Just as the World Food Program charter plane en route to Nairobi sped along the dirt airstrip to its lifting speed and began its ascent, I looked down at the sprawl of white tents and clusters of globular huts below where I had just spent a life-altering three days and vowed never to write about the experience of visiting the Dadaab Refugee Camp. Instead, I would content myself with making occasional trips to volunteer, and until then and meanwhile, help raise awareness about the oldest and largest UN administered refugee camp in the world. (Is it coincidental that this camp is also in Africa, the most historically neglected continent on earth?)
VQR is featuring selected work from our archives in honor of Veteran's Day. Brian Turner's "My Life as a Foreign Country," from the Fall 2011 issue, is also the title essay of his new memoir, out now from Norton.
The Western diplomat cuts two lines of cocaine on his iPhone and snorts them with a 100 rupee bill.
“Pure Colombian,” he says. “Don’t be shy.”
I shake my head.
“A bit of jet lag I expect?” he says glancing about my room and inquiring about my fourteen-hour flight from the States.
“Some, yes,” I say.
We first met in Afghanistan in 2003. He was a source. We got to know each other and became friends in the way I become friends with people I use for information; constant contact bred familiarity. We remained in touch after he was assigned to Islamabad. I e-mailed him as I prepared for this trip and he agreed to meet me in my guesthouse.
As recently as 2005, Camp Bondsteel was purported to be a secret interrogation site for the American military. So why does predominantly Muslim Kosovo love it so much?
A wanderer hears drums, warning him of war, And that one cry of autumn from a wild-goose at the border, And he knows that the dews tonight will be frost
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