They said: “The bomb will be connected with a button, or something like the remote control of a TV. We will give you this kind of remote, and you will go to the place.
 
“We will also give you a mobile, and we will ring that phone, and press the remote, and you will be blown up with this bomb.”
 
They told me they would use such a large amount of explosives that no-one would even know if it was a man or a woman.
 
They told me that I had to do it.
 
There was a kind of medicine they used to give to the bombers that made them go around smiling, in a trance.
 
They said they would give me that medicine, and then I would go running to die – with a smile. I was so scared I decided to prepare my own tea, and my own food.
 
I was afraid they would mix that medicine with my food.
 
Sister’s story


They attached a bomb to my sister Nahida. They tied rectangular pieces to both her arms, and a black strip was wrapped around both her legs.
 
Then they connected the whole thing. She told my brother the bomb was heavy and she could not walk.
 
He said she would be comfortable once she was sitting down in the car.
 
They gave her medicine. But she was crying very loud for my mother. She kept going to her and hugging her. When my sister looked down at the bomb, she shivered.
 
Then my brother and my father started beating my mother, and they were shouting: “Why you are distracting the girl from her mission?”
 
I heard my sister saying: “Where is Meena? I want to see her.” But I didn’t have the strength. My heart couldn’t take it.
 
My mother fainted when they put her in the car. My brother said my sister’s attack was in Afghanistan.
 
I always think about my sister. She was healthy and a very nice girl. She was younger than me, but she was wiser. My mother used to tell me that I was an idiot, but she was very wise.

The other couple are friends, too, though less close. Both are very affluent psychologists who, within their fields of expertise, are pretty formidable. The mister and I get together every few months and go bar hopping and cigar smoking for a day. He suspects that I am troglodytic, and knows that I did not vote for The One, but realizes that I have always steered conversations away from politics. So he understands that I don’t discuss certain topics because I have made the decision to keep him from destroying the friendship.

However, he occasionally will say something stupid—thoughtless repetition of yet another NYT or NPR talking point, and I will challenge him on it. He sneered one day at the Tea Partyers and about how ill-willed they are and I gently said, “I have several friends that are Tea Partyers. They are some of the most decent, honorable and intelligent people I know.” He was genuinely brought up short. He respects me enough to stop nonsense if I show him how nonsensical it is.

Obviously these are fragile friendships. But there are enough good things about them that if I function as the adult—not hard to do in a place where most thinking stops at college—they are enjoyable to me.

SADIE, thanks to Bookworm and some really wonderful conservatives I’ve met here in Marin, I have enough outlets that I can thrive even in the midst of one of the most barren intellectual deserts in America. No need to rail, yell or insult—I leave those shenanigans to my clearly moral leftist superiors.