Appendix: Physical Toll and Packing Logistics
Body Toll: My bodyweight dropped from 185 lbs to 174 lbs during the course of the trip. Upon return, I used bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) to check my bodyfat percentage and then did the math. Of the 11 lbs lost, 8.8 lbs were lean muscle and 2.2 lbs were fat. I suspected that'd be the case since late in the trip I noticed I still had my normal amount of belly fat but that my arms and legs were shrinking.
I also seem to have picked up some sort of skin rash. In Peshawar on my way home, I noticed that there were about ten red spots in a 3" diameter on the right side of my chest. In the nearly three weeks since then, they shifted from red to light brown and haven't faded one iota. Maybe I'll try a topical fungicide.
Of the "Packing List" items from the post I made before leaving...I didn't even end up taking: a hidden leg-attachment wallet, any type of hat, long underwear, a sleep-sheet sack, a multi-tool or Swiss army knife, any sort of business card or press pass, a lighter or scissors or a razor blade (thanks TSA!), the Lonely Planet Farsi phrasebook, Dari phrase cheat cards, any extra guidebook pages, safety pins, or lip balm.
I brought but never even touched my: long-sleeve shirt, swimming trunks, LED headlamp, miniature (AA) Maglight, duct tape, extra high mA batteries (AA and AAA), and ear plugs. Of the medical kit items, I used three of the twenty tabs of Cipro and all of the Emer-gen-C electrolyte replacement powder. Nothing else was touched.
In retrospect, I should've: worn a pair of comfy flip-flops instead of my sneakers, taken more Western-quality toilet paper and/or wet wipes, wrapped the Nexcare "Liquid Bandage" container in something since it ended up leaking superglue all over the medical kit bag, and taken less paracord with me. I'm not quite sure what I imagined doing with fifty feet but I only ever ended up using about four feet, total. I should've also only taken two little Photon LED fobs instead of those plus a headlamp and a handheld flashlight. They supply a perfect amount of light in a tiny package and are really all I ever needed. Plus, I'd have saved a substantial amount of weight by cutting the headlmap/flashlight and all of the batteries for them.
US Customs and Final Thoughts
Two uniformed, armed, US Customs and Border Protection officers were waiting at the end of the jetway in Atlanta. They were checking the passports of every person who disembarked. When they got to me, they had me step aside and then let everyone behind me stream off the plane unimpeded. I knew the FBI had visited my office and talked with my coworkers and I'd had two days to mentally prepare myself for this so I was relaxed enough to casually joke with them about being much less subtle than the Special Branch gentleman in London. One laughed and shrugged, the other scowled and said it was protocol. This ended up being characteristic of the two of them but I couldn't tell if what I was seeing was their normal personalities or if they were setting themselves up for "good cop/bad cop" nonsense, should they find it necessary later.
They ushered me into an elevator and then marched me off to a private waiting room in the CBP office. Less than two minutes later I was in a private interrogation room with the unfriendly CBP officer sitting across from me, telling me he'd be conducting the questioning. An FBI agent came and sat down at the desk with the two of us. The other CBP officer and a fourth man, in plain clothes, stood silently in the back of the room, watching and listening.
The contents of my wallet were laid out on the table between us and questioning began immediately. It only took a few minutes to get to a question I objected to. "Do you often vacation in war zones?" I balked. "I don't think that's a fair question. I don't consider Afghanistan a war zone." I was reading too much into his questions when I could've just said, "No, never." Instead, I was chastised. "That's just your opinion. Most people wouldn't go there. Do you have a military background? Why weren't you afraid to travel there when Americans are targets?"
That line of questioning evolved into other countries I'd visited. "So you'd been to England before? Then why'd you go this time? You'd already been there and seen it all before." I laughed and was immediately reminded of a Samuel Johnson quote I'd seen in London the day before: "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford." Instead I simply reminded him that I'd only been there for a few days previously and I'd been 17 at the time.
Ecuador came up next. "When were you there? Where did you go in Ecuador? Were you traveling with anyone?" Suddenly we were on an absurd tangent. "Why didn't Sadie go to Afghanistan with you? What does she do? Did you pay for her trip to Ecuador? But if she's a student how does she get money? You think she has a part time job, huh? And why didn't she go to Afghanistan with you? She was in Vietnam? Well that's already half way there! She could've just grabbed a flight in Bangkok [sic] and zipped right on over!"
It was all sort of silly and I never felt like were asking the important questions. I was repeatedly asked what cities I'd visited, and in what order, etc, but they never asked who I talked to, or what we talked about, or who I met with, etc. These seemed to me like the obvious questions. Perhaps they're less verifiable than travel timelines, but if you're trying to root out the liars, shouldn't you ask them something they'd be compelled to lie about? As things wrapped up an hour later, the FBI agent sitting at the table with us almost jokingly asked, "So, did you, uh, you know, visit any terrorist training camps while over there?" Even as a joke, it seemed like the first truly pertinent question I'd been asked during the whole interview.
I later found out that one of the people who'd visited the office asked if I spoke "the language over there" and was told I had been learning some Farsi. He scoffed, "Ha! Lots of good that'll do him in an Arab country!" I'd love to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he was fishing for a certain response, but it seems more likely that he simply didn't know that Afghans were Persians and spoke Persian/Farsi dialects (Dari, Tajik) and Pashtu, not Arabic. The interview in London, the interview in Atlanta, the story about the one of the guys who visited the office -- I think the law enforcement communities are sorely lacking in people with specific regional knowledge. The individuals are doing their best, but, damn, how hard would it be to divide up an office and say, "Alright. You three, Southeast Asia. You three, Central Asia. You guys, North Africa. Each of you, go read a book." Even a little knowledge about the regions and cultures would radically improve the elicitation interviews by informing which lines the questioning should take and helping catch people who were lying about where they'd been or what they'd been up to.
As things wound down in Atlanta, everyone left the room except the friendly CBP officer. He was going to do a "standard bag check" on my backpack, as a formality, and then would let me go. I warned him that there was something in there that might strike him as a bit strange and he just smiled, "Yeah, we know." I was inwardly delighted to see that "intelligence sharing" between Britain and the US includes everything all the way down to the contents of my backpack.
The "items" in question were a
small rug depicting 9/11 and some t-shirts I'd picked up in Peshawar the morning I left. I'd hoped to find a Massoud t-shirt, for me to have and wear, but when that proved impossible, a local mentioned, "You know, there're
Osama bin Laden t-shirts here..." I bit and after an hour we finally located some. They were small and of very poor quality (ie, the head hole is too small to get your head through, etc), but I thought they'd make a funny gag gift and at $1 a pop, I picked up a stack of five. We bargained and bought quickly because the man selling them was afraid the police were going to swoop in. Apparently OBL t-shirts are a no-no, even in Peshawar.
Apparently the person in charge in Atlanta had decided to confiscate the t-shirts before I even arrived, but the friendly CBP officer went and talked to him again. Ten minutes later he returned, shirts in hand, and said I could keep them. I was quite happy, on principle, since while they were tasteless, they certainly weren't illegal. Since then I haven't been able to get rid of them. Nobody wants one. (Surprise!)
I've now been back in "the West" for a week and have fully adjusted back to the humdrum simple life in San Francisco. Work, food, apartment, chat with friends, read, walk. I don't think I've given this trip the degree of honest reflection it deserves but that'll all come in due time on its own, bubbling up from my subconscious. When I sit here now and try to consider the trip as a whole, or the travel experience as a distinct entity, I'm reminded only of the line in
Tropic of Capricorn that I read halfway through my time there: "For there is only one great adventure and that is inward toward the self, and for that, time nor space nor even deeds matter."
Was it worth it?Yes, absolutely. Afghanistan is a very special, interesting place to be. That would've been true throughout history, I think, but especially now, coming out of 25 years of war, with elections around the corner, with a general sense of hope even as it's mixed with cynicism. I'm glad I had a chance to dip the tip of my toe into the culture, history, and politics of that country, even if only for a few weeks.
And it was, of course, an excellent break from the monotony of life in San Francisco.
All of that said, am I happy to be back here? Of course. Variety of food, and no need to give it a critical eye and wonder if it'll make me sick, my own bed, a shower that has both water pressure and hot water, flushable toilets, toilet paper that doesn't hurt, etc. Life here is easy. I know the routine. Even when I step outside my routine, things are accomplished quickly and easily. Everything has protocols, rules, and clearly defined structure.
Would you go back? Could you live in a place like that?Yes, definitely, but only if I had something purposeful to work toward. A job with an NGO, a specific project as a writer or photographer, some well-defined personal research goal in a region or on a certain topic, etc. I wouldn't want to return anytime soon purely as a tourist. Maybe in five or ten years to see how much the country will have changed and to visit friends who're still around.
Was it everything you'd hoped for?No. Well, maybe. It might've been everything I should've
reasonably hoped for, but I think I was right, weeks and even months ago, when I confided in people that my real reasons for going were something else. I was hoping that the "exoticness" of the culture combined with the slight edge of danger would affect my life in what would eventually amount to a profound change, bumping my current "life-heading" by a degree or two. A small change now but with larger ramifications down the road as I continue forward. I think that expectation was unmet and that it was an unfair expectation to even bring with me in the first place.
My doubts that this trip will end up changing me substantially stem mostly from the fact that nothing really surprised me there and the only meaningful danger I felt was from overzealous drivers and, for an hour one night, drunk American contractors firing machine guns in my hotel. In that regard, the trip was simultaneously a disappointment of the unreasonable expectations and an affirmation of what Sadie and I have been talking about for almost two years now: travel by a person who's honest with themselves is "without point" in that the people you meet are functionally indistinct from yourself. They do this thing a bit differently than you do, you do that thing a bit differently than they do, but, at the end of the day... it's a wash, a zero-sum game.
All the same, it may yet turn out to be true since seeing the things that changed the course of your life can only be done in retrospect.
Media -- Photos and Video Clips
I'll be making a final post for the trip soon, but I wanted to get the media up and online for anyone who's interested.
The pictures are available in
this gallery. My favorite five photos are all at the top. At some point in the near future, I'll add short text descriptions to each photo.
NOTE: The photos are all quite large and will take a very long time to load on a slow Internet connection.
So long, Central Asia.
I'm in London now. 48 hours ago I was in Afghanistan.
It's strange to think that. Driving east to Jalalabad and Torkham was the first time I really had a sense of "leaving" or of what I had accomplished. For all the danger of the vehicles, the poor quality food that had me sick three times, the pollution in Kabul, etc, I do think I'll miss it. Life moves at a very different pace there. The lack of overt familiarity with my environment is something I thrive on. London feels wholly mundane now, to say nothing of how the even more familiar environs of Albuquerque and San Francisco will feel. I do like being able to accomplish things quickly and easily here, but I think a big part of me is still in "Central Asia mode." I look every direction at least two or three times before crossing the street. "Salaam Alaiykum" feels more natural than "Hello." The first words that spring to my lips when I want to talk to people are in Dari. "Bebakshid, miduneed... kohjust?" I'm sure that'll end soon and I'll forget every word of it.
The trip to the border from Kabul and the border crossing itself took quite a bit longer than anticipated. I arrived in Peshawar after dark when I'd hoped to arrive in the mid-afternoon. I think our driver took us on a slower road, while claiming it was faster, in order to avoid paying a 300 Afs fee on the other, truly faster road. I don't really blame him, considering how much money 300 Afs is there, but... blah. I didn't have any time to buy souvenirs in Peshawar. With a local helping me out, we literally ran through the back alleys of Peshawar to find shops still open to pick up goods. I ended up only finding a few small things for my mom and a few tasteless gag gifts. Perhaps it's better to bring back stories than souvenirs anyway.
The next morning I barely made it to the airport on time and then was heavily vetted by security. They pulled everything out of my bag, literally. The guy even opened up my little dirty laundry bag and held up my underwear, looking it over, pressing on the seams to make sure nothing was hidden in them, etc. They confiscated my expensive camera batteries and told me I couldn't take them in carry-on and would have to check them. I didn't want to just give them to security as "baksheesh" -- I'd have sooner taken them out of the airport and given them to a passing taxi driver or something. After four more times through security and lots of talking with the guys at the Emirates counter, we finally put my batteries in a tiny, 8" long box and checked it. I made it onto the flight three minutes before takeoff. Of course, the box never made it to London. It's only batteries, but at something like $40 worth it's still meaningful to me and I filed a missing luggage claim. I can't imagine they'll be found, so whatever.
For all the hassle in Peshawar, I did get a free bump to business class. Leg room, movies, excellent food from Dubai. In Dubai, I got another free bump to business class. The economy flight to the States is going to feel miserable after the fully reclinable seats for the last two legs. :)
At customs in London, there was a gentleman in a suit waiting for me. He was with "Special Branch" police -- "political, if you get my drift." I did. I spent about an hour with him going over all sorts of shit. Was I married? What religion was I? Did I live alone in San Francisco? What flights was I on? "Do you speak Arabic?" No, but in Afghanistan they speak Persian, not Arabic. "Do you speak Persian, then?" A little now, yes. "Do you speak Pakistani?" They speak Urdu in Pakistan and no, I don't speak a word of it. I didn't bother mentioning that the hairy areas of both Afghanistan and Pakistan are Pashtu speakers, not Urdu or Persian or Arabic. He didn't really seem to know the area at all but he was quite nice and polite despite refusing to give his name. We went over more details of my trip. Cities visited, timetable of return, how I paid for the visit, etc. He photocopied my passport, visas, plane tickets, etc. We went through my backpack item by item, with him asking me to drink from my water bottle, unpack and show the gag gifts I bought, etc. A few of those gifts raised some eyebrows, but I don't want to say what they are here because they're surprises for people who're reading this. According to the Special Branch man, it's quite possible they'll get confiscated stateside anyway, though they're merely tasteless, not illegal. We'll see.
I was initially thinking it was good that my first stop in the States was a three hour layover. If the FBI wanted to talk to me at all, I figured three hours would be enough. I'd make my connecting flight no problem. Now I'm not so sure. After this, I feel it's almost certain that I'll get dragged aside in States, and if this took an hour just for casual, quick stuff here, a more thorough discussion is likely to take much longer. The guy with Special Branch agreed. "I think you're going to have quite a looooong talk in the States." Teasing him about not giving his name, I joked that he should give me his email address and I'd let him know of the gifts got confiscated. He laughed and replied, "I'm sure I'll hear about it." Hah. Anyway, I'm not sure I'll even make the connecting flight now, but we'll see. If we can get down to brass tax right away, it shouldn't take more than two and a half hours, I think. Hopefully.
I feel out of place and mildly uncomfortable here. I can't tell how much of it is merely (reverse?) culture shock and how much of it is from the police at the airport. I really should've expected it. I fit a certain profile that means it was definitely the right thing to do to stop me and talk to me, but it has me in a state of mild paranoia. What sort of dossier are they compiling? Am I being followed now? Will people I know be called and interviewed? The last item has me most concerned. I don't care what information they have on me nor do I care if they want to follow me around London for two days, but I don't want to bring any hardship upon my friends because of my atypical travel destinations.
That's neither here nor there. I'm in London now and have two full days of sightseeing, theatre, movies, good food, etc. Anything I want. Acclimation to Western culture. :) I want to see a play, wander Piccadilly, wander Soho. I walked around for a few hours last night and that was quite nice. If I had more clean clothes, I'd go for a jog in Hyde Park. A cafe for people watching and some time to reflect and read sounds just about perfect right now. I think I'll go do that.
Concentric Circles of Kabul
Emails back from NGOs wanting IT or web design help have come in, but
all too late in the game for me to do anything meaningful. I just got
two of them yesterday, but I'm leaving tomorrow and am now too busy
with other things.
These last few days in Kabul have been interesting for other reasons.
I've been running in different circles, meeting people who are,
functionally, in entirely different orbits. An American lawyer living
in Moscow who does contract work with the US embassy here a few times
per year. (He treated me to lunch at a fancy Indian restaurant and was
boggled by my stories of travelling here as a tourist.) An American
who went to high school here in the 1960s and has returned, after 40
years, to work with NGOs on rebuilding a country that he remembers as
being full of laughter, swimming pools, kite flying, etc.
Two nights ago, I spent the evening with two independent contractors
who've known each other for years. They worked together "on Kuwait"
with the Bechtel project there, capping and cleaning up some seven or
eight hundred burning oil wells, completing the project in something
like 8 months when the projected timeline was a number of years.
Listening to them reminisce for hours was a glimpse into a world I've
never seen.
Snapshot: "When I got the call (for Kuwait), I left the office with
only the clothes on my back. It was only a couple days after
liberation and the entire country was on fire, raining oil. Before I
left, they gave me a credit card with no limit and told me to get six
planes and take them to Kuwait. I knew nothing about airplanes but I
managed to figure it out and a day later I was underway with six
planes bound for Kuwait. The British Airways wreckage was still on the
runway there and the smoke was so thick that the pilots couldn't even
see the airport. We had to turn back and land on an island in the
gulf. Finally, a solution appeared and we ended up being guided into
the airport by using the head of a smart bomb -- they'd set up a
beacon on the runway and we let the guidance system of the smart bomb,
sitting there with us in the cockpit, guide us in to the airport. That
was only the beginning..."
Running the country, commandeering buildings, digging around cities
looking for live phone lines, race riots ended by planeloads of
commandos, developing chemical compounds to dump in the oil lagoons,
taking the oil to the top and the sediment to the bottom so the oil
could be siphoned off and sold, etc.
Later that night, I ended up at a fancy Indian restaurant here in
Kabul, the guest of an Afghan businessman (construction) who ordered a
little of everything on the menu. It was a nice change in palate and
the company was good.
---------
Molly is on her way back from Herat now and she and I will go to
Peshawar together tomorrow. She wanted someone to travel with and I'm
more than happy to have an English speaker to pass the time with. (And
especially her, as her last year of travel has been almost exactly
what I'd love to be doing.) I think the trip is about 10 hours or so.
I don't think I'll have any time to buy souveneirs in Peshawar so I'm
going to try to buy some today in Kabul. Unfortunately, everything is
about 10x as expensive here, both because I'm in Shahr-e Now (the
somewhat ritzy "New City") and because the only place in this
neighborhood to get "gifty" stuff is the dirty tourist trap known as
Chicken Street.
Catharsis?
Yesterday, I felt mostly ok about the shooting in the morning but my
(anger? indignation?) grew throughout the day and by late evening I
was upset at what I perceived as a failure to deal with it
appropriately by the rest of the hotel guests and staff. I realize
that "normal" here is normal viewed through a kaleidoscope. It's
something like actual normal, but sometimes the colors are wrong, the
image is upside down, or shattered into a hundred pieces. But the
"boys will be boys" and "don't ask, don't tell" (how you're feeling)
attitude is, in my opinion, damaging to everyone here.
