THE BOOK UNDER THE BUDDHA

Discovery

Part I

      I deployed to Iraq in 2003.  Before the deployment, I had lived in Baton Rouge for about two months, and I had just begun attending school at LSU.  My National Guard unit, an intelligence unit, was activated after about 3 weeks into the spring semester.  It was a good thing, I guess; I was already failing College Algebra.  I dropped my classes, and started getting my affairs in order.  We shipped out to Kuwait with a unit from the Georgia National Guard.  We were boots on ground in Camp Udari sometime in early April of 2003.

      After about a month of sitting in sweltering canvas tents, doing nothing but counting how many flies we could kill with atropine crystals and planning our next prank, a hand full of us were sent up north to Iraq.  We went to Umm Qasr, where we worked at Camp Freddy.  We were detailed to some British unit, and our mission was to augment their interrogations and do whatever else we could to support them.

      I think we were the first group to use heavy metal and rock & roll for interrogations.  Really, all we were doing was trying to annoy a bunch of the prisoners we didn’t like.  Some of the prisoners and detainees were pretty cool, wrong place at the wrong time types.  Others were cool and actually were enemy combatants of some sort, mostly gunrunners supporting the Republican Guard.  Some of them were jerks whether they were combatants or not, they were just old-fashioned ass holes.  Well, we figured we would be jerks back.  We had one of the prisoners in the interrogation tent with us while we were deciding what the musical selection for the evening would be.

      Richard, the Brit in charge, listed off the songs we had.  “We have Crazy Train, some Teletubbies crying or something, and Hank Williams.  What else? Do we need another one?”

      Jimmy, one of the Georgia boys I got to know pretty good, asked, “Are we just gonna keep it all on repeat, going over and over again?”

      “Yeah.” Richard told him.  “I’d like it to be something heavy and loud.  You know like maybe some Sex Pistols, God Save the Queen and all that. That way it’s loud and yelling, then it’s got the babies crying, then brash again, then it’s got the country fellow crooning away.”

      I piped in, “There’s some Metallica we could play.  Orion or Call of Ktulu would be pretty awesome. But it takes them a while to get going.”

      “No, that’s not what I want.”  Richard said, scoffing off my recommendation.

      “All right.” I replied.  “How about this, Black Metal by Venom?  Come on, it’s terrible.  It’s perfect.”

      As we stood there listening to “Black Metal”, at a reasonable volume, the prisoner sitting in the room started mumbling to himself.

     “أخرس”, shouted our translator.  I didn’t ever know what our translators were saying.  I always just hoped it wasn’t, “Now, now, the time to overthrow the infidels and escape is now!”

      “Yes, that’s it!” Richard said.  “Christopher doesn’t mind us leaving his speakers and MP3 player in here?”

      “No, he said it’s cool.” I replied.

      Jimmy then asked,“Is there going to be a guard in here? We gotta have a guard so he doesn’t wreck our shit.”

      “Yeah, we’ll take turns.  You want to go first?” Richard said, gesturing to me.

      “Sure, I’ll do it.” As the other began to walk out I asked, “Can one of you get me something to eat and bring it back.”

      Jimmy stopped and volunteered while Richard and Mohammed, our interpreter, walked out. “Yeah.  I think Jackie and Joey schmoozed some good meat off the DFAC for tonight.  I’ll bring you a plate when they finish cooking.  I need to take a dump though, you mind if I take care of my shit first?”

      “No.” I said.  “Did you see we have Port-a-John’s now?    No more squatting behind a cardboard box and burning other people’s shit.”

      “Yeah.” Jimmy said.  “They’re great.  They smell like blueberries. But you have to wait until nighttime to use them ‘cause it gets to be like, a thousand degrees Kelvin in there.”

      “Kelvin huh?  You’re an idiot. That’s fine, just don’t forget about me.”

Part II

      After about an hour and a half I decided that for all the tears Hank Williams cried into that beer, he must have felt the sorrow of one thousand widows to be so upset.  The prisoner, Malik, stayed on the opposite side of the tent from me.  We both parked ourselves as far away from the speakers as possible.

      After a while, I noticed that Malik wasn’t completely silent.  I couldn’t hear over the music, but I saw him shuddering over in his corner.  Between song changes, I paid more attention to him.  He was crying. 

      “What a puss,” I thought.  “I’m in just as bad a situation as he is.  I live in a prison.  I eat crappy food.  It’s been three weeks since I took a shower.  I’m stuck in here listening to terrible music at ridiculous volumes.  This guy is weak.”

      “Shut up!”  I yelled.

      Just as I shouted, Malik let out a sobbing moan.  I think he felt that since I knew he was crying he could let it out.

      “What the hell man? Shut up?” I yelled again, trying to get through over the racket coming from the radio.

      He just kept wailing.  Wailing like a man abused.  Crying like a broken spirit faced with his own failures. 

      I yelled again, “Hey.”

      Malik turned to look at me over his shoulder.  His eyes were as red as a freshly severed finger tip.  They startled me.  I got up and walked over to him to make sure he wasn’t bleeding or dying or something.  As I approached him, he turned his body so I could see him better, and so he could see me.

      I stood over him and asked, “What’s wrong with you?”

      He just looked at me.  As I went closer to him, I saw that his eyes weren’t as bad as I first thought; although, they were still a deep red.  The capillaries at the corners of his eyes were deep red and swollen.  They looked like they were dry and burned.  Seeing his eyes like this made mine water.  I had an insatiable urge to rub my eyes until his were satisfied. 

      “What?” I said, as he stared at me.

      “What?!” I said again, throwing my arms open.

      Malik looked at me for a moment.  Then he shaped his lips so that they made an odd crooked shape.  He twisted and contorted his lips, silently wording a sound he knew he couldn’t make. 

As he worked out the sound Malik pushed his jaw out to create an incredible under bite as he sounded, “Khu dtoo tloo”.

