I was able to talk to S this morning for a half hour, joy upon joy. He told me that yesterday he and his kandak drove on a road that had been turned into a riverbed by flash flood rains, and how halfway to their destination they had to get out of their Ford Ranger pick-up and lift it up, literally, and move it in order to get it unstuck. He said it was the worst road he'd ever seen, and that says something given some of the roads he's seen in Afghanistan. He is still at the same tiny Forward Operating Base, waiting with the uncertainty that's become certain since he's been back in-country. Every day he is told they may be moving to a new FOB and that this move may be happening in the next week or it may be happening in the next few hours. During our conversation he was interrupted and when he came back he said that he expects every interruption to be the one that says "pack your gear." Today it was just a warning that the ANA would be doing a live fire exercise in a few minutes and that he should expect to hear some loud explosions. We certainly did.

S would rather not move. He's moved enough. Since arriving in Afghanistan in mid-February, he has switched FOBs a half dozen times. He's been at this FOB for nearly two months, the longest he's been at one FOB and with the same kandak, platoon, of ANA soldiers since his deployment began. This is his fifth group of ANA. With every new group comes a "break-in" period of introductions and evaluations, and often a new interpreter too. These "break-in" days are filled with mutual distrust and trepidation as the troops feel their way through S's leadership and he learns about their past training and their commitment to soldiering. The attrition rates are high. With each group he loses at least 25%, especially when they are brand new to the military. One day these soldiers are at the base training, the next they've disappeared. Unfortunately they take their uniforms and equipment with them and often sell the gear at local markets. The uniforms are then bought by insurgents or civilians, making it all the more difficult to tell who's "friendly" and who isn't. This has become such a problem that they now issue only one uniform per soldier. I can imagine how stinky those uniforms become late in the week.

Even when S inherits an already trained kandak, there is still this period of introduction and evaluation. One group he worked with had been trained by national guard troops who had rotated back home. They were so worthless, S told me, that he had to start all over with them beginning with basic infantry skills and physical fitness regimens. It was overwhelmingly frustrating for him, working with soldiers who had trained for months but learned nothing, most likely because their training had been so worthless. I worry about him most during these break-in days. The only way he can find out if the new soldiers are trustworthy is to take them out on dangerous raids and missions.

He trusts the soldiers he works with at this FOB, and he trusts the Americans, a small group of Special Forces soldiers, he works with too. They have requested that S and his group be allowed to stay because they prefer working with them, having worked with so many of those less-than-well-trained troops over the past year. They have a good working relationship, and though the missions they go on are more dangerous than those S did several months ago at his last FOB, I worry about him less because of the confidence he has in the men he works with. The uncertainty is tempered by the trust he has in them.

The entire country is flush with rumors, no doubt because of all of this uncertainty and the constant change of direction and orders from the military brass. Throughout S's base float the rumor of all rumors, the one tinged with hope and desire and longing, the rumor of an early end to their deployment. "We'll be home before Christmas," they tell S over and over again. He doesn't believe it, of course. "They've been saying 'They'll send us home for Christmas' since Christmas became a holiday," S told me. "Soldiers have been singing 'I'll Be Home for Christmas' songs since the Civil War."

This hope, this faith, that the brass will suddenly become kind-hearted and warm and fuzzy is almost comical given that when S was called up last November he was first ordered to report for duty two days before Thanksgiving, then after a huge stink (they are national guard troops after all and need more than a week to deploy for a year) they were ordered to report a week before Christmas on December 18. This was a "report for duty" in Ft. Hood, Texas, which meant he was actually going to have to leave our house on the 16th. S and the other called-up soldiers knew they wouldn't actually start training until after Christmas, but when they pointed this out the brass said it didn't matter, they had to be at Ft. Hood on the 18th anyway, even if it meant they were stuck on the fort alone with nothing to do. We decided that I would fly down to Texas to spend the holiday with him, for though neither of us is religious (in fact neither of us has any faith at all), we fall for the family-fun of the holiday and wanted to spend it together.

I booked a flight for Christmas, $440 on American, and S and I hurriedly finished out our semesters in New Orleans, packed up many of our things (I'd return several times afterwards to collect most of the boxes, my last trip just one week before Katrina), and drove to Chicago. Our renter, a good friend of ours, moved out just days before we moved back in and, lucky for us, left the place spotless. We bought a Christmas tree and decorated it within a couple of days, placing on top of it a Nigerian mask our friend Rebecca had brought back for us the previous summer. We decided we'd celebrate Christmas together, even if it was weeks before the actual day.

Four days or so before he was set to deploy, the military brass changed their minds. They suddenly realized how silly and cruel it was to send these men off to an empty Ft. Hood days before Christmas and decided to let them stay at home. His new deployment date was December 28, far more reasonable, putting him in Texas by the 30th. I called American to see if I could get a refund or an exchange, but they said no. I'd bought the ticket on Priceline (the regular price was close to $1000) and they said that I'd have to go through Priceline if I wanted to get any money back. I called Priceline and they said "policy is policy," and then basically to go to hell. (I'd find out over the next few months that this was the kind of treatment you can expect if your loved one is serving in one of our wars. The myth of "support our troops" is just that, a myth.) That little bit of military uncertainty and incompetence cost us $440, which added up with all of the money we've spent on equipment as basic as tools for fixing trucks, topped over $1,500 months ago.

