waiting for afghanistan

rWaiting for Rwanda

2008-07-13T18:51:00.002+04:30

stranded in an airport lounge in Nairobi, waiting for a plane to Kigali, Rwanda. Souvenir giraffes as far as the eye can see. A woman’s voice comes over the loudspeaker to signal missing passengers. She’s very polite though. She never uses last names. “Mary S., and Janubu B., please report to Gate 4. Mary S., and Janubu B.” Her voice is tinted with a British accent. There is almost no one here awake. Everybody is splayed in plastic chairs, some sleep right on the floor, newspapers covering their faces. “Joseph K., please report to the transit desk, Joseph K.” On CNN they are interviewing the hostages. I fall asleep and when I wake up the channel is changed to a cricket game. England vs South Africa. I fall asleep again and wake up again. Now a man is sitting at my table, also watching the game. He wears a lycra sweatsuit in the colors of the Kenyan flag. "Is it a good game?" I say. He mumbles. The score is something dream-like, 524 to 208, but the announcers gamely insist that South Africa still has a shot. When I wake up again, the ‘first boundary’ has been penetrated, ‘putting an end to the aching tension of the 5th over.’ Or something like that… apologies to my Pakistani readers. I stumble up with a crick in my neck and wander over to the duty-free. I’ve gone through all the books I brought for carryon so I lurk by the books section. It is all dime novels and self-help books about achieving personal wealth. “Come closer!” says the salesman with the nametag Mike. He asks me what I’m looking for and I don’t know what to say so I say, “Something classic.” (Which may be from now on my go-to answer. Seems that it services pretty much most questions I don’t know how to answer.) Anyway, Mike scans the shelves and hands me “You Can Do It” by Richard Branson. Actually I don’t know if it’s called You Can Do It – this whole blog entry is seeming highly unreliable… but I do know that it’s by Richard Branson and since I took a Virgin Atlantic to get here on the air journey which has gone on forever and forever I just shake my head, quietly, disturbed. Mike shrugs. His favorite book is The Secret, the ultra-best-selling self-help book that I first encountered on a flooded-out street in New Orleans, and since then have had recommended to me a dozen or so times. But Mike gives me a different formula. “God comes first,” he says. “Then read The Secret. Without God, the Secret is nothing. With God, and The Secret, all your prayers will be realized. Eventually.”

RadioLab: The Podcast

2008-05-08T21:12:00.004+04:30

So, um, hello again. It's been oh a month and a half since my last post from Pakistan. So here's a quick recap. Since that post, I returned to Afghanistan to file this story for The World about an Afghan journalist who has been in jail for the last 6 months for insulting Islam. (The reason I'm posting the story is that, well, he's still there. Nothing's changed.)

Then I went to Iran with a bunch of American magicians and Canadian poets to meet poets from Iran. It all culminated in one balmy evening in Kashan where we performed our magic and read our poetry and the Iranians read their poetry, and no one quite understood each other, so it was sort of like farce, but oddly beautiful too, given the political realities, like some last-ditch diplomatic effort choreographed by Lewis Carroll. I'll write about that more real soon, but meanwhile, while I was in Iran I met up with a French cartoonist friend of mine who drew these pictures of one of the events:

Well so the artist's name is Nicolas Wild and I strongly recommend his two-part graphic novel, Kabul Disco, as well as his blog, which is great if you read French and even if you don't. Kabul Disco is being translated into other languages as we speak and is ripe for an American publisher.

So, after Iran I flew home to New York, just in time for the podcast debut of the"Radiolab: Pop Music" episode, featuring lots of amazing stories as usual, as well as a story about what happened when I took my accordion to Afghanistan and encountered the ghost of the late great Ahmad Zahir, a/k/a the Elvis of Afghanistan.

For the record, since some of you have asked, the youtube video of my Johnny Cash-inspired accordion performance in Afghanistan is still up. It seems that some servers say the video is "no longer available," but then again about a thousand more people have watched it since then so that's not universal. I'm not sure what's going on, maybe some smarter minds can weigh in on this. Meanwhile, try it from a different computer is my lame advice. Or cross your fingers and click below:

Oh, one more thing. Since I opened this post with a piece of mine that seems to have had no impact at all, here's one that seems to have had a modest one: a few months back I wrote an article for the Washington Monthly, "The Schools That the Taliban Don't Torch," about a neglected program for aid delivery called the National Solidarity Program. Last week Senator Dick Durbin gave a speech on the floor about aid in Afghanistan, and he quoted the article, and at least I'm told by Durbin's office that we'll now see an increase in funding to that program. I think that's a good thing.

target practice

2008-03-24T20:08:00.002+04:30

One last Quetta story. My last day in the city, I was in the business district waiting for someone when I saw a kid come out of a shop and stand eight or ten feet away from me. He had a sparkly red cap and dirty clothes. His shaved head indicated he was probably Wahabi, a particularly militant sect from Saudi Arabia. I guess he was about 15. But his expression was what stopped me. I would write that he looked at me with hatred but it was more dead than hateful.

He pulled out a toy gun, took aim, and shot at a railing. A little yellow pellet emerged and made a pinging sound. I watched him, this young radical, with the (fairly realistic looking) toy pistol, and thought “I should really get my camera” which is when he turned to me and pointed the gun at my chest.

“Hey,” I said in Persian, which was probably a mistake because he maybe only spoke Pashto. Then he pulled the trigger, and shot me.

"Excuse me,” I said. Then I tried to think of what to say next. “I’m here as a guest in your country.” He shot me again. I tried out various arguments asserting my right not to be fired upon, but none convinced him, and since I wasn’t going to actually shoot him back, or go find his mother, I gave up. I walked away, not quickly so he’d think I was scared, but hey, who was I kidding. He'd won and he knew it. As I passed, he nodded and smiled, making his eyes seem even more reptilian.

