The guest house near downtown Kabul was built to reassure foreigners. Inside the walls were metal detectors, steel doors, armed guards, a dining hall, flower beds, an aviary, and pomegranate trees. Enough normalcy to suggest control.

We also had laundry service.

Older Afghan women did it. They moved quietly through the compound, working without comment. You left a bag of dirty clothes on your bed. A few days later it came back clean and folded. Shirts stacked. Socks paired. It worked because they did.

When I saw them, I tipped a few Afghanis. I didn’t speak Pashto or Dari, and they didn’t speak English. This was the only way I knew to thank them.

After that, my laundry came back faster. Sometimes the same day. Always folded carefully.

The head of party noticed.

He was British, senior, and attentive to hierarchy. He stopped me one afternoon and asked what I was doing.

I told him.

“Well stop it,” he said. “They’ll come to expect it. And the rest of us aren’t getting our laundry back in a timely manner.”

I nodded and kept doing it.

A few days later my laundry bag came back heavier. A shirt that wasn’t mine. Then trousers. British sizing.

It happened again. My Aussie buddy, who had also been tipping, noticed the same thing. His laundry had picked up extra items too.

The Brits complained. Escalated. Asked questions that went nowhere. Accusing Afghan women inside a fortified compound proved difficult. Nothing could be proven. Nothing could be corrected.

Some of their clothes didn’t come back.

Ours did.

We never returned the extra items. I gave them to an Afghan friend.

The washer women kept working. Folding. Sorting. Deciding where things went.

Inside the walls, the foreigners still believed they were in charge.