the_taliban_shuffle_-_kim_barker

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a very poor job keeping current plastic. “Yeah, that’s me.” I sighed. “But what makes this identity theft? It sounds like regular theft.” “The fake license.” My identity on the run, I agreed to drive to the police station on Chicago’s South Side and le a report. It was kind of embarrassing. I had covered wars and tragedies overseas, but I had never been robbed. With the ever-ballooning recession, the United States had turned into its own kind of war zone, an economic one. At the station the detectives took me upstairs and sat me at a long table spread with papers. They specialized in identity theft. I asked them what had happened. The day before, police had responded to a report of an illegal weapon in a nearby park and questioned people there. This woman had handed over a fake Illinois driver’s license with a fake name but her correct address. The cops then searched the master criminal, pulling up more fake ID cards, and then a fake ID with my name and an assortment of my plastic. She was clearly an idiotic identity thief, arrested for fraud or theft at least eighteen times. After catching her, the police struggled to nd me. That was considerably tougher. Some of the credit-card companies had no way to track me. The police called my working credit-card company and my bank, but the number listed for me was an old one. “We were starting to think you didn’t exist,” the lead detective said. “I can understand that,” I replied. But my bank and the police kept trying, eventually waking up my father at 5:30 AM, who instead of telling the police that I was in Chicago and giving them my cell-phone number, said he didn’t know what country I was in but I was denitely a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune. And that’s how they found me, my bank and the Chicago police working together. “That’s kind of impressive,” I said. “Fast.” The police asked me questions. From what I could tell, my wallet was missing for at most twenty hours before the cops recovered my identification. “So … can I talk to her?” I asked. “No you can’t talk to her,” the lead detective said.
We talked more. They asked about my job. I pumped up the macho. “Yeah, I talk to the Taliban,” I said. “I’ve hung out with them before.” After spending almost an hour at the station, I asked my question again. “So can I talk to her? Come on.” The detectives looked at each other, shrugged. “Bring her out of lockup,” the lead detective said. “Get the room ready.” I had watched a lot of TV cop shows overseas while on embeds, while ying from one country to another. I gured I could interrogate a perp. The police escorted me into a tiny white room, where my identity thief sat, handcued to the wall. She was a squat African American woman squeezed into a white tank top and black shorts. In a way, we looked similar—I wore a long-sleeved white blouse and black pants. She was visibly confused, with a wrinkled forehead and questionmark eyes. This was not protocol. I thought about how I would proceed. Macho. Over the top. Bad cop. Out of control. “So I spend years overseas, dealing with assholes like the Taliban, risking my life, then I come home and an asshole like you steals my identity. How did you get my credit cards?” She looked at me, mumbled that she didn’t know anything. “Oh, you know. You know, bitch.” Here, I was channeling a multitude of TV cop shows. “Tell me. I can go easy on you, or I can go hard. It’s up to me how this case is prosecuted. If you cooperate, I’ll go easy. If you don’t, you’ll wish you never were born.” “Yeah,” interjected one of the ocers, who had adopted the role of good cop. “Help yourself.” Eventually, I was able to get the name of the man who had allegedly given her my stolen cards, and the time of day she had allegedly got them. Not much, and no idea if it was true, but the experience was good training for a new career. I walked out of the room with the two cops. We all started laughing. The lead detective was congratulatory. “Man, you’re good,” he said. “You got more out of her in fteen minutes than we did in six hours.”
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Copyright © 2011 by Kim Barker The
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Cover Title Page Copyright Dedicati
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KABUL
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CHAPTER 1
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enough to make it into my newspaper
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championship game. Like everyone el
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grueling way we came, seven hours,
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nothing like the Taliban. But they
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clear sign I was a foreigner, we dr
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I CHAPTER 2 MONTANA ew home to Chic
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nancial ruin. I cobbled together re
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city of about three or four million
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one is supposed to be happy at an A
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CHAPTER 3
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can work with someone who says bad
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thrown at their palace compound. I
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confused with the recently opened A
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smiled, even when talking about tra
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convinced Ismail Khan to abandon He
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CHAPTER 4 THERE GOES MY GUN D espit
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U.S. troops were killed in the ghti
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John Wilson. And always, their miss
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I knew this from Afghans—they fea
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A boy poured the sweet milky tea fr
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watch me take notes. In return, I w
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I CHAPTER 5 ONE WAY OR ANOTHER n Ka
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We said goodbye to the taxi driver
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Nasir looked at me, as if I had any
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“They want money,” Farouq told
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CHAPTER 6
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Warlords then took positions outsid
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three pigs were elsewhere at the ti
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me back and all was forgiven, espec
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Sean, the British journalist who wa
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eversed one of its only decisions t
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I CHAPTER 7 MONKEY GONE TO HEAVEN l
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oy. But now it was too cold for suc
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pressure cooker, going from home to
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Kabul High. One night, as I sat wit
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force, maybe two to three thousand
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CHAPTER 8
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landed rst in Pakistan, then the Un
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Indian capital’s dingy airport be
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laid out carpets in the dirt for us
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simply lming a documentary on the h
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sleep early. At 3 AM, my phone star
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CHAPTER 9
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neighborhood of Shir Pur, where the
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“Sami thinks he’s got a way to
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seemed adamant about returning norm
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for everything. In short, he needed
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apart, and entire chunks had crumbl
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years, no one will recognize you li
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1980s, they had been reluctant to l
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mysteriously end up dead. We soon d
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CHAPTER 10 HELL YES S ure, Operatio
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this to be the best embed possible.
