On Going Native ("Pahtooled")

Afghanistan is pretty variegated genetically - there's dark skin and light, blue eyes and brown, and each region has its genotype, so what a 'typical' Afghan looks like actually changes as you traverse the country. Now that i'm a little worn with travel and my beard's shaggy, Afghans tell me I could pass for an Afghan from the Panjshir valley, in the northeast about two hours from Kabul. I admit a little pride in this since in a country famous for its fighters the Panjshiri villagers are fierce as freaking lions. ("Panjshir" actually translates to "5 lions.")

So I figured I'd complete the disguise and bought myself a hat popular in Panjshir called a pahtool. It works surprisingly well. When I wear the pahtool and afghan clothes, i get treated like an afghan, which has taught me that at least in the city of Mazar it's a lot better to be a foreigner. As a foreigner i get smiles, my bags aren't searched, and tailors refuse to take money after sewing my fraying coat because i am a "guest." (I also get swindled, stared at, and am the butt of most jokes). But as an afghan, i get shoved by police at the shrine, hit up for bribes on the road, and stopped at every bank or electronics shop i choose to enter.

Anyway, here's me with my pahtool. In the background you see a bunch of buzkashi horsemen racing towards us. Two or three seconds after this photo was taken, I and the photographer went fleeing to safe ground (note the guy behind me to my right, already mid-leap.) In other words, this picture was taken just at the end of ignorance, just before panic, smiling cheerfully in the direct path of a horde of buzkashi warriors and their frenzied horses battling over a goat carcass. 3 seconds after this photo i'd look neither panjshir nor lion-like.


People in America often talk about whether it's dangerous to be a foreigner in Afghanistan and of course, in some situations, it is, but in most cases one can usually leap out of the way. As an Afghan one cannot leap out of the way of a career making $50 a month (and that would put me in the educated elite) in a shitty government job while supporting one's parents and eight brothers and sisters, and at the mercy of every corrupt government official with precious little chance of being allowed to ever leave the country, ever.

Such are my thoughts after spending this morning touring some ancient ruins with Reza, an absolutely charming 24 year old self-taught archelogist who practically danced around the Mosque of the 9 domes showing me the bhuddist signatures and 'well Gegary what do you think THIS means?'; he is exactly like all of my favorite professors. To illustrate a story about Genghis Khan he actually pluckd some 800 year old finger bones from the mud wall and lined them up in finger form on the rock. (which does say something else about Afghanistan. How many ancient sites could you go to in the world and find human bones and bits of 13th century pottery and keep them as souvenirs?)

But Reza only has a high school education because there's no archeology program in university here; and he says every time he gets a scholarship to get his degree abroad the culture minister gives it to someone else. This has been happening for the last five years and he is losing hope. It seems to me that this is the real gulf between us and them: not language, not wealth, not religion. It's freedom. It's when you live in a country where some bureaucrat can inch by inch steal away your calling, just because you are Shiite and he is Sunni, and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. "God is great," shrugs Reza. "It will be as it must."