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The FOBs in Afghanistan felt like America to me. All the best years of my life were spent there. What I came back to was often unrecognizable. This feels a bit

by jl2718 5y ago

The FOBs in Afghanistan felt like America to me. All the best years of my life were spent there. What I came back to was often unrecognizable. This feels a bit personal. Little anecdote: Bagram is quite large, and sometimes I used to run late at night into the places where nobody goes. Well, 'nobody' is a legend of some old contractors from back before the centralized personnel tracking systems, who had set up a shantytown in the junkyard in between contracts, and eventually just 'went native' and made it their home. I can't be sure, but there seemed to be signs of life in strange places. I would have bought property and settled in myself if I could. There were a lot of men I worked with who had been completely replaced by their families, stopped taking leave, and didn't want to go back, ever. I can relate. My fiancee died during my first tour, and out there I could be fully in love with a ghost; it was like a superpower. I think I needed a few more years of that.

CalRobert 5y ago
This is fascinating. If you wrote more I'd be interested in reading it.
kilroy123 5y ago
I don't fully understand. You wish to live there and stay on base? Or you wish to live in Afghanistan in general? I mean I've heard and seen pictures, it seems Afghanistan is beautiful nature wise.
- YinLuck- 5y ago
  People rarely like or dislike a place for its nature, buildings, food, etc. That's all BS we tell ourselves. People connect with people. I can see how a military base is conducive to forming the kinds of personal bonds that are so rare in today's developed nations.
- devoutsalsa 5y ago
  After having traveled to the Middle East and Pakistan, I’d consider living in some of those places. I haven’t made it to Afghanistan yet. The people are super friendly. Pakistan’s hospitality culture is an order of magnitude more than anything I’ve experienced in the USA. I would probably want an air conditioner though!
- jl2718 5y ago
  Bagram valley especially, is shockingly beautiful when it snows in the Hindu Kush. In the early spring, you get sunshine and lush greens against snowy peaks. In the south, the mud flooding is so strong in the winter, you can ride it like an amusement park, and it all turns into this deep silt moon dust in the summer. Khandahar had a septic pit that the base ended up expanding all around, and there’s a very slight drift in one direction that goes down one road. In August, you can smell it a little bit everywhere, but if you turn a corner onto that road, it will immediately knock you back. Sorry; unrelated, but funny.
noduerme 5y ago
This is fucking tragic. I'm sorry man. It reminded me of growing up in Vegas, finding the lost places in the desert or the deserted places behind the casinos. I get that. And losing the person I loved. And seeing her when I was tripping. I get that too. But doing that in the middle of a fucking foreign war at the end of the earth, and trying to feel normal about it, that's ...that just seems like it would take an inhuman level of self control.
- jl2718 5y ago
  It was sublime. I felt no pain. I ran until she appeared. I ran harder until I felt my soul rise out of my body to be with her, legs still pumping, rocket attack buzzing overhead. Rapture. https://www.strava.com/activities/720237444 https://www.strava.com/activities/720237444
gexla 5y ago
This reads like an episode from a Shawshank Redemption TV series. I can get how a place can become home when you feel like your links to other places fade, but a hint that it might be more healthy to move around is that you you're sticking to the "recognizable." It seems like you would always be living in some place from the past (which is an illusion because it never really was what you believed it was and it was always changing) which you feel nostalgic for. At the same time, you're building a new place at your other home. Once the romance with the first place becomes destroyed, then the back-up comes forward. I would bet the back-up could have an even greater hold over you if it's a highly controlled (slower changing) environment such as a military base or a prison.
- jl2718 5y ago
  Life in the FOBs in Afghanistan was a time capsule of red-blooded ‘Merica, like hanging out between scenes of a 90s action movie. The gym was 24 hours, everybody was huge, and the music was hardcore 80/90s. Sort of like my high school football team. There were guns in every social situation, which was shocking at first until you realized that it meant that this was the first place on earth where you had nothing to fear from strangers. Everybody knew everything about the people around them. If you had something you were insecure about, you’d get tortured about it until you weren’t. I never fit in, but these people were willing to die for me, and I found ways to earn respect. It was basically the neighborhood I grew up in, or maybe a sports team, or maybe a prison. It didn’t really matter. Food was simple, served every 6 hours on a tray line, and you got everything you needed without thinking about it. On the bigger FOBs, the jet engines ran constantly in idle, and the fighter pilots pretty much did WTF they wanted. There were no cell phones nor internet in most places, which was tremendously liberating. I made the most of every moment there. There was always something important to do, and not much in the way. Most of the time I didn’t worry about my job. We worked 12 hour days, 7 days a week, everybody together in one place. You’re never alone on a deliverable; it’s everybody’s responsibility, everybody’s credit, and everybody’s lives on the line. It felt like focus. I came back to chaos. Jobs where you have no idea what to do or why, but huge pressure to make your boss happy, just some random person that you don’t really know anything about, but they have the power to ruin your career, and you’re all on your own. Shopping. Cooking. Cleaning. Family. Facebook. Cell phones. Internet dating. Interviews. Leases. License. Registration. Insurance. Doctors. Lawyers. Bills. Taxes. Spam. Scams. Outrage politics. These things are not optional. It’s your entire life consumed by other people’s rackets. It all existed before, but every year away, it seems like it’s been put on overdrive when I get back. People have a tendency to infantilize vets by claiming we’re the victims of PTSD or something, but no, seriously, there are some things that really are getting worse in normal American life, and especially politics of the homefront military. Maybe it’s to be expected; a lot of us went forward to get away from that.

