Tell Me How This Story Ends

History repeats because humans fail to learn its lessons.

In the time warp of trauma, days, minutes, months, moments speed up and stand still. Body clocks are smashed. Trauma contorts memory, too. It blocks things to protect us, sometimes forever. There seems to be this black hole where bad things go—the evil doesn't die but it gets locked up. Not everything haunting is disregarded, though. Other details are seared so deep, the sensory unconscious struggles ever to release them. They live inside, and the body reminds. It tells the unending stories that the brain wants to forget but can never escape.

My husband Philip fought the final eighteen days of the war in Afghanistan from our home. The last three weeks have been a blur of twilight. Eighteen days and desperate nights of August contained the things that nightmares, dreams, and everyday lives are made of. Afghanistan has played in the background of my life for so long now, in some ways it was almost ambient noise. Sometimes distracting, always familiar—but in the final scenes of this unforgettable summer, Afghanistan was almost all I could hear.

Philip is an officer in the United States Air Force and spent several years serving in Afghanistan in a special DOD program called AFPAK Hands. He learned Pashtu and fought side-by-side with Afghan nationals desperate to defend their country—a place pillaged and raped by war for generations. The Afghan military leaders Philip worked with and advised were not dissimilar to him. Their families were not entirely unlike ours. Desperate for freedom, these men were driven to carve out space to live. To breathe. They fought to protect. The atrocities Philip witnessed in Afghanistan are unconscionable for most. He lived a nightmare. Still, he saw glimmers of dreams come alive too. Hope. Possibility. Progress.

War was one of the best worst things that ever happened to my husband. While he was deployed, Philip fell in love. He fell hard for Afghanistan and the people who call that hauntingly beautiful, awful place home. In the years since his last homecoming, Philip worked tirelessly to secure citizenship for his interpreters and help their family members obtain visas. These men were part of the reason he is still alive. Navigating bureaucratic bullshit on their behalf was the least he could do.

We had been tracking the slow crumble of Afghanistan before things started to totally spin out. Not protected by naivete, we watched stability slipping away. Knowing too much, we feared for the future of the country. The night of the announcement to close the U.S. Embassy, we began receiving panicked calls and messages from Afghan comrades. "Can you help me? I need to save my family!" were the pleas pouring in. These weren't requests, they were desperate cries. Philip's final flight out of HKIA was in December 2016, but the instant he was called upon to step up to defend freedom and protect innocent life, he mentally armored up to re-engage.

Our family served in this war together for eight short and long years. This last part of the fight was different. In some ways, harder. There was combat in my kitchen. It was easier when there were clear lines between bloody Bagram and my bedroom. This final battle was bizarrely boundaryless. In war, everything is amplified and accelerated. The highs have unparalleled intensity. The valleys are deep, dark, and desperate. As an American, I've always had the privilege of distance. But when the chaos is happening in your house, you don't get to turn it off. I haven't watched the news. I almost never do. The last month, in particular, I didn't need to. I could hear the desperation, cries, and chaos at the airport on my husband's phone every night.

The first place we focused energy and effort was on the case of Tawfiq. His young wife, Momtaz, and their eighteen-month-old daughter were alone in Afghanistan. She had no male relatives anywhere in the country. She had no way to secure resources to keep herself or her child alive when the country was in the Taliban's hands. Military strategy is my husband's zone of genius. He coached Momtaz to be tactical. Food. Water. Sleep. Stay away from gunfire. She bravely went back and forth to the airport three days in a row. Pushed, shoved, trampled, tear-gassed, and turned away three times despite official permissions, she persisted. She was a mother who was hell-bent on protecting her baby. My husband talked to a terrified Tawfiq each night, and prayed different ways alongside him each day. We held our breath. Over and over and over. And then finally, exhausted and elated, cried tears of relief when she was in the air. She flew to Qatar and was routed to D.C. shortly thereafter. I've known the experience of being back in my husband's arms at Dulles after the war—but I can't fathom the emotion of this reunion at the baggage claim. For the first time all week, each of us was able to get several hours of unfractured rest.

The following morning, I woke up to Philip’s ringtone. The first thing we saw on his phone was a picture from his interpreter, Shabir. It was a photo of his five-year-old son. While we were sleeping, the little boy's face had been sprayed by shrapnel during their fourth day at HKIA. His left eye was swollen shut. Their family had been turned away repeatedly at the gate, even though they carried the required documentation. I braced myself to start my day, looked at my own little boy’s face, and felt sick. He was getting ready to play at the park. I worried not for his safety down the street from our house. The greatest threats to my son's physical integrity that day would most likely be a bug bite or skinned knee. Two innocent young boys. Two opposite worlds. Two dramatically different futures.

Time quickened. We knew the window was closing to help people escape. Fast. We remained fixed on laser focus on the burning question: How do we get them out before it's too late? We kept trying. Around the clock we were constantly making choices with incomplete, imperfect information while weighing and assessing very dynamic risk. It wasn't war-gaming. It was life and death. All day long, and over family dinner.

The tenor in our house was different from day to day, depending on the rapid cycle of small triumphs and repeated defeats. Philip was with us physically, but his head had to be on the other side of the world. It's how war works. When the stakes are life and death, you simply can't be distracted. It requires you to be all in, or else.

