“Damn, damn, damn, damn.”
Those are the words with which Rex Harrison opens his song “I’ve Grown Accustomed To Her Face” in the film version of My Fair Lady.
They are also the words that come to mind when a book brings tears to my eyes. Usually I am alone when this phenomenon occurs, which is fortunate, as few sights are more dismaying than an old guy choking up and leaking water down guttered cheeks over a poem or a page of prose.
My latest bout of blubbing occurred when I hit page 224 of Still Come Home. Here, Second Lieutenant Nathan Miller makes a phone call from Afghanistan to his wife in Western North Carolina, trying to bridge the emotional chasm separating them and finally opening up, in a small way, about the horrors of the war he is fighting.
In this novel, Katey Schultz takes readers through three days of the Afghan war as seen through the eyes of Miller, a 17-year-old Afghani girl named Aaseya, and her older husband, Rahim.
Aaseya is a resident of Imar, a village under the control of the Taliban. She is the sole survivor of a Taliban bombing that killed the rest of her family, who were falsely suspected of American sympathies. Married to the older Rahim at age 14 to prevent her being declared an orphan, Aaseya entertains notions of freedom and the world beyond this impoverished village. Taught some English by a Ms. Darrow before the arrival of the Taliban, and raised by her deceased father to believe that women have rights, Aaseya now finds her old world turned upside down, her dreams of an education shattered, forced to wear a burka, and forbidden to walk alone to the market. She often disregards this last injunction and as a result brings ba haya, or shame, on herself and on her husband.
Meanwhile, Rahim leaves the village daily with a friend, Badria, to make bricks in the hills. Here the Taliban encounter the two men, arm them, and command them to fire shots at vehicles in the valley below to prevent them from bringing supplies to the area. Badria and Rahim might have refused the Taliban’s orders, but they need the American dollars with which they’ll be paid.
Like Rahim, like Aaseya, and like his fellow soldiers, Nathan Miller is also a man conflicted by choices and decisions, walking a thin line between the tensions of possible combat and his hopes and dreams for his family back home. He is an excellent leader, highly respected by his men, yet as the story unfolds, we learn that Nathan has come back for his fourth stint in combat in an attempt to erase the guilt he carries for a soldier’s death on a previous tour. He hopes somehow to remove that terrible burden by another term of service, yet his decision to return to the war has brought his marriage to his wife, Tenley, to the breaking point.
Through these characters, Schultz transports us into a part of the world unfamiliar to many Americans, even after 18 years of our nation’s involvement in Afghanistan. When we walk through the marketplace and war-gutted streets of Imar with Aaseya, the town comes alive: the smoke from the many cooking fires, the dust and the heat, the constant shifting of alliances among neighbors, the lack of water, the allure of fresh fruit. When Aaseya befriends and then takes into her home a young mute orphan, Ghazel, we witness as well the tragic impact of war on small children.
In Rahim we come to know his frustration with his young bride, who often refuses to obey him; his stomach-wrenching memories of being a “batcha bazi,” a dancing boy passed around among Afghan military officers as a sexual slave, and his desire to make a son with his wife and find some safe place for his family. Rahim is torn between cynical thoughts—”Morality is for the privileged; honor codes are for the elderly still remembering a world that never knew Osama bin Laden”—and the consoling beauty of the verses of the Persian poet Hafiz.
Through the eyes of Lt. Miller, we experience the camp life of our soldiers, “a fine coating of sand over everything,” the long periods of boredom broken by the intensity of dangerous missions outside the base, the games and entertainments—video games, sports, contests, books—the soldiers employ to ward off that boredom. This desolate base stands in stark contrast to Miller’s flashbacks to his home in Appalachia with its wooded hills and green pastures.
Still Come Home brings to life all these people and places, which is a remarkable feat, because Katey Schultz has never served in the military or even visited Afghanistan.
At her website kateyschultz.com/about/ Schultz tells us she became intrigued years ago by the wars in the Middle East when commentators referred to the conflicts as belonging to “my generation.” She steeped herself in literature and film about the war in Afghanistan, interviewed people who had gone there, and read books or watched movies about Afghani culture. From that research came first a collection of short stories, Flashes Of War, and now Still Come Home.
Schultz makes her home in Celo, North Carolina, and is the founder of Maximum Impact, a mentoring service for writers. She is also the author of Lost Crossings: A Contemplative Look At Western North Carolina’s Swinging Bridges.
Two thumbs up for Still Come Home.
And a heads-up as well: when you get close to page 224, have a box of tissues handy.