BlackFive

This piece is just fun and has all the things a great story should: War, history, outrage and.....sh*t.

A few minutes before the beginning of a Greek mythology class at FOB Fenty, Jalalabad, for which I'd prepared to lecture on Alexander the Great's swift invasion but treacherous occupation of Afghanistan, my best student stomped into the classroom, slammed his M4 down on the table, and announced, "I can't take their shit anymore!"

After his classmates and I had calmed him down, he explained that the walls, stall door, and floor of the toilet he'd just used were smeared with feces. They were always smeared with feces, he complained. He was furious about being forced daily to use facilities that were, as he put it, "Inhumanely, barbarically unhygienic and filthy." He and his unit shared their toilet with the ANA, as they had been ordered to do by their commanding officers-"hearts and minds." And it was the custom of the ANA to wipe themselves with their hands, smear their excrement on the walls of the toilette, and rinse their hands in the sink, which left the sinks reeking, a reek made especially acrid and pungent by the Afghans' high intake of goat meat and goat milk. While brushing his teeth, my student often had to struggle to keep down his gorge.