Scorched Earth
In December 1979, nineteen-year-old university student Seryozhenko Rozov was drafted into the army. He believed he was going to fulfill his “internationalist duty” and bring light to the people of Afghanistan.
Seven years later, he left with seven diaries, a body covered in scars, and a question that could never be answered: What had they really brought to that land?
From the first fierce battle in Kabul to the scorched-earth policy in Panjshir; from seeing comrades sent off to die in disciplinary battalions to watching quartermasters sell medicine on the black market, he witnessed an empire rusting away in the mire. He also watched himself corrode under the System, changing from a young man who read War and Peace into someone who learned to shoot, to keep silent, and to lie to his mother.
He met Faiz, a translator torn apart by both sides; Anna, the girlfriend who waited for him back home and eventually married someone else; and Ahmad, the Afghan boy who picked up a toy horse amid the ruins.
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