Face Value

8. The Connection

           I could not find a single page in the journal that mentioned the rape. 

  I'd woken up sometime after 11:00 that same evening and spent the next 2 hours translating the text on the 82 pages that was written almost entirely in Arabic. Amelie's journal was mostly a documentation of one of many missionary trips to assist Afghan widows and orphans. The journal's first entry was dated April 17th, 1999 and when the dates started coincided with my first tour with the Marines, I began to see the connection between us. 

  A few entries into it, she began talking about the Marines. For reasons which she did not clearly disclose, she had decided to lend her services to them as a translator. I saw my name- my full name in her journal for the first time on the tenth page and then it all became clear to me. 

  After my first tour in Afghanistan, I suffered severely from PTSD to the point that it was completely debilitating. Any and everything triggered the memories. I relived running through the desert during air strikes whenever I took a shower or during heavy rain. I heard machine guns firing instead of jackhammers when I passed by active construction sites and I was reminded of the scent of burning bodies at barbecues. It wasn't until I actually committed to seeing a therapist that I began truly living. 

   Dr. Cheryl Pruitt thought that the best way for me to move past that trauma would be to forget about it entirely and after a few sessions with hypnosis, she had been able to wipe most of the cruder images away. A few dark memories still remained, like the explosion after the riot and I would have recurring nightmares about them every so often. But now, reading these pages, it was like a small hole in the damn that held back my memories had broken and I could remember the moment that I first met Amelie-Nadine.

    The first time I saw her, she was dusting the sand out of her hair scarf in my sergeant's living quarters: 

   Sergeant Daniel Graves was the commanding officer of my battalion. He was a tall man with a stony face who was known for the stern looks he leveled at others with those bright green eyes. He was a man of very few words but he spoke most frequently with me. I was standing in the entrance to his tent and his back was to me as he stood in front of a small table as he spoke with a brunette woman. "You wanted to see my sergeant?" I asked, making my presence known.

  He turned to me, giving me the full intensity of those eyes. A long, jagged scar ran down his face under his left eye and split his cheek right down the middle. His skin was pale, his jaw was strong and his hair tinted silver in some places by age. "This is Amelie-Nadine Durand."  He gestured toward the olive-toned beauty and she gave me a polite smile that made her blue eyes shine.

    I nodded in acknowledgement and moved to shake her hand. "Lance- Corporal Damian Crusoe ma'am,"I introduced myself. 

 "It's a pleasure to meet you, Crusoe," she responded in a thick French accent. 

   "Crusoe here is the youngest Lance- Corporal in this battalion; the youngest I've ever met in fact. He rose up the ranks rather quickly. He's demonstrated exceptional leadership capabilities and I trust him implicitly; even with my own life." It was rare for Sgt. Graves to speak so highly of anyone, unless he truly meant it. 

  To me he said, "Ms. Durand is on a missionary visit and has agreed to work with us as a translator.  She's rather fluent in Arabic. Therefore, she will be staying with us." He grabbed two bags that had been resting against one of the legs of the table before continuing to speak. "For obvious and also for diplomatic reasons because she is citizen of France, her safety is paramount. I'm holding you personally responsible for her well being; you are to keep her safe. You go where she goes. She goes where you go and when she is not with you, you will ensure that she is somewhere safe. I'm having the bunk next to yours prepared for her." He handed me the bags and I took them. "Have I made myself clear, corporal?"

 "Crystal, sir," I replied. Ms. Durand observed me studiously. "I'll give you a tour of the grounds and help you get settled. Suivez-moi, mademoiselle." 

 "Call me Nadine, please. I prefer Nadine to Amelie. Tu parle francais?" She seemed thoroughly pleased that I spoke her native tongue and looped her arm through mine. 

"Oui." I gave her a small smile. 

     Nadine became my shadow; going where I went and wanting to know everything that went on with me including my interactions with Al Qaeda and the man that I was beneath my uniform. She had her own little way of pronouncing my name. In her French accent, it sounded more like ' Dah-mee-an' rather than 'Day-mee-an' as it it often pronounced. Whenever we wanted to speak privately, we spoke to each other in French. On Thursdays and Sundays we had hand-to-hand combat practice and she kept up with me. 

   We were both 18 back then-- although she was a month older than I was; something she loved to remind me of when she thought I was being overbearing and treating her like a 'petit enfant' (little kid). Amelie-Nadine was beautiful, fierce and just as stubborn as she was kind. 

   Just as clearly as the memory of her came to me, I recalled with perfect clarity the way I had felt about her. 

     Amelie-Nadine was the first woman that I cared for. She was the first person, even before my wife, to have seen the man that I was at my very core. At first, I believed that what I felt for her was simply platonic; the way I would have cared for my sister if I had ever had one. But the dull throbbing that I could now feel in my chest said that it must have been more; I might have even loved her. 

  No. I know that I loved her. 

 I couldn't remember having ever told her that but when I agreed to throw away all those vile memories, I buried her and my love for her with it. How did I ever convince myself to throw away such a pure thing?

    Remembering this even now made my head burn. I fought to bring the memories to the surface. The last time that I'd seen her had been the last day of my tour. She told me she was leaving Afghanistan not too long after I left; she promised to visit. She had my phone number; she promised to call. I don't remember if she ever made good on any of those promises. 

    Why didn't she tell me that someone had hurt her? Come to think of it, how did I know that she had been raped? How was I able to see what happened to her ,as clearly as if I had been standing there myself, if she never told anybody about her attack? 

   Someone knew that I'd known Nadine; there is no other reason for that journal to have been left on my front steps. The more I pondered these questions, the more intense the throbbing in my skull seemed to become. 

  I reached for the notepad and pen that I'd been using to translate the journal and wrote down what I knew:

    Amelie-Nadine Durand

 *raped by an unknown, armed assailant possibly ten years prior

*whereabouts of the victim are unknown

*assailant was a member of the U.S. Marines; whereabouts and identity are unknown

 **assailant's weapon was a KA-BAR utility knife (standard issue for Marines); 7 inch blade with an insignia painted on the hilt.

  I let the pen fall onto the paper. I had a sinking feeling in my chest that  something more had happened to her and I meant 'more' in the most sinister of ways. 

   The clock on the beside table read 1:45 a.m. It was far to early in the morning to call on a few favors.  I got up from the desk and kicked off my boots. Stripping down to my boxers, I  climbed under the covers and onto the lumpy mattress, having decided to get a few hours' rest instead. I said a little prayer before I closed my eyes. 

  I prayed that my Alice was safe and that I might find her soon but Nadine was the last person I thought of, the last face that I saw before I drifted off to sleep.