It has been exactly one year since I returned from Afghanistan.
Just writing that down seems incredible to me. The plane carrying me back to the UK touched down in Oxfordshire 365 days ago. UK to Afghanistan and back with just 180 days travel time in between. A lifetime of experience separating the two. It was only a year ago but it seems so much longer. At the same time it also feels like only yesterday. Superficially, everything seems fresh in my mind, I think I can still remember things clearly, but when I concentrate and focus they start to blur, details are lost, names forgotten, places evaporating, shimmering like heat haze above the sand they stood on. In my mind I can still remember blinking in the sun that first day in country. If I shut my eyes I can still see the barren desert, the high hills, the uniforms, the people, the weaponry, the constant never-ending movement of men and machinery, all with one deadly purpose. At night, in the silence, I imagine I can still hear the endless, relentless barrage of noise. The aircraft engines turning, the generators throbbing and the constant, incessant heat, the heat that seared your throat every time you took a breath. I vividly remember all of this but can't explain any of it to anyone. Those I love weren't there, and it means nothing to them. Those that were there, aren't here now. I miss it. I miss what it meant. I miss the focus it brought, the clarity of purpose, the singularity of being. I'm not saying I want to go back, because I don't. I want it to mean something though, and it doesn't.
When I got back it was as if nothing had changed. Mostly because it hadn't. Nothing has changed. But it has. As I was waiting for my flight home from Camp Bastion, we watched coverage of the riots in the UK. London was burning and, as a Nation, we appeared powerless to prevent it. Mobs were roaming the streets, robbing, looting, destroying. From Afghanistan, we looked on in wonder and disgust and shame. Would we merely swap the dusty roads of Helmand for the dirty streets of Hull? A friend of mine who works in Birmingham described how she would get off at New Street station dressed in a business suit, accompanied off the train by youths in hoodies with baseball bats. All off to the city for very different days. The juxtaposition of this ordinary life carrying on as normal set against the anarchic chaos of the riots resonates with me. Last year I was carrying a weapon 24 hours a day, seeing death manifest itself in so many ways, attempting to repair the fabric of a foreign society, whilst 3000 miles away my countrymen were tearing the fabric of their own apart. Now I am shopping in Sainsburys. One year on, I am watching one of the most spectacular Olympiads ever, in a city and a country where we, superficially at least, are united behind an ideal and I am missing a country riven by them.
Everything changes.
A very poignant piece. It made me think that when we feel nothing much has changed while at the same time everything has, its because its us who are different. Altered somehow by an experience or time we've lived through.
ReplyDeleteSo much of what you've written here about missing it resonates with me that, even while the circumstances are different, maybe the questions it leaves behind are the same. What do we want it to mean? Do we want that to be true just for ourselves or for others too? What would make that reality? Is any of it in our gift to make happen?
TOM