I never thought it would take me four years to remember her name. It was Anna. Her eyes fit her name well. I swore I would never forget her from the first day I met her, but I've apparently spent the last four years trying to forget her. Until yesterday I had no memory of her, none at all. Then I saw someone who looked exactly like her, in a park, while I was playing bocce ball. I wish I hadn't remembered. I wish I had the choice to forget.
Four years ago I was called to the front gate ("ECP1" - Entry Control Point) of Bagram for a VIP escort. I saw her standing there in a position I'll never forget. Ravaged? Torn? Broken? Destroyed? It wasn't so much that her body had been shredded with a machete as much as it was the vacant look she held to me. It wasn't the blood streams on her legs or the whipped shreds of her skin. It was her eyes. Those goddamn eyes. The word "rape" doesn't describe what they did to her internally, but I could see it all from where it was hanging out. At first I thought she was a local national (Afghani). Then I wondered why they would call me to escort a local national from the gate to the hospital. Then I realized who she was. She was one of us.
I cannot describe the horrors that had been done to this woman, this person, this human being, this life. I spent two days with her and, up until yesterday, I had completely forgotten about it. Forgetting about these experiences doesn't scare me anymore, not nearly as much as the memories. She was butchered and then put back together. As if she was an animal successfully hunted, cleaned, and carved; then the hunter suddenly reversed the process. The strange thing was that they left her face entirely intact. I don't understand that.
I carried her into the hospital room. Or I tried to. She was hitting me and flailing and screaming the whole way. Goddamn blood. No matter how gentle my voice and words were safe, no matter how softly I held and covered her exposure, no matter how I tried to comfort the trauma. The trauma could not be helped by me. That was the kind of shit that cannot heal, the kind of trauma you never live on from, if you decide to live at all. After the first 16 hours of being her "escort" I left her strapped into the hospital bed, with legs and feet bound by leather straps. Her name was Anna and I'll never forgive myself.
Why did I help strap her down? Why didn't I disobey my orders? I should've never let a torture victim be tied up. I should've never left the room. The next day she was gone. The goddamn CIA came and "recovered" their "agent." Fuck. She was 24 years old. An American. A person from my home state. And she was utterly destroyed.
Some memories deserve to be forgotten, no matter the cost.