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out two large guns on the side of t
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so thin, they had no time to worry
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screen, we watched the bomb hit, se
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CHAPTER 11
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would be the rst to have sex outsid
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Alaska if you were a woman—the od
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omber had hit a U.S. military convo
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I could do, and I had to work. This
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in Kabul. The Fun House would soon
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CHAPTER 12 BARELY LEGAL M y eccentr
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good rule of thumb for most Afghan
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“He thinks you love him,” she s
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everyone talked about, the example
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“My idea is this,” I told the N
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PART II WHACK- A-STAN
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CHAPTER 13 UNDER PRESSURE T housand
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and West Pakistan, nearly a million
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ght. Throughout the 1980s, the Unit
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seizing power almost eight years ea
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moving much at all. The team’s to
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whenever we hit a town, or even an
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CHAPTER 14
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were killed. One head cleric, who h
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Samad called me “boss.” Often h
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platform just above the driver, we
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Page 172 and 173: CHAPTER 15
Page 174 and 175: frantically called people in Pakist
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Page 188 and 189: nally told me, referring to Sharif
Page 190 and 191: “Yes, Mian Sahib’s schedule is
Page 192 and 193: “That was bad planning,” Sharif
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Page 196 and 197: CHAPTER 17 LUCKY STAR B uried by th
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Page 200 and 201: audience, who booed Lima. Some of t
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Page 206 and 207: CHAPTER 18 SUSPICIOUS MINDS M y new
Page 208 and 209: up plates lled with various lukewar
Page 210 and 211: “Pull over,” I told Samad. We s
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Page 214 and 215: handed me the keys. “We’re hiri
Page 216 and 217: CHAPTER 19 REBEL, REBEL S omething
Page 218 and 219: “What the hell?” I asked myself
Page 222 and 223: minutes than we did in six hours.
Page 224 and 225: “All my ex-boyfriends? There’s
Page 226 and 227: I CHAPTER 20 WHY CAN’T WE BE FRIE
Page 228 and 229: President Pervez Musharraf, who had
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Page 232 and 233: “Lady, give me your CV. CV,” he
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Page 236 and 237: CHAPTER 21 LONDON CALLING A fter na
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Page 242 and 243: “BlackBerry, Nokia, or iPhone, Ki
Page 244 and 245: CHAPTER 22 DEADBEAT CLUB A s soon a
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Page 254 and 255: eturned from Pakistan. He hadn’t
Page 256 and 257: against temptation” but with thes
Page 258 and 259: “I can’t take it.” “Why not
Page 260 and 261: cassettes (DVs). The mayor called u
Page 264 and 265: Farouq, helping the New York Times
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Page 268 and 269: Why did I want to stay so much, in
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CHAPTER 25
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time seeing Afghans as the other. T
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turn to the right,” the first lie
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And then, in another nine months, t
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police riding tractors that ripped
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I CHAPTER 26 WHEN THE MAN COMES ARO
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actually might win. For the past tw
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Farouq had told me how he would pol
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and without telling my bosses. And
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CHAPTER 27 HOTEL CALIFORNIA U nempl
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paying my salary. Many diplomats ra
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wrappers. After the usual deep-tiss
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heavy makeup, $70,000 worth of gold
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to do here. Karzai would eventually
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the air. For hours we danced, that
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EPILOGUE
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Helmand district of Marja ended up
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Taliban’s clutches in Pakistan.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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my absurd vision. I’m indebted to
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