A Short Walk

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! :)

posted by daviduri @ 11:30 PM