      “Do I need to get an interpreter?”  I asked him, knowing that he understood me as much as I understood him.

      “Khu dtoo tloo, khu dtoo tloo”.  He repeated.  Several times, he repeated this.  Gazing through me, unblinking.

      I had to put my hands up to slow him down.  If he had some information to tell me, I wanted to know it.  I signaled to him to slow down.  As I started to walk towards the tent entrance Malik shouted out.   He shouted so loudly he shouted I stopped moving.  I dashed over to turn the music off and slid back towards Malik.

      I knelt on the ground next to where he sat.  I looked at him, at his trembling mouth and his painful red eyes; I felt a wave of anxiety come over me.  It gave me a sick feeling.  I felt as though I just heard my child had died.  Malik reached out his hand and repeated, “Khu dtoo tloo.”

      Now, as I listened, the words sounded familiar. 

      “Khu dtoo tloo.” He said again. 

      “Ku doo too loo.” I mimicked.

      “Khu dtoo tloo”. Malik said.

      I recognized the word, “Call of Ktulu?” I recognized the word. “Are you shittin’ me?”

      Malik let out another cry, “Koo Too Loo.”   It sounded like the smell of curdled milk.  It sounded like the taste of rotten animals.  It froze me. In my mind, I thought of getting up and getting one of the guards.  I felt sick.  His yell, or what he yelled, made me feel sick.  I couldn’t tell if I wanted to puke or crap my pants. I rocked back and sat on the ground.  I needed fresh air, the air in the tent felt humid and stale. I rolled over onto my knees and crawled out the tent.  I left Malik alone, as he whimpered and cried.

      Outside the tent, on my hands and knees, I started feeling relief.  My chest relaxed and I could breath the clean desert air.  The night was hot; still, cooler than in the tent.  I felt relief, like walking into a grocery store on a hot southern summer day.  It felt like my head had been spinning, but I don’t remember why it felt like it was spinning. I remembered my stomach feeling sick, and I remembered the anxious feeling.  I don’t remember being dizzy or any vertigo.  I just felt like I felt dizzy.

      As I regained my composure, I realized that it was full night now.   The only light was from the security lights pointed into the detainee yard. I felt alone. For a moment, I forgot Malik was close enough to choke me to death.  I couldn’t see any of the guards.  I stood up in the shadow of the tent.  As I walked around the corner, a guard came to view in the distance.

      I walked toward him and shouted out, “Hey, troop! Guard.”

      “Yeah.” He called back to me.

      “Can you send someone to take this prisoner back to his cell?”

      “Yeah, on the way.”

      While I stood there in the dark shadows cast over me by lights on tall polls with generators rumbling beneath them, I wondered if I would tell Richard or Jimmy what happened.  Just as a crippling headache came over me, a guard came and took control of Malik, to bring him back to his cell.  It felt like I just woke up from a week long bender fueled on cigarettes and cheap artificially colored booze.  I saw Jimmy walking towards me with my dinner in his hand. 

      “It’s about damn time.  I’m starvin’.” I said to greet him.

      In quick succession he asked, “What are you doing man? You look like crap.  Where’s the detainee?”

      I tried to answer his questions without giving much about what happened away, “I feel like crap.  I got sick all of a sudden, you know how it is out here.  I had the guard bring him back to gen pop.  I’ll trade you.  Give me the food and I’ll take it back to our hooch, you get Chris’ stuff?”

      “Okay.” He said.  “Go chill out some.  Go get some water, you’re probably dehydrated.

Part III

      That next day we heard of a prisoner who was caught cutting up himself up with a piece of glass he had found.  When we checked on who it was, I found out that it was Malik.  We heard that he cut one of his eyelids off.  I remember it was his right eye because he had a bandage on it for a few days.

      When he got back from the hospital ship, docked in the only bit of river delta in Iraq, I brought him in for questioning.  I used Mohammed as the interpreter, since he was there earlier on the night Malik freaked me out.  I didn’t make a formal request to conduct an interrogation and I didn’t submit a written plan.  No one needed to know that we were in there and I didn’t want a record of the interview.  Besides, there were only two things I wanted to talk about and neither of them were of any intelligence value. I wanted to talk about why he was going nuts in the tent the night I got sick, and why he was cutting his face.

      Malik’s speech was nearly inaudible.  Mohammed had to sit right next to him and lean in to hear.  Malik refused to speak any louder, as he explained it, he didn’t want the anyone to hear what he was saying.

      Malik continued to explain that he first started having nervous problems and breakdowns after he visited his uncle in Afghanistan.  His uncle, Hajji Mohammed Hashim, fought with the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan during the Soviet/Afghan War.  Hashim stayed in the area after the war, traveling along the ancient Silk Road between Mashad, Iran and Peshawar, Pakistan.  Hashim knew boarder commanders from his time fighting and was able cross back and forth without much trouble.  Hashim was able to make his living as a travelling holy man of sorts.  Since he had made the Hajj and fought in a holy war, he was always welcome wherever he travelled.  He also kept a small house in Herat and another in Kabul.  Malik visited his uncle Hashim in 1998 during the height of Taliban control in Afghanistan.

      Malik spent almost six months, through the summer and fall, around Kabul with his uncle.  During this time, they travelled back and forth between Kabul and Herat and through various trails weaving in and out of the Hindu Kush around the Afghan capital.  Malik said that he noticed his uncle did not pray daily while they were in the wilderness.  Malik was not very religious in the first place, but he prayed at least three times a day since he thought a Hajji would be offended otherwise.  He figured if his uncle didn’t pray that maybe he wouldn’t have to.

      Since Malik noticed his uncle didn’t pray as often as he expected, he asked him about it.  He said his uncle laughed and explained that just because you pray to Allah, does not mean no one else hears it.  Malik continued with his story:

      “You see,” my uncle said, “even if you pray in silence, even if you hide your prayers in words with different meanings, even though you try to shroud the intent of what you pray from everything but Allah, that does not mean there is no other being or creature that can hear and interpret your message.  There are beasts, good and evil, that can hear you when you are alone.  Some things can hear even what you think when you are all alone at the top of this mountain.  You can be buried in the center of the Earth and your thoughts are still known.  They are beautiful creatures, and horrific, and creatures that do not even exist as something you can see or feel.  You understand?”