The story unsettled me - well, the kid did too, but also my story about it - because I felt I was missing something. Some hours later, I considered another way of looking at it: At least he didn’t shoot me in the face. Because as I walked casually (not too fast now, expression firm) past him, it would have been quite easy for him to point his pistol at my eye or something where it would actually have caused damage. As it was, the pellets just bounced off my chest – I didn’t even feel them.

Only target practice.

afghan star

2008-03-23T19:19:00.000+04:30

It’s 10pm and we’re walking through the abandoned streets of Quetta like the last five men on earth. Shop windows are shuttered; political posters flap in the breeze. The distant sound of a motorcycle fades into infinity. Everyone’s inside. Watching TV. It’s Friday night. And the final episode of “Afghan Star” is on.

It is said that during this hour all crime stops in Kabul. Bored young policemen stand idle at their checkpoints, no cars to check. I don’t know if that’s true, but I do notice that the normally crowded streets of Quetta are sure quiet. Our footsteps echo. I’m with my translator, JD, and four of his best friends. All of them were former translators (“terps”) for the marine special forces.

Suddenly other footsteps, other young men appear. Our band of 5 becomes 10, 20, 40. All of us streaming in the same direction. JD gives me the frantic ‘cut’ sign with his hand, meaning: no more speaking English out loud. Mutely, I follow the crowd into a large dust field. There, an 18-foot Scandinavian man in a doctor’s uniform is projected against the brick wall of the tallest building. He is talking about sunblock. His visage is replaced by bottles of lotion. Then that commercial ends and another one begins, this one for a local airline. The square is still filling up with people staring up at the screen. They crowd around cars, motorcycles, pushcarts. By day this field is the town vegetable market. Tonight the empty pushcarts sit like dumb stubborn animals under the gleam of a full moon. Behind the screen, far in the distance, the mountains of Quetta slice the horizon in a squiggly line of dark and less dark.

Now the commercials are over and the screen shows a guy who looks like my 7th grade math teacher singing under colored lights on a stage. He turns out to be not one of the competitors but one of the judges. For those who aren’t familiar with Afghan Star, it’s a singing competition fashioned after American Idol. Viewers use text messaging to vote for their favorite singer. Each episode someone gets eliminated, and tonight there are only two left. Unlike American Idol, though, Afghan Star has a tribal flavor. Every warlord has their candidate, who they shower with money and support. Votes tend to fall along ethnic lines. Tonight’s singers are named RafÈ and Hamid, but everyone thinks of them as the Tajik and the Hazara.

I have been living in a Hazara neighborhood in Quetta, so for the past few days, well-dressed boys with clipboards have been accosting my friends on street corners, drumming up votes for Hamid, the Hazara singer. The guys with clipboards are Hazara nationalists, members of the Hazara Democratic Party. “A minute of your time, brother,” they cry. One is wearing Malcom X-style glasses.

Why is it so important that the Hazara singer win? “Still the war is not finished in Afghanistan,” explains Triple H. Triple H is one of the former marine terps, a handsome musician-type with curly hair. He once taught singing lessons to the Hazara boy that now stands poised to win. Next year, Triple H plans to enter the competition himself. To do so, he’ll have to get the support of the various Hazara political parties and former warlords. Then he has to hope the show’s judges choose him. If he’s chosen of them, his warlord sponsor will then buy thousands of phone cards and hire companies to make text message calls in his favor. Doesn’t this seem a little undemocratic? Triple H thinks more practically. “They used to fight with guns,” he says. “Now they fight… with us! And we are getting the benefit!”

More singing. More colored lights. I am freezing and waiting for the end. Still we must sit through the standard speeded-up montage of Hamid trying on various blue shirts and ties. Hamid getting a haircut. Hamid walking through the hallways of the TV studio. Then more commercials. Actually, the same commercials recycled. “What is SPF?” asks one of the terps, and I’m embarrassed to see how quickly I answer “Sun Protection Formula.” Why can’t I have that kind of instant recall with, you know, books and stuff?

Finally, at long last, the envelope. We all know what’s written there, though. The Hazara guy is going to win. We have it on good intelligence (the show is taped the night before in front of a live audience). This public viewing, this projection screen in the vegetable market in the Hazara part of town, has all been set up last minute so that the community can watch en masse and then celebrate. I wonder how they will react. After a century of persecution, victory! After the massacres, the land grabs, the forced servitude, triumph! Afghan Star style! I have no idea what they’ll do. Will they riot? Will they lift torches and march? Stand atop pushcarts and howl? I am so focused on these eventualities that I don’t even notice when the Tajik guy wins it. The crowd, quiet, immediately disperses. The headlamps of motorcycles illuminate their sad, drawn faces.

“Wha---” I say. “I thought you heard for sure that…” Even hearing myself speak I realize how silly I sound. This is Afghanistan, after all.

On the cold walk home, only recriminations.

And this paradox: In a land of constant rumor, it’s easier to keep the truth secret.

blogging in quetta

2008-03-23T08:42:00.003+04:30

Me, and JD.

hawoooooooo karachi

2008-03-20T09:06:00.003+04:30

Happy afghan new years. Am writing from a net café in Pakistan where the air is loud with the sounds of Doom, the video game. The volume is on max so I hear every cocked gun, every rushed footstep, and, whenever the character gets shot, a computer voice saying: “The terrorist has won.” This seems strangely funny to me at the moment and I chuckle quietly to myself while waiting for an achingly slow internet connection in my little private booth. Private booths: the big thing now in net cafes here. Is it like that everywhere? Is it so we can view porn with greater privacy? My booth has a frosted plastic window and a seat covered in fake fur. Mrao.

