1. LAST CHANCES

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.

“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

I am alive.

Maybe that sounds strange or cliché, but it wasn’t always the case, at least not in a sense that mattered.

In late summer 2021, the Taliban took back Afghanistan. As they did, horrific stories emerged. People detained or tortured or executed. Women and children blown up in a sewage canal as they waited to board foreign planes out of the country. A 17-year-old soccer player who clung to a taxiing C-17 transport plane in a desperate bid to escape and who fell to his death.

These scenes impacted me because I grew up, as a soldier, in Afghanistan. I first stepped foot on the fine, powdery soil of Kandahar Airfield as a platoon commander in 2002, a half year after 9/11. That same year I nearly died at Tarnak Farms from a 500-pound bomb dropped by an American F-16. Four of my fellow soldiers were killed instead, the first casualties of many, including those who came home physically, but whose thoughts never stray far from Afghanistan’s mountains and plains.

I left Afghanistan for the last time in 2011. On that final deployment, my task force detained a man suspected to be involved in assassinating a Provincial Police Chief. We came to find out that the guy was the son or the nephew of the Commander of a local Afghan National Army Corps. When we called in the situation to our division headquarters, we were told to let the man go. In some ways, this was the cherry on top of the sundae that was my Afghanistan experience, a place where government corruption was never addressed despite its direct relation to local security, and where our actions were often undermined by never deeply understanding the culture and reality of the Afghan people we were supposedly there to help. In any event, a time of dissonance began when I left, where I struggled with the sacrifices I’d made as a soldier, and whether they were making the world a better place.

To make a long story short, eventually all that work caught up to me and I decided to take some time off, which came in the form of parental leave after the birth of my second daughter. To share the load, my wife and I made up a schedule where each of us had some free time and what I discovered in mine was that I didn’t know who I was, or what I liked. I had no hobbies. I’d given up reading and music and martial arts as I’d advanced in my profession. And this wasn’t work-life balance. Work-life balance implies that our lives are simply what we do when we’re not at work, and that wasn’t what was missing from my life.

What was missing were moments when I felt alive.

I took up writing. I wrote a lot of garbage, which was all right because in the process I discovered I had stories to tell. Considering the long tradition of storytelling among soldiers, maybe that’s not surprising. Storytelling passes the time during those boring hours spent polishing or cleaning weapons or standing guard. More importantly, stories help us make sense of what we don’t understand.

And the thing is, there’s a lot to be confused about in our world these days, not the least of which is why we can’t seem to do anything to address climate change, or any other number of problems. Now, I’m a soldier, not a climatologist or anthropologist, but I know what it’s like to want to make the world better for others.

When my oldest daughter was five, I took her to see the movie Inside Out. There’s a scene about halfway through where a little girl’s imaginary friend sacrifices himself. It was around that point the heat cranked up in the theatre, or at least I’m pretty sure it did because I started to sweat, like, from my eyes. I was sitting there, blinking back tears, when I recalled something that my mom used to say - that while I might think I knew what it was like to be a parent, that one day I’d truly understand. I’d heard her say that so many times that I felt like I already had that understanding she was talking about. But as it turns out, knowing and understanding are different.

So, there I am, my voice not working, and my throat choked up so much that when my daughter asked what happened to Bing Bong, I couldn’t explain that he’d sacrificed himself so his little girl had a chance for a better life. That’s when it hit me. I understood my mom’s point exactly – what it means to love someone so much you would die to make the world a better place for them.

The thing is, I am going to die. Not any time soon, at least that’s not my plan. In a way, though, that’s kind of the point. Because who knows? I could live another forty years, or I could die in the next five minutes.

Or maybe, and this is the possibility that keeps me up in the middle of the night, maybe you’re reading the words of a dead man.

Either way, I’m not ready. I have two beautiful daughters I want to see grow up. I want to help them become responsible citizens because I believe that’s a parent’s charge. And I believe I can help. I believe I can show them a path to help make sense of our world in these troubled times, and, at the same time, make the world a better place.

What if I don’t get that chance?

I am Alastair James Neil Luft, son of Richard John Luft and Anne Victoria Margaret Luft, born in Canada’s western province of Alberta, in the year 1977. In my youth, I set my mind on martial success, and the pursuit of this goal sustained me through many years. Only after the birth of my daughters did I pause to reflect on my experiences, and whether my life would make my descendants proud.

Whether I helped make the world a better place for others.

I’ve come to understand that I’ve made mistakes. A lot of them. We all have, it seems, those of my generation and others.

But all is not yet lost.

And so, paying respects to my ancestors and with the infinite void of approaching death as a witness, whenever that might be, I take up the pen and begin to write, at 4:00 A.M. on the morning of the nineteenth day of the ninth month, in the year two-thousand and twenty-one.