August 29th 2004

It is hard to know what to tell people sometimes. I encountered this when I came back from Iraq (where I did nothing). When a story is told, the teller loses control of it. He loses control because the listener interprets the language, changing the story from the teller's reality to a different perspective. I never wanted to lose control of that experience. Any violent act which takes place halfway around the world is going to be subject to extreme interpretation. This doesn't mean that my perspective is more accurate-it may not be. Still, I am reluctant to put this event out there for scrutiny. I didn't witness the destruction of the DynCorp house down the street. We had just come back to our own compound from the gym at Camp Phoenix, a multinational base in Kabul. The bomb went off as we were walking from our car to the house. I thought it was much closer to us-I could feel the concussion and debris started falling down on us. We all got down next to the cars and tried to figure out what was going on. I remember thinking that there could be another bomb right next to us, but luckily I was wrong. We heard a few shots fired, so we kept our heads down for a few seconds. We all realized that we had to seal off the street to prevent any cars from approaching and possibly detonating in front of us. One of the guys grabbed a vehicle and drove it down the street about 100 meters to block traffic. The rest of us just ran down the street, found cover, and waited for someone to try and run our little impromptu barricade. No discussion occured, no-one issued orders, we all just reacted together. There were a few tense moments with taxis and Afghan police (in that situation its hard to trust people), and there is one reporter who has a very unfavorable impression of American hospitality. The kids, Fuad and Omed and others, were standing on the street, watching the whole spectacle until we started screaming at them to leave. None of us wanted to shoot them accidentally, and they were in our line of fire. After a while we realized that things were probably going to be okay. After about forty-five minutes some security personnel came out and relieved us. We went inside, still dressed in gym clothes. There are images from that afternoon which are fixed in my mind, like my friend Paul aiming his rifle at people over the front of the car, or the U.S. Humvees speeding down our street to get to the bomb site. Generally speaking, our experience of the event was peripheral. I think that most of those who came out unscathed would probably have to say the same.