      “No.” I said.  “I don’t understand at all.  These are creatures like birds…or dogs…jinn, or…”

      “No, no.” he continued. “Everything you are saying is imaginable by man.  They are created by God, by Allah to whom we pray.  What I’m talking about you can not conceive.  They can hardly be believed in, much less understood.  These are creatures no god would choose to make.  No god with the least amount of love, or even indifference, would choose to create these things.  These are creatures cast off from even the worst devil in hell.  Creatures so damned that the most unclean among us could bless them with a word.

      He paused. “You don’t believe me?”

      “No.” I told him.  “You are just telling me stories, camp stories to scare your brother’s son.  I’m too old for that, Hajji Hashim.  I’ve been around for a while now.  I’ve heard stories, and I’ve seen evil.  These are just good stories to scare small children.”

      He looked at me for a moment.  Then in a clean and glassy voice, as though he knew what he was about to do would be like a harrow across my soul and disturb my mind for years to follow, he said:

      “You have never seen the evil you will soon feel.”

      He stood up and told me to follow him.  We had been camping in an area about two hours east of Kabul, roughly halfway between Gardan Diwal and Bamian.  I asked him how far we were going, and he told me we were driving up to Do Ab-e Mikh-e Zarrin.  It was the first time I had ever heard of the place.

      It didn’t take long to get there.  Hajji drove fast, it took us maybe an hour to get to Do Ab-e Mikh-e Zarrin.  We rode in silence.   As we came to the village, the mountains gave way to broad farms.  I couldn’t tell what they were growing.  It didn’t smell like poppies or hashish, so it was probably grass for stock.  We came to a stop next to a run down ASO Diesel station. 

In his raspy, more natural,voice Uncle Hashim stated, “Now we walk.”

      As far as I could tell we started walking north, up the side of the mountain.  We stayed in the channel between peaks of the mountain.  We walked upward, but not much; it was only a slight incline.  We walked up for almost half an hour.  When we came to a small Buddha, about a meter tall, we stopped.  My uncle waved his hand, signaling me to walk around the stone the Buddha was carved in.  When we got to the back of the stone Hashim told me that we were going to crawl into a cavern underneath the stone.  He kicked some brush out of the way of what looked like a pika hole, but much larger.  It was about half a meter across, and mostly circular.  As we crawled down the hole, it became wider.  After about two meters, I could get on my hands and knees.  After a minute of crawling backwards along a twisting tunnel, the ground opened up enough to stand and turn around.  I had to stoop to keep from hitting my head. The room seemed larger than I think it was.  There was no light to see.  I could stretch my arms out and not touch either the walls or my uncle.

      “Come here.” My Uncle Hashim called, as he turned on a flash light.  “The book is over here.”

      I stepped to him and whispered, “I thought you were going to show me creatures.” I don’t remember why I whispered.

      He told me, in a strong reassuring tone, “You will see what I told you about.”

      He squatted over a small wooden crate and told me to sit down.  I sat.  Out of the crate he pulled a plastic bag.  And from that plastic bag he pulled out a large book wrapped in more plastic.  He handed me the book.

      “Go ahead,” he said, “look at it.  Open the book and look.  Be able to say that you have seen evil.”

      I unwrapped the book from its plastic covering while my uncle kept the flashlight aimed towards the object of our evening expedition.  When I took the book out it felt heavy.  Heavier than other books that were the same size. The cover looked like it had four different titles.  I could tell that one was in an old version of Arabic.  The other looked like what I think was Latin.  I don’t know what the other two were.  One of them didn’t look like a human hand could write it.  The letters look square, and blocky.  I imagined the writer would have to walk around and draw the letters from different angles to make the shapes right. 

      I opened the book somewhere in the middle and began feeling sick.  I felt dizzy like my head was being spun like a top.  The feeling quickly went away, but it felt as though a sick feeling was lurking just beyond my acute awareness.  The pages reflected the light from the flashlight.  They were glossy and dull at the same time; they reflected the light like the shine of greasy hair.  There were lists of sentences on the page with no images or illustrations.  The lists looked like they were the same four languages as the cover.  I tried to read what the Arabic words said, but I couldn’t quite make sense out of it.  I didn’t know most of the words, and the few words I did know didn’t make sense in the context they were used.

      “Why doesn’t this make sense?” I asked my uncle.

      “It doesn’t make sine because it was written by a man possessed.  You can’t read it because that language is dead.  It took me a long time, with several teachers, to read only a few words.  We decided that this version of Arabic is ancient, it’s closer to Semitic than the Arabic we have today.  It is older than the Koran written by the hand of Mohammed…peace be unto Him.  We also decided that the other writings were saying the same thing as the Arabic portion.  It’s like a key.  The other languages are Greek and Latin.  We could not identify the first language, there on top.

      “Are these lists?” I asked.

      “Yes.” He replied.  “They list the creatures that worship other creatures.  The creatures that are worshipped are listed under the gods that created them.” 

      He turned through several pages while I held the book.

      “Here,” he pointed, “this word is human. It is throughout the book, but not under all the sections.  We put time into learning what the section titles said, and what the sub sections said.”

      He looked at me.  In the silence and the dark, he looked at me.  He waited for my curiosity to speak.

      I spoke out to the silence, “What do they say?”

      He replied, “There are two major sections.  Earth and Heaven.  Then there are what is referred to in the book as Greater Gods, Great Gods, and Gods.  Beneath each of them there is a list of all the beings that worship the god it is listed under.  We could not decipher most of the words.  They were as foreign and strange to us then as they are to you now.  One of the teachers with us, Hajji Shah, decided to just make the sounds of the words and give them our own meaning, instead of trying to find out what they actually meant.  What we found by doing that, is that none of the Greatest Gods worship anything, but some seem to serve each other.  Any god or creature beneath another seems to worship and call on any god above it, but no god above another worships the lower god.”