As days passed, the list of people contacting Philip grew. Each story desperate and important. None of it was easy, but some cases were particularly complex. Philip had worked closely with members of the Afghan National Army. They were our allies during the war but are not afforded the same protections or privileges that interpreters are by the United States. When Philip checked in with one of his closest commandos through a connection in country, the news we heard was bleak. Mohammad Wali, his wife, and their nine children had been locked in their home for several weeks. They were marked targets—sitting ducks—and they were quickly running out of food.

One Sunday, I watched Philip quietly preoccupied for an entire afternoon, unsure of what was happening in his head. I sensed something was different than the other days of distraction. It was heavier. Harder. Later that night in the midst of our witching hour family circus he processed aloud how he was thinking about how to help Mohammad Wali avoid being murdered. I stood next to my microwave discussing how a man could hide a memo from Philip on his person and move through Kabul from point A to B to C without being killed site on scene. I'll never forget asking myself, "Is this real life? Am I part of some kind of Resistance?" It felt like a movie—too surreal to be true.

I couldn't get Mohammad Wali's wife out of my head. She, too, is the mother to twins. Being a mom to multiples is no joke. Three months ago, she delivered her ninth baby. "That's a lot for one woman," I mused," in America." I sauteed chicken and asparagus all the while wondering, "What is she telling her nine hungry kids at dinnertime?" My attention snapped back to the room when my daughter dropped a plate. It shattered. She cried. I scooped her up and held her while I swept the floor. On that night of broken glass, I couldn't help asking myself what explanations a frightened mother in Afghanistan had to manufacture for her screaming children while her family is hunted. What’s a mom to say while she stands in line with her family waiting for the slaughter?

The morning we learned the airport gates in Kabul would be closed, I almost vomited on the floor. I understood enough to see the writing on the wall. It was scribbled in blood—lots of it. I braced myself for what the next days would hold, knowing it would be heinous. When I was right, the world was shocked, but I stood entirely unsurprised.

As Afghanistan unraveled in August, I continued to bounce back and forth between the trauma of the third world and the everyday dramas in my first. The announcement about the gates at HKIA coincided with the news that our new nanny had backed out of her position at the last minute. I lacked the bandwidth to problem solve but felt panicked. I was an anxious American mom holding in my heart the anguish of Afghanistan mothers everywhere. I thought, "I just want to give one of those women who will die in that country the soon-to-be-vacant au pair bedroom in my house. Why can't the universe give both of us that?" That would make a lot of sense and work out quite well. Unfortunately, often, war and politics don't do either of those things.

The night Philip and I realized we would not be able to help anyone else escape alive, we were wrecked. Acceptance was agonizing. It was time to start the most difficult conversations we faced to date. My head hurt, and my heart shattered. I read my husband's texts, devastated. "There is nothing more we can do right now. I am not going to give up, but now it's time to start to play it very, very safe. Do you understand? It's getting incredibly dangerous. Stay home. We won’t be able get you out this time around." We all had been agonizing to decide whether to chance a return for one final try. Was the outside chance of freedom for life worth a high probability of death? That night Philip gave specific instructions to Shabir's family not to return to the gate again. The next morning, it was bombed.

Desperation continued on both sides of the world. I saw the anguish in Philip's eyes. I heard the sadness, rage, guilt, and fervor in his heart. "I am abandoning these people, Joy." I looked into his eyes and saw his soul. "You," I corrected him, "have not abandoned anyone. I have witnessed you do everything you could—everything in your power." Warriors are strong. They experience deep sorrow, too. The most courageous aren’t afraid to show it. One night, Philip finally hit a wall. He wept as he repeated, "I just wanted to get more people out. I tried so hard."

People. That is what the story of Afghanistan will always be about for me. Not politics. Prose about the human condition—pain, grief, suffering, survival, and resilience. Protecting the innocent. Fighting for something far bigger than yourself. Service and sacrifice. Purpose and faith. Most of all, love.

By the time I'm scheduled to publish this post, the news cycle will have refreshed several times over. Tired of looking at pain, people will be eager to think about the next trending topic. I predict that the story of Afghanistan will fade from collective consciousness as quickly as it was reignited like a flash in the pan. But even the worst old stories will become new again. Count on it.

The war may have officially ended, but the painful realities are far from over. These kinds of exchanges continue to transpire at high frequency in my home:

"I want my family out as soon as possible before my brothers get into trouble, sir. Please help, sir, if you can."

"I will do everything I possibly can, brother. When you are surrounded by darkness the only things you can do are stay strong and keep fighting. We will figure something out for your family. Do you need to talk? I can call you in a bit."

Putting a pin in someone else's pain for a short period of time so that you can have the gift of putting your kids to bed before revisiting the harshness of reality can induce unwarranted guilt. It’s an odd kind of psychological torture. We're in this, now, for the long game. These families need us to hold hope and keep fighting when few else can or will—so that is what we continue to do. To whom much is given, much is required.

I don't worry or wonder how long this will go on. What I fear is silence. When the phone calls and texts stop. That's when you know something has gone dreadfully wrong. It will be the sign the grim reaper came quietly in the night when the cameras weren't looking.

"Tell me how this story ends."

It doesn't.

For thousands of people left behind.

"Tell me how this story ends."

It doesn't.

There are 2448 American tables that will forever have empty chairs.

"Tell me how this story ends."

It doesn't.

This mess. This tragedy.

It will happen again.

Different players. New geography.

Same pain.

Identical price.

History repeats because humans fail to learn its lessons.

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