Late last night, I finally had a good conversation about this. Nick,
Mary and I sat around and talked about our fears, our assessments of
how people are dealing with this, etc. It was fruitful and beneficial
for all involved, but by the time we finished talking at 10p, I felt
like I'd been punched hard in the gut. It wasn't the emotional gravity
of the situation; I knew I'd be sick again that night.
An hour later I woke up and vomited all over the marble courtyard
outside my room. The theme continued and by morning I still couldn't
even keep water down and my body was aching from the efforts of the
night. Food, then water, then bilirubin and spit.
I was supposed to take Nick, Josh, and Mary to a huge Russian tank
graveyard I spotted off the road to the Panjshir, but come time to go,
I was still in bed. Nick came by and, seeing my sorry state, offered
an anti-emetic. I took one and now, an hour and a half later, I'm
doing marginally better.
In the mean time, I crawled out of bed and ran cold water over my arms
and face. If I couldn't drink it, I at least wanted to feel it --
wanted to feel something other than hot and run down.
I started listening to my MP3 player and for whatever reason found
myself in a hyperemotional state. Seemingly every song would remind me
of someone and I'd sniff and my eyes would well up with tears. My
(dead) older sister and (wholly absent) dad (Enya "Book of Days"),
Kris's kids (Radiohead "Fog"), myself (the lyric, "...you surround
yourself with people who demand so little of you.") I couldn't tell if
it was brought about by the emotional intensity of the night before or
the catharsis associated with a body out of sync.
I still can't tell what brought it about and right now I'm in so much
pain and a state of such profound dehydration that every word of this
takes focused effort.
In other news, I can't fucking believe I'm sick again. I didn't get
sick in Ecuador even once -- not even a single episode of diarrhea or
a headache. And that was despite eating off the street and drinking
local water in the mountain towns. I can't even remember the last time
I was sick stateside. The most recent that comes to mind is food
poisoning from Joe's Crab Shack when Yvette was visiting, something
like three plus years ago. Is it just the hygeine here? Open sewers,
flies, undercooked meat, money stored on the meat itself, etc. Did I
pick up something nastier? I can't wait to peek at my blood in
Albuquerque and see if there's some gigantic parasite with a turban
and an AK.
The OK Corral
I returned from the Panjshir in time for an impromptu barbeque here in the courtyard of the Mustafa. The general manager, Wais, seems to
semi-regularly throw these parties for guests and friends. I was
famished and was delighted to eat steak, pork ribs, crab legs, and
chicken wings. Fresh veggies that're safe to eat, BBQ sauce and hot
sauce, topped off with cheesecake for desert. This would be a feast
anywhere but in the land of "kebab, pilau, nan," it's absolutely fit
for a king.
As word of food spread, some life was breathed into this place and people began to filter in. I spent a few hours eating and chatting
with the characters that comprise the expat community here. The
highlight for me was probably talking with a British "security
consultant" whom I've befriended over the last week. I mentioned the
"Wanted: Osama bin Laden" matchbooks that CIA dumped all over
Pashtunistan after 9/11 and to my surprise and delight, he said that
he knew some people and would make some calls in the next few days and would probably be able to get me one! They're nearly impossible to get, all having been snatched up by collectors or used up by a people so used to box matches that they eagerly snap up and use any book matches they can find.
I'd had an early morning and by 10pm I was completely beat. I retired to my room and quickly fell asleep.
--------
I woke up to the sound of nearby pistol fire. I immediately jumped out of bed and grabbed my passport and large USD cash and then slipped into pants and a t-shirt. I strapped on my watch -- 11:51p -- and tied my shoes. Moments later, the pistol fire stopped and was replaced by machine gun fire. By now I was dressed and ready to run as well as
coherent enough to gauge how near the fire was.
It was definitely very close.
Between me and the front door of the hotel was about 120' of open
space. The machine gun bursts sounded like they were definitely either
coming from there or coming from the bar which is situated near the
front but on the second level of the complex.
I quickly considered my options. "Should I move or stay put in my
room? If firing starts here outside my room, I should probably lay
down near the thick marble of the front wall -- it's barely large
enough for me to tuck my body behind. In case someone starts going
room to room, I should make up the bed to look like I'm sleeping in
it, but will I be safer, then, hiding under the bed, which won't
really stop bullets, or should I still tuck myself near the front of
the room? If someone entered the room, could I kill them with my metal
pen before they could shoot me? Is someone attacking the hotel or is
this internal? There're guards at the front and they're armed, but...
What time is it now? 11:57. Christ -- I tied my shoes far too tight
and my feet are going numb."
I loosened and re-tied my shoes as shotgun fire erupted, this time much closer than the machine gun fire. Three shots, a pause, then a fourth.
A few minutes passed with only shouting -- too far away to be
intelligible and half of it in Dari -- and I decided I could safely venture out of my room and try to see what was going on. I put two fingers against my neck and checked my pulse. It was faster than a resting pulse but far slower than I expected. My body had a light sheen of sweat on it but despite my fear I felt quite composed and clear headed. "Okay," I thought. "Here we go."
I crept out of my room silently, my metal-sleeved pen in my right hand
and a small LED flashlight, unlit, in the other. I walked through the
side courtyard, heading for the stairs to the second floor. I crept up
the stairs and looked around, seeing nobody. I rounded that hallway
and was continuing now a second when suddenly, right in front of me,
"Billy," a hotel regular and former Marine, rounded the corner with a
shotgun in his hand. He shouted at me, "STAY THE FUCK DOWN!" He's
always struck me as quite volatile and in that moment I was more
afraid of him than I was of whoever had the machine gun(s). I quickly
turned and half-walked/half-ran the other way, back down the hall, down the
stairs, and back to my room.
I quickly threw everything in my backpack, leaving the dirty clothes out so I wouldn't have to pack carefully, and set it near the door. I had to pee urgently and I realized that if this shit really went pear-shaped, an empty bladder would be an asset. I peed into a plastic water bottle and reassessed the situation. Billy was alive, the shotgun firing was likely him, the voices are definitely in both Dari and English and one of the English voices is shouting for Wais, the general manager.
I heard more shouting and now glass was breaking. A French man staying at the hotel crept by and we talked in hushed whispers. He'd also been
woken up by the firing, had no idea what was going on, had hid under his bed initially, and told me that after the initial pistol shots, he'd heard a woman screaming. I asked if him if he thought she'd seen something bad or if she'd been shot -- "Which kind of scream was it?" -- but he said he couldn't tell. We confided in each other that part of why we'd come to Afghanistan was for the danger but that this was definitely not what either of us had in mind.
After a while longer, he crept out again to see what was going on and I followed him. We slipped around the front corner, drawn by voices,
and found, finally, that the police, the Afghan National Army, and an
ISAF patrol had showed up at the front door of the hotel. This was
approximately 30 minutes after the shooting had begun.
I walked into the cluster of shouting people and tried to ascertain what went on. As far as I can piece things together, based on what I heard that night and what I've learned today, what happened is something like:
After the barbeque wound down, people still interested in drinking and partying moved from the courtyard into the bar. "Jason," a hotel
regular, was drinking heavily as was "Englebert," someone who'd just
checked into the hotel for the first time last night and who was, depending on who you asked, either a a State Department employee or a contract construction worker. In any case, the story goes that Jason, who was a nasty drunk and had caused problems twice earlier in the evening, called Englebert a faggot.
What happened next is unclear, but Jason went into a bathroom and Englebert left the bar and went into a shadowy area of the lounge about 40' away and waited for Jason to exit the bathroom. When he did, Englebert opened fire on him. Jason returned fire. Both men ran out of pistol ammo without hitting each other. Jason grabbed an MP5 submachinegun from his friend "Matthew" and opened fire with that.
Somewhere in the midst of the firefight, Englebert disappeared completely, either running off down the street or vanishing into the labyrinth-like hotel compound.
Resolving things with ISAF and the police took a few hours, with Jason
completely out of his head, drunk and furious, claiming self-defense
and saying that Englebert had tried to kill him, his wife, and his
friend. Luckily for everyone, Jason's friend Matthew was a cool head
and prevailed upon him to relax a little and stop threatening the
police and ANA soldiers. Wais was reasonable and handled the situation
well also. If you should want, or expect, anyone to remain calm, cool,
and logical in a situation like that, it's the people in a position of
authority and responsibility over everyone else.
Jason and his entourage left and then ISAF/police/ANA left and I
retired to bed. The next morning, I found out that Wais searched the
hotel and found the guy, the shooter, hiding in one of the servants
quarters. He handcuffed him and turned him over to the police who've
since tossed him in jail.
As you might imagine, discussing this has been on everyones lips all
day. People can hardly seem to talk about anything else.
Tidbits from today:
1) An Afghan couple who'd just married arrived at the Mustafa last
night. They entered with their wedding party and then the wedding
party left and the bride and groom came down to the lounge, barefoot.
(?) The second they stepped foot in the lounge is when the shooting
broke out. Glass flew everywhere. Bullets were flying. They
immediately ran from the hotel, running across broken glass barefoot.
2) Everyone ended up strange positions. I was in my room for most of
the firing, trying to decide whether it was safer to stay there or to
flee. Nick, the Greek doctor, stuffed his cargo pockets with a first
aid kit and gauze bandages and immediately went to the roof of the
hotel, thinking that anybody shooting wouldn't want to be cornered and
thus wouldn't come upstairs. Josh peed in a bottle like I had and
ended up on the roof with Nick. Mary ended up in someone elses room,
making cell phone calls to ask if people are ok.
--------
Today, the vast majority of the people in the hotel, and especially
the locals and expat regulars, have brushed off the incident as a mere
hiccup and are more concerned with looking forward to future
ramifications. "What if the Afghan police demand that everyone who has
weapons in the hotel have a permit?" Wouldn't that be terrible? It
might be for certain peoples fragile egos and paranoid fantasies, but
in terms of overall safety for everyone, I think it would be an
improvement. To acquiesce to the general chaos of the region is a
mistake, in my opinion. Weapons firing in the lobby of a hotel,
nevermind fully automatic weapons, is not a normal or safe state and
it shouldn't be brushed off with a macho shrug and wink.
Of course, voicing opinions like these might help me find camraderie
amongst the more enlightened expats, but to the rest it marks me as a
coward who's not a "Real Man." A real man would understand that being
called a faggot is appropriately responded to by trying to kill
someone and a real man would know that this sort of thing is just men
being men -- naturally prone to violence, tough, macho, hard. It's all
very absurd but in a land where the natural state is so abnormal, I
think it's easy to lose sight of what should be the natural state.
Panjshir Valley
Tuesday morning, I set my alarm for 5am and headed for the nearby
Panjshir Valley. It was nice to get out of the city and I was eager to
visit the grave of famed mujaheddin commander Ahmed Shah Massoud.
Massoud is a local hero here and his picture decorates billboards,
shop displays, and taxi windows. His image far, far outnumbers the
pictures of Hamid Karzai. Massoud held the Panjshir Valley against the
Russians and then against the Taliban, repelling numerous invasion
attemps from both. He was assassinated two days before 9/11 by a pair
of Arabs disguised as journalists.
I wanted to make a quick day-trip to the Panjshir to visit his grave.
I ran the trip by the driver at the hotel and after much non-commital
bullshit he finally settled on US$150. I laughed and instead went by
local transport. I ended up spending 240 Afs for the entire trip,
which is, mm... US$4.80 or so? Under five bucks.
The Panjshir River, which flows through the valley, is one of the only
(?) fast-flowing rivers in the country. The road into the valley
follows the river, twisting and turning, passing mountains of scrapped
Russian steel: tanks, armored personnel carriers, etc. Parts of tanks
have become bridges or diving platforms for kids in the river, but
most simply lie still on the side of the road, a testament to
Massoud's prowess as a tactician.
It takes approximately four hours to reach Massoud's grave (Qaber-e
Massoud). It's a small, simple green dome on a hill-top -- green being
the color of Islam and, consequently, the color of martyrs. There
were a few soldiers milling about and a small contingent of workers is
building brick platforms to transform the simple monument into
something more befitting the "Hero of the Afghan People." I was the
only tourist there.
I spent some time in the tomb itself, took some pictures, and signed
the guestbook. Afterward, the soldiers -- friends and former soldiers
under Massoud's command -- invited me to have lunch with them. It was
sort of surreal to sit with Massoud's soldiers in the husk of a
"liberated" Russian troop carrier. We ate pilau and drank tea,
struggling with the language barrier as they spoke no English beyond,
"No problem!" These men, seasoned mujaheddin, were the first truly
muscular Afghans I've seen in my time here. All of them were Tajiks,
as Massoud was.
After an hour or so a bus heading to Kabul passed by and I took the
opportunity to return to the city.
Miscellania
There're a few distinct things that I've been ruminating on and want
to talk about. Typing is so easy and mindless for me that it's a very
zenny, lovely way to sort out my thoughts and sharpen my reflections.
Open the floodgates and let it all go.
-------- Hitchhiking in Afghanistan
Kristine sent me an email about my "hitchhiking experience" saying
that she'd discussed it with her sister and her sister's girlfriend
and they'd wondered about my judgement there. "Did your discomfort
[with the original driver] push you into an even more dangerous
situation?"
The answer is that I don't know and that I can't know. But, that
having been said, I do think I made the -right- decision for that
moment in respecting my gut instincts.
Here's why I think that's the case: The brain, as an organ, receives a
LOT more information than the conscious/higher mind ever sees. In
every nanosecond, the brain is taking in probably hundreds of
thousands, if not millions, of bits of distinct stimuli -- visual,
aural, olfactory, tactile, etc. Only a handful make it to the
conscious mind. Case in point: you can sit and study in a loud cafe
and you really "hear" nothing whatsoever as you're doing this. But if
someone in the cafe says your name, you'll hear that. Your brain was
hearing everything the whole time and it was filtering out everything
except that which it deemed important, ie your name being said. Or you
can lay in the grass and while you won't consciously feel the grass
touching you at every moment, you will feel a bug start to crawl up
your leg.
Now, "gut instincts," such as they are, are from the oldest part of
our brain: the brain stem or, as it's sometimes called because it is
so ancient and survival-focused, the "reptilian brain." This is the
part of the brain which, I think, receives much more information than
the "conscious mind" does. It's separate, as much as any one part of
the brain can be, from the higher faculties that let us do neat stuff
like calculus and writing haikus. The parts of the brain that do those
sorts of things developed much later and are much more "conscious."
The "higher" mind has a propensity to get caught up in all sorts of
stupid bullshit that takes a long time to sort out, eg thinking. It
takes a long time, that is, compared to the brain stem which has had
hundreds of millions of years of evolution aimed at, first, making
snap -- instant! -- decisions that'll promote survival and, second,
making those decisions based on danger recognition patterns that've
been honed over the eons. The brain stem is functionally instant and
it's very, very good.
So, that's the long answer. I trust my "gut instincts" because they
come from a place with much more information than the conscious "I"
has, and they come through a part of the brain that's had hundreds of
millions of years to "get it right" on making instant decisions which
will promote the survival of the organism, namely moi.
The short answer, of course, is that I trust my "gut instincts"
because they -feel right-. :)
-------- The Minaret of Jam
The Minaret of Jam was easily the most potent experience I've had in
Afghanistan. I wish I were better able to capture the intensity of the
experience but I can't find the words to wrap around it.
While I was there, I wanted to play capoeira or meditate or compose a
haiku with tea leaves. Do something to honor the experience. To
channel or reflect some positive energy back into the experience. Lift
a mountain, dive into the river and swim down to the bottom and dig
with my hands until I broke through to the other side of the world.
-------- Theme Songs
During the prep for this trip, and especially as the final day
stateside grew quite close, I felt like my "theme song," as it were,
would have to be the White Stripes track, "Seven Nation Army."
Travelling across Central Afghanistan, through the mountains, moving
up through a valley, paralleling a river, rising to the peak of a pass
where you can look out over the tops of the mountains, feels like
something nicely captured by the Chemical Brothers track, "Surface to
Air."
I don't know what to make of the desire to associate music with
experiences. Is this any different from a couple having "our song" or
associating your first dance at prom with a certain track? I remember
laughing at someone for wanting to listen to certain music while
flying over the Hindu Kush, but that's exactly what I want to do. I
want to set my experiences to music. Breathe aural life into them and
let them bounce and jiggle and radiate vibrant sound.
-------- Western Women Travelling in Afghanistan
Someone asked in one of the blog comments if I'd run into any female
travellers here.
I've only met one. She's an American named Molly. Tall, skinny, blonde
hair and blue eyes; she's a glassblower from Ohio off on a
post-college walkabout. She's been on the road for a year, travelling
from Cairo to Cape Town and, now, around Central Asia.
The practical "this is Afghan culture" side of her travel experience
has played out with many hotels refusing to let her stay there and
many busses requiring that she purchase two seats in the vehicle,
paying double, so that nobody would sit beside her. At chaikhanas, she
sometimes has to sit behind a curtain, seperate from all the men
who're eating. She covers her head while she's out but she's so
blatantly a foreigner that I doubt anyone is fooled.
I wish she was still here so that she could answer the implied
question in her own words. My own take is that despite all of the
above, she's excited and happy to be in Afghanistan. She understands
that the curtain in restaurants, the seating arrangements in busses,
etc, are all cultural things that you just have to put up with. I
think that she's chosen to travel with two Western men while in
Afghanistan, when she'd previously travelled alone much or most of the
time, probably points at some measure of fear or insecurity. She
mentioned that she feels safer in NWFP/FATA Pakistan than she does
here, but I'm not sure that's well founded. It might just be the
"dangerous rep" of Afghanistan and I, personally, think NWFP/FATA is
far more dangerous for a foreigner than most parts of Afghanistan.
I think travelling here as a Western woman is do-able -- Molly is
proof of that. The negative side is that you deal with a bit more
bullshit, with hotels and busses, and the negative expectations
Westerns bring are probably compounded for women by the fear of rape.
On the plus side, if you're culturally aware and polite, things are
generally pretty safe here and Western women are a sort of "third
gender" which gives them access to both Afghan men and women. The
latter are completely closed off from Western men with no respectable
Afghan man letting you (me!) interact with his mother, wife, or
daughters.
The handful of other women I've met here haven't been travellers. A
contractor, a photographer who stays in the hotel all the time except
when travelling with a private driver and a translator, and a few NGO
workers or Thai hair-stylists working at fancier hotels in the city.