      “So, it’s like a chain of command, an army of gods?” I asked him.

      “I don’t know.  It might be organized that way, but I don’t think it is all one organization or one large collective.  I think it is just a list of cults and what they worship.  If you still want to be able to say you have seen evil, keep turning the pages.  Every time a new Greater God is listed, its picture is above its name.”

      I kept turning the pages.  An overwhelming sense of anxiety came upon me as though it were being heaped over me like buckets of sand.  I began to itch with anticipation.  I felt that if I did not see these pictures, the images of Greater Gods, that I would be buried in this foreboding feeling for the rest of my life.  I had to see something that before then I never imagined existed.  I must have turned twelve or fifteen pages.  I kept my eyes open for “human” again.  After several pages I realized that I didn’t see “human” again because it was already listed. I turned through a dozen or more pages and was still on the same list.  I finally came to a page with a picture.  It was blurry at first.  As I forced my unwilling eyes to focus on the image, I jerked away at what I saw. 

      It looked like a bulbous fish, vomiting up reptilian legs and feet.  I couldn’t tell how much of the animal it had eaten, but is seemed as though the food was still alive.  This “Greater God” could not be a god worshipped.  The hideousness of the image drawn so many generations ago made me sick to see it; I couldn’t imagine how anything would worship it willingly.  After I collected myself, I put my hand over the picture to shield me from it.  The drawing felt cold and wet.  It felt more motionless than a picture should, so still that I felt the blood in my hand slow down.  My fingers and palms became cold and began to sweat. I looked down the list of things that worshipped this monster.  I turned the page, relieved to close the picture of this decaying fish against the other pages of the book.  I realized that this was the monster under which “human” was listed.  I felt sick again.

      I wanted to detach myself from all of humanity.  I felt ashamed to be a person.  I wanted to be the dirt that surrounded me.  I wanted to be the stone above me. My sight went blurry.  I looked at my uncle and tried to speak.  I had double vision and couldn’t focus.  The flashlight was so bright it hurt my eyes; I felt like I was looking into the sun.  I thought I spoke but could not hear my own voice.  I could hear Hashim laughing.  He was cackling like a chicken clucking in the yard.  I had somehow fallen onto my back.  I remember my uncle yelling out through his wild laughter.  His voice was course and agitating.

      He screamed with hysterical intent, “Now you can say that you have seen evil! Now you understand that evil is not of this world.  The evil you know now is not in the realm of Allah and ‘Iblīs.  No horrible thing you could ever imagine is as evil as what you have just seen.  You have felt the power of an evil so distant, and still you recoil in its unsurpassable horror.”

      As my consciousness faded I heard him let out a cough that sounded deep and caught in his throat.  It sounded like he was spitting up soft wet mud.  My ears heard the sound his throat made, and my mind hear d the word, “Khu dtoo tloo.”

Part IV

      Malik sat quite.  He didn’t want to talk about what he found under that Buddha anymore.  I didn’t blame him.  We sat there for a while, quite.  At first, Mohammed’s face looked like he was disgusted at the story Malik just told.  The look faded as we sat and turned into an annoyed sneer.  I decided this was enough.  However, I did still want to ask why he was mutilating himself in his cell. If I had that information, I would have something to say if anyone asked why I was with the prisoner. 

      “One more question.” I told Mohammed.

      “What did you do to your eye?” I asked.

      Malik replied, “After you said the name of the vomiting fish, it brought back the vision of the image I saw under earth that night.  The image burned into my mind like a photograph.  Every time I blinked.  Every time I closed my eyes.  I saw it again.  I became sick again.  Sick of being a man.  Sick of being human.  I thought of killing myself.  But then, I thought maybe I would be punished and made a servant of that beast, or one worse.  I didn’t want my eyes to close anymore.  I was going to make it so my body wouldn’t close my eyes anymore.”

       “Holy crap.” I muttered under my breath. “You were cutting off your eyelids so you couldn’t close your eyes anymore?”

      Mohammed looked at me, without translating what I had said; he asked, “Can I go now?”

Acquisition

Part I

      After about a week we started hearing rumors of an investigation being conducted in regards to prisoner abuse.  We were all pretty sure that it was going to come down to Malik’s situation.  We weren’t worried about the Brits, they weren’t our problem.  However, there was an American group in Afghanistan around this time who had a few guys die in the prison facility, so we figured that we would be put under some heavy scrutiny. 

      Some higher ups in the chain of command must have gotten in contact with the unit in Afghanistan.  It wasn’t another week before we were in Afghanistan working to replace the intelligence unit there. After about two weeks, they went to where we were in Iraq.  I think the commanders of the two units must have worked some drug deal to make a quick switch and confuse any investigation that came about.  Eventually some people from the other unit got some minor disciplinary action for letting an old man die of natural causes in prison; I never saw what the big deal was.  We never heard anything from the investigation in Iraq, I guess it just went away.

      While we were in Afghanistan, we sent a lot of three to five man teams to forward operating bases.  However, since I was an interrogator, I was stationed at Bagram Airfield.  Bagram was a major routing point for detainees in Afghanistan.  We had enough people to run two shifts, so I volunteered to work on the night shift.  It was easier.  All the officers and senior sergeants worked the day shift, so I didn’t have to deal with them.  The night shift was me and three other people.  We conducted an interrogation here or there, but our main responsibility was to respond to incoming prisoners and do all the screening and in processing so that the day shift could work with them.  The NCOIC of the night shift, Jeff, was really cool.  He set up his own little hooch in one of the old unused cells and never bothered us.  We could do what we wanted as long as we did enough work not to get noticed by the day shift.  What we usually did was two of us would work the actual job, and let the third go do whatever he wanted, while Jeff hid in his hooch drinking smuggled booze and watching movies.

