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by
Sean Parnell
The boy opened his mouth again. Another whine spilled out between cracked lips. Behind them, we saw ruptured gums and no teeth.
“Get Yusef and Doc Pantoja,”
The boy’s condition evoked no visible emotions in my ’terp.
I didn’t want the rest of the men to see
the
boy.
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What if we climbed the slope and walked into an
enemy stronghold?
Protecting them from this sight was worth the risk.
“Let’s take him up to the village.”
We started
up the slope,
The
village
was a fri...
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s...
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The mud-walled huts were barren of even the most basic essen...
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no
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c...
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w...
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was riddled with human feces, animal dung, and filth. The smell of such a place is one that n...
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Movement inside a nearby shed caught our attention.
A little girl peered out from one of the huts. The girl’s face, once beautiful, was striped with purple and yellow bruises.
Lying on the shed’s dirt floor was another boy, perhaps a year old. He was partially naked, and flies had infested his body.
“Doc, do whatever you can for him.” “I don’t think there’s much hope, sir. They’re eating him alive.”
The two shared words, and the elder held the boy in a fierce, protective embrace.
“Yusef, find out what happened to this kid.”
The enemy had kidnapped the elder’s oldest grandson. He was the future of the family, the boy most cherished and revered in Afghan culture.
They had tracked the enemy gang back to their lair and somehow liberated the elder’s grandson. But by then
it
was
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too
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l...
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“The enemy came back to the village and beat the other children as punishment.”
Why would they do this to their own people?
“Yusef,” I said, “tell the elder we’re bringing him medical supplies, food, and water. Anyone who needs help, we
will
tr...
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We
went
to work treating the battere...
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her dark eyes bright and full of mirth. How that could even be possible in this awful
place
The community had been too traumatized by the enemy’s assaults to inflict violence on one another.
I oversaw the distribution of the food and medical supplies. We gave the elder’s people all our medicine, and Doc Pantoja carefully explained their use and function.
our horror and grief spinning together into a ball of molten rage at the men who could inflict such torture on innocent people.
TWENTY-TWO
TWO
SHAKE
AND