Dispatches from FOBistan: The Kyrgyz Magiciennes of Bagram

Bagram, at night. (Photo by me)

BAGRAM AIR BASE, AFGHANISTAN — It is perhaps no surprise that I can be a rather stressful person. I thrive in stressful situations, and when a vacation or pause in work lasts for too long, I tend to go batty (and panic about becoming mentally soft). I function best with tight deadlines, rarely sleep more than 5 or 6 hours at a time, and collect every ounce of pressure right between my shoulder blades.

Which was why, when I ran across an article in the Washington Post about how big American bases in Iraq and Afghanistan have massage staffs, I thought, “why not see if it’s as awesome as it sounds?”

First, a few caveats: most importantly, while I was stuck at Ali Al Saleem Air Base in Kuwait, I was so frustrated with trying to get into Bagram that I tried putting my name on a flight to Kandahar instead. When I called one of my friends there and told him I’d be popping into KAF for a while, he told me that, “when you get up to Bagram, be careful of all those cute Kyrgyz girls. They are dangerous.” Considering this friend has spent a considerable portion of his life in Russian-speaking countries, I was inclined to agree with his warnings. Second most importantly, I am extremely shy about my body, and don’t much care for strangers running their fingers through my back hair.

Regardless, several days of really bad sleep, coupled with a head cold thanks to the transient tent at FOB Morales Frazier (those things in general are incubators of disease), and a four-hour long migraine headache—one never gets used to the billows of dust and diesel fumes that choke Bagram—made a massage, and a haircut, seem like fantastic ideas.

So after eating a rather crowded lunch at the DFAC, I part ways with my colleagues and made my way down to the PX. Here is where my story diverges from that WaPo story: some two-bit FOB in Mosul is clearly superior to the primary American base for all of Afghanistan, because our beauty shop is certainly not as nice. Granted, it is perfectly serviceable in a rather Almaty way, but it is certainly not on par with what that reporter described (and it is absolutely not as well-lit, either). Regardless, I tried mumbling my best approximation of zdravstvooytyeh at the man at the cash register, and put my name down for a 30 minute back rub ($8; they offer hour-long full body massages for like $16) followed by a shampoo and haircut.

A rather baleful, but nevertheless charming Kyrgyz woman invited me into a hall of curtained alcoves. She led me to one, pulled the curtain aside, and gestured me inside. Now, I have had a grand total of two massages in my life, one of which was at my parents’ house because a friend was finishing her therapy licensing and needed some hours of practice (the other was a cruise ship, which is clearly not a compatible circumstance). So there I was, standing inside a Kyrgyz massage parlor in Afghanistan, with the curtain closed, and I have no idea what to do. I take off my comfortable green Army fleece and put my hands in my pockets, and look around. There is a table covered with a sheet, a single towel spread out on one end and a bundle of towels on the other. A mirror on the wall, trinkets along the cabinets lining the alcove, and a small table with a large digital clock and a pile of $5 and $10 dollar bills (presumably tips).

My masseuse-to-be pokes her head in the room. “Oh,” she says, and motions with her hands.

“Oh, I should take my shirt off?” She nods. I do so. She then gets a quixotic look on her face and comes all the way in. She points at my belt buckle, saying “this too.”

As my cheeks burn with shame, I undo my belt. “Umm,” I begin, really not knowing what I am supposed to do or say with this. She sighs really loudly and grabs my belt, pulling it in one swift motion off my jeans. She points again. “What?” I really don’t want to understand what she wants. Flattening her lips, the masseuse lunges at my jeans and undoes the top button. My jaw drops slightly. She then begins sweeping her hands over the table. After much halting and stuttering, I figure out which way she wants me to lie, face down of course, and that I am to leave my combat boots firmly tied to my feet and ankles. After plopping myself down on the table, she then rolls back the other side of the top of my jeans, revealing rather more of that side of my body than I’d prefer. I instinctively reach back to pull it back up some, and she slaps my hand away. “No, this good,” she says, and then proceeds to make noises whilst sashaying around the tiny alcove.

What followed was indescribable. For one, the demure, petite Asian woman had hands of titanium. For 30 minutes, I gasped at every wrench back and forth of my back fat, sometimes in pain, sometimes in sheer amazement at the muscles in my upper back she managed to unclench. At one point, she had a knee on the massage table and was grinding both hands onto my shoulder blades, while entreating me, “relax, relax!” I felt something resist, then break apart when she was maneuvering my arms into rather geometric configurations, all while perpendicularly karate chopping my spine. The point at which she used her elbow to outline my spinal column and then make something go crack right beneath my trapezius is something I hope to experience again—it was a pure physical impression of relief, like learning a growth isn’t malignant. I’m certain at at least two points, I dozed off, the whole process was so relaxing. By the time I was standing up again, fully clothed and in quite an excellent mood, I felt perfectly okay handing her a $20 bill in thanks.

While walking back up the hall to get my hair did, it struck me: this is what my friend meant. He didn’t warn me about them in any weird kind of sexual way, he warned me about them because they trick you into giving them unbelievable amounts of money. Or maybe he meant it in a sexual way. Who knows. Regardless, I had to fight off the next Kyrgyz woman, who seemed intent on trimming my beard (no thankyouverymuch), but was nevertheless quite satisfied with the result. I left her a $10 bill in thanks. Tips aside, the total cost of both pamperings, which lasted nearly an hour? $19. It’s tough to beat that. Next on my agenda is getting over my low self-esteem over the wretched state of my feet, and getting a pedicure. We’ll see how those non-plussed Kyrgyz magic-makers react to my scary hooves.

There is, of course, a dark side to this as well. I asked around a bit, and learned that these women are barely paid. The reason AAFES, the company that runs most (if not all) Base Exchanges and Post Exchanges, pays them so little they might as well work for free, is because they are meant to rely on tips. It is like working in a restaurant, only instead of the $2 per hour I made waiting tables one really unfortunate winter at a Northern Virgina Olive Garden, they’re paid more like $2 per day. Some of them are also not given days off. At all. Hell, the French cooks at FOB Morales-Frazier have Sundays off (we have to fend for ourselves).

But these Kyrgyz women, who work really long hours pampering sometimes cranky and disrespectful servicemen, get nothing. One said her contract didn’t give her any vacation time for two years—and that included taking a day off for herself. Like many of the other TCNs, or Third World Nationals, I have met working on far-flung American military bases, they work in conditions that would be considered unacceptable in the U.S… even as the soldiers here are fed limitless mountains of ice cream and fried chicken three meals a day, every day.

Upon learning that the women who had just dramatically changed my outlook on life through moments of agony and a near wrestling match over a trimmer are actually treated like Roman slaves, I suddenly felt better about leaving them such substantial tips. I kind of wish, in retrospect, I had left them more. They certainly need it more than I do.

This post was written by...

Joshua Foust – author of 1801 posts on Registan.net.

Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust

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