Troublemaker

Posted by Lianne Gutcher at 09:06 on 18 Dec 2009

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Phone rings. I answer. "Hello?"

"Hello." Dramatic pause. "Guess who's dead?"

Jeez. Well, I'm kinda thinking it can't be someone I'm that close to because otherwise the news would have been broken a little more delicately.

My friend tells me who it is and that it was death by poison.
Apparently, it's quite the Afghan way.

I am shocked but not surprised.

Now, I think we've established that I like troublemakers. As a reader, Priya, gently suggested in a comment - and she is totally right - it's not Afghanistan, it's me.

This one, though, was in a class of his own.

I met Deceased Troublemaker when he introduced himself to me at L'Atmo. He was what is known as a "Halfghan" - someone of Afghan origin who has assumed another nationality. DT didn't ask for my number, he gave me his and told me to call. He said he was working on a political campaign and we should talk.

So I called him up and went for drinks at his poppy palace mansion. He was half cut when I arrived. He told me about the bar he was opening. I certainly didn't have the hots for him. He didn't seem to have the hots for me. But, as happens, things turned to affairs of the heart. He told me he had a Russian ex who was crazy and was stalking him.

A week later, I got a call asking if I'd like attend the bar's pre-opening party. I was off on holiday the next day so decided it might be fun to cut loose.

Except... when I got there, as well as my host, there were three Saudi businessmen, a few Afghan associates, three western male contractors and me. I felt like a gangster's moll. I made my excuses and left early.

While on holiday I got an email from my office regarding the new bar: "On advice from the NDS (the Afghan Secret Service), this venue is out of bounds... until further notice."

Oops. Too late.

My office needn't have worried. The new bar shut the night it opened after DT, who I was beginning to realise had anger-management issues, got into a drunken fight with the guards outside the house of someone high up in the NDS. Apparently, he also tried to ram the front wall with a Hummer. DT went underground for a bit after that and I didn't hear from him for a while.

While I didn't hear from DT, I did, though, hear from his "wife."

Oh yes. One quiet afternoon an email drops into my inbox.

"I am sure you did not expect to get a letter from me. However, it thought it was enough of you trying to interfere in our relationship with ---- ."

Our relationship? Clearly the "wife's" English wasn't tip top.

She continues that she knew DT called me and asked me to "stop contacting him and you cried over the phone. Please understand me as a woman. If you had a husband, and there was one annoying girl - that wants something from your man (I do not know what) - how would you feel?"

She signs off: "[S]top bothering my husband. Hope you will find someone to love you much one day."

I reply to her saying DT has never mentioned a wife then forwarded it to him asking WTF?

The "wife" emails back: "He told me many times that he told you he has  a girlfriend (and he loves to tell everyone around us - we are married), one step from being married."

Ah, so you're NOT married, then?

"Now you know, and as a female, I would assume you understand me. Men are hard to trust in this world, and we female are there to catch them by the balls."

Oh, really? You mad crazy woman.

Seconds later another email arrives, entitled: "I guess you do not get it." It's from mad crazy woman; she is reading his email and is not pleased.

At this point, what with the temper, the NDS enemies, the mad "wife" and apparently 10 years in jail for aggravated assault, I decide to sever contact. I am totally freaked out.

I run into DT from time over the next few months. He's usually brawling.

Then, next thing I know, he's dead.

I am shocked but surprised only that he wasn't bumped off sooner.

I was going to write something here about how Afghanistan is a violent place, a Wild West country with little rule of law and that there are some things foreigners really don't understand and shouldn't get involved in because, well, frankly, you will end up dead.

However, the latest intel I have is that it wasn't poison that killed DT but a lethal combination of drink and drugs. And, as we all know, that can happen anywhere. It's happened in Kabul before now, it's happened to the most famous of rock and film stars, and it's happened to the lowliest of junkies.

So I have to bring it back to the personal. And what I take away is this: even I recognised this one was too much trouble. I ducked and I ran. Girl did good.

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