So, a bit of a recap; I arrived in Karachi 10 days ago on assignment for Marketplace. Much like in Kabul, one divides one’s time in opposite worlds; the days I spent in the industrial quarter with the poorest of laborers, the stench of chemicals and butcheries and poverty and decay; my nights out at some restaurant or party, including a soiree at the island yacht club hobnobbing with consulates and former ministers of health and a air-force-pilot-crooner named Johnny who recounted New York stories from his second book. (One of them was rather funny involving three Irishmen, a raincoat, an off-duty mugger, and a pub on St Paddy’s Day.)

But it was nice to leave Karachi for a smaller town on the outskirts, where I’m now living in a house we rented for $50 a month. We have electricity half the time and a gas lamp for the rest of it. The kitchen is a room with a bench. The house has no furniture. The living room has two mattresses, one in each corner, with pillows and blankets and a rug beneath. That’s it, oh and a bound copy of the Koran on a shelf just above our heads. We remove our shoes when we walk in. When we leave, small children peek out of their doors, which are corrugated aluminum cut from the side of shipping containers.

The town is small and people feel safe to walk after dark. The streets are narrow and winding; the houses nuzzle up close to the road like curious but blind animals. It feels like a shtetl – with many little grocery stores, and a few beauty salons, many tailors with their window display of vests (called here ‘waistcoat’, perhaps some piece of European fashion imported centuries earlier). There are sheep in the road splashed with pink paint and a young boy selling bags of yoghurt mixed with green spices. At dusk the vegetable stands are lit by gaslight, while the man with a pushcart and a pot of chicken soup is just wiping down, but willing to serve us two last cupfuls; for 25 cents you get the cup, the soup, and as much pepper as you can take. (“With egg or without?” he’ll ask, and with your consent, he’ll sprinkle chunks of hard boiled egg on top of the soup.) During the day the soup cart functions socially as a barbershop; a clearinghouse for rumor and information. You see two or three men at a time standing at the cart sipping soup.

Today the rumor is me.

NOTE: Tune in Friday in NYC for Radiolab, featuring my accordion and the triumphant return of the Afghan Elvis... Ahmed Zahir. Also in the story is Najib, who you've read about in these pages. Here's a little video teaser: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5nvg0_FfjU

Bush bazaar

2008-03-09T02:24:00.004+04:30

There's a little market in a seedier section of Kabul where you can buy almost anything that fell off a US supply truck. The so-called "Bush bazaar" is basically a few muddy alleys lined on either side with large metal shipping containers that serve as kiosks. You walk down the narrow lane stepping over little kids and squeezing past wheelbarrows loaded with washed-up items: tins and tins of microwave lasagna in a rice-eating country with no microwaves, also lots of Dr Pepper, A-1 steak sauce, instant mashed potatoes, ketchup-flavored potato chips, bodybuilder protein powder in gallon-sized plastic jugs, dime novels, zit cream, lime-flavored tortillas, and applesauce in single-serve containers.

i bought a can of Snapple for my translator. He studied the list of ingredients for a long time before opening it and sipping tentatively. "How do you like your Snapple?" I finally asked, and immediately felt like a moron. Like some high fructose ambassador.

"Quite delicious," he said diplomatically. For my part, I'd drunk my can too quickly, hoping for a rush of nostalgia, a sense-memory back to the basketball courts near high school, or the back seat of certain cars, or old Sal's Pizza, or the tuna-on-pumpernickel sandwich at the deli around the corner from my first office job. But, nothing. It was, well, just iced tea. I was thirsty.

God bless it.

let us introduce... (Marketplace story link)

2008-03-01T08:15:00.007+04:30

This story aired a few hours ago on Marketplace.

bonus just for 'waiting for afghanistan' readers: the first character in this radio story is the same Mahbub on whom the blog entry 'the uses of laughter' is based.

the uses of laughter

2008-02-16T10:56:00.003+04:30

last night
i interviewed a boy, tall, and so thin his friends
say that shaking his hand is like grabbing nails.
he laughs and and they laugh.
his thinning hair covered with a knockoff yankees cap.
The Y is too small.

We were sitting on a bed
drinking tea and the boy was telling his story of losing his life savings to a guy he still calls his friend. Meanwhile, the TV behind him played "Wedding Outtakes
Volume II"
And he says that the worst part of being robbed of one year and a half's
worth of salary
was not the money
or his future
or having to see
the faces of his children
but
knowing that he, duped, had duped his friends and cousins too.
And he is telling the story and he is laughing
in the moments of the story where you might expect
outrage
and/or sadness and/or shame
He is laughing. He doesn't know the word Yankees.
There are looseleaf poems in his pocket
addressed to the abstract hypocrite
and behind his ear, hypoglycemic bridesmaids
are collapsing into the furniture
into the grooms
into the priests
and i ask him why he is laughing he says:

"in every job
one person become rich
one person become not rich.
it is not also your idea?
in the school
it belong to the person to first position
it belong to another person to last position.
Every person want to approve. But every person
cannot approve. This is how the school, the job, this is how the life.
and in the last part it belong to God."

oh my god,
i think.
he still doesn't
even
know
he was
scammed.

And then
his tale told,
my microphone put away,
he starts to sing.
And my friend, whose
bed this is, and tea this
is, tells a story about this boy:

how he had a tailor shop
during taliban time
and he would sing and tap his fingers on the loom
the taliban heard it
and burst into the shop
and started to search
saying 'where is the tape, the tape'
and the boy said:
my dear brothers,
there is no tape.
no tape in here.
the sound you hear is just me singing, and drumming on the loom.

and then he sang and he drummed for the men until they cursed
and left the shop and he sighed.
And breathed.
And thanked God
They hadn't searched his drawers
and found the porn.

birthday candies

2008-02-10T01:42:00.000+04:30

it's my birthday today. i spent a chunk of it with the poorest family i've ever met. They live in the bombed out grounds of the king's old palace, in what was once the royal stables. The windows are plastic sheets covering holes in the brick. To keep warm they all lie in a circle and put their legs under a big group blanket with a few hot coals in the center.

