When I worked on a special projects program in Afghanistan, I spent a lot of my time with the Afghans, rather than with the coalition forces that is the standard operational tour model I was accustomed to. There were several downsides to this, the main one of course being constantly alert and hyper-vigilant of the insider threat; the Afghan that would walk into one of my sessions one day with a suicide vest primed and ready to go.
The upshot was the experience of living and working alongside these people and their culture and the direct access to their lives and stories. Case in point: The old guy in this photo worked in the location where we conducted a lot of our training courses. I kind of inherited him when I took over the role and he was allegedly employed to clean our offices, classroom and break-out areas. In reality he would just run a spectacularly filthy cloth over surface areas making them far worse than they had originally been. That was how he earned the nom de guerre of ‘The Dirtier’.
He was very poor, even by Afghan standards. He received no official salary but was paid in kind with leftover food from the Afghan trainers. He never spoke but communicated through gestures and an odd grunt to get his point across. Once I had settled into my new position I became curious. Who was this guy? Why was he allowed to remain in our compound when he was actually more of a hindrance than a help? The Afghans are not noted for being a particularly charitable people so I was also interested in their reasons for letting him hang around.
So I asked my Afghan counterpart, a Major with a fearsome reputation earned on the battlefields of Helmand and Kandahar. Turned out ‘The Dirtier’ was once a respected Afghan Army officer who refused to shore up the puppet government that the Russians emplaced back in the 80s. Choosing honour and integrity over capitulation, he joined the Mujahaddin and their battle to force the Soviet war machine out of their country.
A natural leader and superb tactician, he quickly became a legend for his audacious attacks and bravery in action. A boogeyman spoken about in hushed tones around Russian campfires in the Hindu Kush. But with success comes notoriety and he was now firmly on the Russians’ radar. His name crept up the target list aided by information about him gleaned from savage interrogations of captured fighters. He evaded the Russians’ attempts to ensnare him and was regaled as something of a folk hero by the Afghans. But it could never last; he was a marked man.
During a particularly brutal engagement he and his men were trapped in the neck of a steep valley, decimated by repeated strafing runs from the Hind gunships. Pinned by the aerial onslaught there was no escape when the Special Forces troops swept down from the summits. His war was over. The boogeyman was caught. His capture was celebrated by the Russians who by now were looking for any good news stories to send back home to a demoralised population questioning the deaths of their conscripted sons in a nonsensical cause.
His capture was always going to be a painful one; The Russians have none of the sensitivities or conformity to treatment agreements that our western nations have. Mohammed was tortured. Firstly for information; where are the other fighters basing themselves? Who is helping them? When is the next attack? Secondly he was tortured for revenge, reparation for the lives of the soldiers he had taken. And lastly, for sport; the broken boogeyman available to all and sundry to vent their frustrations upon. Mohammed was tortured horribly and for a long time.
As a result of his torture and interrogations he is deaf and speaks only with difficulty. Hence the grunting and pointing for communicating. This man has borne witness, and been subjected to, the very worst atrocities that human beings inflict upon each other. By rights he should be a bitter misanthrope, a man with an axe to grind against the world and the injustice it served upon him. But he is not. His soft, kind eyes show he bears no grudges. The laughter lines and mischievous gleam hinting at the hidden character within.
My team contained a healthy complement of cynical, jaded individuals. Men moulded by the situations and operations they had been exposed to over the years. And yet, without knowing anything of The Dirtier’s story, I watched how they softened to the old man’s presence. Gifts in the form of clothing, caps, shoes, were passed unceremoniously with a gruff ‘thought you could use these’ to allay any suspicion that softness or affection was involved. Quite surreal to see the transformation of The Dirtier from his ragged, down and out look to turning up in 5.11 tactical pants, approach shoes and a black polo shirt.
He started spending more time with his new British friends, just as quiet as he ever was, save for the fact that he would occasionally laugh when he saw something that he could understand outside of the language barrier. One of the guys returned from leave once and took The Dirtier to one side and privately presented him with a gift. With the assistance of an interpreter he was giving The Dirtier instructions for something. Curious, I picked up my coffee and ambled across in time to see the old man holding the side of his head and crying openly. It took a second for me to assimilate all of the information in front of me and work out what was going on: My colleague had returned from the UK with a hearing aid for The Dirtier. And it was clearly working. The raw emotion from the old man was infectious and I found myself turning away, some unseen smoke obviously irritating my eyes…
It was some time later that I learned The Dirtier’s story and shared it with the guys. They were, as you would expect, impressed and respectful of the old man and what he had gone through. But here’s what I like about this whole affair: These guys treated The Dirtier with compassion and courtesy from the off, when to all intents and purposes he was just a tramp with a place to be. Whenever I hear the occasional moron stereotyping military and ex-military personnel as war-mongering automatons, I always think back to my guys and their relationship with The Dirtier and wish I could show that person the reality.
When I learned Mohammed’s story I wanted to photograph him, to try and capture those soft eyes with just the barest hint of mischief. A snapshot to remind me that no matter what fresh hell is levelled at us, we can come through it without being broken. So here it is, a portrait of the man whose story I have just written taken in our compound on the day The Dirtier became Mohammed.