      I eventually learned that the Civil Affairs guys would show up at our office twice a week at around nine o’clock in the morning, one hour after I was off duty.  They wanted to let us know that we could send an intelligence collector with them on their “public displays of affection”.  They would go out to villages and towns with a bunch of shoes and clothes for kids.  They would bring presorted boxes of food (rice, beans, flour, salt, sugar, oats) for the women. They would also bring notices of jobs and set up local day worker sites for the men to get work. 

      Medics would always go out with them too.  The medics had it bad.  They would set up a little center for inoculations and shots and stuff.  They would also have people with strange diseases or mangled and rotten wounds come up and want an instant cure.  A lot of times there wasn’t anything they could do for the people.  Our medics usually tried their best, but there just wasn’t much they could for some guy that had his foot blown off from hitting an old land mine or mortar round while he was digging a well. 

      I found out that if I went out with these guys I didn’t even have to show up for work the next night.  So I started going on all their little day trips.  They went out on Mondays and Thursdays.  None of the trips were more than 8 or 9 hours, it wasn’t too bad.  The Taliban, al-Qaeda, and all the other groups knew that attacking us would piss off people in the villages.  They also knew that once we left the town there would be a lot of new loot they could steal.  So, they let us go about our business without too much harassment; only rarely did anyone fire a pop shot at us.  

      One of these Civil Affairs trips brought us out to Bamian, about three hours west of Bagram.  On the way there, in my sweet Toyota Hilux, a road sign jumped out and grabbed me: “Do Ab-e Mikh-e Zarrin”.

      I thought about Malik a lot after I left Iraq, and his story a little bit, but I never thought to seek out the book he found.  Not until I saw that road sign.  Most of the signs were written in little squiggles.  Some signs still had Russian lettering.  Only a few ever had the Pashto squiggles and the English letters.  When we got into Bamian I started doing the intel guy thing.  I walked around and tried to identify the village elders, the politicians, and the police. I tried to just get a general feeling for who ran the place and try to rub elbows with them.  After a while I started asking people about the sign I saw, I wanted to know how far away from Do Ab-e Mikh-e Zarrin I was.   Turns out, Bamian was just about an hour south of there.  I remembered then that Malik has said something about being near Bamian the night his grandfather brought him to the cave with the book.  I needed to find a way to get there. 

      Once I realized how close I was to this thing that would make a man fear death so much that he would rather cut off his eyelids, well, I just had to see it.  It had been at least five or six years since Malik had been there.  As long as it wasn’t too difficult to find, it wouldn’t hurt just to see.  I had to find a way to get there.  A few days later the opportunity presented itself.

      In the rare instances we actually saw Jeff during our work hours it was to come out and reply to emails, to make it seem like he was working.  Well, this night he actually had a meeting with us.  Someone had noticed a significant lack of intelligence being produced by our crew and we all needed to actually start working.  I thought this would be a good chance to do some maneuvering.  

      I started cranking out false reports. Not too many at first.  But I eventually identified all the prisoners from around the Bamian and Do Ab area and started generating reports that I thought would get a Civil Affairs group out there.  I wrote reports, in the name of prisoners from the area to indicate that the people in Do Ab-e Mikh-e Zarrin were generally supportive of Americans. I also included that they were under a lot of pressure from Arabs and the Taliban to provide material support in opposition to the Coalition Forces.  I wrote up reports that said the general health of the area had begun to decrease since an old doctor whom used to visit the village stopped showing up.  I increased the production of these counterfeit reports over the course of a few weeks.  Anytime we got a new prisoner in from the area, I would put out fresh information to support the previous reports.

      Eventually this caught the eye of one of the operation commanders.  And, just like I planned, the Civil Affairs team was tasked to go out and do a standard love run with the people of

Do Ab-e Mikh-e Zarrin.  It worked like a charm.

Part II

      I didn’t see any old ASO Diesel stations on the way to our set up area.  Something that simple wasn’t going to stop me, not this close.  Even if there was nothing there I had to find this Buddha and see for myself.  I had four hours before we were leaving again.  Four hours to find this thing.  Since I usually had free reign to go wherever I wanted it would take something serious for anyone to notice I was missing. 

      I went straight to the mission at hand, find my first land mark. It didn’t take long.  I found an older gentleman who had live in the area for years and asked him where the station was.  He walked me to it, it was about a quarter of a mile away from where we were.  He thought it was strange that I wanted to go to an old gas station.  I told him that my grandfather worked for Esso, the actual company that was Aso, before Esso turned into Exxon.  I had my interpreter use my camera to take a picture of me and the old man in front of the station sign.  That seemed to resolve his interest and he went back towards the Civil Affairs area.  I told the interpreter, Ernie (his actual name was Jamal, I can’t remember why we called him Ernie), to go back and see if anyone needed his help.  I told him I wanted to tool around in this old abandoned gas station to see if I could find any cool old stuff.  He didn’t have any interest in rooting though a bunch of junk and went back to the Civil Affairs area.

      I had to move on to my second land mark, the Buddha carved in stone.  I went around behind the station and faced north.  I had to get this right or I would never find Buddha.   Malik and his uncle headed north.  What did he say, through a valley, but still going up?  I spotted a narrow draw line up the mountain that stayed relatively level, just a slight incline.  That was my path.  I started running.  

      It took about ten minutes to come up on a boulder big enough to have a carving three feet tall on it.  I needed to rest anyway, I was (and am) an out of shape lug; I was about to cough up a lung.  I looked around the stone and got real excited and upset; I didn’t see the carving at first.  Then I noticed some damage to the rock.  I moved some brush aside and saw the most beautiful belly I’d ever seen.  Too bad though, the face was chiseled off.  I remember the Taliban had something against all the Buddha statues in Afghanistan. That didn’t matter to me now.  As I started to move around to the back of the boulder, I wondered if the face had been knocked off before or after Malik was here last.  If it was after, had somebody found this book that pulled me to it like iron to a magnet? 

