The Watch [Paperback]

The Watch is a novel, but it seemed to be the front page story of my daily newspaper, only with the names of the characters changed.

One remote outpost in Afghanistan is the background, but the events that surround it and the challenges that the young soldiers face, ring true for practically all the garrisons in this war-torn country. The characters are so vividly portrayed that one feels that the author was embedded with the unit portrayed in the book (to my knowledge, he was not). The young girl wishing to give her dead brother (was he really a Taliban?)a proper Muslim burial, the First Lieutenant, the medic, the various enlisted men,are realistically portrayed as are the differences between Muslim culture and that of the West. The description of the Afghan countryside made me feel as if I was viewing a photograph and not the printed word.

This book was almost impossible to put down and I most highly recommend it!

Joydeep Roy Bhattacharya has based the events of this novel loosely on the Antigone myth and perhaps on Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes. While a familiarity of Sophocles and Aeschylus' plays is not a must to reading the novel, it does add to a deeper understanding of what the author is trying to do with his plot.

The novel begins with the narration of our Afghan Antigone, Nizam. Having heard of the death of her brother, Yusuf, in an attack on a remote outpost of American soldiers she makes her way down the mountains to ensure that he has a proper burial. However, Yusuf's corpse has been identified as important, and higher authorities have decided that it is to be brought to the Afghan capital and so is not buried. The first chapter details the events of the rest of the novel from Nizam's point of view. The remaining seven chapters are narrated from the points of view of the men on the other side of the fence. Events cycle back to before the gun fight, the base is then attacked, heavy casualties are sustained and the men are in a state of high tension. The arrival of Nizam demanding the return of the body of her brother, one of the attackers, exacerbates an already tense situation.

Each chapter proceeds chronologically from this point. I found myself flipping back to Nizam's story to match up the events in her narration to the remaining chapters. This really helped in seeing how each side misinterpreted and feared the actions of the other and how these misunderstandings finally led to the final conclusion.

The first chapter, in the voice of the Lieutenant, includes sections from Sophocles in the Lieutenant's flashbacks to his days of studying Greek mythology and the life he had before the war. (This allows the author to quite obviously cement the link to the Antigone of Sophocles' work.) Through him we are introduced to the men in the outpost and to the pattern that the author uses for each one of the remaining characters. The narration of events changes hands from Lieutenant to Medic to Translator to Second Lieutenant, to First Sergeant to the Lieutenant's Journal and then, finally, to the Captain himself. In each one of these chapters (excepting the translator) there is a standard formula that the author uses - the men have flashbacks to better times and then return to their grueling present. However, even though the men come from different back grounds there is a uniformity of thought and attitude that simply did not gel. The first sergeant may be a Blues loving man with memories of the Bayou but his point of view and impressions of the war differ very little from that of the Medic or the highly educated Lieutenant Frobeinus. In that, what seemed like a fascinating view in the first few chapters begins to fall flat in the latter half of the book. The characters soon seem like one dimensional cut outs that have little to say for themselves.

Bhattacharya does try to show us the sheer futility and insanity of a war where both sides refuse to see the humanity of the other. Nizam is convinced of the evil nature of the Americans and the soldiers are confused and hobbled by their ignorance of her culture, language and traditions. It soon becomes apparent that the soldiers do want to help her - even using floodlights to keep wolves away from her at night as she sits vigil outside the fence - but she has no way of knowing this. Her link to their intentions is only in the translator who sometimes interprets and represents what he is told in ways he sees fit.

However, I think the author has quite transparently used the text as a polemic against the presence of the US in Afghanistan. Nizam's situation is uniformly poignant. The mistaken attack on her family based on misinformation fed to the Americans leaves her crippled and an entirely sympathetic character. Even her brother's attack on the base is seemingly justified as retaliation for honor. The Americans, on the other hand are portrayed as uniformly naïve and ignorant of the culture they are interfering with. Played by rival factions against one another, they are helpless and hopeless in their situation.
In sum, the link to Antigone and Sophocles seems to be a frail hook to draw the reader into a book that, in the end, fails to reveal any new truths or portray evenly the truths of both sides.