So there i am, my 33rd birthday, playing toesies with five little girls and boys under a polka-dot red blanket and all of them begging me to take their photos, me no me no me first. Really I was only there as a favor for a friend who used to work in Afghanistan. She'd asked me to pass on some money on her behalf to this family she'd pretty much adopted here four years ago. I'd seen her photos and I'd heard some stories "Now Fareed is ill and can't get help" "Arzoo is just getting her big teeth in" but the stories didn't mean much to me until today, when all of a sudden it's real kids crowded around my real head and the real stink of the real blanket and we're talking through pictures, basically, making faces and striking poses. I should print some of the photos and bring them back for their walls. The mother was so hard-bitten, her daughters so giggly and fun, you felt that she'd tried to absorb most of the blows. All of them were illiterate; they don't go to school or do anything during the day except play games with each other. It was only the eldest daughter who seemed worn.

(She's the one below with the kefiyeh wrapped around her face.)

We stayed for tea, so as to make the exchange of money feel less nakedly colonial, but for a long time the tea didn't come. I mean we just sat there, coughing under the blanket, talking and taking pictures. I saw there was a lot of secret whispering between the mother and the eldest daughter. And I realized what was happening but was powerless to stop it; I knew they were scrounging up something special for us guests; I just prayed it wouldn't be too extravagant, like they'd gone and pawned their only shoes so we could eat chocolate biscuits. In the end they served tea on a tray with two tiny bowls of Pakistani candies. The children eyed the candies interestedly but when I tried to pass them out only the very littlest one took one. The rest were too polite, or too proud. The candies were just for the guests, apparently. So me and my translator dutifully downed two of the sweet stale white things and washed them down with questionable tea. Then the littlest and cutest girl coughed twice and sneezed right into my face. After it happened we just looked at each other, then she gave a big smile as if she'd just learned a new word.

phobocracy

2008-02-05T19:54:00.000+04:30

I love this word coined by Michael Chabon in his Washington Post op-ed for Obama. If you didn't read it, here's the money graph:

The point of Obama's candidacy is that the damaged state of American democracy is not the fault of George W. Bush and his minions, the corporate-controlled media, the insurance industry, the oil industry, lobbyists, terrorists, illegal immigrants or Satan. The point is that this mess is our fault. We let in the serpents and liars, we exchanged shining ideals for a handful of nails and some two-by-fours, and we did it by resorting to the simplest, deepest-seated and readiest method we possess as human beings for trying to make sense of the world: through our fear. America has become a phobocracy.

It reminded me of something that I heard on the news just yesterday. We were driving through downtown kabul in a taxi listening to the radio. The woman announcer told us that Mullah Omar had ordered his Taliban fighters no longer to slit the throats of Afghans accused of working with foreigners. He said that slitting people's throats, even if they were working with foreigners, was barbaric and against Islam.

"From now on," he said, "Just shoot them."

Why did Omar say this? Why now? No one could say, though one humanitarian worker mag covered it this way:

Video clips showing horrific scenes of human decapitations and other forms of severe physical torture had been circulated by the insurgents, apparently in an effort to threaten people who support and/or work with the Afghan government and its international supporters. Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) and other international rights watchdogs have repeatedly accused Taliban insurgents of deliberately attacking civilians and systematically violating international humanitarian law. "No more beheadings."

"Mullah Omar's order is effective immediately and there will be no more beheadings by the Taliban," said Zabiullah Mujahid, who claims to be a spokesman for Taliban fighters. About 100 people have been beheaded by Taliban insurgents on charges of espionage in the past 12 months, a leading Afghan news agency, Pajwhok, reported on 4 February.

The implication seems to be, Omar picked up his morning copy of Pajwhok news, saw how many local folks they'd beheaded, and finally saw the light. Right. Since Taliban has never ever as far as I know bowed to the complaints of human rights activists, I feel like this can only mean a few things. One, Omar really hopes to be president of this country again, and so wants to assume some pretense of civility. Or at least not seem like a totally sick and bloodthirsty savage. Two, Omar wants to compare his strong hand with Karzai's impotent one. Karzai makes speeches, Omar makes change. (I wonder what will happen if some Taliban don't follow the rules? Will the beheaders get beheaded? Or shot?)

But I have a third theory, and it gets back to this idea of fear. When the Taliban controlled this country, they were a phobocracy. They ruled by inspiring fear. (Even their fighting technique was designed primarily to intimidate: black Range Rovers barreling full-speed through the dust.) And, well, everyone knows that if you want to really scare someone, you hold back. You don't do the thing you most do show. Not... yet.

I've written to you already about how we're living through grim days in Kabul. Foreigners are spooked. Restaurants have closed. The nightlife, such as it was, is limited. They have us cowering. Everyone's waiting to see what the Taliban will do next.

And, for the moment at least, they do nothing. They sheathe their knife. Slowly bend down to clean some snow off their boots. Even old one-eyed Mullah Omar himself steps out of his cave to give a little papal wave to his people. My good children, he says, no longer will we cut your throats like dogs. Now, if you don't listen, we'll just kill you. Capiche?

And then he winks.

If this was a movie, the audience would be squealing.

prom night

2008-02-04T00:05:00.000+04:30

Weekend morning. Bright sunshine. The pushcart peddlers hollering about potatoes in the quiet street. I eat my cereal in the cold then light a stove and open my laptop. At noon a friend stops by; she seems happy at first but once in the house she slowly crumbles down onto the rug. "Not too good," she says in response to the obvious question. She's a party girl by nature, now having to spend nights in her rented room watching reruns of Lost. Since the Serena hotel got attacked, all the restaurants are closed. Every bar but the bars on the embassy are off-limits. Her days are spent keeping development projects afloat as expats back out of their contracts. Everyone is spooked.

