The Food Terrorist Diaries
August 19, 2021
This is the most recent draft of the last chapter of The Food Terrorist Diaries, a book that I am currently writing.
Chapter 61 – THAT PHONE CALL
The phone rings at 9:30 pm. I’ve stopped answering the late-night calls. A gift to myself after my second back surgery in six months.
But I look at the smart phone. UNLISTED NUMBER. Unlisted numbers are never worth answering yet I don’t know why but I take the call.
“I’m in Central Asia you understand” the man starts in a shaky voice. No hello, no I am so and so, just an announcement that the American sounding caller has dialed the Food Not Bombs phone from Asia.
“You see,” he continues without a pause, “things are really bad”.
He asks why Americans are not in the streets protesting the wars.
He tells me Americans don’t know whats going on in Central Asia.
Afghanistan I ask.
It didn’t seem like he wanted to say but yes, Afghanistan he admits.
I can tell from his voice that he is really upset.
“People don’t understand. Last week I checked into a hotel and paid for three nights telling the manager not to bother me. You can get Fentanyl real cheap here. We get it from China,” he adds. “So I took so much I was sure I would die but I woke up 36 hours later.”
He asked if I knew what a stop loss was. I told him I did, one military redeployment after another.
“I have been in Iraq or Afghanistan for the last 13 years and I just can’t take it any more.”
I asked if he talked with his superior officer. He had and was told to suck it up.
He went on to say, “I’m trying to stop drinking.”
He continued in his shaky voice, “I was in a convoy and a kid on a scooter came near us. You know kids on scooters could have a bomb so I shot him but he didn’t have a bomb.”
His voice cracked, “I killed an innocent child for no reason. If the US wasn’t here we wouldn’t be killing kids like him.”
He asks again, “ How come there are no mass protests against the wars?”
I agree we need to organize against the wars but its difficult. Trump is giving Americans lots to protest but so far war is low on the list even with his threats against Little Rocket Man.
My caller continues, “I’m not worried about nuclear war so much as the wars we already have.”
I asked if he had talked with his unit’s chaplain. He tells me he is not religious. I suggest maybe he could start a Food Not Bombs group in Afghanistan since he had mentioned that he volunteered with a local chapter before signing up for the military horrified by the World Trade Center attacks.
He thought that wouldn’t be a good idea. “Remember the US dropped orange packets of food for a while during the beginning of the war on Afghanistan than dropped orange cluster bombs that looked like the food drops. No one would trust me here and I don’t blame them.”
He tells me he logs on to Indymedia and follows Food Not Bombs on line hoping to see a mass uprising against the wars.
The compassion that inspired him to volunteer with Food Not Bombs as a teenager was the compassion that inspired him to join the military.
“Thanks for speaking with me. I am going to get drunk.”
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