the secrets of pork

I had pork ribs for dinner last night. In a strictly Muslim country that's something to brag about. Pork sausages are easy- you can ask for those at the supermarket for foreigners on the edge of town. For pork ribs you have to have a connection. I found the hostess, a Chinese-Australian I'll call L. She found the South African butcher. She'd been in this country for three years, minus just three weeks of home visit in 2006. The butcher she'd only discovered last week. To find it she had to drive to the Spanish Embassy, make a few turns, get lost, and call her contact, who said: "Just look up at the buildings. Do you see the eagle?" Yes she did. The metal bird with open beak was perched upon the balcony of one of the street's new mansions ('Narcotecture,' they call these gaudy monuments of the nouveau riche). She followed the eagle's wing counting two, three, five doors to an unmarked compound with guards out front. They let her in and in the basement she found a tall man in a blood-stained smock unpacking boxes of imported meat. Next to the meat locker was a grill, over which they'd built a massive exhaust pipe that went all the way to the roof. "Indoor grilling at its finest," L said. She said a person could literally reach into the refrigerator, pull out some ribs, and toss them on the grill without taking more than three steps. Across the room was a pool table. On the walls, sexy beer posters and calendar girls. "All of Kabul could be on lockdown for three months," she said, "and these guys wouldn't have a clue." She bought all the ribs they had and took them back with her to her own compound, the one I wandered the streets in the dusk last night trying to find.

"Wait," she'd said when I'd called her a second time for directions. "Don't you see the three story house with the green balconies?" I did not. It took a few minutes of walking back and forth down the street, that is to say, stepping around crumbled rock piles and open sewers, whispering landmarks quietly into the cell phone so that I wouldn't call too much attention to the English I was speaking. "I'm passing 'Ahmad's Bake Shop and Sweet,'" I'd whisper. "Across the street from a naan shop." I was unable to identify the name of the street because no streets in Kabul are marked. "There's a blue sign with an arrow. It says 'Marco Polo Inn.'"

Soon after, safely settled in the wicker sofa on her back deck underneath a grape arbor, a full plate of ribs and slaw and julienned potatoes on my lap, and a cold Fosters beer, I told L that it seemed to me that this unmarkedness was a defining aspect of life in Kabul. All cities hide their secrets; every city has their secret-finders, their Anna Pavlovnas. But in Kabul there is no room for the alternative, restless dog approach. One cannot take a jog, as I so love to do in a new city, and just discover places. Even if you could jog here (and I hear there's a crowd of bold early risers who run before six am; they say it's fine as long as you go early before the sun wakes up the dust and the gangsters) – even if you could take a post-prandial jaunt on a summer's evening, you wouldn't see anything but locked gates and barbed wire. Danger cramps the wanderer. You don't want to take unnecessary risks, and it's not a great idea to roam the streets asking too many people directions; if you're walking anywhere, keep your head down and look like you know where you're going. And besides, the gulf between expats and natives is so wide that often the armed guard standing on the next street over will have no idea what you're talking about. "German restaurant? Wha?" Recently a friend asked me if I knew the location of the new English book exchange in Kabul. I hadn't even known there was one. Of course, there are no Kabul yellow pages. We both scrolled through the contacts list on our mobile phones to find someone in the know. In Kabul, you have to know about things before you discover them. And even then, you have to have the right name on speed dial.