Biting Through by John Ratcliffe

Author:John Ratcliffe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO000000, HIS027190
Publisher: Scribe Publications Pty Ltd
Published: 2014-05-28T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

Changing Seasons

Life at the embassy had gone on as normal while I was away, and I met up with Hendricks and Nagib for a catch-up on how things had been going during my latest absence. The Chinese prostitution problem seemed to have been contained, and Hendricks had stopped drifting further afield looking for new places, preferring to float from bar to bar in the red-light district in Wazir during my absence. Only a few of the bars could now keep up the bribes to the police. Beer sales were going the wrong way, as interest in the green cans dropped off with the approach of winter.

This was going to be my second winter in Kabul. It was pretty harsh, but at least the attacks would be tapering off and the militants would be heading back to Pakistan before the passes became filled with snow. The Taliban, who usually launched a flurry of attacks before the end of the year, had managed to sneak a four-wheel drive packed with explosives into the city. One morning, it hit a Humvee right in front of the US embassy. A woman in her fifties had been in the turret of the Humvee, probably thinking that this would be a story to tell the grandkids, before the car next to her swerved into the side of the vehicle and exploded. It was the second-largest car bomb in the history of the war, and the security contractor at the embassy checkpoint was knocked off his feet. I heard the bang, grabbed my medical kit, and headed up towards the US embassy. I knew that the coalition would be responding to a blast so close to the embassy and would quickly have thrown a cordon around the area, but there would be wounded Afghan civilians left untreated, and I could focus on them.

When I arrived, the carnage was amazing — the smell of blood, fire, and oil, again. Nothing was left of the car bomb, except a deep crater in the once-busy road. The Humvee had been shattered into tiny pieces. Blood trails led here and there, where the wounded had fallen or been dragged away. Fourteen Afghans had died and almost 30 people had been injured; it was pretty grim. I walked back along the road that the bomber had followed, and could see that all the windows had gone from the shops up and down the street. I found a chemist I knew who used to sell me medicine; he was sitting with his brother outside their shop, on a pile of debris. They had been close to the blast, but the Humvee had borne the brunt and shielded them from the worst of the explosion. I was relieved to see that they had been spared. He got up and invited me to join him and drink tea — such politeness in a middle of the devastation — but I was looking for ‘my’ street kids, who I knew worked a few hundred metres from there, cleaning cars.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.