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Arnon Grunberg 12 13 ‘The Future We Saw As Belonging to Us, a Thing Contested by No One, Overijssel Province, Was Going to Afghanistan As Well

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Arnon Grunberg 12 13 ‘The Future We Saw As Belonging to Us, a Thing Contested by No One, Overijssel Province, Was Going to Afghanistan As Well AdriaaN VaN Dis, born in 1946 in Bergen, the Netherlands, made his debut with the novel Nathan Sid, the story of a boy growing up between two cultures: the paradise of colonial indonesia and the drabness of the Netherlands after the second World War. Van Dis is interested in cultural clashes, and this fascination permeates his entire oeuvre, from Nathan Sid to his most successful novel My Father’s War. a confrontation between two different cultures is also more than apparent in his travel books, such as In Africa, which deals with the war in mozambique. in his novel Repatriated, to be published in English early next year, Van Dis recounts the humorous and moving story of a boy who grows up in a family repatriated to the Netherlands from indonesia, and who remains an outsider despite his endearing attempts to integrate. Van Dis currently lives in Paris. Programs multiPlE PassPorts: WritErs oN homEland and IdentitY April 26: huNtEr collEgE laNg Recital hall, 1 Pm-2:30 Pm IntErNal ExilE April 29: Instituto CerVaNtEs, 2 Pm-3:30 Pm traNslatioNs my fatHer’s wAr london: HeinemAnn, 2004. trAnslAted From tHe dutcH by inA rilke. repAtriAted london: HeinemAnn, in prepArAtion (will AppeAr April 2008). trAnslAted From tHe dutcH by David colmer. arNoN grunberg 12 13 ‘The future we saw as belonging to us, a thing contested by no one, Overijssel Province, was going to Afghanistan as well. ‘I’m planning the war as a tempestuous prelude to happiness, and happiness itself to talk mostly to soldiers from Overijssel,’ he told me. ‘What’s your as a part of our character,’ wrote Isaac Babel in one of his stories angle?’ about the Soviet-Polish War of 1920. War, that tempestuous prelude My angle. That I was going along to experience that tempestuous to happiness, had eluded me so far. The wrong time, the wrong prelude to happiness seemed better left unsaid. ‘The person behind place, the same old story. Yet fate is pliable. the soldier,’ I mumbled. That always worked, the person behind. At one-thirty on a midsummer Tuesday afternoon I made my The boarding area where we found ourselves was no different way to Eindhoven airbase, from where I would fly to Kabul. Then to from boarding areas at other airports. Normal airports, from which Kandahar. And perhaps on to Tarin Kowt, depending on the security people left on holiday. War, though, is a kind of holiday as well. As situation, as the defense department put it. one soldier in Afghanistan would tell me later: ‘It sounds weird, but The security situation, a term open to interpretation. I relax here.’ I was not going as a soldier, not even as a spiritual adviser; after ‘With us it’s just like with Ryanair,’ Captain Cynthia said. ‘The having been declared unfit for duty at the age of eighteen, that first one in gets the best seat.’ would have been too much to hope for. A psychiatrist had written Once on board I was about to sit down beside a soldier a letter, and few weeks later I was notified that the Kingdom of the — fraternizing is something which is best begun quickly and without Netherlands would not call upon me, not even in times of war. warning — until the soldier said in middling Dutch: ‘No, someone I was traveling as an ‘embedded journalist’. What ‘embedded’ is seating here. Occupied. Occupied!’ He turned out to be an Afghan meant was as yet unclear, and calling me a ‘journalist’ was rather asylum seeker, off to serve his new fatherland as interpreter. dubious. But, like ‘security situation’, ‘journalist’ is a term open to Interpreters are essential, of course, when you’re out to interpretation. reconstruct a foreign country. How many NATO soldiers speak Captain Cynthia, a spokeswoman for the defense department, met Pashtu? me in the departure hall at the airbase. She would be traveling with I ended up at last beside a real Dutch solider, Tinus, who after an me to the finish, to Afghanistan and back. hour’s silence asked: ‘What are you going to do in Afghanistan?’ There were fewer family members out to wave goodbye than I’d ‘I’m going to try to understand the mission,’ I whispered, expected. I was spared the tearful separations. If it hadn’t been for whereupon Sergeant Jordy, sitting in the row in front of us, joined the uniforms, you’d have thought we were waiting to board a charter in the conversation. for Majorca. The sergeant held up a wedge of cheese, as though it were the One little boy of about seven was dressed like a soldier and toting spoils of war. a plastic machinegun. He was more interested in his machinegun ‘Why are you taking cheese to Afghanistan?’ I asked. than in his family members. He had probably grown accustomed to it ‘Because I love cheese,’ the sergeant said. ‘I’ve got enough with by now, having an absentee father. me for the first few weeks, and after that they’re going to send me I wondered how that went, the last evening with one’s family. more from Holland. I told everyone, my girlfriend, my family, my Were there soldiers without a home front, soldiers who left behind friends: ‘Just send cheese.’ In Afghanistan it melts, but that doesn’t nothing but an empty apartment and a birdcage? The neighbor lady matter; it’s vacuum-packed anyway. You just put it in a refrigerator who comes by once a day to feed the canary. The smaller the home and it gets hard again. After that all it needs is a good whack and it’s front, the easier it was to face death. At least, theoretically. back in shape.’ After half an hour, the outbound soldiers — army, air force and ‘Have you been to Afghanistan before?’ I enquired. military police — separated themselves from those who were to be ‘Twice,’ the sergeant said, ‘but this time I brought a cheese-slicer.’ left behind. The men and women in desert-colored uniforms walked He grinned triumphantly. Then, as though relating confidential with me to the check-in desk. Those military personnel in uniforms information, he said: ‘Once they find out you have cheese, everyone more suited to service in the rainforest remained behind. I was the wants a piece. But if you let them cut the cheese with a pocketknife, only person in line not in uniform. No, not the only one. A young it’s gone before you know it. This time I brought a cheese-slicer, so man in civilian dress, a journalist for the regional broadcaster in everyone gets a thin slice, you know what I mean? So this time they 14 15 won’t eat all my cheese right in front of me.’ and minds’. For a person who has seen the beauty in a tank, who I felt a fondness for this Sergeant Jordy, who would not enter had actually convinced me that a tank is more beautiful than the Afghanistan unprepared. For the first time on this trip I sensed that Virgin Mary, that could not be an easy assignment. my hunch had been right. I was going to find out something about But the lieutenant-colonel kept a stiff upper lip. He and his men the happiness that had eluded me all these years. were looking forward to the mission, even without their tanks. ‘And what about Srebrenica?’ I asked, because I didn’t want the A few hours later, Captain Cynthia arranged for me to sit beside conversation to peter out, not yet, I wanted to go on, on with the Lieutenant-Colonel Nico. An army marches on more than cheese- tanks across the plains of Germany. ‘Is that still a trauma?’ slicers alone. Lieutenant-Colonel Nico is a tall, athletically-built man The lieutenant-colonel shook his head. ‘Not for these boys,’ of around forty, but you could only mistake him for a gym teacher he said. ‘If there’s one thing they have no intention of being, it’s if you didn’t look carefully. He commands a tank battalion. He was cowards. Back before seatbelts were mandatory, scads of people were going to Afghanistan, however, without his tanks. The men of the killed in traffic accidents. Everyone thought that was normal. Would ‘PRTs’ are recruited from within the tank battalions. PRT stands a fireman refuse to go into a burning building just because there’s a for Provincial Reconstruction Team. The army exists by virtue of chance that he might not come out alive?’ abbreviation. Rarely have I picked up as many abbreviations as Now I knew why he didn’t look like a gym teacher. Everywhere during my stay in Afghanistan. ‘Lupa’ is a lunch packet, ‘detco’ a the lieutenant-colonel turned, he saw death creeping up on him. He detachment commander. The amount of time that saves is staggering. was braced for the ambush. That’s how he’d looked at me as well, From now on, happiness would be just plain ‘hap’. like an ambush. Lieutenant-Colonel Nico had always been an idealist, and that ‘Did your wife take you to the airport?’ I asked. hadn’t changed. He had originally joined the army because the ‘No,’ the lieutenant-colonel said. ‘That’s always a bad idea. I have Russians were coming. Within two hours, he and his tanks could a buddy who’s in the army too. When he goes, I take him to the be at the former East German border. He had aerial photos to show airport.
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