, they spotted a small settlement of natives with maybe no more than ten kishlaks (see “Terminology and Glossary” — Editor)

The leading helicopter was the one that landed, whilst the second chopper was circulating above. The counterintelligence agents — theirs and ours — together with a machine gunners platoon, went to meet the locals, who all went out to watch the helicopters and asked for some kerosene. The flight engineer F, saw how the children were running with buckets towards the helicopter, and closing the door, he waved them off. He could not give them a drop of fuel — the fuel was a precious commodity — it was just enough to fly back to Farahrud.

— Commander, kerosene, commander, kerosene! — the boys shouted in unison surrounding the flight engineer.

He tried to push away their clinging hands from his pants and their rattling buckets away from him. He looked around in a hope that his guys had returned, but they were talking to the elders of this village.

Then suddenly, a single narrow figure appeared on the canvass, like in Ivanov’s painting (see “Terminology and Glossary” — Editor).

It was a girl in violet trousers, green spacious dress, with protruded braids under a red hat-skull cap. She was slowly moving with her bowed head, and her black eyes behind thick lashes that were staring at the flight engineer. Her lips covered by lipstick glowed in the dark, and her face was like a rose in the twilight garden. She carried a white enamel can with a picture of a goat; and she looked like she came for some milk.

Looking at her, the flight engineer forgot that they are now on the border of Iran and Afghanistan, but understood that she needed kerosene for a lamp, because there is not and never was electricity in her village. Surrealistically, behind the flight engineer was a time machine, and this girl, with a necklace on her thin neck, was older than him by several centuries. He regretfully pressed his hands to his chest and parted them, gesturing that he would like to give her kerosene, but… Then he pushed the boys away, jumped into the cabin, took three packs of “Bonko” candy out of his bag with grenades, and handed the candies to her. She took it with one hand, looking down and, at the same time, to the side.

— Do not pay attention to their girls! — the captain shouted from the cabin. — We will be beaten by stones! Let’s start the engine, our guys are coming…

And they went off.

On the way home a secret agent shared the information about the lost plane: locals saw the plane that flew in the direction of the Iranian city of Zabol — thirty kilometres from the border. Clearly it was about to land, it was not burnt, not smoking, and both engines were working…

When they arrived home, they found out that this plane crossed the Iranian border as a result of a navigational error (unfortunately the navigator and one of the crew, were killed by the Iranian special forces during the storming of the aircraft); and now negotiations are going on to return the plane and crew.

Late at night, first lieutenant F. wrote a letter to his distant friend who lived an unreal peaceful life and who went to the library, the philharmonic, theatres, exhibitions, who can read Hesse and Mann, Borgen and Borges, and who can sing in a shower. This friend hated the army — never learned in the Military Department how to march-, and he wrote to the flight engineer F. about a rock group who sang a bold song about America and Casanova.

“Here everything is changing rapidly, — he wrote, — While you are doing who knows what, Ryazanov wants to make a film “Master and Margarita”. When I read Freud and Nietzsche in the library, I do not hear footsteps, wearing boots!”.

In response, to prove that he does not waste time in vain, the flight engineer F. wrote back about what did happen to him as the traveler of the exotic country. He told him about local customs — for example, about the amazing friendship between men, when one leads another by a little finger, and answering to some peculiar questions, he answered that local women are thin and flat, but the boys have their things to be proud of. He wrote about the strange insects that have become huge in the absence of the birds. Yes, there is no chirping of birds and leaf rustling — they are replaced by the rustle of the sand, carried by the wind, and at night, when he whips on the plywood walls half asleep, it feels like a dry snow…

The flight engineer also wrote about the war to his friend, whose world was eagerly absorbed with the knowledge of Zarathustra from the yellowed pages with yat letter (see “Terminology and Glossary” — Editor). However, he tried to do it delicately so that the pacifist soul of his mate will be not hurt.

His mate sent to flight engineer F. the pages extracted from Zarathustra (see “Terminology and Glossary” — Editor).

The flight engineer F. read them, comprehended and, reincarnated, wrote back. He talked about the white sky and the red mountains of this country, the birthplace of the prophet, about the hellish heat that prevails here. “The heat here is unbearably-the flight engineer wrote. But we have got used to it, and it does not bother us — on the contrary, we want it more, like in our veins there’s already flowing fire, not moisture. And our rotary-wing animals, in the beginning, were hard to lift off from the ground, but then I learned how to rush into the sky these ridiculous predators, with its benches, with orange-yellow tanks, with ragged blue corrugated floor, with unwashed brown spots on the floor under the tanks.

Every early cool morning, we were out hunting, at the time when the eastern mountains were still black on a background of purple silk, and the wind has not yet passed through the cabins.

We flew over the fields so low that the wheels were knocking the flaming poppies. And then at the parking lot, a dog Gloomy together with his two girlfriends came, and Gloomy was licking these wheels covered by poppy juice until he become like a good-natured puppy.”

This is how the flight engineer F. wrote to his friend. Maybe it was written not to him but rather to himself whom he wants to be in the future.

So this evening he wrote in the letter about how they were looking for the missing plane. He described the girl with her milk can, which she handed to the white God landed from Heaven in an iron dragonfly…

Ten years have passed. Former flight engineer F. wrote a story about the sun, trembling in the lake, and serpents creeping about the snake swallowing. After reading it, his friend asked:

— Is it about an Afghan girl that you fucked on the border with Iran?

— I fucked her? — the former flight engineer sincerely was shocked. — God be with you, why do you think this way?

— Why do I think? You wrote me in the letter that she was the daughter of a cloth merchant, and while her dad was talking to officers about a missing plane, she gave you to drink of goat milk, then invited you into her father’s shop, where you smoked kalian (an oriental tobacco pipe with a long, flexible tube which draws the smoke through water contained in a bowl — Editor), and then the blue Iranian tulips were a love bed for both of you, and how she presented seven metres of this material freshly painted by her virgin blood.

I remember it by heart, because I read it so many times! I remember, you also were afraid that she gave birth to a boy with ginger color hair, and was scared that she and the child would be beaten to death by stones by her tribe. You also wrote that her skin smelled like wool, and called her Kteis, which in translation from Hazara means “cat”. After reading the letter, I was wondering could you remember her — or would you think ever about this incident, I was sure that it is a real story, even if a bit incredible… But you do not remember, bastard…