She tells me about her two friends that were in Kabul’s luxury hotel the night it was attacked. One felt bullets wizzing around her head and saw a man shot in front of her. Another hid in the women's locker room but when they came to rescue them he had to jump over the dead Filipino woman. "He told us the story cheerfully, laughing" she says gnawing the ruby stone on her middle finger. "He'd fucking lost it." Both of the friends had left Afghanistan, never to return.

We meet another friend at a restaurant, a reedy Canadian journalist with blue eyes and red beard. The last time I saw Red, he was planning to stay a year and write a book about the Canadian experience. Now he's put in notice. He got another job in Sierra Leone and leaves in two weeks. He'll be running to the airplane when it comes.

"I'm done with this country," says Red. "Done done done done done." We are eating the restaurant's specialty bolani, a sort of pastry stuffed with potato cut into bite sized squares. There are two dipping sauces for the pastry, a green one and a red one. Both are delicious. Red says he’s done trying to figure out the Afghan puzzle. He doesn't want to know anymore.

The rest of the meal arrives. Mung beans smeared with yoghurt and cardamon, comforting and succulent, also a kind of ravioli stuffed with leeks and parsely, some south asian-style meatballs, plain rice and fresh cucumber salad. Baklavah for desert. When we put on our coats it is almost four o'clock. We've been here three hours and the restaurant has had only two other customers.

The grocery store where we go next is the only crowded spot. I buy 10 boxes of juice, four jars of pasta sauce and four kinds of pasta. I buy so much food that the store owners laugh at me. I joke back and do not tell them that I have been hungry for four days.

That night I have dinner with three more friends, one of whom just broke her contract and another of whom is thinking about it. The third is sick since Christmas vacation. We are sitting in a living room on couches and cushions whispering on the edge of the circle while a British guy is holding forth to a Bulgarian woman on how when he went to Africa he failed to fix the bloody special setting in automatic cameras that you need to adjust to photograph black people. A christmas tree is in the other corner and a gas stove is making us lightheaded.

It might have been the fumes or perhaps nostalgic longings that drove me after dinner to a party at the US Embassy. The taxi drops me off at the barbed wire and concrete gate and I walk the rest of the way on foot. The concrete path is swept clean and well lit. I walk deeper into the compound. I see no one, just me and my breath under the spotlights. I wonder if there are snipers watching me somewhere in the darkness. Then out from the concrete wall steps a guard with a kalashnikov.

"Ho there!" he shouts. (He doesn't actually say 'ho there,' but the Dari phrase he uses sounds so ornate and old-fashioned. And the cold concrete platform feels like a stage.)

"Hey," i say.

When I finally arrive at the party I hear it before I see it. A guy is screaming into a microphone, something about a queen and a kiss. “It’s prom night!” someone says.

The embassy people, the USAID people, the people that pass out multi-million dollar development contracts several times a month, they're here, quite literally Playing That Funky Music (White Boy) in a cafeteria strewn with paper streamers and string lights and Betty Crocker cake. Someone hands me a slice, on a paper plate.

back again.

2008-01-31T01:35:00.000+04:30

Hi again.

So, I’m back. Back in Dubai, waiting for a flight back to Kabul. Back after almost a month away from Afghanistan. My extended absence was a bit of an accident; I took a holiday in France with some friends, which led me to a brief trip to New York, which became a longer trip, and then there was a mix-up about the planes which took another week to resolve.

Obviously, much has happened in Kabul since I’ve been gone. Kabul’s premier hotel was attacked. (Thanks to those who wrote to ask after my safety, though your concerned emails and skypes had the unintended effect of making me feel like a complete poseur, a flak-jacketed frappacino-sipping sideline warrior.)

Also this month in Kabul, the coldest winter weather in 15 years. This is less newsworthy to the West though vastly more important to Afghans than the hotel attack. People are dying. I just got this email from a friend yesterday in Kabul:

from hamida aman
to hamida_aman@hotmail.com,
date Jan 28, 2008 8:07 PM
subject The chain reaction
mailed-by hotmail.com

Dear Friends,

As most of you will have surely noticed, Afghanistan is currently facing one of its harshest winters in living memory.
You might have also noticed that thousands of women, kids, and men are struggling every day to heat and feed their families.
The point here is certainly not to make you feel guilty but very simply try to do something at our very modest level.
Of course, most of you are working for international organizations involved at some point with large-scale humanitarian aid or development projects.
But in our personal and more modest scale, we are a group of friends who want to apply what some call Zakat, some other charity or just compassion by giving what we can.

A donation of 50$ will allowed a family to survive during one month and receive flower and coal to warm their house.

Please write below your name, phone number and the amount you would like to donate and send back the list to the sender. Please forward this e -mail to those you knows who would like to donate.

Many thanks for your generosity!

Meanwhile, here in Dubai, they're offering a free bmw or bentley with every purchase of a new Damanc property.

More soon.

-G.

the schools that the taliban don't torch

2007-12-28T18:54:00.000+04:30

(From The Washington Monthly, December '07)

The road from Kabul to Azra, a mountainous district in Afghanistan's central Logar Province, is, in places, not a road at all. At some points it's a rocky riverbed, at others an open desert. For one terrifying stretch, it's a twisty gorge known as the Dubandi Pass, famous for carjackings by Taliban bandits. The steep terrain and treacherous roads have always made this part of the world remote, even by Afghan standards. Tribal ties are stronger than national loyalties, and the unguarded border with Pakistan makes the region an easy access point for insurgents. Azra is the kind of place that both Kabul and Washington worry about most.

As violence has risen, development in this area has floundered. The United States Agency for International Development is funding a much-needed new highway in Azra, but work crews have been repeatedly evacuated because of insurgent threats. This past summer, the murder of two aid workers in a nearby district led Azra's only local nongovernmental organization (NGO) to shut down its office for a month.