by jl2718 5y ago

CalRobert 5y ago

This is fascinating. If you wrote more I'd be interested in reading it.

kilroy123 5y ago

I don't fully understand. You wish to live there and stay on base? Or you wish to live in Afghanistan in general? I mean I've heard and seen pictures, it seems Afghanistan is beautiful nature wise.

YinLuck- 5y ago
People rarely like or dislike a place for its nature, buildings, food, etc. That's all BS we tell ourselves. People connect with people. I can see how a military base is conducive to forming the kinds of personal bonds that are so rare in today's developed nations.
devoutsalsa 5y ago
After having traveled to the Middle East and Pakistan, I’d consider living in some of those places. I haven’t made it to Afghanistan yet. The people are super friendly. Pakistan’s hospitality culture is an order of magnitude more than anything I’ve experienced in the USA. I would probably want an air conditioner though!
jl2718 5y ago
Bagram valley especially, is shockingly beautiful when it snows in the Hindu Kush. In the early spring, you get sunshine and lush greens against snowy peaks. In the south, the mud flooding is so strong in the winter, you can ride it like an amusement park, and it all turns into this deep silt moon dust in the summer. Khandahar had a septic pit that the base ended up expanding all around, and there’s a very slight drift in one direction that goes down one road. In August, you can smell it a little bit everywhere, but if you turn a corner onto that road, it will immediately knock you back. Sorry; unrelated, but funny.

noduerme 5y ago

This is fucking tragic. I'm sorry man. It reminded me of growing up in Vegas, finding the lost places in the desert or the deserted places behind the casinos. I get that. And losing the person I loved. And seeing her when I was tripping. I get that too. But doing that in the middle of a fucking foreign war at the end of the earth, and trying to feel normal about it, that's ...that just seems like it would take an inhuman level of self control.

jl2718 5y ago
It was sublime. I felt no pain. I ran until she appeared. I ran harder until I felt my soul rise out of my body to be with her, legs still pumping, rocket attack buzzing overhead. Rapture. https://www.strava.com/activities/720237444 https://www.strava.com/activities/720237444

gexla 5y ago

This reads like an episode from a Shawshank Redemption TV series. I can get how a place can become home when you feel like your links to other places fade, but a hint that it might be more healthy to move around is that you you're sticking to the "recognizable." It seems like you would always be living in some place from the past (which is an illusion because it never really was what you believed it was and it was always changing) which you feel nostalgic for. At the same time, you're building a new place at your other home. Once the romance with the first place becomes destroyed, then the back-up comes forward. I would bet the back-up could have an even greater hold over you if it's a highly controlled (slower changing) environment such as a military base or a prison.

jl2718 5y ago
Life in the FOBs in Afghanistan was a time capsule of red-blooded ‘Merica, like hanging out between scenes of a 90s action movie. The gym was 24 hours, everybody was huge, and the music was hardcore 80/90s. Sort of like my high school football team. There were guns in every social situation, which was shocking at first until you realized that it meant that this was the first place on earth where you had nothing to fear from strangers. Everybody knew everything about the people around them. If you had something you were insecure about, you’d get tortured about it until you weren’t. I never fit in, but these people were willing to die for me, and I found ways to earn respect. It was basically the neighborhood I grew up in, or maybe a sports team, or maybe a prison. It didn’t really matter. Food was simple, served every 6 hours on a tray line, and you got everything you needed without thinking about it. On the bigger FOBs, the jet engines ran constantly in idle, and the fighter pilots pretty much did WTF they wanted. There were no cell phones nor internet in most places, which was tremendously liberating. I made the most of every moment there. There was always something important to do, and not much in the way. Most of the time I didn’t worry about my job. We worked 12 hour days, 7 days a week, everybody together in one place. You’re never alone on a deliverable; it’s everybody’s responsibility, everybody’s credit, and everybody’s lives on the line. It felt like focus. I came back to chaos. Jobs where you have no idea what to do or why, but huge pressure to make your boss happy, just some random person that you don’t really know anything about, but they have the power to ruin your career, and you’re all on your own. Shopping. Cooking. Cleaning. Family. Facebook. Cell phones. Internet dating. Interviews. Leases. License. Registration. Insurance. Doctors. Lawyers. Bills. Taxes. Spam. Scams. Outrage politics. These things are not optional. It’s your entire life consumed by other people’s rackets. It all existed before, but every year away, it seems like it’s been put on overdrive when I get back. People have a tendency to infantilize vets by claiming we’re the victims of PTSD or something, but no, seriously, there are some things that really are getting worse in normal American life, and especially politics of the homefront military. Maybe it’s to be expected; a lot of us went forward to get away from that.