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Woman in a War

from Dust of Uruzgan by Fred Smith

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about

In the second half of 2009, I made a few trips from Tarin Kowt up to Kabul to help out at the Embassy. At the time, the Australian Embassy in Kabul was a modest concern comprising a couple of blokes in a Donga (prefabricated container – the Americans call them “hooches”) plonked on the grounds of the US Embassy. Coming from living in a shipping container with seven farting diggers down in remote Uruzgan, the US Embassy seemed to me a vision splendid. There was a pool, a tennis court, restaurants and a bar servicing 700 officers including five ambassadors.
Whatever Americans do they do with energy, but it can be hard to feel like you’re getting any traction in a place like Kabul. The atmospherics around the compound were a weird combination of excitement and frustration. The US State Department classifies Kabul as an “unaccompanied post”, so on a Friday night the Duck and Cover bar was often full of young, smart, single-ish folks looking to let off steam. It struck me as a place where a boy from the provinces could get into trouble.

lyrics

I was working up in Kabul in the last years of the war. Karzai had decided he didn’t love us anymore.
The Town was full of checkpoints and security companies, and everyone with money had an exit strategy.

She came in in December to work for State
On her second posting across from Kuwait
I met her at a briefing down at ISAF HQ, some Colonel was pretending that he knew what to do

There’s nothing quite as sexy as a woman in a war
A delicate reminder of what we’re all fighting for. She said the word “kinetic” like she’d seen it for real
She was her Daddy’s daughter with her Daddy’s ideals, but she said:
“Pay no heed what people say, notice only what they do”

There’s no-one quite as horny as a woman in a war
The sugared instant coffee, the adrenalin and more
Nothing like the hunger for some softness in the night, when you wake up every morning with a war to fight. Still she’d say:

“Pay no heed what people say, notice only what they do”

Couple of months later in the Duck and Cover bar. We’d been on a trip together with the General in Mazar. We got talking about the problems of the ANSF, it was gettin’ late, and the others all had left

I came a little closer and to her I said: “We could die tomorrow, tonight I need you for my bed
Back in my ‘hooch’ I’ve got a bottle of Jack”
My dick was claiming victory, like Bush did in Iraq. But she said:

“I’ve enjoyed our conversation and your offer is bold. Your loquacious admiration, of the problems you can’t solve. But these are not your problems this is not your war. You only really came here because you were bored.
So get back to your family, and your ordinary life.
Your ordinary children and your ordinary wife.
I am not your mother your virgin or your whore.
Only a survivor, I am a woman in a war.”
Glossary
ISAF – International Security Assistance Force
Kinetic – in the parlance used as an adjective for involving violence, as in ‘kinetic operations’
ANSF – Afghan National Security Forces

credits

from Dust of Uruzgan, released August 30, 2020
Vocal by Carola Van Houwert

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Fred Smith Canberra, Australia

“Fred Smith is simply the best folk/country musician working in this country in 2020. Beyond writing some of the finest songs about Australians at war, he has created a repertoire that is wry, literate, witty, powerfully emotional and insightful.”(Bruce Elder, Sydney Morning Herald). ... more

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