But there is one project here that's proceeding relatively unimpeded. One sunny morning in July, I visited a small hydropower facility under construction in the village of Dadi Khel. There I watched a few dozen villagers building a small channel, slapping together stones and mortar beside a riverbank. When the project is finished, river water will spin a turbine that will bring electricity to about 300 village families. It will be enough power to allow those residents to turn on lights, iron clothes, and watch Bollywood soaps—a small advance in the face of their many problems, perhaps, but also the first development project that any villager here can remember. And it's remarkable that it exists at all.

Read the rest of the story here.

lowered expectations

2007-12-28T18:40:00.000+04:30

Refugees in the little town of Barikab. Click here for story on The World.

if you're a journalist, help us

2007-12-28T02:37:00.000+04:30

I am walking to my favorite kebob house for lunch when I see an old woman sitting on the sidewalk, screaming. She is well dressed and she is clutching another woman who seems helpless and embarrassed. There are many leather jacketed men moving in and out of a furniture store like bees after their hive has been cracked open. I know this store. I bought a desk chair there once. But they don’t want to talk to me and so, after standing around for a while with the other gawkers, I go in to have my lunch.

Inside I am seated directly in front of the TV which is loud enough to make my teeth rattle. The program is a talk show in which we are shown tight close-ups of bearded men talking about the corruption problem in government. Then an ad comes on which shows a turbaned genie perched on a village wall. I know he is a genie because there are video-effect bubbles hovering around his head like swollen luminescent gnats. The genie is telling a farmer to warn the police about IEDs. The man seems surprised. It’s the right thing to do, says the genie. OK, says farmer. He runs and flags down some approaching police jeeps. “Look!” the farmer shouts, and points to a landmine which looks something like a lime green bicycle gear embedded in the dusty road. “Thanks!” say the police. The farmer’s son thanks the genie who promptly snaps his fingers and disappears. It's like the persian version of those subway posters.

Outside the screaming woman is gone and the crowd is dispersed and the leather jacket crowd at the furniture company are more amenable to speak. In fact. they spot me and flag me down. “We have big news!” they say. For a moment I wonder if they are trying to sell me another chair. But then I see the manager has blood on her hand which has spattered onto her shirt. “If you are a journalist, please help us," she says. “They came in, they kicked everybody they kicked everything." It takes a while to get the story. They are subcontracting a cell phone project to a shady dude in the east who came in this morning to demand more and more money. An hour after he left, the ‘special crimes unit’ police arrived. They wore no uniforms. They dragged away the owner, and smashed his cell phone when he tried to call for help. “He has a heart condition,” says his daughter.

As I'm sitting listening to this story, one of the "policemen" come back! He says he needs the man's heart medication. His daughter screams and jumps into the car to go home to get the medication. The cop sits looking bored. I fear the worst.

I am writing this while sitting on the desk chair he sold me.

I’ll call tomorrow to see what happened.

christmas in kabul

2007-12-25T23:39:00.000+04:30

let me start with some sorrys. first for the title of this post. i really didn't want to begin on such a cheesy note. But it's a holiday with a lot of gravitational pull. Second for falling off the blog for a few weeks. i don't exactly know who i'm apologizing to, but you know who you are, my bench team.

Somewhere in the mess on my floor, among the multivitamins and DV tapes and old saucers, among the notebooks and paper scraps and alka seltzer and flak jacket and wasabi peas, pepper garlic flavor, among a selection of bagged tea and the collected stories of Barthelme, my dusty sneakers, my little red accordion, wires, cords, memory cards and baum de tigre and some long underwear, somewhere amongst the junk is a christmas card from Waheed. Festive Greetings, it says, Especially For You.

There is an odd feeling one gets at christmastime in a strictly muslim country. I suppose its a bit like being a Jew in Kansas. The holiday differentiates you from your neighbor. Today I got a text message from an Afghan friend which read: "Christmas is a special occasion for you. Hope you are enjoying it in afghanistan any way."

It's the opposite of christmas in new york, where the collective spirit might either epel you or sweep you up. here, christmas makes you the object of attention, so you end up feeling a weird sense of ownership towards the day. it's like a little crumb of holiday. But somehow it tastes quite sweet.

anyway, my power is about to be shut off. so, merry christmas, and enjoy.

g

meat of human

2007-12-04T22:21:00.000+04:30

There are big warlords, and there are little warlords. Big bombs and little bombs. Suicide attacks are happening with increasing regularity in Kabul, but when you consider that 3 or 4 people die out of a city of 4 million, the risk of actually getting killed by a bomb is very small.

The bomb up north last month, though, was one of the big ones. Not just because more people died than in any blast in Afghan history. Not just because there were six delegates (the entire economic committee) and 70-odd schoolkids that died. But because no one took responsibility. And thus the bomb is like a question mark for Afghans - was it Taliban? warlords? Even Karzai himself gets blamed in the furious rumor mill that has its own aftershocks and casualities.

That is the significance of the bomb up in Baghlan. I went to Baghlan a few weeks ago and did this story for The World. You'll understand the title of this blog if you hear the piece. If you don't have time to listen, I'll just say that 10 days after the bomb the trees were still red.

(And yes, for those most loyal readers, this is the same story I talked about doing with Dr. Daud up north, i'm just a dork and forgot to post it until now.)

give me my top

2007-12-04T10:36:00.000+04:30

got my visa today. The five hour ordeal involved trips to two different ministries and four different offices. By afternoon I was ready to eat the carbon paper. Finally we got the various stamps and signatures and we drove across town so I could pay the $10 fee for the visa itself. The bank is a dimly lit old building inlaid with marble and mahogany and dust. My teller had blocked off his window with a newspaper; looking closer I saw it was the NATO propaganda paper. I had nothing to do but wait and read the tortured syntax: "After long periods of suffering and destruction, Afghanistan is moving forward, not the least of which, economically," began the lead article. The next article was "Taliban Kill Hostage." Then there was something about kids in a library.