Snapshots
1) The Masjid-e Jami is often referred to in English language guides
as the "Friday Mosque." "Masjid" means mosque and, yes, the word for
"Friday" is "Jami" -- but Jami does not mean Friday, per se. It means
a group of people gathered together, most typically for prayer
("salat" in Arabic or "namaz" in Dari). In Dari, the days of the week
are numbered. "Yak, du, se" are the numbers 1, 2, 3 and Sunday is
"yakshanbe," Monday is "dushanbe," Tuesday is "seshanbe," etc. Friday
is the only day that breaks this "shanbe" (day) sequence and it is
because Friday is the Muslim holy day. The day of Jami -- people
gathering together in prayer. The Masjid-e Jami, then, is not the
"Friday Mosque" but the "Mosque of people gathering together." Take
note.
2) Everyone here spits. Correction, all males here spit. They spit on
the sidewalk when outside and out the car window when seated next to
the window. When they're inside, they still spit -- onto the floor of
the restaurant or the carpet of the hotel. When they're in a car and
not near the window, they spit on the floor of the car. Nobody bats an
eye.
3) The Mustafa is an incestuous little community. The twelve or so
people here keep active a large enough rumor mill to make you think
our numbers were tenfold. The macrocosmic Afghanistan problem of a
skewed sense of value plays out here in the hotel on a microcosmic
scale. Here, it's with women. Or should I say, "woman." There's only a
single Western woman here and since that makes her (ostensibly,
possibly) the only "available" woman around, her value has
artificially skyrocketed. A face in the crowd in her home country, the
focal point of a swirling maelstrom of attention and attempts to win
affection -- or just sex -- at the Mustafa. The topic -- "she!" --
dominates coffee table conversation here and that fact aggravates me
to no end. Where she'd previously tried to downplay all of this
nonsense, and recognized how artificial it was, she's now, two weeks
later, talking about making lists of her "top five" of the men around
here that she'd screw. The whole think reeks of 8th grade and is so
pitifully juvenile that when I look around at who is sitting at the
table buying into this -- a doctor, a satellite communications
engineer, a psychiatrist -- I want to cry or scream or collapse in on
myself and fall straight through the floor.
4) There're three places to get military rations -- MREs, or Meals
Ready to Eat -- here. The first two places are the bazaar near Bagram
Airbase and the bazaar near the Kabul Compound. Soldiers trade MREs
for cigarettes, I think, or give them to locals as gifts, and then the
locals sell them. The third place is a shop on Chicken Street. I'm not
sure where those MREs come from as they're not individual. You buy
them by the case (12 units) or by the pallette (a number of cases). It
seems there's a black market for MREs here, perhaps fed by
unscrupulous Westerners or locals doing transport and a few cases,
every few days, just "falling off the truck."
I've been eating them for a few days and while not "good," on an
objective scale, in terms of Kabul food they're fantastic, even
gourmet. At $5 to $10 for a case of 12, they're something of a bargain
as well. In the states, an individual meal at a military surplus store
runs you $10. Here, it's about 80 cents per meal. Each includes an
entree, a desert, crackers, peanut butter or cheese, a small (glass!)
bottle of Tobasco sauce, etc, as well as matches, chewing gum, toilet
paper, and instant coffee.
5) A few weeks prior to this trip, while walking alone at night in
Virginia, an ten-second image flashed into my mind. It was me,
kidnapped. The view is of a small, dimly lit room. Cracking plaster,
peeling paint. A blank wall partially covered with a haphazardly
strung homemade banner proclaiming the name of some jihadi group in
Arabic script. Hizb-e-Islami or Islmaic Jihad or al-Saraya Mujaheddin,
maybe. I'm kneeling on the floor in front of the wall. Clothes torn
and dirtied, head hanging limply, chin resting against my chest, eyes
fixed on the floor, perhaps, or closed. My body is broken and beaten,
my wrists tied together behind my back and my shoulders slumped
forward in a mixture of exhaustion and resignation.
In the moment that this image appears in my head, my dried, cracked
lips are scarcely moving, mumbling at barely above a whisper: "Every
finger in the room is pointing at me... I want to spit in their faces
but I'm afraid of what that might bring me. Got a bowling ball in my
stomach, got a desert in my mouth... figures that my courage would
choose to sell-out now..."
Saturday August 20th
I've been back in Kabul for two days now and have whittled them away
doing absolutely nothing of consequence. I didn't, and don't, feel
good about that, but I don't feel any strong inclinations toward
anything else. In an effort to sort out these feelings, I sat down in
front of the computer earlier today, closed my eyes, and just "free
wrote" for a while. I didn't imagine I'd post, or even keep, the
results, but I suppose in an effort to have this blog accurately
reflect my travel experience, I should include everything... even
barely coherent personal ramblings. The results are below.
A few hours after writing this, I realized that the answer to doing
nothing right now and not enjoying that feeling, is to volunteer my
services. I've started talking to people in hopes of finding an NGO
that wants a week worth of free help with IT/HTML/web design stuff or
writing/editing stuff. Hopefully some will bite.
-----------------------
I feel listless. Doldrums.
I've accomplished nearly everything I set out to do here. The only
remaining items are a visit to the OMAR landmine museum, the destroyed
areas of West Kabul, and a day-trip to the Panjshir Valley. After
that, I will be... done? Was Afghanistan merely something to conquer?
Go here, see this, do that. Done. A box checked off.
I'm not sure what I wanted here. Romance? Jason Elliott's descriptions
of the beauty of the landscape and the hospitality of the people?
Danger? Awe? To sit in a cafe back home and casually mention that I've
just returned from Afghanistan, in hopes that it'll draw raised
eyebrows and a warm regard for my masculinity and bravery?
I hope it's not the latter.
Honestly, I hope it's not any of these things. This is to be a
vacation for me. Some time away from work. Some time devoted only to
myself. But I really don't know what to do with it. I almost wish I
had some sort of job if only so I'd have something to do. "What does a
man really need? A few pounds of food per day, a place to lie down in,
and an activity that yields a sense of accomplishment. That's it." I
think it's the last item that's lacking here.
Doldrums.
My trip across the Central Route wasn't epic, by any means, but it was
a tough slog that had the benefit of being aimed at something precise.
I was heading east, and every moment of jarring pain in the back of a
HiAce or riding pillion on a motorcycle was a bit of progress toward
that. I went where a relatively few other people have been, especially
recently. Remote. Adventure.
Done. Check. Next? Kandahar, just to say... what? To impress... who? A
few people who know that of all of Afghanistan, Kandahar is likely the
only place with a modicum of active danger. I don't want to do
anything for the sake of impressing people, but I also don't want to
sit here at the Mustafa, watching pirated DVDs, talking with the
expats, etc. I want something more. And for lack of a better choice,
maybe I should run off to Kandahar. Zip down to Peshawar and head off
to Dara. And what? I have a week left. A little more than that, before
I fly to Dubai. After that, it's pure vacation silliness. A play in
London, a movie. Food. A fucking hamburger.
Can I have my vacation here at the hotel? How much will a hotel cost
in London? A hostel? $20 per day at the Mustafa. $2 for a DVD. $10 for
12 MRE meals of varying quality. Henry Miller. I could finish reading
my books. I could absorb every last ounce of juice from everything he
wanted to communicate, in hopes that somehow it'd help alleviate the
lack of direction here.
Why do I even want direction? Do I have to feel like I accomplished
something? Do people returning from vacation get asked, "So, what did
you accomplish?" Is it not equally noble... no, not noble... Is it not
equally valuable to simply sit and be with your thoughts and devote
all your time to yourself? That's vacation, I think, though I've known
since Ecuador that in many ways that sort of lack of goal direction is
disappointing to me.
Why?
When I see people who're afraid to stop, to settle down, to take a
moments respite to reflect, I think they're running from something.
Afraid of something. Afraid of what they'll find if they look inside
themselves and so they reach and grasp and grab and anything they can
get their hands on, they devote themselves to. Anything external.
Anything that doesn't require personal honesty.
I don't feel like that's me. I like to imagine that I'm quite honest
with myself and quite capable of sitting quietly, fading slowly into
my mind, merging the conscious and unconscious, honestly assessing how
I feel, what I think, what I want, what I fear.
So what, then, do I fear here?
Do I fear returning home and saying, "Yes, well, I travelled -- nay,
adventured! -- for the first three weeks and the last week I sat in a
hotel, eating MREs and watching DVDs, feeling as though Afghanistan
had nothing left to offer me." Or I had no spirit of adventure left?
Nothing to draw me out and engage me? Did I go on this trip in hopes
that people would think I was more... cool? Masculine? Brave?
Adventurous? Did I have something to prove? If so, was it to myself or
other people? Both? In what ways? To other people, that I have the
courage needed to put myself in danger? No. To other people, that
Afghanistan is not as dangerous as they think? That the world isn't so
nasty and barbaric that we have to stay home, huddled in the corner.
The world is nasty and barbaric, but it is beautiful and tranquil at
the same time. People under stress -- people in war zones, or zones
recovering from war, etc -- are both the most beautiful and the most
ugly. Stress brings out the extremes of human nature. Grace. Dignity.
Murder, rape.
I want to sort myself out here. I don't want to spend another day at
idle, seeking to fill my time with aimless chats with the expats or
sitting up in the DVD lounge, etc. What does Kabul have to offer? If
nothing else is here for me, I should leave. What's near here?
Countries: Iran, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, China,
Pakistan, India. Iran and Turkmen Baba Land are out for the difficulty
of obtaining visas. Tajikistan and Uzbekistan would likely be more of
the same although perhaps Uzbekistan would have a different energy
because of their brutal quashing of a popular uprising recently. Would
people talk to me about that? Could I help? China is too far, I think.
The Wakhan Corridor is not easy to traverse and flying in would take a
considerable investment of both money and time, especially since going
into Tibet itself is a major pain in the ass and requires a measure of
trickery with government officials and official tours and the like.
That leaves what? Pakistan? India? I could go to India but I almost
prefer to leave the country wholly untouched until my Four Points
trip. What's it like to close your eyes and start walking, blind and
unknowing, and to suddenly find yourself underwater? Your entire body
changing medium. The temperature. The danger. All of it in a flash. I
want India to capture that moment. I'm afraid it'll be more of the
same...
Is anything in this world different? I've often paraphrased the Dalai
Lama and told people that all we're all fundamentally the same. We
have hearts, minds, feelings. We seek to maximize happiness and
minimize suffering. We're not really different at all. And yet... I
feel so drawn to travelling, in hopes that a culture will be different
from my own -- or "different enough" -- that I'll... what? Have some
change? Provoke some change in myself? What change? And why? And why
provoked by something external? Because that necessarily must be the
case, or because it's easier than "provoking" it myself, internally,
purely through self reflection. "The only zen on a mountaintop is the
zen you take with you."
There was a line or two in Tropic of Capricorn that touched on this.
Early in the book. I should fish it out and reread it. The most
dangerous and most difficult adventure doesn't require that you go
anywhere -- it only requires that you go within yourself.
Sadie and I talked about this, ages ago. In another time, when rivers
flowed uphill. I think our final agreement centered around something
like this: If you strip away all your preconceived notions of what the
world Is, the kids playing in the yard across the street from your
house is as wholly foreign a situation as anything, ANYTHING, you can
find anywhere in a remote corner of this planet. What, then, is the
point of travel? Where's the pith here? We strap ourselves into little
metal sleeves and we catapult them through the air, landing somewhere
else and... what? Improve our ability to empathize? Maybe that'll play
out in meaningful ways. Politics, etc. Would we be so quick to
degenerate into violence if the "other" -- wasn't? Is meeting new
people worthwhile? Meeting different sorts of people? People with
different value systems? I think the last one is worthwhile. It must
be. It's the collision of divergent opinions and out of this
collision: partial truths can be combined, the truth itself can be
revealed and strengthed, having been tempered by fire, and things
false can be shed like snakeskin. JS Mill.
Where do we sit now? Staring at the children in the yard across the
street and travelling overland through Papua New Guinea. Francis Ona
is dead. John Garang is dead. There're interesting things happening in
the world. Interesting. Geopolitics. What's going to happen with
Bougainville? Sudan? What's happening with Iran? What's the real
story? What's the real danger? Was Iran the most likely candidate of
all middle eastern countries to home-grow some democratic revolution?
Wasn't that true, a few years ago? Bah.
Release.
Children play in the yard. Collisions of value-systems benefit
everyone. A generation whose minds are sapped by television. What do I
know about Henry Miller other than some inkling that he had some sort
of (long term, long distance) liason with Incest-bunny Anias Nin? Is
it selfish to hope that authors, artists, have something to offer me?
"Be heart-core. What is it that we do art for?" Communication. The
wrist must be loose and relaxed as it holds the end of the paintbrush.
The fingers grasp gently and the circle is drawn slowly, its value in
the experience of creating not in the final product. A perfect circle
on rice paper.
I don't know why anyone travels except that... it's romantic. I think
we're hoping for some experience to change us. Chain jus(t)[ice]. Why
on earth am I in Afghanistan? Why did I move to San Francisco? Would I
be happy sitting in a 10x10 room, duracrete, one lightbulb... of
course not. Afghanistan and San Francisco have a measure of beauty...
and a variety of things to offer me. Things that... bring me
happiness? Joy? Happiness is transient and has an opposite in sadness.
Joy is something deeper, perhaps. Tied to the soul. Souljoy. "She's
unique among women I've loved in that I feel souljoy merely from
sharing physical presence with her." Transient. Redefining "joy" in
such a way that it's not mere transient happiness, and not merely the
long-term presence of short-term lust and chemical attraction...
pheromones. Moths. Joy. Happiness comes and happiness goes. Joy is a
noble pursuit because it's a slow burn. Lifetimes of the slow ebb and
flow. Or years, maybe. Punctuated by tragedy. The slow breath of the
universe. Brahma's chest slowly rising and falling. Vishnu and Shiva.
"I have become death, destroyer of worlds." Chapter 11. Maybe I should
have brought the Bhagavad-Gita with me instead. Fuck Umberto Eco for a
game of soldiers. Marquez too.
What fits moods? Why do we want to amplify our moods? When I feel bad,
I don't want to feel good -- I want to feel worse. I pick music that
matches my miserable mood and I seek to deepen it, as if in suffering
I am legitimized. In happiness, we want to amplify that too, choosing
happy music, positive situations, etc. Amplification. Modulation.
Frequency and amplitude. With a mood of a certain frequency, we want
to modulate the amplitude and maintain the same frequency. My time
here in Kabul is, then... I see no correlation. An attempt to grossly
increase the amplitude of my present life in hopes that by doing so I
would alter the frequency? A collision. The glancing blow of a meteor,
spinning through space, the product of dull, dry calculus instead of
the magic of chaos.
Chasing an impossible dream. Hoping for external circumstances to do
the work that it's too hard to do internally? Too intimidating to even
begin? The value of... We want life to happen to us. Yet, "Life is
what happens while you're busy making plans." Plans. I'm good at
plans. Good at lists. Steps, strides. Giant steps. Slipping silently
along the shore of the Sea of Tranquility. Mind games. Intellectual
gymnastics. Fantasy. Day dreaming. Lobsang Rampa might want you to put
your consciousness in your big toe but the stronger experience is to
put it elsewhere entirely. A body works, struggles. A mind is free.
Wholly seperate. The simple things are left to base motor skills and
the mind, the post-bicameral mind of Julian Jaynes, is free to wander
and dip and dive and slide and swim and twirl and then explode --
spraying itself out into oblivion, tiny particles falling like an
umbrella of lonely, screaming electrons.
Maybe I'll go play soccer with the kids at the Shahr-e Naw park.
Central Afghanistan and the Minaret of Jam, Band-e Amir and Bamiyan
Twenty minutes outside of Herat, we came to a junction where the
smooth, asphalt road we'd been driving on split into two. One side
remained beautifully paved, the other was a nasty, gnarly dirt road
littered with potholes and thick with dust. The driver smiled and
pointed down the paved road to where it disappeared into the horizon.
"Iran," he said. He wheeled the van down the dirt road and gestured,
"Afghanistan."
"Afghanistan," coupled with a shrugged sigh, would become a common
lament over the next week. When there's dust so thick that you drive
twenty feet and then wait for thirty seconds for the road to reappear
before driving another twenty feet, the only explanation that
transcends the language barrier is an exaggerated shrug and the
one-word excuse, "Afghanistan." Indeed, nobody ever claimed the roads
in this country were good and the Kabul Caravan guide site even goes
so far as to note that, "in a country of bad roads, those in Central
Afghanistan are possibly the worst."
I've spent the last week on these roads and the physical toll tells
the tale: Quads and glutes extremely sore from hours spent walking up
the sharp inclines of high passes that were too steep for the anemic
motorcycles or four-wheel drive HiAce's to climb. Forehead and nose
peeling from a nasty sunburn brought on by too many hours holding onto
the back of a motorcycle. Hip abductors knotted and radiating pain
from holding my legs akimbo on the motorcycles as we zipped across
rivers or through very rocky areas. Coccyx and both knees bruised from
10+ hour rides in padding-free minivans stuffed full with eighteen
people. Body reeking from six days without enough privacy to even
change your underwear and socks, never mind scrubbing yourself clean
at the river. Nose perpetually clogged by the fine dust that fills
vehicles and coats everything near the roads, sapping the color from
plants and lending them a death-like pallor.
The beige shalwar kameez that I wore all week is so saturated with
this dust that it's impossible to clean. A casualty of the trip, it'll
have to be thrown out.
To call this region "lacking amenities" is a gross understatement.
There're no hotels, there's no bottled water available, and there're
no bathrooms. You sleep on the floors of chaikhanas, drink expired
orange soda or chai, and when you ask where the bathroom is, you get a
sideways smile and a gesture to a nearby field or river. The same
river, of course, that they're drawing water for chai and cooking from
and which they'll point you to if you ask if they have purified water.
The food situation is equally dismal. The bread is dusty, hard, and
wholly unappetizing. The chunks of meat are cold and have likely been
sitting out for a day or two, since they were first cooked, waiting
for more travellers to happen by. The rice is no better and,
unfortunately, there're no other reasonable choices. The only other
way to take in calories here is to eat long-expired Chinese cookies
sold in the villages.
All of that said, the trip is definitely worth it for two reasons.
First, the simple beauty of the landscape is unmatched, and second,
the Minaret of Jam has got to be one of the most spectacular sights in
Central Asia.
It's only a few hours outside Herat that the landscape slowly begins
to morph from empty plains into hills and then mountains. By the time
you're fully in the mountains, the change is so radical that you feel
like you're on another planet. Metal oxides color the soil and each
mountain is a different color. Pastel green shifts into a blue-tinted
gunmetal grey which bleeds into a dark, rusty orange. Some look like
they swallowed too many boulders and bulge as if they're about to
burst, spilling their cargo down into the valley below. Some stand
tall and narrow, sharp and naked, cutting across the landscape like
the spine of a dragon. Erosion has sliced away whole sides of
mountains, exposing the tall rock spires inside, leaving them looking
like ancient cities uncovered after thousands of years by shifting
dunes.
