Mark Taylor: Genesis (Prequel in the Mark Taylor Series) Read Online Free PDF

It’s not going to matter.”
    He would have argued, but a glance around him showed no trash receptacles anywhere around and Mo was right. It wouldn’t matter. His wasn’t the only glass around.  He dropped the shards, disgusted with himself, the men who had beaten the woman, and the country in general.
     He tried to reason in his mind that at least he had captured the beating on film. When people saw the photographs, maybe he would help shed some light on the atrocities committed. Change seemed like it was an unreachable goal and impossible for him to achieve. Tradition and culture was ingrained over hundreds, if not thousands of years, and he was just a guy who took pictures. It wasn’t like he had any real power to make things better.
    He straightened, brushing his hands together and slanted a glance at Mo. “So now what’s going to happen to her?” he asked, inclining his head in the direction of where the beating had taken place.
    Mo regarded him for a long moment and then his eyes slid away.  “I’m not sure.”
    His friend’s evasive action hinted at the truth. “Bullshit.”
     

     
    Kabul was large and busy, but showed signs of the war that had torn the country apart. It wasn’t as scarred as Kandahar, but it was not untouched.  Mo showed little interest in taking photos, so Mark stole away whenever he could and wondered where the material for a book would come from. His friend didn’t seem to be taking notes either.
    The lack of effort drove Mark to seek even more snapshots as he felt the more he took of this way of life, the better his chance of making a difference, with or without Mo. He learned to be stealthy, and pretended to photograph other objects, but shifted the focus at the last moment. None of the photographs were as brutal as the beating, but as the town was larger than the villages they had passed through so he was able to get more glimpses of women venturing to the market. What frustrated him was his inability to capture on film the sense that the women were basically invisible in their burqas.
    A few men glared at him, and once when he tried to take a photo of a woman, an apparent beggar with two small children, the mother covered the children’s’ faces with her own burqa. He tried to apologize to her, but she gathered her children and left the area. He cursed his stupidity as she hurried away. Of course she couldn’t acknowledge his apology. Not only had she probably not understood it, she wasn’t allowed to speak to strange men.
     The inequality struck him like a clenched fist and once he knew it was there, it was all he could see.  Vendors would ignore a woman and take care of a male customer even if the woman was there first. Other little things stuck with him, like how the schools in the town were full of little boys. Groups of boys from very young to teenagers would trek alongside the roads, to the madrassa, but little girls were absent. He had known these things before arriving in Afghanistan, but it had been an abstract knowledge. Seeing it firsthand made it real, but also incomprehensible.
    Faisal and Sayeed seemed to have other duties in their hometown. In the evenings, they left the home. Mo said they were visiting other relatives. Mark didn’t really care, he was just glad they were gone.
    On the night before they left Kabul, Mo informed him that he had to go to a village far from town with the cousins. It was a family thing. Mo suggested that Mark ride back to Kandahar with a friend of the family and wait for Mo there. Mark got the hint. He wasn’t welcome, but he didn’t care. He finally felt he had some decent photos and their flight home couldn’t come quickly enough. He had experienced his fill of violence, heat, and dust. Chicago traffic and humidity would seem insignificant after this trip.
    The almost twenty-four hour long trip back to Kandahar had been uncomfortable. Physically, the nearly five hundred miles had seemed endless. There were no roadside