      I found my way along the ground until I set upon what looked like a giant rabbit hole.  I wasn’t wearing any vest or helmet, but if I was they would have had to come off.  The hole wasn’t very big.  My stomach started turning.  My heart beat didn’t know what to do.  My mind said go.  I heard my own voice tell me, “Get in there!”

      I decided to go down feet first, that way I could pull myself out if I got stuck.  Just as soon as my elbows entered into the cave I became overwhelmed with the fear of getting stuck.  I tried to start pulling myself out, but my hands were useless.  They couldn’t get any leverage and the entrance had a downward twistyness to it. I pushed backward and my hip got hung up on a rock.  I was terrified.  I was afraid I would be stuck in this hole in the middle of Afghanistan and that I would die.  I was afraid of the fear that came over me, that it would make me panic and make my situation worse. 

      I panicked.

      My shoulders felt like they were trying to smash into each other.  They crushed inward towards my spine and were choking my neck.  They became stiff, like an iron rod was bracing them against a wall. Still, they squeezed my lungs, forcing shallow breaths.  This cave became a python squeezing the life out of me, waiting for me to suffocate so it could swallow me whole and without a fight.

      My fatass thighs and stomach were wrenched and jammed into this crushing dirt tube so they couldn’t move.  I kicked back and forth with my knees trying to break the bind this tunnel had on the heft of my body, but the attempt was worthless; I was worthless.  The ancient hard packed dirt was stabbing into my hip.  The jab the earth gave me made my trapped body quiver and shake in pain.

      With my shoulders shoving my chest outward, I could feel my heart beat against the dust that should be my casket.  With my face buried against the wall of this tomb and my arms jutting out uselessly above my head, my mind filled with distress.  I was suffering a smothering demise.  The fear of an imprisoned death filled my consciousness.   My head felt like it expanded and the world felt like it contracted.  I felt as though my body would explode into a pink mist of agony and anxiety for every moment I was stuck in that narrow chute of trepidity. 

      I violently twisted my body. In this gate to hell, under a Buddha carved in stone, I twisted my body again.  The rock in my hip dug deeper into my skin, pinching it between stone and bone.  Again, I twisted.  And again.  Trying to break the dirt around me like a drill, I twisted. I wasn’t moving anywhere.  And still I twisted.  I had to do something, and this was all I could think to do.  I focused on the stone tearing the flesh on my side.  I took as deep of a breath as I could and let as much out as I could.  In my mind, I imagined my hip against that rock.  I twisted my body in a way that my backbone could break apart and shred its own nerve column. 

      The dirt around the rock broke first.

      I heard dirt falling beneath me as I slid into a wider opening in the tunnel.   I landed on my knees and fell back into the cave. It was dark.  I felt something heavy land next to my foot.  That damn rock.  I took out my keychain LED light and shone it at the rock that almost killed me.  It was a little larger than a softball and had sort of square bottom, with a round peak to one side. I decided that the tunnel needed a little more tunneling.  Even though I was short on time, it wouldn’t matter if I got stuck and died on the way out.  I picked up my stone of doom and started scraping out the narrowest part of the tunnel.  I had to make it just a little wider.  After about 20 minutes of that, I was spent.  The tunnel did look like it would be a little easier to get out.  I crawled up the tunnel a little to make sure.  It was definitely easier to get out now.

      I looked at my watch to see how much time I had left.  I still had just under three hours before I had to get back to the Civil Affairs group. It felt like I was stuck for an hour, it was only a minute.

      I crawled a short way out to the main room of the cavern.  I shone my light around to make an assessment of the cave.  It was big for being a hole in the ground; it was about 12 feet by about 15 feet.  The ceiling was low, maybe five and a half feet high in most places.  I had to find this book now.  It had to be here after that horrifying time in the tunnel.  I moved my light across the room until it landed on a strangely square pile of dust.  That was the crate Malik told me about.

      Walking over to the old ammo crate, I reached for my camera.  My camera! Did I smash it in the tunnel?  The worst things went through my head.  When I took it out of its little pouch it didn’t even look like there had been a problem.  DNT makes a sturdy digital device. I took a picture of the crate.

      When I pushed the top off and looked into the box I saw the plastic bag Malik had told me about.  It was still there, the book was still there!

      Apprehension flooded over me.  A feeling of suspense filled the dirt room.  I took out the plastic bag and sat on the floor of earth.  I pulled another wad of plastic from the bag and unwrapped the book.  The excitement made me want to squeal.  This book did exist.  Regardless of what was in it, I had just made a journey across the world to a treasure.  Some sort of prize I didn’t even know existed only a few months ago.   The book felt heavier than it should have.

      I sat cross-legged and held my little flashlight between my lips, aiming it at the book that sat in my lap.  I took pictures of the front cover, the back cover, and the spine.  Then I took time to look at it. Four languages, just like he said.  This was the book that made a man try to cut his own face off.

      The cover of the book felt like petrified wood, bound at the corners and edges with hard tough leather.  I opened the cover to the first page.  The rush of blood to my hands felt like pins and needles, like they had fallen asleep and I was slapping them against a table.  The painful tingle lingered, but I soon forgot about them as I stared at the first word in the book. 

      I had no idea what it said. 

      As a Spanish linguist I could tell that the third language down was Latin.  I recognized a word that was either “God” or some version of it.  There was another word after, and its meaning was obvious, “bestiam”, beast.   As far as I could tell, this was the closest thing to a title the book had, “Beast God”.

      I took a picture.   

      I turned the page.

      I threw up.