The valleys between the mountains are empty at first but as you climb
in elevation they slowly shift from dust to green grass and are soon
filled with herds of fat-bottomed sheep and goats. By the time you
reach the area of Garmao and Jam, the now verdant valleys are home to
nomads who've created small, temporary villages out of tents made from
wicker and animal skins. The nomad women wear elaborate clothing with
bright colors and rarely, if ever, cover their faces. The children,
often with scabs across their cheeks and noses blamed on the cold
weather, stare at you from their mothers backs or from the grassy
fields where they're playing.
It's in this region that the Minaret of Jam is hidden at the end of a
rocky, winding path that criss-crosses a small river. The path
meanders past waterfalls, towering stone monoliths in every color, and
small fruit orchards. The metallic, earthy smells of wet rocks and
rotting logs fills the air. The sudden appearance of the tip of the
minaret in the distance tantalizes and at once reminds you of its
sheer size -- at sixty five meters tall, it's the second tallest
minaret in the world. As the path continues to wind with the river,
the minaret periodically disappears and reappears until finally, in a
blink, the hills give way and open onto flat land with the minaret
towering in front of you.
Standing on the curved bank of the Hari Rud river, the isolation of
the minaret in this remote corner of Central Asia plays a big part in
its awesome presence. Suddenly finding yourself standing before it,
with mountains towering on all sides, you feel as if you've come
across a long lost treasure, buried through the ages but once again
discovered by... you! The intrepid traveller, trekking through the
central mountains of Afghanistan. Indeed, the minaret was not
"discovered" until 1943 and its exact origins remain something of a
mystery.
It's from the Ghorid period and its surface proclaims its creator to
be "Ghiyasuddin Mohammad ibn Sam, Sultan Magnificent! King of Kings!"
Ghiyasuddin was a Ghorid ruler who died in 1202. Its tan surface is
covered with the complete text of the 19th sura of the Qu'ran.
Entitled "Maryam" (Mary), this sura "speaks of Mary and the Virgin
Birth, of Prophets Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Ishmael and
Enoch, and, of Adam and Noah. It relates how they were guided by the
revelations of the Merciful, warns unbelievers of the punishments of
Hell and promises those who embrace the Faith the glories of the
Garden of Eden." (Dupree) Whether the minaret marks the site of the
ancient city of Firozkoh, capital of the Ghorid Dynasty, is
unresolved. The presence of tablets carved with Hebrew, found by
Italian archaeologists 1962 and dating from 1149 to 1215, add to the
mystery and some contend that it's a victory tower proclaiming the
victory of Islam over the pre-Islamic religions of the area.
---------
By the time I reached Band-e Amir, I'd been on the road for five or
six days. I'd spent three days drinking two liters of orange soda per
day and two days drinking pump water that I'd treated with Katadyn --
one liter at a time and letting it sit for the required four hours.
Arriving at Band-e Amir, half of me was eager to see the lakes that
I'd heard so much about and a half of me was simply desperate to check
all the shops and see if anyone had a bottle of water for sale. After
five strike outs, I found someone who had a single bottle. I paid
twice the regular price and couldn't have been happier.
With my water in hand, I sat gazing out over the lake, marvelling at
the contrast between the pink cliffs and the water that shifted from a
glowing cerulean blue in the center to a light, airy turquoise close
to the shore. The other-worldly coloring of the water is due to high
concentrations of metal ions and the lake is so rich in lime that it
has formed a natural wall for itself out of these deposits. The lake,
perfectly flat, sits on a hill side with the top edge comprised of
towering cliffs and the lower edge formed, literally built up, by tall
walls of limestone.
By and large, Afghans cannot swim and those who do come up to Band-e
Amir tend to just sit on the edge of the lake and have picnics and the
like. The morning I was there, however, I saw one family playing in
the water. Five of them sat on shore while two waded out into the
water onto a natural shelf which dropped off suddenly. Both were fully
clothed and one held a length of rope that was tied around the other
person's waist. The person with their waist tied would jump off the
shelf and flail wildly in the water, seemingly drowning, for about
four or five seconds before the other person would reel them back in.
After much laughter, the episode would be repeated a few minutes
later.
After a few hours, I left for Bamiyan.
---------
Bamiyan is much larger than its reputation suggests. Most of the
guides and travelogues I've read make it sound like a tiny village
with a tourist hotel or two situated on a hilltop, overlooking the
non-Buddhas. I was alternatingly told that it did or didn't have
electricity and everyone agreed that it definitely didn't have
internet access.
In reality, it's a one-road town, but that main corridor road is
probably a kilometer long, or more, and crammed full of shops of every
variety. There's most definitely electricity and there's even internet
access on the "toward Kabul" end of the road at a place called the
Bamiyan Business Center. The UN/NGO presence feels heavy, both from
the obvious show of many white trucks and SUVs mounted with large
antennas, and the less obvious plentitude of shop signs that're
(mostly accurately) translated into English.
The Buddhas are, of course, completely gone. I think Bamiyan is still
definitely worth visiting, and not merely as a show of support for the
Hazara people who were ruthlessly persecuted by the Taliban and who
had their only foreign-money attractors (tourist attractions)
destroyed. It's large enough to have the amenities you'll want and
need, but the weather is cool and nice and the air is much clearer and
easier to breathe than the thick smog soup of Kabul.
---------
I'm back in Kabul now and trying to decide what I want to do.
Kandahar is intriguing and while the little boy in me wants to run in
a convoy and play with guns and hang out with a bunch of mujaheddin,
the safer route to Kandahar is likely me, alone, leaving my backpack
here at the Mustafa, and travelling in a regular taxi or bus.
Really the only thing I'm especially interested in seeing there is the
"Al Qaeda graveyard." I'm not sure if I've mentioned it before on this
blog. It's a grave area for foreign fighters who were martyred and are
considered heroes. The dirt of their graves is reputed to have healing
powers and the sick visit to take tablespoons of it, replacing the
dirt taken with a tablespoon of salt.
I definitely want to go to the Panjshir and visit Massoud's grave.
It's a day trip from Kabul but it'll have to wait until tomorrow.
Today, August 19th, is Afghan Independence Day. They're celebrating
their freedom from British rule in 1919. Consequently, it's not a good
day for shopping or travelling. Everything is closed.
---------
Snapshots from the overland trip from Herat to Bamiyan:
1) On the long drive from Herat to Garmao, our driver became very
sleepy and with mimed gestures asked me if I knew how to drive. When I
said yes, he pulled over and I slid into the drivers seat. The HiAce
was a right-hand drive car, but shifting with my left hand came
naturally and off we went, again zipping toward Garmao. I heartily
enjoyed having full range of the road, weaving and dodging the largest
holes in an effort to find the smoothest section. The novelty of (me!)
driving an AWD bus across Central Asia, with 15 swarthy Afghans in the
back, was immediate and I was grinning from ear to ear.
2) With only a single bus each morning going the direction I needed, I
realized I had an entire day to visit the Minaret of Jam. Instead of
spending an hour on the back of a motorcycle, I decided to rent a
horse. It was my first time on horseback in memory, but it's not
especially difficult and we were immediately underway, chugging up the
mountain pass that separates Garmao from Jam.
As we walked up the first real hill, the poor horse started farting
loudly with every step. I couldn't help but laugh. For the next hour
or so, every time we would start up another steep section, the farting
would start again. Even after the tenth steep section I couldn't help
but giggle and I thought to myself, "If this keeps up, by the time we
get to Jam the horse will be completely deflated and I won't have
anything to ride back."
Unfortunately, after much struggling on the last sections before the
top of the pass, the old bag finally gave up and absolutely refused to
go any further. I ended up walking back down to Garmao and hiring a
motorcycle.
3) On the road back from the Minaret of Jam, the motorcycle I was
riding on the back of hit a nasty spot and I bounced so high into the
air that I nearly flew completely off the bike. This caused the driver
to momentarily lose control and sent us right up against the road
edge, the back wheel of the bike slipping off into empty air above a
forty foot drop. I immediately jumped off the bike and onto solid
ground and we both roared with laughter. Thirty seconds later we're
back on the move. What else can you do but laugh?
4) At a chaikhana between Band-e Amir and Bamiyan I met an Australian
man who's been travelling for nine years. It started with an early
retirement and a plan to travel for three months. These days, he and
his wife travel for ten months of the year and then spend two months
back home in Australia visiting the family. He revealed to me the
second Golden Secret of Squat Toilets. The first I figured out on my
own, much to my delight, and it was later confirmed by locals.
Secret 1: Twist the top of your shalwar kameez to the side and tie the
front and back together. It may be slightly preferable to do this on
the right side so as to seal the pocket, but either side will work.
This tying will keep the top from "touching the ground" (euphemism for
"soaking up the urine and feces splattered around the edges of the
squat toilet").
Secret 2: Don't take your pants down all the way. Take them only as
far as needed -- ie, mid-thigh. It's so simple but it never occurred
to me or, apparently, to many other travellers that he's revealed this
to over the years. If you take your pants down all the way, your legs
are too close together for safe, easy, effective squatting. If you
take your pants down only to mid-thigh, you can keep your legs as far
apart as you want or need for both hygiene and balance.
With these two "golden keys," squat toilets go from being a nasty drag
that you loathe and seek to avoid to something you might come to
prefer because, ultimately, they're more hygienic than sitting on
something. Hooray for that.
Going Dark
I'm leaving Herat this morning.
I'm going to try to go to the Minaret of Jam but it's turning out to
be far more complicated than expected. One thief at the "agency" area
for Ghor asked for 10,000 Afs for a Landcruiser. US$200. For that
price, I could buy my own motorcycle and go myself. I think, for the
distance, the price should be about 400 Afs, but since it's 4x4 only,
maybe 800 Afs. 1000 Afs. Around there. Reasonable locals agree. With
Jam off in the boonies, though, I'm not sure how it'll work. Garmao
seems to be the jumping off point. Other people say go to Chakhcaran
and hire a taxi for a day to take me BACK toward Herat to the minaret.
We'll see how it works.
I don't think any cities between here and Kabul have Internet access.
Someone told me Chakhcaran is very big but has no Internet access.
Someone else told me Bamiyan has no electricity. We'll see. I'll
likely not post again for somewhere between five days and ten days.
I'll check in again, most likely, when I'm back in Kabul, after from
Band-e Amir and Bamiyan.
Herat and the Plague
I arrived at the Kabul Airport two hours early but when I reached the
front of the line, the man at the ticket counter took one look at my
"reissued" (for a new date) ticket and promptly kicked me out of line,
telling me to wait somewhere else. I got the sense that the people who
had booked today, originally, would get first dibs on the plane and
that all of us whose flight had been cancelled would merely be
standby, waiting for someone else to cancel or fail to show. That's
the kind of thing that happens when you have an airline that has two
(two!) working airplanes to service Dubai, Frankfurt, Kabul, Herat,
Mazar-e Sharif, etc -- all of their routes.
Disappointed that it looked like my trip to Herat would be delayed
again, I tried to take finagle something and wandered off to find a
Kam Air manager who spoke a little English. When I did, I somewhat
timidly began to feign indignation and, in a flash, he grabbed my
ticket, marched over to the ticket desk, shouted something, and --
pow! -- I had my stamped boarding pass. I was in.
The flight was unremarkable except for the F-16's taking off before us
and the unwrapped hotdog bun soaked in cheese-like sauce that was
served instead of peanuts.
Herat, on the other hand, is quite remarkable. It's quite unlike Kabul
or Mazar-e Sharif. I think the only group here that is wholly enclosed
inside Afghanistan's borders are the Hazara people of the Central
Highlands. The rest all bleed into other countries. The Tajiks into
Tajikistan, the Uzbeks into Uzbekistan, the Pashtun's of the south
down into NWFP/FATA Pakistan, and here, in Herat, the bleed is over
into Iran.
I'm told Herat has a distinctly Iranian character. The streets are
wide and have medians filled with grass. The majority of trade is
across the border to Iran. The Iranian intelligence agency has a
history of meddling in Herati politics. There're trees here. On the
drive from the airport, our car stopped for some reason. In
Afghanistan, that either means you're picking up another person or the
car has stalled and died. I looked at my driver and then back at the
road and only then did I realize we had come to a streetlight. A
streetlight! There're none in Kabul, as far as I could tell, but Herat
has at least three. It's a novel idea and makes crossing certain
intersections less like playing Frogger, though you still have to
watch out. Cars and motorickshaws honor the lights but motorcycles
typically blast right through.
On arrival, I checked in the Mowfaq hotel. They have double-bed rooms
with no bathroom for 500 Afs, double-bed rooms with a really nasty,
dirty bathroom for 700 Afs, and double-bed rooms with a "clean"
bathroom for 1000 Afs. I opted for the middle choice, stashed my bag,
and headed off to the find the Masjid-e Jami. The Friday Mosque.
The mosque is about 250 meters from the hotel. It doesn't have the
expansive outer courtyards that the Shrine of Hazrat Ali mosque in
Mazar has, but it's still a monolithic presence, towering over the
neighborhood. There're been mosques on this site for ages, but the
current mosque was build in 1200 by Ghorid Sultan Ghiyasuddin. Inside
is an enormous courtyard, 100 meters square, with marble floors. The
mosque was in rough shape until a restoration of the tile work started
in 1943. The restoration has continued down to today, with the WFP
(World Food Programme) giving food to boys for learning how to make
the tiles and working on the restoration. I shot some video footage of
the mosque and will upload it... someday.
A practical tip: If you're going to visit the Masjid-e Jami in the
summer, pick one of the entrances that will open into the courtyard in
an area that will be in shade. I didn't and walking barefoot across 80
meters of sun-heated marble had me grimacing in pain and trying to
take fast, light steps, aiming directly for the nearest patch of
shade.
The mosque is very quiet and students mulled around, studying, while
other people napped in the cool marble antechambers off the main
square. I laid down myself, thinking about my expectations for this
trip and happy to have a moment of rest. I slept for about half an
hour and then went out into the main square to take a few pictures.
While doing so, two local men approached and we began talking.
It turned out they're students - seniors - at Herat University,
enjoying the solitude of the mosque to get studying done for their
final exams on Tuesday. One of them, Malikey, is an English literature
major and speaks excellent Englsih. The other, Abdul Qader, is
studying sociology. Abdul Qader asked me about "culture shock" and
Malikey and I talked about the religions of the world. After about an
hour of talking, Malikey invited me to stay a few days, in a guest
room at the "course" where he teaches English, to save money on hotel
costs and exchange some English tutoring for Dari tutoring. This
seemed like a great opportunity and my schedule isn't exactly fixed. I
agreed.
We walked back to the Mowfaq and I checked myself out before we headed
over to their "course" area. They rent a few rooms across town, near
the central square that has a statue of Afghans killing Russians in a
tank, as a memorial to the Russian slaughter of 2000 Heratis on that
street in 1979. I talked with them for hours at their school and the
Malikey's older brother gave me a ride across town to a restaurant on
the back of his motorcycle. For the first time, I felt less like a
tourist and more like I was experiencing true local culture. It was
also interesting, after being in cars that nearly hit motorcycles, to
instead be on the back of a motorcycle, inches from the hoods of
honking cars, slipping through traffic. Back at the school, they made
me a lovely bed upstairs, open to the sky, with a mosquito net and
everything.
They were so gracious and courteous that I felt bad when I changed my
mind and went back to the Mowfaq at midnight. I caught the plague a
few days ago, you see. I've had diarrhea and a rumbly stomach and feel
absolutely awful because I haven't absorbed any of the nutrients I've
eaten in the last two days. I had hoped I was over it, but my stomach
still felt bad that night and I woke up needing to spring downstairs
to the squat toilet, barely getting my pants down (and off) in time.
I returned upstairs but the wind made it nearly impossible to get to
sleep. Every year, during this season, Herat has "120 days of wind."
Babak is right, it does sound Biblical. "And God cursed them for their
sin, that every year hereafter, on the dawn of sin, the Heratis would
be reminded of His power by suffering one hundred and twenty days of
fierce wind!" It cools things down a bit, which is nice, but it's so
strong, and so dusty, that it dries out your nostrils, filling them
with dust-boogers, making it burn as you inhale. I'd started putting
my hat over my face, in a desperate attempt to maintain some
dust-free, humid air to rebreathe safely.
The wind was part of the reason I decided to leave, but most of it had
to do with the fact there there was no privacy in their bathroom, that
it was a squat toilet, which I still haven't mastered though I've
figured out an excellent trick, and that if things took a turn for the
worse I'd just want to lounge around naked in bed all day, fading in
and out of healing sleep.
I've been hesitant to take the Cipro I brought with me, as I don't
really feel that bad, but realistically, if I'm only here for a fixed
amount of time, why bother feeling awful and being tied to a toilet
just so my body can "deal with the problem on its own"? I think I'll
take some when I get back to the hotel.
I think everyone who gets sick likes to try to pinpoint what did it.
"The flu I have must've come from Sheryl at work! She was sniffling
and coughing all day, blowing her nose noisily and adding to her
mountain of gooey tissues!" Or, in my case, "I bet I know where I
caught this bug! It was the chaikhana across from the Mustafa in
Kabul. The normal kebabs seemed ok, but two of them were some sort of
special ground (lamb?) meat. They were hard on the outside, as
barbequed meat should be, but when I bit into it, it was extremely
soft and mushy inside, like dishwater-flavored rice pudding. Meat
shouldn't be like that. That must've been brought on the plague."
I'm not sure what my exact plans are now. Maybe some language exchange
today with Malikey and some sight-seeing, with him filling me in on
the history of the places. Maybe I'll just go back to my hotel room
and rest, naked in the heat, happy to have a nearby toilet and reading
Henry Miller. If I feel perfect tonight, maybe I'll just leave
tomorrow morning for the Minaret of Jam. I'm eager to get to Band-e
Amir.
Speaking of books, I finished Love in the Time of Cholera a few days
ago. I wasn't especially taken with it. While marvelling at his
beautiful, evocative style, I didn't really find myself able to
empathize with any of the characters. I'd planned to exchange novels
with other travellers, but I'd rather cut weight on my pack so I gave
the book to Nick, a Greek doctor, at the Mustafa. (This is in contrast
to One Hundred Years of Solitude, where I wanted to name one of my
kids after one of the characters for months after reading it...)
