They are strange people. They have a poorly hidden attraction to the den of death. The more difficult it is for them now, the more acutely the nostalgia will torment them later. They are “Afghans”, cannon fodder, officers and soldiers, thrown from a stagnant, half-asleep world into the meat grinder of war. They pay off some mysterious “international debt”, they go under bullets, try to survive, curse their work and... again they strive here, where the red-hot dust has frozen in red waves, where the traces of tank tracks are intertwined like a snake, and all human virtues and vices are laid out like on the shelves.