      After I took control of my stomach, I prepared myself and looked again.  The picture was drawn in what looked like very saturated oranges and reds. It was henna. It looked like it was fresh tattoo on the page, but there were no punctures or holes.  It seemed almost like the picture was part of the page itself.  The image looked like a turtle split across the belly and folded back on itself so that the hard upper shell above the tail pressed against the hard shell above the head; with the head and tail facing the same direction. Around the edges of the shell, the artist drew fuzzy looking fluff.  It looked like fluffy mold growing on moss.  I thought I could smell the picture.   When I threw up, my body reacted to the stench before my brain had realized what had happened. 

      The smell coming from the picture reminded me of a time I found a dead calf in a grazing pasture.  The calf had been still born without anyone knowing.  It had been there for weeks before I found it, bloated and steaming at the edge of a pond.  Just like that calf, the picture smelled of old flesh, slowly under cooked by humid air.  I turned the page to get it out of my sight.  The smell quickly faded.

      I forgot to take a picture of the page.  I had planned to take a picture of each page, but this book had probably 200 to 250 pages. I wouldn’t have enough time to take pictures of every page.  I took a few pictures of the first few list pages under the rotten turtle.  

      I examined the sheets of material that held the strange writing.  They were glossy; however, it didn’t seem like they were coated in any oil or wax.  The paper seemed to be made up of a reflective material.  The pages were strong.  I dog-eared a small corner, and the paper neither creased nor cracked.  It looked more like fine woven linen than pressed paper, and I could see how light reflected off the ultra-fine ridges in the material, so I didn’t think it was parchment or skin.  Whatever it was made from was incredibly durable.  The letters looked burnt into the page but there were no damaging marks.  Upon closer examination, the letters looked to be more like a natural part of the paper; like they had simply always been there.  I put my light as close as I could to look for the ink bleeding into adjacent fibers.  There was no bleeding.  The written lines were perfect, as though they and the pages were cut out to fit each other and were melded into one another.

      I couldn’t really read anything.  As I turned the pages I scanned for “homo” or “hominum” or something that looked Latin for “human”.  I didn’t see any.

      Since I decided it would take too long to take a picture of every page, I decided to flip through the book and take a picture of every page that had a picture, plus one page after the picture.  I decided not linger on any of the pages.  I would end up in bad order if I reacted to any of them like I did to the first one. I flipped through the pages quickly.  I started to feel worried.  I kept checking my watch to make sure I wasn’t late getting back to the convoy.  The more pages I turned the more worried I got.  I felt like a ten year old who found his dad’s porn stash for the first time.  I began having trouble controlling my bladder, so I got up to walk to the other end of the room to pee.  On the way I stumbled on some rodent’s skeleton, I almost pissed all over myself.  After making my bladder gladder, I got back to the book. 

      There were way more text lists than there were pictures. There was a picture only after every dozen or so pages. I came to a picture that looked like a smashed fish trying to eat a squid. 

      It was Ktulu.

      I looked at it.  As it watched me look at it, I noticed that my mouth became dry.  I noticed that my lips were chapped.  My eyes became dry and I couldn’t stop blinking.  I was thirsty and had forgotten to bring any water.  I felt like I had eaten a mouth full of sand, then remembered that I did just that on my way in through the tunnel.  The picture looked like it was just his head.  Its eyes were bulging and hung beneath a brow formed from thick rubbery scales. The scales on his face reminded me of heavy rubber sheets lain over each other like shingles on a roof. Where an upper jaw should have been there were tentacles.  Five large, unsymmetrical, fat, corpulent tentacles that looked saturated to the point of being more liquid than flesh.  Beneath, and tangled around, those heavy suckerless tentacles where more, smaller tentacles, and from those even smaller tentillum.  Each of these smaller tentacles were different.  Each seemed to be its own creature crawling out from the hidden mouth of this grotesque bust. 

Disgusting. I took a picture and turned the page.

      Ktulu had 30 or more pages of lists after its picture.  The most of any picture so far. I became more and more horrified as I considered so many cognizant creatures would worship or serve such a wretched thing.  Towards the end of the section under Ktulu I saw the word “hominum”.  I remember wondering why it was all the way at the end. I didn’t think about it for long, the next page held another picture.  A picture of curves.

      I would do anything for those curves.  I can’t even imagine what I would do to protect the being which inspired these curves.  I would lay down the lives of everything that has ever lived, or worse. 

      The strokes of henna formed a complete and coherent shape.  Though, as I was drawn in by the perfect flow and form of the curves, the complete image disappeared among the bending and moving lines on the page.  I felt an urge to be nearer to the picture than I was.  I laid my face against the page where the curves were made.  I felt the blood in my face heat up as I blushed from the embarrassing flattery of being allowed to be so close to the image.  I longed to be near what Greater God this depicted.  I yearned to be able to serve this lovely creature.  I wished I knew what I had to do to bring happiness and joy to the Greater God drawn there.

      I felt tears running down my eyes.  I feared that my tears would harm this image of heaven personified.  I threw myself away from that pyxis which contained those perfect curves, the curves that drew up such emotion from me.  I laid there, prostrate next to the tome of creatures.  That bestiary of devils, chsjar, and monsters all deplorable even by the worst imaginable beings.  I was horrified that my tears may have stained the drawing of curves, and would have made it any less perfect because of my actions.

      I laid there thinking of how anything I could do was not good enough for this Great God that deserves only as good as it desired.  And crying.  I laid there crying.  Sobbing like a child who lost its way.  My chest was heaving and shaking.  My lungs jerked and lurched and tried to pull in air, fighting against themselves as they pushed against the breathes.  I wept. 

      Sorrow filled my entire being.  I wept because I could never know this God.  I wept out of envy against those who could.  Anguish filled me.  Spittle and snot shot from me as my diaphragm stretched and pulled at my ribs with its indecision of how to breath.  The ground beneath my face was bathed in expectorant and tears.  That eternally dry ground became a pool of mud made from a mix person and planet.  I poured out the essence of my being, longing for this creature I came to love with all the energies of life.  I moaned out my devotion for a creature that could inspire perfectly simple curves.  That those curves were so powerful made me fear the true power of the creature on which they called. I writhed with the excitement of knowing such a power.  Angry that I couldn’t know the God better, I slapped and kicked the ground, knocking the book aside. 