I definitely need to kick this bug before leaving for my long overland
trip to Bamiyan/Band-e Amir... Being stuck in a car when you feel
terrible is bad anywhere but especially bad here. I'd have to learn
the Dari words for, "Please stop as soon as possible, as I'm about to
explode, but please find a bush or large rock in this empty, desert
wasteland so that I can have the culturally-required privacy to go to
the bathroom. It is also important, of course, that you make sure it's
in an area where there aren't minefields on both side of the road so
that I can retain all my limbs. Thanks!" Tashakor! :)
Snapshots
Some snapshots, jotted down over the last two week.
1) At London Heathrow, I passed a gaggle of women walking quickly in
black burkhas. My heart skipped a beat and I quickly reminded myself,
"You'd better get used to seeing that." I'm not sure how I felt about
it in that moment. Slightly angry that they're not available to me in
any way? Slightly intimidated by that fact since it means they they
represent a strong unknown -- something I can't see, touch, feel,
understand, interact with, etc?
2) In a day in Peshawar, I saw two people in t-shirts -- Western
clothes. In a day in Kabul, I see many. Maybe five to ten percent of
the population here wears Western clothing. Young men in trendy jeans
and Diesel shirts, older men in business suits. Some women here wear
high-heels, painted toes, make-up. They clutch purses at their sides
and walk quickly, not looking at anyone, but even in silence their
choice of clothing makes a strong statement.
3) To say that Kabul is overrun with aid workers would be a mistake.
There're many here, certainly, but most stay locked up in their
compounds. You see the white Landcruisers of the UN or ISAF on the
street occaisionally, but there's little other indication of their
presence. The exception are the few bars/clubs that serve alcohol. The
Elbow Room, Copacabana. To a lesser degree, the bar here at the
Mustafa.
4) The server and window washer here at the Mustafa used to be a
professor of geography at the Kabul University. He makes US$100 per
month as a salary. My taxi driver when I first entered Kabul had spent
three years in Cairo studying Arabic and speaks five languages. The
realization of just how many educated people are reduced to menial
work here is slightly stunning, but in many ways it's not different
from back home. Talk to gas station attendants, or taxi drivers in San
Francisco. You'll meet people who were doctors, professors, successful
and rich business men, lawyers, etc, in their home countries.
5) The Kabul equivelant of San Francisco's massage parlors are the
back rooms of Chinese take-away (takeout) restaurants. US$50 for a
fuck.
7) When I was a teenager, I remember overhearing someone say that the
reason girls loved guys on motorcycles so much is because the men are
completely covered, including their heads, and thus you can imagine
exactly the sort of man that turns you on most. I wonder if a similar
thing happens here with the burkhas and head coverings? You can
imagine the woman underneath as the most beautiful in the world,
perhaps secretly eyeing you as she walks past, explosive sensual and
sexual energy eager to be unleashed, only barely kept in check by a
culture that forbids even a shared gaze. Maybe the fantasy would be
blunted by seeing a few women lift their veils to reveal old,
lop-sided, wrinkled faces, missing teeth -- the old woman taunting
Buttercup.
8) Men and women here aren't really allowed to look at each other.
Worse would be a Western man looking at a local woman. Still more
egregious would be the man taking a picture of the woman. A Western
woman wearing a short skirt or a cleavage-baring top is a scandal of
the highest order, possibly ending in gang-rape or a stoning. All of
that said, the billboards here are covered with pictures of Bollywood
stars in short sleeves or sleeveless tops, some with scoop necks.
Afghan men love to take pictures of Western women. More affluent
Afghan men sit in Internet cafes all day and surf porn. Joel told me
of going up to Band-i-Amir with three Western girls and renting a
rowboat. They rowed around a bluff to a private area and the girls
stripped down to their bras and underwear and went for a swim. Up on a
cliff overlooking the area, twenty or so Afghan men -- Kabuli tourists
visiting the lake -- had followed them and were watching the girls
swim, passing around binoculars.
9) At the Kabul airport, I was willing to pay about 100 Afs for a taxi
ride back to Shahr-e Naw. The first two taxi drivers I asked said it
would cost me 300 Afs. That's US$6 for a 15-20 minute taxi ride in a
country where, as far as I can gather, the official monthly salary for
a normal government worker is US$50. The third taxi driver didn't try
to rob me blind and offered me a fair rate of 70 Afs. When we got to
Shahr-e Naw, I paid him a flat 100 Afs instead, with the extra 30 Afs
as a way of saying, "thanks for not trying to screw me." Being
overcharged is very common here. In light of the local salaries,
slight overcharging should probably be happily endured, but charging
people six times the fair rate seems absolutely absurd. Cost to value
ratios are wildly out of whack here and I hope the locals realize that
when the journalists with expense accounts and UN workers making
US$9000/month leave, prices will have to plummet through the floor
before any normal tourists will be able to afford to visit.
Afternoon in the Babur Gardens
(Note: This post is from August 10th.)
After wasting 45 minutes driving around trying to find the (fabled?)
OMAR landmine museum, I ended up going to Babur's Gardens instead. The
gardens were almost completely destroyed by the mujaheddin, with a
local pointing out one of the hilltops where one mujaheddin camp was,
and another hilltop, on the other side of the garden, where another
had taken up a position. That whole section of Kabul was deserted at
that time, reduced to rubble by heavy shelling and rocket attacks. All
that was left of the once-spectacular gardens, by the mid-90s, was a
single dead tree, which still stands as a reminder, and some remnants
of the walls.
In the post-Taliban era, the Aga Khan Foundation has been working to
reconstruct the gardens and I must say, it's going splendidly. Thanks
for the Aga Khan funding and a work team of 150 men, there're now
hundreds of trees planted, rows of flowers, the pathways are being
laid with new stone, the buildings are being slowly rebuilt. In a few
years, once the work on the walls, paths, and buildings is finished,
and once the trees have had a chance to grow in, it will likely be the
most beautiful place in Kabul. A large, lush garden, terraced up the
hill to the top where the tomb and buildings are.
After a walk through the garden, I began talking Umar Wardak, the
project overseer for the reconstruction who doubles as the keeper of
the guest book. I signed the book and we chatted for twenty minutes
before he invited me back for tea. He showed me the original pieces of
the buildings that they've been able to salvage and the work being
done to faithfully recreate the garden buildings based on what they
used to look like.
We sat down for tea and slowly other people trickled in to sit and
talk with us. An ex-mujaheddin, now the night guard for the gardens,
two foremen who manage the masons working on the project, a former
military officer of the Najibullah government who fled to Pakistan and
then Iran when the Taliban came to power, and who is now a tree
sprayer, and Rahullah, a very tall, strong man who, it turns out, is
the number one boxer in Afghanistan and has won many tournaments in
Pakistan and Iran as well.
We talked for a few hours with the former military officer acting as
translator. Again I'd told them I was Australian, initially, and then
felt bad that I hadn't been honest when the subsequent discussion went
so well. We talked about marriage, which, with all the gold jewelry
you have to buy and the feast for everyone you know, etc, costs
approximately 300,000 Afghanis. That's approximately US$6,000 and thus
it's no surprise that many of them said they had to go to Iran for
many years and work, saving up money, just so they could come back and
get married. They asked if I was married and then if I lived with my
family or if I lived alone. When I said I lived alone, one exclaimed,
"Yes, that is the good way to live!" but the others were shocked by
the further revelation that I cook for myself. Their expectation, I
think, was that I would live with my mom, with her cooking for me,
until I married and lived with my wife who would by my new cook. The
idea that I took care of my own food, and my own laundry, was very
foreign to them. In the course of this discussion, I was able to
dispel some rumors for them, such as the idea that Westerners don't do
laundry at all because they buy clothes, wear them once, and then
throw them in the trash and buy more new clothes.
Afterward, I watched the sunset from the garden terrace and then
caught a taxi back across town to the Mustafa.
Mustafa BBQ Party
Well, damn. It looks like I'm stuck in Kabul for another day. I went
to the airport this morning and the gate guards turned me back saying
the Kam Air flight to Herat had been cancelled. I caught a taxi back
to the Kam Air sales office and had my ticket changed to tomorrow
morning. Hopefully it won't be cancelled also.
There was finally a glimmer of life at the Mustafa last night. The
owner, Wais, had been out of the country for a few weeks and
everything had been closed. Last night, he threw a barbeque in the
hotel courtyard, with Omaha steaks and crab legs. I think the steaks
were about US$30 a pop, imported, but were free for guests and
friends. As word got around, more and more people showed up. At its
peak, maybe 20 people were there. An AWCC contractor, his Chinese
girlfriend, an ex-Marine now indepenent contractor putting up wireless
antennas around the country, two American guys from Alaska and
Missouri who work for Evergreen, on contract to the UN, flying lear
jets. A couple of Thai girls showed up, hairdressers from a salon at
the Intercontinental Hotel. Two NGO workers involved with PR/media, a
few guys from the states doing "chase the high dollar" contract work
installing communications equipment, a Greek doctor over here for a
few months to train local doctors, etc.
I chatted with Tom, the ex-Marine doing communications contract work,
for a while and we talked about the safety of going to Kandahar. He
said he made the trip 5 weeks ago and that he thought it was probably
pretty safe if you ran in a convoy of three Landcruisers with tinted
windows, filled to the brim with Pashtun bodyguards -- hardcore
Jihadis -- and had the guards sit with converging fields of fire with
one in the backseat who has a straight view directly forward out of
the front of the convoy. Sheesh, ok. Very different from what I had in
mind, but it's true that the roads around there are dangerous.
Supposedly the Taliban elements routinely set up roadblocks and if the
police come through, they ambush them immediately. If vehicles they
want to capture come through, ie nice Landcruisers with tinted
windows, they gauge whether or not the ensuing firefight will be worth
it and then decide to let the convoy through or not.
Tom offered to let me ride down there with him next time he's going
and gave me his email address and mobile number. I must say I'm
intrigued by the prospect. The air in situations like that, surrounded
by heavily armed ex-mujaheddin with ammunition clips scattered
everywhere, through high tension areas, must be absolutely electric.
The two public relations/media people were the first two "aid workers"
I've met here who actually fit the spirit of the term. Greg, a
handsome, swarthy Frenchman, and Paloma, a strikingly beautiful
Spanish/French girl raised in Sao Paulo, both work for Sayara Media,
the biggest or second biggest (?) PR/communications firm in the
country. Greg has been here for a number of years and, sensing my
distaste for how much of the expat community handles itself here,
talked about how most NGO workers, as distinct from UN and
contractors, are actually working long hours in concert with local
people and are respectful of the local culture even as they seek to
create enclaves of "Western" culture to relieve stress, etc. Without
these sorts of outlets, he said, people would quickly become homesick
and uncomfortable and end up leaving within a few months -- a
situation that's damaging to their efforts to help the locals because
doing so requires building long-term relationships.
I appreciated his perspective and agreed with his reasoning as it
pertains to aid workers. At the same time, I still reserve some degree
of rancor for the "high-dollar chasers" who have little or no respect
for the local culture, boozing and whoring incessantly, making nasty,
racist remarks about the people whose misery they're profiting from.
Shameless "war profiteers," I suppose.
More on this topic later.
Paloma and Greg also mentioned that there's a weekly capoeira class
here in Kabul. A roda in Afghanistan? Imagine that. I suppose I
shouldn't be too surprised, as Babak mentioned a yoga class and I've
read about salsa dancing lessons, etc. Little bits of home that keep
the expats here in touch with Western culture since, as Greg put it,
"(they're) here to help, but not to become Afghans."
I'm very excited about my trip back from Herat! I think the Minaret of
Jam will be spectacular and Band-e Amir even more so. Now if only I
could get out there and get it started. I can't imagine Kam Air will
cancel flights two days in a row but we'll see. Life here requires a
measure of flexibility a patience.
Afghanistan After Dark
I'm back in Kabul now. Sitting in Mazar, I was exploring options to go to Herat. I could hire a jeep and spend three days driving there, twelve hours each day, sleeping on the roof of a caravan-serai each night for free. Or, I could catch a ride back to Kabul and fly to Herat from there. Or, I could fly directly from Mazar to Herat.
The third option seemed the fastest and cheapest, so I went to the local Ariana Airlines office and tried to see when the next flight was. Nobody in the entire airline office spoke any English whatsoever. It took me about fifteen minutes of miming and looking up key words in my phrasebook to figure out the following that the next flight was, in fact, today at 11am. It was 11:30am already as we talked in the office, but I was told the flight probably hadn't left yet. It would take 10 minutes to get to the airport. Maybe someone would cancel or fail to show up and I could take their place. The cost is 1500 Afs (~ US$30). If I missed that flight, the next one was next Monday -- a week away. (Or Thursday, a few days away, on Kam Air, but nobody in the Ariana office would admit that.)
I thanked them and sprinted out of there, grabbing my bag from the hotel where I'd tracked down Barukh and Chris. I said goodbye as Barukh was writing notes in his journals and Chris lay in bed, nearly naked, sweating, half-dead as he'd been for the last 12 hours from some stomach bug or flu. I caught a taxi to the airport. It took 30 minutes to get there instead of 10. At that point it was almost an hour and a half after the plane should have left, but when I arrived it hadn't even boarded yet. I talked with someone at the airport and he told he there was no way I could get on and to come back next week. The plane was booked for 150 people but the airline cancelled 20 of the seats due to the heat (?!). That meant there were 150 people waiting there, 20 of which were already on the "waiting list" ahead of where I'd be.
I caught a taxi back to the city and reevaluated my options.
Eventually I decided that although my ego would be slightly bruised by backtracking, and while I had a certain trepidation about the trip after what happened last time, my plans would really be best served by catching a ride back to Kabul and trying to fly to Herat from there. I wandered off to find the "bus area" of Mazar and spent thirty fruitless minutes looking. Eventually I ran into a two-man American military patrol and asked them. They had no idea but radioed another patrol and had them ask their interpreter. Instead of answering over the radio, the other patrol said they would come over in a few minutes.
I chatted with one of the soldiers, a guy from Orlando, Florida, and he was surprised that I was a tourist. He asked if things seemed really dangerous to me and when I said, no, that there was danger but very little, he said he agreed. "I'm not sure if it's just because we have machine guns or what, but everyone is really nice and we don't really see any violence." Indeed. We talked about the need to win "hearts and minds" here and he agreed that all of the soldiers in the country needed retraining in friendly "diplomacy" more than they needed more weapons.
The other patrol arrived a few minutes later and their interpreter pointed me in the right direction. I was on the right road, but about
a kilometer off from where I needed to be. The commander of the patrol asked what I was doing here and when I said I was a tourist, he roared with laughter and said, "Yeah, right!" giving me a friendly slap on the shoulder. He was a National Guard call-up from Virginia. His "normal" job is managing part of a hospital, but here in Afghanistan he wears body armor, wields an M16, and leads patrols into Mazar-e-Sharif to do shopping. As I started to leave, he fired a parting shot (haha): "And when you travel," he asked, "is it with a visa or a military ID? Hahaha!" I laughed it off, sure that even I stayed there for the next hour, I wouldn't convince him that I really was just a tourist.
I walked down to the "bus area" and carefully and slowly selected my driver and vehicle. I wanted a driver that seemed patient and calm, a
vehicle that seemed stable and roadworthy and, if I could find it, a car with someone who spoke at least a little English for translating.
Within a few minutes, I found what I wanted. A red Toyota 4Runner-type thing. One of the other passengers was a translator for a general at
the military base up here near Mazar. Perfect. I paid 400 Afs and off we went. The drive takes somewhere between 7 and 10 hours and we left at around 2:30p. The driver was very sane and safe, slowly working his way up toward the Salang Pass and onward toward Kabul. Perfect, right? Wrong.
At a village an hour outside Kabul, we stopped at a chaikhana and took a rest break, drinking "chai sabz" (green tea) and chatting. A rotund Afghan immediately took a liking to me and in a booming voice tried to teach me how to say new things. "I am travelling from Mazar to Kabul!" Another asked me if I was Muslim and then asked me if I drank alcohol. When I responded no to each, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a stick of "chars" (hashish). With the consistency of brownies, he broke a small piece off the end and rolled it into a round ball the
size of a dime, placing it in my palm. I rolled it between my fingers and told him, no, I don't smoke hashish either. He then offered me a cigarette and when I declined that also, he laughed and walked away.
This was pretty low key and tame but I began to get an ominous feeling from the situation overall. Body language, quiet discussions, people eyeing my backpack, the hair on the back of my neck beginning to stand up. It may have been nothing, but I felt certain that "something was up" and that I'd better be careful.
After about half an hour here, things started to reveal themselves. The driver finally admitted that he didn't want to go to Kabul tonight. Instead, he wanted to sleep in the chaikhana, most hash with his buddies, and continue on to Kabul in the morning. I was torn at this point between wanting to be casual and affable and flexible and my general feeling of unease. I decided I that I definitely wanted to continue on to Kabul and I said as much. The other two passengers who weren't friends with him, one of whom had an eye-operation scheduled
in Kabul in the morning, also wanted to get going. The driver claimed he was sleepy and mimed, to me, falling asleep while driving and crashing the car. It was obviously a bullshit ploy and I told the translator as much but he felt there was little we could do. After half an hour of discussion and arguing, with me pushing for Kabul, I
finally got the driver to refund a small portion of my money (50 Afs, though I asked for 100 Afs back). The translator turned out to be useless and capitulated early on, leaving me on my own.
Against their alternating pleas and warnings, but in line with my gut instinct, I walked over to the road and tried to flag down passing cars going in the direction of Kabul. It's dangerous to drive in Afghanistan at night and even more to hitchhike, but by that point, whether grounded in fact or just a quickly growing fantasy, I felt very unsafe and wanted to leave.
After twenty or thirty minutes of trying, with only two or three cars passing in that time, I managed to flag down a car which almost ran
into me as he skidded off the road, throwing up a cloud of gravel and dust. I jumped out of the way and quickly told him, "Sir, please. I want to go to Kabul tonight." Seeing my success at getting someone to stop, my previous taxi driver sprinted across the road and immediately got in a fight with the driver who'd stopped. They were shouting and pointing at each other and then at me. I had no idea if the driver was telling him what really happened, or if he was telling him NOT to give me a ride, etc. It seemed like the latter, from the ebb and flow of the shouting, but the driver took pity on me and I climbed in, sitting on top of a bed of melons.
The driver spoke Urdu, Pashtu, Dari (Afghan Persian), Farsi (Iranian Persian), Tajik, and Russian. Despite having the good luck of being picked up by a polyglot, we had no languages in common and had to stumble through conversation with a few keywords and lots of miming. I found out he had a wife and four children. One girl and three boys. I told him I was Australian. He asked if I was Muslim and I told him that no, I was "isawi" (Christian). (That's not true either but Christians are still a "People of the Book" and are thus considered "brothers" of a sort. It's likely the safest category to avoid getting the dangerous label of "kafir" -- unbeliever.) He asked me if I was circumcised, making a knife-hand gesture at my groin and a "SWISH!" sound. I told him I wasn't and he asked me if Australians were circumcised. I told him that some were and some weren't. He shook his head and seemed disappointed or upset by these revelations.