It's not the money I worry about when it comes to the military's uncertainty. It's S's safety. The uncertainty reflects how little planning has been put into this war, our supposed primary front on the "War on Terror." It also reflects how little forsight there is on the ground, how out of touch much of the leadership is with what's going on at these far away FOBs. They play mix-and-match with ETTs and ANA kandaks and shuffle board with FOBs. There is no logic, no forsight. Only happenstance. How can S build proper relationships with his ANA soldiers when they are moved and replaced so often? How can he develop good relationships with other Americans, including the officer he's paired with, when they too are moved around and replaced? He's worked with two different officer partners this year, though his first partner was activated with him and is still in country. They have split up his unit and scattered them across the Afghanistan, and then paired each of them up with mix-and-match officers at mix-and-match FOBs. There is no consistency and constant uncertainty. It doesn't make any sense.

One of the reasons soldiers stay in the military even during war time is because of the loyalty they feel for each other and the guilt and desperation they feel when their buddies are deployed and they're still at home. This guilt, this desperation, led S to reenlist for a year when most of his unit was called up well over a year ago. He signed up to help them out after he'd been out of the military for a year. They called and said that they had no one left in the states to train new members and the unit would fall apart without a qualified person to train them. The unit has a long history. It is the only national guard infantry unit to be activated during Vietnam. As a Ranger unit, it is also tied to the history of the Rangers generally. Their unit, a long range surveillance detachment, is like the one in "Saving Private Ryan."

Of course, they had no intention of having him stay in the states and train new members. That became clear just a couple of months after he signed the contract when we received that crack-of-dawn call, that call that threw us into these endless months of uncertainty. And though the unit has a long history, it is no longer what it was. The experienced soldiers like S are getting out as soon as they're allowed to. They have no sense of that reputed loyalty, that 'brotherhood,' because they were splintered apart and scattered. I'm sad about this for S; I think his deployment would be easier if he were with his buddies, men he's known for more than a decade. But I'm glad for me. He doesn't have the guilt that drives so many disenchanted soldiers to reenlist anyway. I don't think he'll ever sign another "stay at home and train new soldiers for a year" contract again. I think he'll say no to a contract based on rumor.

My good friend Gabe, an exceptional poet I met down at University of New Orleans, came into town today from Santa Fe where he's been exiled since his house was flooded and ruined by the floodwaters of Katrina. We went to my favorite southern Indian restaurant just blocks from my house, Udupi Palace, and we talked about hurricanes and war and poetry and chapbooks (he's meeting with his editor this weekend here in Chicago), and then we drove to see the underpass virgin on Fullerton Avenue. I'd not visited her since she first appeared last spring when a young Mexican-American girl spotted her on her walk home from school. Within a few days, the image was adorned by candles and notes and offerings and visitors, all asking for ayuda from the mother of God. I went and visited her and I was moved by the spontaneity of the event, how ordinary people made a church out of a dirty, dusty underpass beneath the highway to O'Hare.

Within days of my visit she was defaced by an angry Mexican-American man who spray-painted a swastika across her face and beneath it "BIG LIE." The news traveled quickly, made the evening news, and within twenty-four hours the streets and sanitation crew had come (they are incredibly swift here in the City That Works) and painted over the entire image, leaving only a two-dimensional stalagmite in industrial muddy brown. The image of the virgin was gone; the visitors vanished. The notes stayed for days, but the candles burned out, abandoned.

It was caused by water, this image, so it sat above the surface of the concrete wall like a calcified scar and therefore was easy to discern beneath the paint. A handful of believers came and removed the paint from the image, leaving only an outline of it around her head and body. They placed cinderblocks around her as a proper altar, placed potted flowers in front, and on the stepped edges, carnations in vases. Her image was not the same, a bit of the likeness had disappeared with the peeled-off paint, but with the outline and the cinderblocks she had become more edified even if a bit of her had been lost.

Gabe and I walked and read the messages left for her, these 21st century petroglyphs. Most were RIPs or pleas for ayuda for whole families. Some were about careers, some about lovers. One asked for help in getting a dad out of jail. Another said simply "I miss you grandma." Gabe noted the whirring sound of the speeding trucks and cars above us and how they sounded like war. They sped above us violently, screeching, creating a harsh echo throughout the underpass that was deafening at times. I hadn't noticed this noise when I visited last spring, perhaps because the place was filled with the scuffing of work boots, the whisper of prayers, or perhaps because I don't pay attention to sound the way I should. Gabe stuck his cell phone up in the air and captured a bit of this highway clamor.

Here are a few pictures of the water stain-turned-virgin, once defaced but again revealed. She is Our Resurrected Lady of the Underpass:


The new altar with flowers and a handful of burning candles. Who checks to see the candles stay lit? And who changes the flowers?


Scribbled on the Emergency Parking Only sign: "Take care of all of us sinners to let us all in when our time comes -- Mel"


The algebra of faith: "I love God times ten to infinty plus four."