Today was a bad day.

The girl had been rushed in to the base earlier. She had been brought to the front gate, bleeding everywhere, full of holes. It wasn’t clear to me who had brought her, probably one of the local ambulances as they are prone to doing in emergencies, or maybe one of the neighbors who had a car available at the time.

By the time that her parents got to me, it was about an hour later. She had already passed and they were here to collect the body. Her mother and father had come, along with an uncle who drove the car. The mother was naturally upset, crying and wailing when she first arrived. However, Mother had spent herself by this point, and was just whimpering in the back of the seat, her grief just continuing on in a slow trickle despite her exhaustion. Mother’s eyes were glazed and teary, numbly looking out at the world unseeing.

None of us had known then that the ambulance had gotten lost on the way to the hospital. That it made a wrong turn, that the driver had professed to know where to go and where to go, but hadn’t. Whether it was simple head nodding to questions about procedure to cover for lack of knowledge, or simple panic in the heat of the moment. And none of that made a difference, as it would have bought her a few more minutes on the table in the Trauma Ward instead of the back of the ambulance, but in the end the result would have been the same.

I did the scripted routine for checking ID and scanning the vehicle. Despite the situation, we have our job, and my role is to try and make it as gentle as possible. The father stepped out of the car, his dishdasha, his man-dress, covered in blood, mostly dried at this point. His wife just followed him and both were instructed by the uncle, the only one with sense of what was happening in the world around him.

Honestly, it amazed me the amount of blood on him. I offered him water in pidgen Arabic, stumbling over the words as my brain was trying to peice together what was going on and how to move the situation along and how to put it in words and do that in a way that wouldn’t compound their grief, make matters worse.

They had to wait about 45 minutes according to the Body Snatchers, the mortuary affairs people. They are notorious for being wrong, but this time they were only 15 minutes off of what they figured. The family had asked that I radio in to tell them to hurry up. I faked it since there is nothing that I can do to hurry them; they are in a different part of the base, in a different branch of service, in a different world together, one insulated from the outside, one where the locals are never met, one where each body is a specimen, a number, a task to be completed as the time or energy permitted.

We gave the family water to tide them over. They used it for washing and drinking. It was all we could do. It seemed so insignificant.

When her body was brought out, it was in a large packing truck, one that could easily be painted in different colors, marked Fed-Ex or UPS or Joe’s Movers. The Air Force team seemed indifferent, anxious to get the cargo gone, and the papers signed. “You’ll get your interpreter down there to help translate, right?” Right. All will be better for you and your miserable uncaring asses will be gone from my post as soon as I can make that happen.

The mother was renewed with grief, and began sobbing uncontrolably. The father got out as the ramp was lowered on the truck. She was brought out on a stretcher, covered in white linen, clean and unstained. It was as though all of her blood had been put on her father’s clothes, and there was none left for her.

And it was so tiny. The little lump that was there was once, just an hour ago, a little girl, 12 years of age. I couldn’t help think of my daughters, the oldest 13, the second one turning 11 in a few weeks. She seemed so small, this couldn’t be a young woman on the verge of life. And then she had gone home from the field that she was tending and either handled or just came close enough so some object near the road to her house. And the expolosion that tore threw her ripped her apart and her parents world was shattered at the same moment.
And her father had held her and helped move her to a vehicle. And it just seemed so cruel, so wrong, so unworldly.

And I turned my head for a moment, the tears welling up and mixing with the sweat to sting and blind. Although I had sunglasses on, and no one could see the American starting to cry, I could see them, and her father getting in to the back seat of the white sedan and the uncle and interpreter lifting in the body onto their laps.

No where else in this place have I seen the people cry, especially the men, unless there is death, especially children. While the rest of life continues with the torturous, murderous brutality that is the third world, while there is not a thing under the sun that they own, while they scrape for food and work the land by hand much as the Babylonians did millenia ago, they do so stoicly, sometimes laughing when the threat of harm or pain is imminent. Now, her father, a proud man, wept openly, sobbed uncontollably. Her mother continued, without the wailing, the silent sobs of someone who is beaten.

And how would I deal with such a thing, with my children, my daughters, snuffed out at the end of childhood? All I could think about was that could be me, that could be my number one, my number two, exactly like this, same age, same gender. She had lasted a bit, enough to arrive here, enough to give hope before everything gave way to grief.

And I looked away for a moment, to stop my tears, to get my composure, so that I could finish my part in the tradgedy, and clear the route out for them. Other trucks came into the checkpoint, and I put them far enough back so that she could leave once her uncle finished signing papers that said yes, this was she, she was now leaving, sorry for the loss. The distraction of other work was welcome, something to focus on, something to do, something to make the other not there, but Somewhere Else.

And finally she left. I told them that I was sorry for the loss, that the Eternal go with them and comfort them. Only their uncle could hear me, the others focused on their grief, the mother cradling the head of her daughter to her chest, one last nurturing effort, held at the end of her life as she was held at the beginning.

And then I got back to work.