Chapter 5

The writing started as therapy. Dr. Longwell had suggested he keep a journal to process his thoughts, but he quickly found himself gravitating toward something more structured: stories that sought to make sense of the things he’d seen and the people he’d known.

He wrote in the early morning hours, after his workout and breakfast, when his mind was clear. His roll-top desk became his writing space. With headphones playing soft jazz instrumentals, he could lost himself creating for two hours. There was something satisfying about writing that ordered his mind and gave him a bit of purpose.

The first story emerged slowly, built around a friendship he’d developed with a Tajik trader named Hamid during his second deployment. Hamid was part of a clan of traders who moved goods (and information) through the mountains of northern Afghanistan. Officially, the team was supposed to monitor them for weapons smuggling. Unofficially, they’d developed a relationship based on mutual respect. Hamid was the man who helped him gain insight into Afghanistan’s complexities.

The story wasn’t about military operations or intelligence gathering. It was about the evening conversations he’d had with Hamid’s nephew, Rashid, a young man about Jason’s age who spoke three languages and understood the geopolitics of Central Asia better than most. What he remembered was how Rashid had described his arranged marriage to a girl from a neighboring clan. The marriage was a joining of families that had been planned by their relatives.