As we passed Bagram, the US's largest base in Afghanistan, he told me that America was good but that America in Iraq and America in Afghanistan were bad. He disliked Ismail Khan, Dostum, and Massoud. He called Massoud a killer and said he murdered 1,000 people. He disliked Hamid Karzai and said he was NOT the president of the Afghan people and that Afghan people were bad Muslims because they drank alcohol. Pakistanis were good Muslims and Pervez Musharaf, the current president of Pakistan, was good -- as was his military backing. I pointed out that Musharaf had said all foreigners must leave the madrassas (religious schools) in Pakistan and it was at this point that I learned what his job was. He was a teacher at a madrassa in Pakistan himself. (For anyone unfamiliar, it was the madrassas of
Pakistan where the Taliban were "born" and where most of the terrorists/bombers who've "travelled to Pakistan" went prior to 86'ing themselves on subways and airplanes.) I wasn't sure what to make of this, and wasn't immediately more concerned. It wasn't really a surprising revelation after the previous judgements he'd passed on every political figure in the region.
I asked about the Taliban, noting that they brought an end to the mujaheddin fighting and he loved the Taliban, saying they were very good Muslims. At this point, he asked again if I was circumcised and then shook his head and looked disappointed when I repeated that I was not. He told me Muslims circumcise boys and girls both. (I think this is only partly true. Muslims in parts of Africa "circumcise" girls (ie cliterodectomy and sewing the labia majora together), as part of the local cultural blend, but I don't believe most Muslims do so, and specifically not the Muslims of Afghanistan.)
Conversation continued, sliding across various subjects, with him continually interjecting comments about circumcision. He kept grabbing my hand and sliding his thumbnail across the back of my thumb saying, "Doctor. SWISH!! Easy. Good!" While not especially concerned, I did start to wonder why we hadn't reached Kabul yet and started thinking ahead, casually sliding my hand across the sill of the door, noting where the handle was in the dark. A few minutes later, I silently
removed my seatbelt while he wasn't looking and cast a casual glance of my shoulder to see exactly where the top handle of my backpack was.
Finally we reached the outskirts of Kabul, much to my relief, and he issued a clear dictum, revealing more badly accented English than he'd revealed in the past hour: "I take you guesthouse. Kabul. If tomorrow you doctor.
SWISH!! Yes?" Again, his nail slid violently across my thumb and he made a chopping motion at my crotch. Inwardly I was laughing at his audacity -- a taxi ride in exchange for my foreskin. Somehow it didn't seem like a fair trade. I was silent for a moment and then smiled a sloppy, stupid smile, saying in Farsi, "I don't understand." I shrugged and played dumb for the next few minutes as he tried to
clarify. "You SWISH!!" His voice boomed in the small car while I grinned and looked blankly around, biding my time, hoping the hotel was close.
Finally, we reached the Mustafa. He stopped the car out front and honked the horn and then told me he would come by tomorrow at 12 noon, to visit me. I tried to play dumb some more but finally just told him I was flying to Herat tomorrow, grabbed my bag, and jumped out. I thanked him, in Farsi and Dari, and offered him money. He declined the money and disappeared into the night. I was happy to have arrived in one piece, with my backpack, and with my foreskin intact.
---------
I spent most of the morning chatting with a Dutch photographer at the Mustafa named Mary and most of the afternoon running around town trying to get a plane ticket to Herat. After finding the main Ariana office, where they would sell domestic tickets to a foreigner, I was told all flights were booked through Saturday. I went and found the main Kam Air office and bought a flight for tomorrow morning for 3000 Afs. That's about sixty bucks and is double what Ariana charges. The Kam Air office, interestingly enough, was staffed by three young (Afghan-looking but, I learned later, Syrian) women, all of whom were wearing tight-fitting Western clothes, far too much make-up, including purple glitter eyeshadow, and all of whom had
very fancy, layered haircuts with bright, multi-colored (purple, red) highlights.
With my ticket set, I wandered around the neighborhood more and found a large cinema in the middle of a park. I paid 20 Afs (about 40 cents) and was ushered into the movie theatre. It was a Bollywood action epic dubbed into Dari. I didn't understand a single word but was quite surprised at how risque it was. One of the girls wore a top that didn't cover her stomach and when she and the other girl, in a miniskirt, danced, they would shake their butts like Shakira. All thirty of us in the theatre were glued to the screen, wide-eyed. After the movie let out, I exited from the side entrance and saw about 25 bikes all tied up in a row. The young men in the theatre had come from all over Kabul to watch the movie.
This afternoon, I want to stop by the OMAR landmine museum. I've been meaning to do that for ages and have never gotten around to it. I'm
off to Herat tomorrow morning and will make a long, overland trip through the mountains to get back here. In Herat, I want to see the Friday Mosque. It's even more spectacular, I hear, than the one in Mazar-e Sharif. From there, it's about a one day drive to the Minaret of Jam, and then about two more days in a 4x4, slipping from village to village, to reach Bamiyan and go up to Band-e Amir.
I'll likely post again from Herat but once I leave there I'll be incommunicado for somewhere between four days and eight or ten days.
Bus Mutiny and the Shrine of Hazrat Ali
I learned some new Dari words yesterday on the drive up to Mazar-e Sharif from Kabul. "Be careful!" "Slow!" "You're crazy." "Do you want to die?!" "STOP!" "DANGER!"
Before leaving on this trip, I was discussing the relative dangers with some people from work and I told them the two biggest dangers to me would be, first and foremost, car accidents, followed by weird stomach bugs and parasites. Everything else, from the Taliban to being mugged to "Al Qaeda", was almost infinitely less likely.
Barkuh, Chris, and myself set out on the trip early in the morning and ended up with a bus driver who was insane even by local driving standards. We piled in outside Kabul, paying 450 Afs for the 10 hour ride. Our driver drove with another HiAce (mini-bus/van) driven by a friend of his. They played cat and mouse with each other, overtaking and dropping back and overtaking again, coming up close in behind each others bumpers. On flat, straight roads, I dismissed this as mere showmanship and a driving danger that simply comes with the territory.
When the buffoonery continued in the mountain passes on our way to the Salang tunnel, all three expats in the car began to get nervous. Our driver thought it was absolutely hilarious to tailgate his friend's van, sliding within inches and then giving it a tiny "bump" -- bumper touching bumper -- before backing off. At 80 km/h on mountain switchbacks with 100 to 1000 foot drops off the side, down scree into sharp rocks, or straight into a river far below, this was absurdly dangerous. As the only one of us three who spoke any Dari, I told the driver to "be careful, please." Overtaking the other van on blind turns, doing the bumper-touching bullshit, and eventually starting to lose control of the van, leaving us fish-tailing from side to side on a narrow road covered in gravel, with a 500 foot drop into a river. At one point, after a very near miss with oncoming traffic at 80+ km/h, Chris finally flipped out, flying up out of his seat, spittle spraying from his mouth, screaming, "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING? ARE YOU FUCKING CRAZY?!" Of course, his outburst served to do nothing but freak the driver out and the van immediately started to fishtail again.
Half an hour later we went through the Salang Tunnel. In the middle of the tunnel was a group of men standing around, arguing, and a white Corolla that was completely smashed, having apparently been nicked by a large cargo truck and spun out of control at high speed. Part of the front of the car was gone and the windshield had two reddened "starburst" cracks right in front of the driver seat and front passenger seat where foreheads had met glass. Whoever was in that vehicle was likely dead. While it reminded me of my own mortality and the physics of high-speed crashes, it didn't seem to affect our driver at all and he continued to barrel on, flooring it to pass his friends van while going around yet another blind corner.
The excruciatingly close misses happened a few more times with me imploring the driver to "Please, please slow.... Slow! Be careful!" Finally, our collective will, or at least our willingness to die on road in Afghanistan, collapsed. Another near-death experience and we all started shouting at the driver. He laughed it off as Barkuh continued shouting at him in English, "This is not fucking funny. You're a fucking crazy driver, you're fucking stupid." Shortly after this, we three decided to mutiny. We had the driver stop and we all got out of the van with our bags. At this point, everyone was shouting and screaming, including the other Afghan passengers. Barukh was cursing, Chris was shouting and miming a crazy person with a steering wheel. The Afghans were all shouting and gesturing for us to get back in the van. I used my phrasebook to look up "crazy" and the grammatically proper way to ask someone if they wanted to die. The driver hadn't been paid yet and was upset about losing three big fares, 3/4 of the way to Mazar. The other Afghans were trying to reconcile things despite speaking no English. They were tugging on my arms, pointing at my phrasebook, miming words that I couldn't understand. It was all sorted out within half an hour with Barukh and Chris getting into a different taxi. I got back into the same taxi, but only after much promising and swearing by Allah, literally, on the part of the driver. If there was one more close call, I was going to get out again and just hitchhike in even though it was after dark by now.
Thankfully, the rest of the trip was uneventful and I shared the big back seat, where all three of us had previously been stuffed, with a ten year old Afghan boy. He and I played counting games and he taught me the words for "beard" and "hair." I shared a protein bar with him but he didn't like how it tasted. Eventually he fell asleep against me and we slipped through military checkpoints unhindered, an Afghan boy sleeping against you a better disguise than any beard or hat.
When we made it to Mazar, I lost Chris and Barukh again and while they ended up at some hotel near the mosque square in the center of town, I ended up at a "local" hotel. Most of the guidebooks say these places don't allow foreigners, but for 200 Afs ($4), I had a room to myself. It was a floor with a sleeping pad, a single lightbulb hanging so low I burned my hat on it, and a fan that was also so low I had to avoid walking upright in the middle of the room. I woke up every hour all night, partially, I think, due to the heat, and partially because the external windows of the room opened onto a shared balcony that ran around the whole building and they could be opened from the outside. I didn't feel safe. At 4am, I knew the first call to prayer would happen shortly and I decided to start my day.
In the center of Mazar-e Sharif is a mosque that's ostensibly build on the site where Ali, the fourth caliph of Islam and Muhammad's cousin, is buried. Only Afghans believe that's true; seemingly everyone else in the Muslim world believes Ali was buried outside Najaf, Iraq, where he died. The Afghans believe he died there but that his body was tied to a white camel that walked and walked, eventually collapsing and dying here in Mazar. This place, his "true" place of burial, was revealed to a mullah in a dream in the 12th century. Supposedly, when they dug in that area a small tomb was found that contained a sword, a Qu'ran, and the perfectly preserved body of Ali.
In modern times, the site of the mosque is considered to be so holy that any grey or brown pigeons who come here will be turned into white doves within 40 days. Sure enough, the mosque is surrounded by flocks of white doves. Foreigners are allowed to photograph it from the outside, but only Muslims (read: locals) are allowed inside.
Since I was up very early this morning I went and found the hotel Chris and Barukh were staying at and dropped off my backpack for a while. Even in a city of 130,000 people, it's easy to track down two Americans since there're only a few hotels they're likely to be at. I asked at the front desk, "Two Americans are here?" and was shown down to the hall and pointed to their room. Simple.
Later, I wandered over to the mosque and went inside. Kristine and I had talked about this before my trip and I told her I wouldn't go inside because, while I'd learned the mechanics of Muslim prayer (salat) before leaving in case my life was in danger and I needed to pretend to be a Muslim to get out of it, I respected their wishes to only allow Muslims inside. Yesterday, however, I was talking with a book seller in Kabul (the one featured in the book, "The Bookseller of Kabul," actually) and he and I discussed this shrine here in Mazar. His contention was that it was contrary to Islam to not allow people into a holy site. We discussed this at some length and I decided that while it would obviously be enormously offensive to fake prayer, making a mockery of the religion in a holy place filled with people who invest it with so much meaning, I would give simple entry a shot and see if they'd let me in.
Today, after the morning prayer and without my backpack, I walked over the mosque and quietly and casually entered it. The guards stop all Westerners from entering, but I took off my shoes, greeted the guard and handed him my shoes, and walked right in. When I left, 45 minutes later, the guard gave me a big smile and I found a little piece of foil-wrapped candy in my shoe.
Inside the center building of the mosque is a series of smaller chambers, the walls of which are lined with gold. People stroke the surface of the walls lightly with their right hand as they walk through each set of doors.
The first chamber, outside the main tomb, contains a spherical metal container approximately 8 feet in diameter and resting above the ground on a stand. It has a number of thin edges on it which are covered in padlocks. People touch it and lightly kiss it, mostly from a standing position though some even crawl underneath it and kiss it from the bottom. I'm not sure what significance the padlocks have, but I believe people tug on them with the belief that if one unlocks for you, your wish will come true. As is often true, and even though Islam has a reputation in the West for being very strict and uncompromising, the "local flavor" of the religion mixes the basic tenets of Islam with hold-over folk religion elements from the belief system(s) that existed prior to the introduction of Islam.
The inner chamber houses the tomb of Ali itself. The tomb is approximately 15 feet by 8 feet, covered in cloth, and inside a small rectangular room surrounded by gold lattice work. This rectangular room is set in the middle of the larger room comprised of four symmetrical parts, with the ceiling rising some 50 or 60 feet into the air. Pilgrims walk around the tomb in a counter-clockwise path, stopping periodically to lean against the lattice work and look through, inside, to the tomb itself. When they do this, most put their hands up to cover the sides of their face. I think this particular motion is an aspect of salat in which prior to the beginning of a raka you slide your hands back, as in a "hands up!" posture, but with your hands closer to shoulders/ears, signifying that everything from that point forward is for Allah. The symbolism of that is also precisely the reason, I believe, that walking in front of a Muslim who is praying is said to negate the positive benefits of his or her prayer.
Inside the tomb area were both men and women, most deep in thought, some crying as they leaned against the tomb. Off to the side people were praying. Outside the tomb area, the grounds of the mosque, including the other buildings which have equally beautiful tile work on the outside of them, had many men who were sleeping, cripples (amputees, mostly) and women in burkhas begging with their children in their arms. The third of the "Five Pillars of Islam" is "zakat"
('purification' or 'growth'), a 2.5% tax given to the poor that, I believe, was traditionally more self-regulated and in modern times tends to be done by the state. As the Prophet said, "Charity is a necessity for every Muslim."
After leaving the mosque, I went and had breakfast (nan and chai) and then tried to dig up some information on buzkashi games. Unfortunately, the taxi driver in Kabul was right -- it's the wrong season. "It is too hot now for the horses. They cannot run." I'm sympathetic to that. :) Unfortunately, it means that I likely won't be seeing a buzkashi game at all on this trip. Mazar is the most famous place for the games and if they're not happening here, they're almost definitely not happening anywhere else.
I'm not sure what my next plans are. I might go visit Balkh. I think that from Mazar, I'll travel overland to Herat. It's a two to three day trip in a jeep, 12 hours of driving each day, sleeping for free on the roofs of caravan-serais at night, gazing up at the stars. It sounds nice and relaxing. I could fly, with internal flights being fairly cheap, but it's not like I'm pressed for time. We'll see.
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My body has been functioning in a lean mode since this trip began. I've been sleeping about five or six hours a night, eating about half as much as I normally do, and drinking twice to three times as much water. I can't tell if it's the heat? Maybe jet lag? Anxiety? I wake up at least a few times a night, every night, mostly to drink more water and to clear out the dust-boogers clogging my nose. Other than this "lean mode" stuff, my body is holding up well. No diarrhea, no headaches, no nausea, no car-sickness, no nothin'. Hardcore. (And lucky.)
Embassies, Flooding Bazaars, and Leaving Kabul
Today I'm leaving Kabul and heading up to Mazar-e Sharif. I'll be travelling with two guys from the Mustafa -- Barukh, a Jewish freelancer (successful! making money from the pieces he writes!) from New York, and Chris, a wanna-be freelancer trying to make it here who's originally from Seattle. I hope Chris doesn't come down here this morning wearing shorts as he has been for the last few days. Bare legs are quite offensive in Muslim cultures, with young men pointing and laughing, old men scowling, and maybe the more fiery men in the middle wanting to throw you in the river. The locals don't understand Western clothing well and can't tell the difference between shorts and underwear. Thus, Chris in shorts is, in essence, Chris walking around "in his underwear" in front of women, etc... Bah. It would be a slight security threat to Barukh and I if Chris decides to wear shorts for this trip. I'll probably talk to him about it again.
Me, I'm wearing a shalwar kameez and a Pakistani-style hat all the time. The shalwar kameez is made of very light, thin cotton and is cut generously to help alleviate the heat. The shirt, which goes down to just above your knees, is probably hotter, in my opinion, than a Western-style t-shirt. The pants, however, are much cooler than jeans. They also look like they're cut for MC Hammer or a wide-hipped elephant. I'll take a picture of the pants laying out flat, without the belt in them to cinch the waist. They're about four feet across (literally), all of that cloth eventually being bunched up at your waist. When I first removed the pants from the bag, after spending 20 minutes having tea with the cloth merchants (customary after a "big" purchase), I thought I'd been had and that the tailor had so obviously cut the pants wrong.
I've been entertaining the idea of going to Kandahar. It'd always been a give-in that I'd avoid it since it was the Taliban stronghold, the focal point of ongoing attacks in the country, not especially interesting to me anyway, etc. But... I think I could do it safely. This is despite the news this morning that there was an attack on a car in the neighboring province of Helmand where gunmen opened fire on a car of civilians, killing five or six, including a woman. "Personal enmity" suspected, not Taliban-esque insurgents. I don't want to avoid doing something I want to do because of unfounded fear. Kandahar being a dangerous place is somewhat founded, but... it's probably overblown, like most other security threats in this country. (See below)
The question now is just if I want to go or not. The only thing of strong interest to me in Kandahar is a mosque that houses the Cloak of the Prophet. It's a cloak that Mohammad (PBUH :) wore and it has the entire Qu'ran written on it in very tiny script. It's shown only rarely. The most recent time was in the mid/late 90s when Mullah Omar brought it out it "prove" that he was the leader of the true believers or something. Prior to the that, the last time it had been shown was in 1934. All other times, it's kept burried under a small mountain of
blessed rugs, etc.
There's also an "Al Qaeda graveyard" full of foreign fighters who probably had no ties to Al Qaeda. That's probably actually more interesting to me than the mosque. Locals believe the men who are buried there are heroes and that the dirt from their graves will cure all manner of sicknesses. People visit the graveyard to take tablespoons of dirt off the graves, replacing what they take with a tablespoon of salt.
