2018_September-October.indd

FEATURE

HOME COOKING IN THE HINDU KUSH words by DavidW. Brown + photo by Denny Culbert Y ou measured time by the Hindu Kush Mountains on the horizon. When we first arrived in Afghanistan, they were black in the hazy distance. As fall set in, the very uppermost peaks of the mountains turned white, and with each passing week, the white slowly crawled downward, downward— and it was beautiful, until the white was all around us, and then it was not so beautiful. The weather was never what you would call “nice.” There were sunny days, but they were the harsh highland sort.Mostly, though, it rained in the fall and rained in the winter, and when it didn’t rain, it snowed. With winter, all of the color in the world vanished, replaced by a gloomy gray above and the muddy snow below. Eventually, the rain and cold conspired to harden the ground of the entire camp into one massive slab of ice. I am from Louisiana, which means I slipped at least once a day, and never gracefully.

of a firepit, with your feet three inches deep in snow. We talked about the weather, the way it always rained and yet nothing seemed to grow. Afghanistan was like the moon, with the occasional, elusive patch of grass. (Not all of the country is like this, but the mountains certainly seemed that way when I was there). We talked about the next run, and whether we would be on the convoy, and how you only forgot your head scarf once if you were a turret gunner, because by the time you got back to the post, your face was brown from all the dust, but beneath that brown, it was deep red from an unholy combination of sunburn, windburn and cold. John was a cook, so he talked a lot about food.This food they were serving, it was just wrong, he said. Terrible. Not just the leftovers at midnight, but all of it.The other day they served tacos at dinner, and the locals serving the food had no idea what to do.They’d never seen a taco before!They just handed out the shells as a side. And the soldiers working at night were getting the worst part of it because it was the same slop, but now warmed over. See, he said, he had this family recipe that he’d love to cook out here. Unit morale was subterranean. It would help, he said. It was a chili; good home cooking. That’s what he could do. He — why, he bet if he cooked that chili, everyone would love it, morale would skyrocket, people would wake in the middle of the night to eat it! Because who doesn’t want to feel like they’re at home? And what feels more like home than a cold night and hot chili? He talked about it for what felt like weeks. He would cook the chili. He could scale the recipe to feed the entire camp. He probably could get all the ingredients. In fact, he said, he would get all the ingredients. He would do this. So after enduring endless months of what was a thankless job, John’s scheme had evolved into a plan. A purpose. He would begin a midnight dinner service, and on opening night he would serve homemade chili. The truth is, it seemed ridiculous to me. I felt bad for him. The winter really did a number on one’s spirits, and this guy was clinging to something certain, it seemed, to end

You don’t think about home cooking until there’s none to be had. A hot meal on a cold, rainy day. A hot dog or burger in summertime. Food is fuel, yes — calories and nutrients to stay alive — and yet, when prepared with love and served as such,it is communal,spiritual. It is the difference between feeling full and feeling satisfied. My task force ran operations around the clock. Life was made up of vast stretches of boredom punctuated by the occasional spike of excitement. I worked nights for most of my deployment. My lunchtime was midnight, and you’d trudge to the improvised chow hall across the dark camp, treacherous ice beneath your boots, and the air was so cold that the sweat in your hair or on your brow would freeze the moment it formed, leaving you an animated snowman. The chow hall was a repurposed ramshackle building, though I’m not sure what it was beforehand. Out front was a firepit made of cinder blocks. It was about the length and width of a pool table, and there was always a fire going there at night (when it wasn’t raining), and people would gather to talk or smoke in twos and threes.There were no meals prepared at midnight; there were, instead, kitchen warmers filled with leftovers from whatever had been served at dinner. The chow hall was dimly lit at night, and it was a sorry affair — a feeling of abject loneliness swept over you the moment you crossed its threshold, and you welcomed the food the way you’d welcome a frozen TV dinner: If you weren’t depressed before, you would be by the time you set down your fork. Around the firepit, I would frequently see a soldier named John. He was a cook, and his job — from what I could tell — was to babysit the chow hall at night and direct preparations for the next morning’s food. There’s not a whole lot to talk about at three in the morning in the Hindu Kush Mountains, standing in front

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