Then I heard a voice from behind the newsprint. I stooped down to the little slot and eyed the teller, whose suit matched his gray moustache. "Give me my top," he said again.

"Top?" I said.

I shuffled through the multiple thin sheets of paper with dari script I was clutching. It was only when he used the arabic word bakshish that i realized he was asking for a tip. I just laughed and he laughed and he gave me another thin sheet of paper with scribbles and I left, having paid my $10 and no more.

I think what surprises me about bribe-taking in afghanistan is not how common it is but how half-hearted. I've been asked for bribes dozens of times but they always back down pretty quickly. Unlike in the former Soviet Union, where they rarely ask outright for the bribe but god help you if you don't pay something, or know someone, because you will dribble half your life away waiting for fairness on the cold tile under the fluorescent bulb.

children with adult faces

2007-12-03T06:06:00.000+04:30

finally got myself a cell phone with a camera, so expect a lot of grainy pics of kabul from here on. these were two kids i happened to meet yesterday. the boy on the left is a shepherd, i passed him with his father leading a herd of sheep and a few goats down a kabul alley. (The alley near my house turns out to be the main thoroughfare between the squatter homes on the mountain and the street with all the butchers where blood runs down the gutter.) In the kid's hand is a thin tree branch he uses to whip the animals if they fall out of line, though, really there's nowhere to go. I squeeze around the animals copping a feel of rough warm wool as I pass by.

the boy on the right is a chimney sweep I guess you'd say, he cleans out the neighborhood wood stoves (bukari's). I met him this evening in the corner store. I turned around and there's the afghan huck finn at my shoulder just staring at me. His ruddy cheeks are smeared with grey ash. His voice is like a hammer hit hard on iron. He's speaking Dari but I can't understand even a single word he says. He goes over to the cooler and grabs a carton of juice and tips it down his throat. I request a picture. First he says no, then he laughs and says yes. Then he gets shy and hides behind the cooler. This photo was taken during the yes period.

According to the Human Development Index 2007 released last month, life expectancy in Afghanistan is 43 years. That's down from 44.5 years in 2003.

"Afghans live almost nine years less than people in other Least Developed Countries, the report's findings show."

American Taliban (Ibrahim's Song)

2007-11-21T17:21:00.000+04:30

Last night I got into a public taxi and the driver asked where I was from. "I'm American," I said.

"No you're not," he said. He looked to be 60 or 70 years old. He had a tiny head and chewed on his gums.

"No, but I am," I said. (We were talking in Dari.)

"No," he said. "Because all Americans are supporting Taliban and I can tell you're a good boy."

I laughed but he wasn't kidding.

"Maybe you're French," he said. "Or German."

I said, "I thought everybody says Pakistan supports Taliban."

"But who supports Pakistan?" he said. "American money! Money!"

He was quiet a moment. Then he started singing. I had him sing the song again for my tape recorder. (Click here to hear). His name was Ibrahim.

Taliban in the treetops

2007-11-17T16:45:00.000+04:30

An hour before sunrise, the streets of Kabul are empty. The wedding party drag racers all gone to bed. It’s a tradition here after weddings, brigades of Russian ladas and Toyota minivans and beribboned taxicabs all honking and swerving to beat the newlyweds home, so if you figure on several dozen weddings a night + the absence of traffic lights + the potholes of Kabul, early morning hours can be a bit mad.

But now everything’s quiet. We drive quietly through the checkpoints and stop at a gas station just outside the city gates. In the backseat my friend Vanessa looks wide-eyed at the asphalt and well-lit pumps. She was last here in 2003, when there were no gas stations, just dark shacks and some dude with a bucket. “What’s next,” she jokes. “A Getty Mart?” I look towards the building where, if this were a Getty Mart, the clerk and the coffee and the maps and snacks and newspapers and twinkies would be. They are, of course, not. Neither is the ATM sign or stickers on the door or cans of motor oil or ICE machine. No sink or table or anything else in the small enclosed room. Just, on the floor in the corner, an electric tea kettle and glass mug. And in the center of the room, under the fluorescent light, two hooded figures. One is kneeling in prayer and the other is about to. Their breath rises, visibly.

I give our driver money for gas. It’s more expensive than home—40 bucks to fill the tank. Just as a point of comparison: our driver Daud is a surgeon in one of Kabul’s biggest hospitals. The hospital pays him $60 a month. I pay him more than that in one day. I can do this because there is a market in America for stories about Afghanistan. It’s a funny way to think about the news. Try it maybe. If you listen the story I do from this trip, which should air on the BBC sometime next week, think to yourself: this story helped Daud feed his wife and four kids and continue saving lives at the hospital. That's a pitch you never heard on public radio pledge drives.

Of course, for Daud it’s not only about the money. He’s had some adventures working for journalists. He got to be in the first car to enter Kabul in 2001 after the Taliban were defeated. He was with a four star general and a reporter from the Washington Post. They were driving a Taliban car so at first people didn’t know who they were. When people realized they were Northern Alliance they started throwing candy at the car. The reporter thought they were throwing stones and got nervous. Daud laughed. Taliban had imprisoned his brother for a year. Taliban had made it almost impossible for him to get his medical education. Now the people were throwing candy.

Inside Kabul the Taliban had fled. They found only seven fighters who had climbed a tree. They were foreigners who didn't know their way out of Kabul. From the treetop they fired on the people. They shot a child and a woman before the northern soldiers arrived with their guns. Bang, bang, bang. Plop, plop, plop. Daud watched seven taliban dropping from the branches, like overripe apples.

