Just LivingChapter 116 of Balloon Wars: An ISR Operator's Account Of The Wars In Iraq & Afghanistan
Chapter 116 – Just Living
Just Living. A man and his dog. A man and his pigeons. A man butchering a sheep. A family on a motorcycle. A woman and her granddaughter descending a stair.
At every site there were times when I used the camera to simply watch people living their lives. Which they normally did as if there was nothing wrong. War wasn’t a constant state of being for the people in Baghdad or Afghanistan. While I was in Ghazni the only evidence I saw that there was fighting was Afghan Army patrols in pick-up trucks. People there were just doing what they do.
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OTHER SELECTED CHAPTERS
Chapters 1 & 2 – PTDS & the ISR Network
Chapter 12 – Battle in Al Atiba’a
Chapter 17 – Muqtada al-Sadr
Chapter 33 – Urged to Jump
Chapter 40 – Mortar Attack
Chapter 78 – UTAMS Repair
Chapter 79 – IRAM – A Deadly New Weapon
Chapter 82 – Bagram and Waza Khwa
Chapter 86 – Captain Ellis
Chapter 87 – 9th Inflation and The Karez
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I watched a man walking to some destination and playing with his dog as they made their way across a field. The man jumped over a ditch but the dog wouldn’t follow. The dog ran back and forth, spun and barked urging the man back while he laughed and urged his pet to make the jump. Finally the dog got his way and the man jumped back to him to pet him and laugh some more. The two found another point where the ditch was a little narrower where they both jumped across.
A few minutes later I saw a man on his roof. The house was on the route I was scanning and since they were paying me to be suspicious I waited to see what he was doing but he wasn’t setting up an ambush. He was tending his pigeons, an obsession with many Afghans. Kaftar bazi – play of pigeons, is a national pass time. He let them loose from the coup and watched as the flock circled the house several times and then flew in widening circles. He didn’t take his eyes off of them and I pictured how he must have appeared to his birds.
sunset from Waza Khwa
Further down the road I saw a man butchering a freshly killed sheep on the ground in front of his house and then a motorcycle traveling west toward the city carrying an entire family, Mom in her burka, Dad and two children.
A little girl dressed in a school uniform and carrying her bookbag was on the back porch on the second floor. The distance between the steps to the ground was so great the child had to almost climb down them and the old woman with her, who may have been her grandmother, was taking a tremendous risk with each step. I thought how odd it was that they had to deal with such an inconvenience.
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Book Chapter and photos © Robert A. Crimmins, Felton, Delaware, USA
(photos on this page are by others)