      A thought occurred to me. 

      I thought of the rodent remnants I had kicked earlier.  I thought of how I would be found decades from then.  It would take some anonymous explorer’s foot crushing down and shattering my dry skull to find my skeleton.  This would not do.

      Jumping up, I grabbed the book. At some point the pages had flipped to one of the many pages with lists of worshipers.  I wanted to write my name under the image of the curves.  I checked my watch instead.  I only had about half an hour before the Civil Affairs group started wrapping up in town.  I had been crying for an hour, and the puddle of tears was a testament my fit.  I couldn’t bring the book back with me; I had to protect the image of the curves.  The book was safe in this cave for years before, it would be safe here still.  I decided to leave it for now, and come back for it later.  I wrapped the plastic around the book and put it back in its box. 

      When I walked to the cave entrance, I saw my rodent friend.  I thought he would make a good guard for the book of Gods.  I picked up his remains and placed them, in order, on top of the crate.

      I hesitated at the bottom of the entrance tunnel.  There was no other way out, so I started to climb.  I tried to keep my arms a little closer to my body this time.  The part I scrapped out made it a little easier to get to the surface.  I had to run back to the Civil Affairs area.

Part III

      “Never cheat on a PT test again.”, I told myself when I got to the Civil Affairs area.  I was bushed.  I ran a little over a quarter of a mile and I was seeing flashing maggots and my throat burned.

      “Hey, where have you been?” The mission commander shouted out to me.

      “I was a few blocks down in one of the policeman’s houses.” I said back to him.  I had come up with a story on the way back.

      He asked, “Doing what, drinking tea and eating crumpets?”

      “Pretty much.”, I said, trying as hard as possible to sound like a smart ass.

      “What the hell happened to you?”

      I didn’t prepare for this question.  I didn’t even realize how filthy I was, I glanced down at my hands and saw that blood from my forearms was easily visible. Fighting and thrashing in the tunnel did a number on me.

      Quickly, I came up with a simple lie, “I was running back over here and busted my shit on a rock.  Every one over there laughed like it was the world’s first joke.”  He didn’t actually care enough to worry about whether or not that actually happened.  It was a response and that’s all he wanted.

      “Well,” he said, “go get cleaned up and dust off before we head out.”

      When we got back to Bagram I had to get the pictures of the book onto my computer.  As soon as we parked the truck I started off to my tent.  The convoy commander called out at me to come up to the operations center for the after action review.  I had my camera with me; I couldn’t bring it in the Ops Center, that was a classified area.  Then, for some reason, the Captain put his arm around my shoulder and started walking towards the Ops. Center with me. (Why did he do that!)

      Nobody saw my camera when I walked into the operations center.  I calmed down a little bit and thought maybe I would be able to get out without losing my camera, and more importantly the pictures on it.

      On the way out one of the building, a guard shouted out, “Hey man, what’s that?”

      I kept walking.

      “Hey stop!” he shouted.

      I had to stop.  “Oh, sorry, I didn’t know you were talking to me. “  I lied.

      “What’s in your pocket.”, he said.  It started out as a question, but ended as a direction.

      I looked down and saw the camera lanyard hanging out.  He knew what was in my pocket.

      “Oh, damn dude.” I tried to play the lower enlisted brothers approach. “I forgot my camera in my pocket when I got out the truck. I had it with my when we went out on the mission. You know taking pictures of the country side and what-have-you.”

      “You know I’m going to have to confiscate it.  No recording devices or cameras are allowed in the classified areas.”

      I wanted to yell at him.  I wanted to wrap the lanyard around his throat and choke him to death.  I wanted to squeeze he neck until his eyes bulged and his lips turned purple and swollen.  I knew the rules.  I knew the rules better than he did.  I didn’t want to bring the camera in; the jackass lovey-dovey captain carried me in here with it.

      “When am I going to get the camera back?” I asked him.

      “Just put in a reclamation form with your S2.  As long as there isn’t any classified on it you can get it back.  It should take our security shop a few weeks to get to it.”

      “A few weeks, you’re screwing with me.” I thought.

      “Okay.” I said, and handed over my only tangible connection with the book.

      I filed my form.  I never got my camera back.  They told me they found the investigation report and since there was no classified information on it I wouldn’t get in trouble, but at some point, they lost my camera.  I know that’s garbage.  Someone saw what I had and stole it.  It’s that simple.

Part IV

      I never got another chance to go back to the cave.  Since then, I’ve only ever seen the book under the Buddha in my dreams.  Ambushes and IED attacks on convoys started picking up shortly after that trip and all the friendly operations stopped.  The risk was too high; it wouldn’t be to high if the knew what was really out there.  Not only that, but after a few people were sent home early, there weren’t enough people to run two shifts any more.  Therefore, the kick ass night job went away; Jeff was pissed. 

      We redeployed, went back home, in the spring of 2004.  I had a lot of trouble doing some simple things.  It took a lot of effort to even step on grass.  I cringed when I saw a car parked on the side of the road.  I started having vivid dreams, so vivid that they were difficult to distinguish from real life.  Over time, they occurred more and more often.  With all the trouble sleeping and dealing with stupid things like…stepping on grass, I went to the VA and they gave me some BS about it being PTSD.           After a few years, I learned how to differentiate the dreams from reality.  I designed little tests to find out if I dreamt something or if it actually happened. 

      Now the dreams happen more often than they used to.  Sometimes, if there isn’t enough going on around me I drift into vivid dream states while I’m awake.  Not normal daydreams, but full on “alternate-reality-dream-world” dreams.  I’ve picked up different hobbies and habits to make sure my entire mind is active at all times, so there is no opening for the awake dreams. 

      Some people call my little habits “nervous tics”, but what do they know about being nervous?