One against the Taliban

Enough time has now passed so I’m no longer ashamed to admit that at the last moment of the old ways, I was sitting at my desk in my Brooklyn loft, preparing to write an article about the rise in popularity of the Latin Grammys. At At 8:50 a.m., the phone rang. It was a fashion editor with whom I’d slept two nights earlier.

We all know what the next four hours were like, and my experiences did not diverge from those of other published writers. I felt a mixture of grief, fear, anger and revulsion, along with hope that the Times Magazine might call for my contribution for the special issue that would inevitably emerge from this chaos. After the second tower fell, I composed a metaphor in my head that went, "the World Trade Center was our remembrance of temps perdu, and when it collapsed, like two cakes in an overwarm oven..."

Reading those sentences now in retrospect, I’m encouraged by my wit and sensitivity under such extreme conditions. Because in times of grief and trouble, the arts must rise, and writers must write about the rise of the arts, for pages and pages, with references to Orwell and true satire in the Brechtian sense. I, as a three-time winner of the National Book Award and 17-time selectee for The Best American Short Stories, can provide no exception to the immutable rules of redemptive prose.

On that day, after a brief scroll through my Palm VII to ensure that my editors all worked in midtown, I went for a walk in my neighborhood among the ordinary people with their anguished, confused faces. I collected several oral histories en route, and the raw human narrative, that vein of gold that runs through all New York’s noble, hard-working residents, broke my heart. But I was encouraged that I hadn’t lost my essential reporting skills. Through many national calamities–the Kennedy assassination, the My Lai massacre, the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Kent State, the unexpected cancellation of The Beverly Hillbillies, Watergate, Broadway versions of Disney cartoon musicals, Waco, the deaths of Princess Diana and JFK Jr., Columbine and beyond–the American people have shown astonishing resilience in the face of lost innocence. And I have been there to chronicle their tears.

I returned home to find 500 messages on my answering machine. All three of my e-mail accounts were brimming. Mostly, I’d heard from famous, important, wonderful people, including several published novelists, informing me that they were okay. There were also already several requests to participate in benefit readings. But one message stood out among the rest:

"Hi. This is Jenny. I don’t know if you remember me, but I’m an assistant art director. I met you at a party a couple of weeks ago and we made out in the stairwell. Anyway, I live on Flatbush Ave., and my roommates are out of town and I’m scared, lonely and kind of horny. We don’t know each other well, but could you please come over?"

SEPTEMBER 20, 2001/PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN – It was 1979, or maybe 1981. Across the floodplain, the ground tinted blue against the setting of the pinkish-orange sky. Our truck, parked behind a mound of hilly dirt, seemed pointless in a landscape of irregular rocks, mortar shells and broken bones. I looked at the tired, hungry, heat-worn faces of the mujahideen around me, and even then I knew that when this war was over–and it would be over, if I had to spend 10 years and 20,000 words in Afghanistan chronicling it–these soldiers would become hard-line religious fanatics who would threaten the very foundations of civilization itself. They placed a Kalashnikov in my hairy, muscular arms, and bid me fire upon the Soviets. I shot the rocket, with its red glare, sad in the knowledge that one empire would only replace another, because I have seen the evil that men do.

I was there in 1973 when King Zahir Shah was overthrown by his brother-in-law. I was there in 1979 when President Taraki was murdered by his deputy’s supporters. In fact, I was there when secret CIA operatives planned that murder, which I wrote about at length in my Caldecott Medal-winning children’s book A Hot Boiling Lie: The CIA-Sponsored Murder of President Taraki. I witnessed, on and off, the entire Soviet-Afghan War, and was the only American reporter present at the Siege of Jalalabad. As recently as June of this year, I was among the Northern Alliance, working on the last really good prose piece about Ahmad Shah Masoud, whom I described as "a rebellious dog barking into the gorge of terror." I still remember the last thing he said to me before I left on a much-needed vacation to Maine.

"We are lonely," he said. "Please send us female exchange students. From Switzerland."

The only bar in Peshawar is full of white people in brown jackets, looking for something to do. I sit next to a woman with close-cut brown hair, serious-looking glasses and not too much makeup. She’s wearing a nametag that says "HELLO: My name is ASHLEIGH."

SEPTEMBER 27, 2001/KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – I arrive in the center of Kabul near dusk. A veil of cool horror swims through the air as the Taliban obey their call to evening prayer. The driver stops my car to join them, which gives me time to collect my thoughts in a notebook. This is my first visit to Kabul since 1990. I see that my favorite old hotel, the British Empire Arms, has burned down, replaced by mere crisp shards of rubble in the cruel night. Also, the famed Afghan strip malls, which once boasted some of the world’s largest Banana Republics, now contain only three types of stores: Switch World, Burqaland and I Can’t Believe We Like to Skin Our Enemies Alive! It is also apparent that everywhere the Taliban are uprooting trees. I spy an ominous billboard that says "Trees Are a Crime Against Nature." My body shudders preternaturally, though that may be because my own particular brand of barbiturates has been banned here as well.

After prayers, my guide drives me through the rubble of Kabul, while the Taliban skip arm-in-arm, singing their merry little song:

SEPTEMBER 28, 2001/A CAVE IN AFGHANISTAN – Osama bin Laden and I spend several hours together, just catching up. We have so much in common. Like me, he is from a wealthy family and had the finest education. We both fought as insurgent rebels in the 1980s, he against the Soviets in Afghanistan, I as a Special Forces commando in Guatemala. We both share a love for the work of Denzel Washington, going all the way back to St. Elsewhere, and over the years we both gradually developed a distrust of the United States and its foreign policies. I suppose that’s where the similarity ends, though, because I took my doubts and became a regular on the liberal-arts-college speaking circuit, while he became the murderous enemy of all things decent on the Earth.

"Perhaps now you would like to be entertained by Jimmy the Jihad Chicken," he says.

The surprising chicken does a hideous strut as Osama begins to sing, clapping his hands merrily:

God, what an awful song. In America, it would probably be considered racist. I wonder who the hell wrote it?

"This is not entertainment!" I say. " It’s just the desperate act of a man who’s out of funny ideas!"

He says, "As opposed to most American entertainment, including the sketches at the Gridiron Club dinner?"

I realize that our empire is built on fragile hypocrisies. In fact, I’ve pointed them out repeatedly through the decades, first in Our Man In Tarzana, my novel about the military-industrial complex, and subsequently in the speeches I wrote for Ralph Nader’s nearly successful 2000 presidential bid. My online column regularly attacks the banalities of contemporary television and music.

But I don’t want to hear about them now, particularly not from Osama bin Laden and his goddamn dancing chicken. With my exclusive access, I’m going to do the job that no one else can. I am a star-spangled avenger, and I am going to kick Osama bin Laden’s ass!

"Pleased to meet you," says the man. "Hope you guessed my name."

Drove a tank, held a generals rank ...

Please click the link for the entire article.

At first I thought this guy was serious. Then he started talking about the chick from NBC dying her hair brown.
Maybe I'm alittle slow ...

Drove a tank, held a generals rank ...

..."while the blitzkrieg raged, and the bodies stank"...

Hmmmmmm...future aroma of countries that sponsor terrorism?...Hmmmmmm

FMCDH

Had me fooled at first as well, but that taliban song almost made me spit coffee all over my keyboard.

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