That's interesting, but I'm not sure it's "a few days of travel through the Southwest"-interesting. If it's 100F degrees here, how hot is it in the desert between Kandahar and Herat? Probably 110-120F there. I'd survive, of course, but the hassle, the time, coupled with the increased danger, etc -- I'm not sure it's worth it. Still, it's an idea I'm considering, as going through Kandahar would make a travel loop into more of a real loop than zig-zagging and backtracking.
Yesterday, I completed what was definitely the most dangerous part of my trip so far. I went to the US Embassy. The Embassy is in a secured area across town, near the road to the airport. The whole area is blocked off with barricades so cars can't approach. There're multiple gates and sets of guards in posts all along the road. The Embassy itself has sand-bagged look-out/sniper points on its roof, razor wire everywhere, search lights, etc. High walls, bomb-sniffing dogs, more sand-filled barrels to block explosions, etc. I say it was the "most dangerous" mostly because it's a very high-profile target for insurgents but also because the guards there are so high-strung.
My taxi driver pulled too far forward, slightly past the first
barricade, and a tall, muscular black man wearing a bullet proof vest and waving an M16 flipped out, waving his rifle at us and shouting in English, "What the fuck is your fucking problem today? You can't come in here, motherfucker! Your bitch-ass is gonna get shot. Are you all fucking stupid today?!" I can't really put myself in his shoes, to know the stresses of being a proximity guard for the Embassy compound, but he certainly projects a poor image to the locals. You'd think the outer-most guard would be someone who could, uh, speak Dari and/or Pashtu and actually communicate with people? At the very least, it ought to be some amiable and with good manners.
Anyway, the jaunt over there wasn't what I expected. After much confusion, being sent three times to the area where locals get badges for embassy access, I finally learned that I didn't need to do that at all and just had to wave my blue passport around and walk right past the gate guards to the embassy itself. When I finally made it there, I told them I wanted to register as an "American-in-country" and instead of inviting me in for tea, cookies, and a chat (or something -- I don't know what I should've expected), I was brought into the first security foyer, taken through the metal detector, and then just given a single piece
of paper and a pen. When I finished filling it out, I set it in a paper basket and walked out. That's it. The sheet asks for your name, address/phone locally, who to contact if you're dead, etc, and has a small section saying that due to the such-and-such Privacy Act, information about your whereabouts and health will only be released to: "[ ] no one. [ ] anyone. [ ] family. [ ] individual members of congress. [ ] the below specified individual(s)." After mulling over picking "individual members of congress" and having fantasies of a rebel congressman spearheading an investigation into a covered-up disappearance here, I just picked "family" and left it at that.
While leaving the US Embassy I ran into some Canadian ISAF soldiers. They politely and appropriately returned my "salaam alaiykum" and shook hands with me and we talked for a few minutes. I asked them about the Canadian convoy accident I'd seen the night I arrived. It turns out nobody was injured. That's good news. After talking with them, it also seems that the road I was on coming to Kabul from the border, the ostensible "shortcut" that got us stuck behind the German ISAF convoy for so long, was one that looped around and came back down into Kabul from the road that Bagram, the main US base in Afghanistan, is on. Weird.
I did chat for a bit with an Afghan security guard at the Embassy and, speaking of "overblown security threats," he related a funny story. He
told me that he once took an American soldier who'd been in-country for six months to the bazaar to do some shopping. The soldier had never left the secured "behind the wire" area of the blockades and guardposts of the Embassy area and when he went to the bazaar, his hands shook the entire time. He was afraid someone would just walk up and behead him in the middle of the marketplace. The Afghan relating the story had a good laugh about this with me, but it's not really an isolated case. Fear seems to permeate all expat communities here. There's a young Western guy from Kansas or Colorado working the bar here at the Mustafa and it came out last night that he's been here for two years and hasn't been to Mazar-e Sharif, Bamiyan and Band-i-Amir, or the Panjshir. The last two are short day-trips and frequent tourist destinations of intense beauty, etc. Strange. All that time, sitting here in a hotel and venturing out only to buy beer or to go to the other expat bars.
All of that said, I do take my own security seriously. Avoid obvious expat areas (ie, Chicken Street), be extra-careful after dark, maintain vigilance for people following you/suspicious vehicles, dress and move/act like a local, tell most people I'm Canadian or Australian if they ask, being sure in follow-up questions to refer to temperature in celcius, etc. Haha... details! Lock doors, don't sit near front windows. Observe cultural cues: you eat with your right hand only, the only acceptable use of the left being to hold nan while you tear it with your right hand, stand when an Afghan of higher social status enters the room, seating arrangements put honored guests furthest from the door with lower social status being closer to the door, returning the "touch right hand to heart" gesture if given, shaking hands lightly, holding wrists, interacting with children, not pointing the soles of your shoes at someone, holding your shoes together sole-to-sole, not side-to-side, if carrying them in a mosque, etc. There's a whole variety of stuff but it's all pretty easy to remember and to smoothly nail each time.
Yesterday, I met a guy here at the Mustafa named Joel. He's from San Francisco and, 13 months ago, in an unrelated double-whammy of tragedy, lost both his job and his girlfriend at the same time. By way of response he checked his savings account balance, sold his Porsche, and left the country. He flew to Japan and has been travelling mostly overland since. It's the sort of "exit strategy" that I also have. "If everything goes pear-shaped, I could sell everything in my apartment in X-days, making a little extra money from that, on top of Y-money in savings, and then travel for Z-years in third world countries. Anyway, he's on month 13 now. The
initial plan was six months, then when that ended, six more. He's on the third "just six months more" now but feels like he'll probably definitely go home at the two year mark. He just left this morning, after two weeks in Afghanistan, for Turkmenistan.
Joel's a good guy and I enjoyed his company. Yesterday, he and I walked down to the market near the river here. The bazaar is called "Titanic Bazaar" because it floods when the river floods. Right now, the river is almost completely dry, filled instead with trash, merchants, and beggars. I took a few pictures of it and a few of parts of the meat market there. One, a top-down shot of a platter of goat heads, teeth grinning, should be especially good. He and I casually but very carefully snapped photos while moving through the bazaar area for about fifteen minutes and then left the area. Again, security.
I think I'm going to try to go to the OMAR landmine museum this morning, before we leave for Mazar. I have to pick up my laundry also. I'm wearing my one greyish/purpley shalwar kameez now. My other, sort of a biege/peachy color, and my Western pants/shirts are currently being laundered. I hope the guy cleaning them doesn't drop the ball; he should be here in half an hour. I'm not sure if I'd delay leaving the city until I had my clothes or if I'd try to have someone at the hotel hold them and then return for them later. Decisions, decisions. I hope I can find a buzkashi game to watch in Mazar. And, damn, I can't wait go to Band-i-Amir and go for a swim. I think the lakes are at about 9,000 feet and are brutally cold. They sound about perfect right now.
Video footage of Peshawar outskirts
I commandeered one of the computers here at the Mustafa last night and uploaded a short video clip off my camera. It took a few hours to upload, overnight while the "internet cafe" was closed, for what would normally take a few minutes. On top of that, I don't even know if it works. I have no reasonable way to check it here, so I'll just cross my fingers and post the link:
Outskirts of PeshawarI hope it's viewable. The download is approximately 20 megs. It's footage shot from the side of the taxi on my way to the border with my taxi driver and the Khyber Rifles gunman/guard. (As an aside, I didn't get a picture of me with my gunman in front of the "No Foreigners Allowed Beyond This Point" sign. Shucks.) I really want to walk through Khyber Bazaar with the camera and take similar footage. It's about ten times more dense than this, with little side alleys that're barely wide enough for two people to walk shoulder to shoulder.
Incognito Travel and Chinese Hookers
I'm in Kabul now, no worse for wear despite spending three hours stuck behind a German ISAF convoy who would point their machine guns at
us if we got too close. During the course of the trip I probably inhaled about two pounds of dust.
First and foremost, Kabul is much cooler than Peshawar was. Today, Kabul had a low of 86F and a high of 93F. By contrast, Peshawar had a low of 100F and a high of 111F. Even the low is in the triple digits! Hotel rooms with "air conditioning" (ha) are more than twice those without. I woke up many times last night to roll a little to one side of the other, shifting my body onto parts of the sheet that weren't yet soaked with sweat.
This morning I packed my Western clothes away for the next month and slipped into a shalwar kameez for the first time. At the Khyber Agency Home Office in Peshawar, every official that I had to talk to commented on my appearance. "You are Pakistani? Afghani?" "No." "You are Muslim?" "No." The second no sent him reeling and it was more than a full minute later when he finally spoke again. "But you speak Pashtu, Urdu?" He wasn't the only one. The next official I had to talk to, for a signature, joked that I looked "100% Pathan." Some other foreigners entered the office a few minutes later and greeted everyone with a "salaam alaiykum" and then went boggly eyed and giggly minutes later, when I spoke in English.
And on and on. I traveled from the border at Torkham in a taxi shared with three Koreans. At the first military checkpoint, the guard asked
everyone for passports but didn't bother with me or the driver. At another checkpoint just south of Kabul, a guard was shocked when I said I was American and later, while his peons searched the bag of one of the Koreans, he tugged on his moustache and pointed at my beard and said, "Very nice, very nice. You are like Pathan." and then launched into rapid-fire Dari and laughter with the driver who also thought I looked Afghan.
Outwardly, I laugh with them and nod in agreement when they say I look "much better" this way than in my clean-shaven, doe-eyed-at-age-16
passport photo. Secretly, I'm loving it. It's not quite on the same level, but it has shades of a Sir Richard Francis Burton or Lawrence of Arabia moment. How easily can I make slight changes to my appearance, assimilate body language and cultural cues, fitting what people expect to see?
The trip took all day and by the time I arrived in Kabul, it was already dark. I'll have to explore the city tomorrow. In the mean time, I've checked into the Mustafa Hotel, quickly making friends with a young Afghan man who works here named Samim. His father is a driver for the hotel and he is going to check on how to visit the Panjshir for me. There're day trips, of course, and maybe there's nothing more to see, but it'd be nice to travel in a circuit, even if part of the trip, ie from the northern tip of the Panjshir, where the road ends, to Faizabad, are on horseback. Too romantic perhaps, and with too many shades of Jason Elliott. We'll see. I talked with another taxi driver on my way to the hotel tonight, a gentleman named Safi Hosseini, and he told me that Kabul has kite fighting on Fridays now but I missed the season. I then asked about buzkashi and he said that Kabul has that too, but not so much and that I missed the season. Ho hum.
Tomorrow, I'll give Babak a call, find a cheaper hotel if I'm going to stay here for a few days, and maybe visit Babur's Gardens (recently reopened after being redone by the Agha Khan agency) and check in with the US Consulate, ANSO, and view the OMAR landmine museum to bump my mine awareness.
Some other miscellanea: Just south of Kabul, we passed a Canadian ISAF convoy with one of their eight-wheeled armored megabeast trucks tipped
over off the side of the road. They typically outfit those things with a driver or two inside, a top-side front turret .50 cal gunner, and a rear guard/gunner. That's two people up on top and this thing was sitting directly on its top. Hopefully no one was killed. If so, I'm sure it'll make the news soon.
Kabul is also overrun with Chinese prostitutes, I hear. At an opportune moment in the discussion to drive the point home, a guy here at the hotel returned with a Chinese girl in tow, leading her into his room and then slipping out to the bar for two beers and two Pepsis.
There're mosquitoes here. Peshawar had none, I think, or maybe they were just on strike until the temperature cooled. I'm getting bites already and I'll pull out my DEET later.
The toilet paper available here is from China and has the exact texture of the rolled paper we use for streamers in the States. It's neon pink and slightly rubbery. It might still be a step up from doing the "hand thing." My hotel room in Peshawar had a squat toilet, which was my first, and a bucket with a ladle for cleaning yourself (left hand only!) -- also a first for me. After my first go, I can say that I think your ass ends up much cleaner, but that all the "accessories" (bucket, ladle, splashing water around, etc) probably make the whole thing less hygienic overall.
Hot Pakistani Nights
I am in Peshawar now after about thirty grueling hours on airplanes and in airports. I tried to shift my sleep schedule while flying, so I am pretty much on my "local" schedule now. I am completely exhausted and stink for want of a shower.
The flights were pretty uneventful but Peshawar is a real head trip. The heat here is incredible. Forming a meaningful line has not really caught on here yet and so, due to my reticence at elbowing burqa-clad women, the customs queue at Peshawar International Airport -- all one runway and an 80 by 120 foot building of it -- took about an hour and a half. After about ten minutes in this heat, I could feel beads of sweat forming on my unmoving legs and then rolling down them toward my socks. Some of that time was spent talking shop with an Afghan guy who is a physician in LA and talking with a guy from Dubai, Jon Saddiqi, who has family here in Peshawar and works for Marriott Int'l in Dubai.
As we landed, Jon told me a bit about the history of the airport. He pointed out that off in the bushes near the runway you could see concrete entrances to underground bunkers, the wreckage of fighter planes, etc. He said that every time Pakistan and India have gone to war, India has bombed the airport here in Peshawar but they have never really succeeded in taking it out of commission because of the aforementioned bunkers. We talked about how the population of Peshawar swelled during the Soviet War in Afghanistan and how the old culture, with Peshawar in the mid 70s as a sleepy frontier town reminiscent of Kipling, had been completely replaced.
Once through customs I "looked confident" and casually strolled right past all of the eager vultures -- "Taxi? Taxi?" "Change money?" "Porter? Porter?" I had changed a few dollars into Pakistani Rupees during my seven hour layover at LHR and I was good to go. I caught a taxi out on the road beyond the airport and paid Pr 200 for a ride across town to the Khyber Bazaar. Traffic here seems to have no real rules, up to and including which side of the road is for which direction. That's usually honored, but if it's convenient, drivers swerve across medians into oncoming traffic. After a few minutes of silence as he deftly maneuvered his old Corolla, the driver asked me, in Pashtu, if I spoke Pashtu or Urdu and I shook my head no, saying (in Farsi), "...but I understand a little Farsi and I speak English." Nada. My miniscule Persian will not come in handy until Afghanistan.
After very narrowly missing a number of pedestrians, a handful of motorized rickshaws, the donkey and horse-drawn carts that mingle with the "steel" traffic, and at least three busses, I got dropped off in what he claimed was the Khyber Bazaar area. Sure enough, I soon found the hotel I was looking for. I've booked a room at the Rose Hotel, Shoda Chowk, Khyber Bazaar. No hot water, but since this place feels like a blast furnace, I certainly don't mind. I left my backpack there and eased out into the hustle and bustle of the city to get some errands done. In a few hours, I had looked at pakools and other local-style hats, bargained with a fabric seller to have a tailor make me two shalwar kameezs, checked out the bead market, and discovered a fabulous secret roof spot looking down into the courtyard of a mosque. The last was thanks to a Turkman named Zahir who took a liking to me, dragging me around for an hour, showing me where to buy water, where to buy beads, and where to buy carpets (from him, of course) should I find myself in need.
I have to return to the fabric-seller at 3p to pick up my two "suits." I overpaid very slightly, in the end, but I enjoyed spending about 15 minutes haggling, making counter-offers, drinking tea, joking with the old men who came to watch, etc. Everything is going smoothly, with the biggest hiccup so far in realizing that a pakool will trap too much heat on my head, so I will have to find another style of hat to pick up. Maybe a chopi/topi instead? That the "worst thing so far" is so pitiful is a testament to how smoothly things have been going.
Hmm. That all feels pretty dry. I went here, then I did this, then I did that. I would really rather capture the energy of this place if I'm
able. Let me give that a shot:
The most ubiquitous feature here is the heat. Indoor areas hum with overworked fans; outdoors, the heat sharpens the smell of the shit flowing through the open sewers which appear under your feet seemingly from nowhere. It dries out the roads, making the rickshaws and motorbikes kick up so much dust that merchants selling cloth and rugs splash bottles of water out onto the street in front of their shops every few minutes to wet the ground. The sewage smell permeates everything but every few yards there is a street seller hawking kebabs or nan or stew and the delicious and powerful smells momentarily blot out the sewage as you walk past. These smells in turn mix with the exhaust of the motorickshaws, all of which are started by a hand lever on the floor, not a key, and which spew trails of blue smoke as they buzz past you.
All the smells together assault one sense, but the other senses are equally engaged. The most pervasive sound is that of the lawnmower-like motorickshaws. From any street corner, you can instantly spot and hear at least twenty of them at a given moment. Each has a horn which is used liberally. The fabulously painted busses, always full to the brim with smiling, thick-browed men in dirty white shalwar kameezs, have small chains with bells hanging from every edge. They too have horns but they're less necessary since their girth gives them some right of way privelidge. The car horns here have a distinctive sound, unlike either the motorickshaws or the busses. They produce a sharp, rapid staccato, "beepBeepbeepBeepbeepBeep!" The joke among Westerners in Kabul is that you have to look left, right, up, and down, before crossing the street. The same applies to crossing the street here, as all the horns -- coupled with screeching tires, shouts, and the sharp squeal of overworked brakes -- produce a cacophonous symphony of transit sounds so overwhelming that your ears become useless and you must spin around, eyes constantly darting, to avoid becoming roadkill. The rules of the road in Central Asia may be more "relaxed," but the laws of physics during the inevitable collision are not.
Beneath that is the comparatively quiet murmur of non-mechanical life. Urgent conversations, casual joking, bargaining over sales, primarly in Urdu and Pakhto (the sharper southern variant of the slightly more mellifluous Pashto), but with occasional Arabic. Vendors do not loudly hawk their wares here, but their eyes watch, following you as they fan themselves in the heat, and if you throw a glance their way, a door for commerce -- or, failing that, chai -- has been opened. There is no music blaring and I have yet to hear a public call to prayer (adhan in Arabic or azhan in Persian) in the time that I have been here.
This entire area consists of bazaars and each has its own section. Walking around lets you see the sharp thematic shifts. There is a section for gold jewelry and a section for beads -- lapiz lazuli and jade, mostly, both from Afghanistan. Those two border each other, but there is no meaningful mingling of the bead shops with the gold shops. Rugs are in another area. The shops run by Afghans or Turkmen, many of whom seem to be from Mazar-e Sharif, have their own separate areas. Swamp coolers and large home appliances all share an area. For my clothing order earlier today, I walked about 10-15 minutes from the Khyber Bazaar area to the Qissa Khwani Bazaar area. There, I had my choice of twenty to thirty fabric sellers offering fabric for male shalwars. On the floors above the fabric merchants, or the smaller shops hidden behind them, are the tailor shops. Open areas filled with haggard looking men operating manual sewing machines. The evidence of their work is all over town. Everyone here wears a shalwar kameez and primarily in about three or four "summer" (light) colors. White, off-white, beige, and light green. A distant fifth place would go to light blue. The breast pockets of many bear a tab noting the tailor shop that made them. "Khan." "Talib." Mine, when ready, will say, "Zahir-Shah." I'm not joking about the "everyone" part. I have only seen two t-shirts here all day, both on young Pakistani men.