By sunrise I’m doing my turn at the wheel & Daud is in the passenger seat worrying I’m going to wreck his gearshift. Vanessa grumbles in the back under her hijab because Muslim custom forbids women in the front seat and though it’s okay in Kabul here in the countryside we’d call attention. Daud is thinking about moving to Australia. His cousin is there now driving a taxi. Would you have to drive a taxi too I say no he says there is a course maybe only one year and then I can work as doctor. We drive through the mountains and then along a river and then turn left by a tributary towards the village which is our destination. The riverbed here is dry and filled with garbage but I do notice, under a little bridge, a puddle and a circle of seven ducks. Stiff-necked they face each other pretending that this is exactly where they meant to end their days, under a footbridge in Afghanistan, in a dry gully filled with garbage. I wonder if they know their way home. I wonder if Afghan ducks can fly. I wonder how long before someone sees them and kills them for dinner.

me and my warlord

2007-11-14T21:40:00.000+04:30

The word "warlord" gets tossed around so much these days. But how well do we know them? Reminds me of a pretty dangerous dude I met this summer. Big deal guy, no bomb explodes in the province without his say so, of course that could be rumor, but well, he's got five wives and it's not because he's such a knockout. Takes the girls he wants, takes the money he wants, rich as hell off poppy, visited him in his tinted glass windowed massive compound at the end of a wide empty desert road. Inside, I'd never seen so many roses.

Anyway I hadn't planned to meet him, but we had some time to kill before our meeting with the governor, so we called him up and he had time. We talk with the four lesser mafiosi outside, we get the lookover and then we're approved, we slip off our shoes and head into the...well, into ONE of the houses (i guess he has at least one for each wife), and there's this little guy standing there next to an overstuffed E-Z chair. And i figure this is the guy who will lead us to the kingpin but no, this is the kingpin, and as I'm introducing myself I'm looking at this little moustachioed slight man who comes up barely past my shoulder and I'm thinking - if i was casting a sitcom I'd cast this guy as the harmless nerdy neighbor...

but that impression faded very quickly. I don't know what it was about him. Maybe it was the way he lay completely still until he spoke. Or maybe it was the way he took his paralyzed left hand and cracked the knuckles. Over his head.

"I fought my whole life. I'm ready to step out of violence and be a private man," he said. I mean really the dialogue was straight out of godfather.

From there I went straight to the governor's office and he too was a scary, proud, powerful, crafty and fundamentally uneducated man. Later someone said that I'd met the two most powerful people in the province. And there was I, sweaty, dehydrated, dodging fat-bottomed sheep in the street, wearing my ink-stained afghan clothes. There are times that being here feels like I stepped straight into my TV screen. Sweatpants on and dorito crumbs in my lap.

britney spears afghanistan

2007-11-10T23:40:00.000+04:30

Flew out of Newark last night. Familiar floaty feeling in international airport terminals late at night, quiet but for the swish of mop and click of high heels & dull but for the colorful ascots and the charm of the marquee at each gate: LIMA 6:45 HONG KONG 8:40 TEL AVIV 6:20 QATAR BUDAPEST and so on. There's something about the nexus of repetitive infrastructure (magazines, bathrooms, over-priced pretzels, repeat) and Narnia-like possibility (behind the locked double door of each gate, an adventure). In such a stale smelling playground it's hard not to ask myself why I'm going back to Afghanistan for the third time.

I'm aware of the importance of this question. I can hear the fear in my mother's voice. We're not an I love you kind of family but she just said it to me on the cell before I checked through security. Still I find myself unable to think about this important question and instead pick up an airport copy of US Weekly, where I read that Britney Spears is showing increased signs of mental illness. exclamation point. The article by Kevin O'Leary recounts a "harrowing delivery of clothes" by an unnamed source to Britney's Four Seasons hotel room: "When we walked in, she was on a towel in the center of the bed, lights off, eating cheeseburgers. The room smelled so bad, like stale fries."

So, my sympathies are with Spears on this one. We've all had our cheeseburger-on-the-towel moments, awful enough without worrying that we're traumatizing the delivery boy, who ingratiatingly patters past our vacant depressed stare while he mentally bottles the stink of our stale fry farts for the tabloid reporter lurking downstairs. My friend Jake Halpern did a lovely piece about celebrity narcissism disorder that I'll try to find a link to. (As I'm writing this I'm in a plane over the Caspian Sea.) Until I heard Jake's essay on NPR I'd never heard a piece so empathetic to michael jackson. But what must it be like to live as a person who the world is watching? Who wouldn't go crazy under that pressure? When your every move really is being broadcast on prime time TV, it's not paranoid delusions. It's your life.

Call it perhaps the Britney Spears Theory of International Relations: some countries have more celebrity status than others. Afghanistan is one of the few places in the world that Americans seem to want to know about. And visiting Afghanistan these days can feel kind of like visiting Britney Spears' bedroom: you're horribly fascinated at the same time endlessly wondering why you've come; you want to stay to notice everything and you want very much to flee, you feel unprepared (you can't be otherwise) and the wider you open your eyes the less clear it is what's actually going on. The only thing you understand is that whatever is happening seems to have very little to do with the half-naked girl on the bed littered with fast food wrappings. She's only the mouse in the experiment. In the same way, and if you'll forgive the tabloid metaphors running through my airplane brain at the moment, but in the same way when I travel in Afghanistan I feel like I'm actually getting to know America, in a way that doesn't always smell super wonderful. And I'm tired of having only the delivery boy's version of events.

So. Here's my promise to you folks for the next month or so that I'm here. I will tell the truth as far as I'm capable, stale winds and all. I will probably not do it every day, but will go as far as my discipline and my electricity will allow. And I will try to include a little more news context, but don't expect details on the latest bombing, because I'm not interested in that, unless I see it myself.

Finally, I'm going to try to provide links to the things that my friends are involved in, even if it's not directly related to Afghanistan, because it occurred to me these past months in NYC how many amazingly cool are the things my friends are doing. And they inspire me and in general fill my brain with interesting colors not found in nature. And because it's nice to have food for one's inquiries besides tabloids and tribal beefs.

the secrets of pork

2007-07-23T09:36:00.000+04:30

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.