As an aside, I think I've only seen one foreigner and he might've just been another light-skinned (Caucasian looking) Pakistani. I can't imagine there're really that few tourists here. There're at least the handful who were on the same plane as me. I think when I picked the Khyber Bazaar area, instead of the aptly named "Tourist Inn Hotel" across town, I effectively closed myself off from all other tourists. I like it this way. I like to imagine I'm seeing, touching, inhaling, a Peshawar that's more authentic than if I'd picked the "road (more)
taken."
Most of the shops I've visited are in winding alleys, filled also with hat sellers, cooking wares, booksellers, VCDs, and more food. The main streets, where busses can fit, have more practical items. Money changers cluster together, each pod often having an armed guard nearby, sitting with his machine gun resting across his knees. Xerox service is available every few blocks from a man with a single old photocopier sitting on the sidewalk in front of him, prices by the page. Poor quality knockoffs of every style of watch imaginable. More food, usually coated with flies whether it's meat, nuts, or fruits.
My afternoon has been spent slinking through that world, slipping off down tight, dark alleyways, careful to keep a sort of "dead reckoning" image in my head so I can return to the main streets without trouble. Here, a man is carrying chickens as a bouquet, with ten of them together with their feet bound within a single five inch ring. A truck pulls up to one of the meat vending stalls, its bed filled with only the heads of cattle, all partially skinned, all blanketed with flies. A woman sits on the sidewalk with her hand outstretched, her right leg uncovered to the knee to show gross distortion of her lower leg and foot. Elephantitis, perhaps? Her foot is the size and shape of a large eggplant, with two of the toes on one aspect of it and the other three separated by three or four inches between. A child walks past me carrying used plastic bags for sale. I'm still in my Western clothes and his sales pitch is, "Hello! Hello! How are you?" The only words he knows in English. Another child torments an older beggar, hitting him with an empty plastic water bottle until his Pathan father, his beard red with henna, ends his fun with a silent glance. Women float silently past like jellyfish, wearing all colors of burkhas. Many women are completly uncovered here, though most wear a head scarf. Some cover their heads entirely, leaving only a slit for their eyes, and some wear the burkha -- that symbol of everything wrong with the Taliban picked up Mavis Leno -- Jay Leno's wife -- and transformed into a celebrity cause du jour.
Tomorrow I will go to the Khyber Agency Home Office, across town near Saddar Bazaar, to get my permit for Afghanistan and head off. I'm looking forward to the drive to the border because it will finally give me a chance to sit and observe. I haven't been able to find an opportunity to do that since arriving here. I want a one-way mirror onto a back alley bazaar so I can watch without my strange Western pants drawing stares. Once I am wearing a shalwar kameez, instead of a t-shirt and Prana pants, I think I will be nearly invisible. I had someone ask tonight if I dyed my beard red with henna, like many Pashtuns do. It took some miming and language fun to explain that it was my natural beard color. Wearing a shalwar kameez will likely cut down on the "eager to practice their English" crowd that likes to sneak up silently behind you and then say, "Hello, hello..." in a quiet voice, in hopes that you will turn around, beam from ear to ear, shout "Hello!" in return and engage them in badly broken conversation.
This is a strange and interesting place. I really like it here. Peshawar, "City of Spies" during the Cold War and now, with its population tripled or quadrupled since the early 80s when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, a city spilling out of its seams, the old culture gone, replaced by too many people with too many agendas. It has a very vibrant energy and I feel like it is easy to feed off it like a parasite, riding it, immersing myself in it. It's exactly what I
wanted.
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I'll probably post again from Kabul in a few days. I hope I won't be stuck staying overnight in Jalalabad, though there are some interesting (and completely ransacked) Buddhist stupas to see in the area. Jalalabad has little else going for it and I would rather hurry on to Kabul. It took me nearly 15 minutes to read three tiny emails on this Internet connection, so if others are equally slow, there is little chance of me uploading any photos. These computers are all first generation Pentiums running Windows 98 with IE 5. Mine has 64 megs of RAM, but it is almost unfathomably slow. I think all five computers here are sharing a single, low bps dial-up line. Ok, confirmed. I asked and they have six computers hooked up to an "ISP line" with a modem that usually syncs up at "45, 46..."
Speaking of numbers in the forties, I just asked a local how hot it was today and he said, "It is very hot today. Very hot. I think forty-four? Forty-five?" I don't even want to know what that is in fahrenheit, but showering at the hotel and then walking for two minutes to an Internet cafe, even after dark when it has cooled down a little, left my back completely drenched in sweat. My hotel room, incidentally, has a mattress with a fitted sheet and a pillow. No blanket or cover of any sort. The fan will be kept on "MAX" all night long. I've already begun making vague plans to leave Kabul for somewhere higher in elevation and cooler.
Finishing Touches
I had my first good laugh about this trip today. I was standing in front of the mirror in my bathroom and I realized that a few days from
now, I'll be in Central Asia. A place I've never been, in a culture I've never touched, informed by a religion I have next to no understanding about, immersed in languages I don't speak. I'm excited! People have been asking me that for weeks now and I think they've been disappointed by my casual shrug. But now, with that realization, I feel genuinely excited. I'm going to splash down into a new and foreign situation, spending a month thinking on my feet, learning new things, every sense excited by things unfamiliar.
A few days ago, I received an email back from Nancy Sours, a professor at SFSU in whose class I read Jason Elliot's An Unexpected Light and first started making vague plans to visit Afghanistan. She mentioned that she's doing Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner in one of her classes this semester and that it might be interesting for me to come in and talk about my trip. My immediate thought was, "Uh oh! I'd better read The Kite Runner and I'd better be sure to visit Herat while I'm over there!"
Those of you who've read the book know that it does not, in fact, take place in Herat. I must've been confusing it with that other pop-Afghan book I haven't read, The Sewing Circles of Herat. Figuring I could just blast through the book in a few days, I checked SFPL and there're about eight copies in total, all of which are checked out. There're 62 holds on the first copy returned. Instead, I went to the Borders on Union Square and just sat down and read it. It took about five hours, total. It's a delightful, fast read, alternatingly heady and contrived. Overall, I enjoyed it and thought it was very good, despite the bits that outed Hosseini as a first timer. And now, of course, I feel off the hook for visiting Herat. I think the only time Herat was even mentioned was early in the book when referring to a "Herati carpet."
The last few days have been spent putting some of the finishing touches on my prep work.
I finally finished selecting, reformatting, organizing, etc, all of the music to put on the little Sony player. It feels somewhat chintzy, but I think it'll hold up. With such long battery life, there ought to be less chances to snap off the battery cover.
Tonight, I'm packing the backpack and running down checklists. I'm using rolled up jeans to approximate the sizes of the shalwar kameez pair that'll eventually occupy that space. If anything is still missing, tomorrow is the time to get it handled. I've already got a few things that I should pick up which aren't really necessary: small safety pins, sun block, sandwich bags.
I've spent a few days at the mosque on Sutter talking with a Lebanese Palestinian (or Palestinian Lebanese) named Walid about the practical side of Islamd. I read a few books on the subject over the past few weeks but they were nearly entirely history and theory. Walid helped me explore some of the practical aspects and, at my specific prompting, the daily prayers (salat) both in terms of mechanics and theory. I'm a little better off to understand the culture now, but it's really only a sliver.
All the books I've read on Afghanistan history and culture, also only a sliver. A mere vestige of what it's like to truly experience a new
culture. My Persian is very sparse, amounting to nothing more than enough to get me into trouble. That said, it's ten times better than my Spanish was when I went to Ecuador, and I got around with no problems there, even culminating in a long, albeit simplistic, discussion with a woman the night before I left.
That reminds me, I need to get on the ball with sending out a mass email letting people know I'll be gone and inviting them to read this blog. Of course, if I end up spending the whole time out in the boonies, this blog will sit idle and I'll feel like an ass for the email.
Overall, I feel fairly well prepared for this trip. I wish I spoke more Persian, knew the history better, especially regarding Sufism, had a better understanding of Islam, et cetera. Yadda yadda... I wish I had a darker tan; being impervious to Central Asian sun would mean one less bottle of goop to carry. :) But yeah, overall, I feel decently well prepared. I've done my homework. There's a chance that I'll have bad luck and end up smooshed, but it's overwhelmingly likely that I'll just wander back to the States in a month, no worse for wear except for a sun tan and a (much) thinner wallet.
Oh, and as an aside, this post was made via email, not via the Blogger interface. That's a nice feature and one that'll make updating this blog substantially easier while travelling.
One week out!
The train steadily advances, building momentum.
Remaining Shopping List
- Cipro & Malarone once prescriptions arrive (Priority Post)
- loose, long-sleeve hot weather shirt?
- watch dongle w/ alarm or travel clock w/ alarm
- Nalgene bottle(s)
- another fast CF card for photos/video clips
- a sleep-sheet sack? (check temperatures by region)
Remaining Task List
- fabricate a press pass?
- get business cards printed?
Shopping List
Just under two weeks left and I only have a few knick knacks to pick up still. One afternoon should clear all of these up.
Shopping List
- Cipro & Malarone once prescriptions arrive
- loose, long-sleeve hot weather shirt
- swimsuit
- large, heavy gauge trash bags
- lighter
- watch dongle w/ alarm
- baksheesh items
- high mA batteries (AA and AAA)
- travel-size deodorant
- small toothpaste tube
- earplugs
- electrolyte rehydration powder
Task List
- fabricate a press pass
- get business cards printed
Possible? List
- another CF (Compact Flash) card?
- a sleep-sheet sack? (fleas, Bowersox had scars, et al)
- sun hat?
Backpack Selection
I've spent hours mulling over the practical differences between taking a high quality "Western" style backpack and taking a cheap duffle bag that would be exchanged for a "local" style bag once in Pakistan.
Today, I ended the internal debate by ordering the
Victorinox "Bolt" pack from
REI. It's quite a small pack at 1,575 cubic inches, being smaller than some school bags I've had, but I think it'll juuuust fit everything I need. It's
simple, clean, and black. It also has a single external compression strap if I need to attach another set of clothes, or a jacket, to the outside.
My primary criteria here were: small, tight (to the body, etc, to be able to move quickly with), and not so garishly colored or littered with straps and buckles that it would attract undue attention. The last criterion was the most difficult to find as most backpacks have gobs of "features" that mean extra pockets, meshes, compression straps, connecting straps, adjustment straps, external pockets, folding lids, rain "cinch" closures, reflective strips of fabric, etc. Compound that with whatever sort of fascination with "extreme sports" or being spotted from the air that leads manufacturers to make backpacks in neon colors and you end up walking around looking more like an oversized toucan than a traveler.
Anyway, I think this Victorinox pack should do nicely, but if it doesn't, I'll probably just return it and buy a $10 duffle bag in Chinatown. REI has a lovely "100% satisfaction guaranteed return" policy and will take the pack back without questions if I don't like it.
Packing List
Basic clothing load-out:
- Nike trainers
- (x-type) of backpack (w/ small combination lock?)
- wallet (USD$100 in $5 bills + $50 in paki rupees?)
- money belt (passport/tickets/plastic)
- hidden leg-attachment wallet thing?
OUTERWEAR (BACKPACK):
- 1x Prana pants
- 1x or 2x long-sleeve shirts (loose! for hot weather)
- 2x Nautica wicking t-shirts
- cap / sun hat? pakool? something lighter for summer?
- buy two shalwar kameez's (dark colors that blend and don't show dirt)
INNERWEAR (BACKPACK):
- 6x underwear
- 6x socks
- 1x swimtrunks (or "groovy boxers" that'll double?)
- 1x long underwear
- small sleep-sheet sack?
ZIP-LOCK BAG IN BACKPACK OF:
- copy of passport info page
- copy of passport visa pages
- copy of flight itinerary and tickets
- list of phone numbers/contact info
- 2x passport photos
- driver's license
- ...all of above, folded in half
KNICKKNACKS (BACKPACK):
- led headlamp (AAA)
- red mini-maglight (AA)
- 2x large trash bags (heavy gauge)
- 4x large ziplock bags
- lighter
- reflective paracord (50')
- watch dongle (with ALARM!)
- multi-tool or swiss army knife
- 35%+ DEET spray
- duct tape (small camping roll)
- business cards as freelance journalist?
- journalist press pass?
- Katadyn water purifier tablets
- lock and key for hostels/chaikhanas/etc, if lockable!
- novels since you'll be stuck in the hotel at night (Umberto Eco, Henry Miller?)
- ...probably Tropic of Capricorn and The Name of the Rose?
- Lonely Planet Farsi Phrasebook
- Awde's Dari Dictionary/Phrasebook
- Dari phrase cheat cards (3 levels)
- relevant guidebook pages, xeroxed, shrunk, and stapled
MONEY BELT (on person at all times)
- passport
- copy of passport (or only in pack?)
- plane tickets (only actual tickets, leave receipt page in bag)
- large backup cash (thin, few, new style)
- debit card/credit card
- tiny phone number list (tiny!)
- 4x passport photos
- 4x painkillers
- ...all in plastic (THIN but waterproof)
BAKSHEESH
- mini mag-lights (3x?)
- batteries, books, pens and pencils, blank paper tablets (?)
- small radios, tea and coffee (?)
GADGETS
- Sony Psyc MP3 player (AAA)
- Canon A300 digicam (512m CF/AA)
- high mA AAA and AA batteries
- another CF card?
TOILETRY KIT
- toilet paper
- nail clippers
- safety pins (small, ~4?)
- deodorant (even worth bothering? travel size?)
- camp soap (shampoo/body soap combo)
- toothbrush
- toothpaste (small tube)
- earplugs
- camp towel (cut in half)
- lip balm (even worth bothering?)
- q-tips
LEAN/MEAN FIRST AID KIT
- scissors
- immodium
- eletrolyte replacement powder
- superglue (Nexcare Liquid Bandages)
- coban (3M's new ace bandage replacement)
- band-aids (only a few!!)
- Malarone (treatment dose)
- Cipro (treatment dose)
- Aleve (painkiller + anti-inflam, only a few)
- moleskin (1 sheet)
T-Minus 2 Weeks
I can't believe this trip is only two weeks away now.
I'm not nervous or frantically trying to get things done in preparation but I do feel like it snuck up on me.
All essential items are done. I have my plane tickets ready to go. I have my passport back from the Afghan Embassy in DC, as of yesterday, and now have both my Pakistan multiple-entry visa and my Afghanistan visa. I'm up to date on all relevant shots, as of last week. I needed "#3" (of the primary series, since I'd never had shots prior to Ecuador) of polio and tetanus/diptheria and won't need boosters there for the next ten years. I have money, a debit card, and a credit card. There's nothing else I
need for this trip. I could leave tonight and buy what I wanted/needed as I went.
As for non-essential stuff, things are coming along nicely. I ran four miles at the gym last night and then "rucked" (power-walked at 4 mph, up and down steep incline "hills") for half an hour more. I don't foresee myself having a chance to tan naturally, so I might just hit a tanning booth for a few evenings. I'd like to get less-white before leaving so I don't roast on day 1 and end up bright red and peeling for the first week. Last night, I got an "Afghan haircut" -- 1/4" all around.
Today, I'm finishing off document sets. Copies of plane tickets, my passport, my visas, a list of relevant phone numbers, etc. One set with me, as a backup, one here at the office, and one with my mom.
Remaining task list:
- learn more Farsi/Dari
- get a tan
- print up Dari phrase cheat cards
- buy a backpack of some sort (or buy a local style pack over there?)
- buy the Sony mp3 player
- buy quality (high mA) batteries for camera and mp3 player
- buy an LED fob for reading at night?
- find a bottle of Aerobic 07?
- figure out the press pass thing?
- make list of people to email this blog link to, come trip-time
- continue going to gym
- refine packing list
- pick novels to take: Umberto Eco's new book and some Henry Miller?
- get beard trimmed and another haircut the day before leaving
Photo: Two weeks out and with an Afghan-style haircut.
Flight Itinerary
I'm leaving August 2nd and flying from San Francisco to London, London to Dubai (UAE), and from Dubai on to Peshawar, Pakistan. From there, it's overland through the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan itself.
My plans while in the country are very loose. My sense is that Kabul is a large, polluted city with little to offer the traveler except over-priced hotels and hordes of bitter, anxious NGO workers who're thoroughly insulated from the population they're ostensibly there to help.
Chances are, I'll only spend a day or two in Kabul, to get my feet under me with the language, etc, before heading out. I have some rough sense that I'd like to go up through the Panjshir to Faizabad, then West to Mazar-e Sharif, then back down to Bamiyan and on to Kabul. That would make a nice circuit, I think. If a chance to do meaningful medical relief work comes up, of course I'd jump at that instead... We'll see.
Overland back across the Khyber and buy some small gifts at the bazaars in Peshawar before flying home. From Peshawar, it's back to Dubai and on to London. On the return, I've given myself two days in London before flying back to the States. It ought to be a nice chance to clean up and reacclimate to the West. Plus, London has a special place in my heart. I think I'd like to live there someday.
I'd be returning on September 2nd, but since that's the Friday before a holiday weekend, I think I'll try to fly to Albuquerque instead to see my family and friends for a few days before flying back home to San Francisco.
T-Minus 5 Weeks
After much dawdling, I've finalized my travel plans for this summer. In the end, Afghanistan won out over Colombia and Sudan. I was talked out of Sudan by a friend who'd just returned from there on a security gig with
Relief International. That left Colombia and Afghanistan. The decision between them was made mostly on a whim. Talking with Hashmat Ansari at
Pamir Travels in Fremont, I found out that I could fly into Peshawar for $500 cheaper than Islamabad or Kabul directly. This fit what I wanted, costing less money and with the added romance of going over the Khyber Pass, so I slapped down my credit card and that was that. It's a done deal.
This blog will be devoted solely to this trip. The first few posts will be updates during the run-up to the trip. After that, I hope to post both travelogue entries and photos periodically from within Afghanistan.
Essential task list:
- apply for Pakistan visa
- apply for Afghanistan visa
- get up-to-date on relevant vaccinations
Non-essential task list:
- learn Farsi or, preferably, Dari
- let beard grow in
- get a tan
- get in better shape for trekking, et al
- create a packing list
List of possible tasks:
- source an appropriate backpack
- sell the Canon A300 and buy a Pentax 43WR
- buy a 1gb/70 hrs on a single AAA Sony Psyc micro MP3 player
- fabricate a press pass (?)
Photo: Five weeks out, photo used for both visa applications:
