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Friday, May 29, 2009
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Twelve hours in Afghanistan
I’ve been sitting, at once patient and nervous, in the plane for two hours. We’re flying over Pakistan, mountain range after snowy mountain range. I’m wearing the soft black headscarf that I’ve carefully wrapped around my head in the Delhi airport. Finally the pilot announces that we’re to begin our descent into Kabul. (“Good morning. Air traffic control was temporarily shut down, but they should be up and running by now.”) Finally we land, taxi, and as I step out onto the tarmac and into the hot, dusty wind of Afghanistan, I catch sight of two planes – one belonging to the UN, and the other belonging to the ICRC – and it’s pretty much the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me.
So I walk into customs, and as soon as I get there, people start talking to me in Dari – including an officer who opens a new booth and invites me to be the first person in line. After learning that it’s a small miracle the conveyor belt worked in the first place, I grab my bags and head out of the airport where Z. is waiting for me, complete with his friend E. (and E.’s fast car). Apparently the road running from the airport into the city – a short one, and one that leads almost directly to the place where I’ll be living – is the nicest in Kabul. It’s wide and smooth. It’s also, I learn, one of the more dangerous ones. But that’s okay: soon we turn off onto a dirt road and we’re home. It’s wide and clean, but incredibly bumpy – the car jostles and knocks around as it tries to navigate a terrain that’s more like those mountain ranges I flew over than a nice residential area, which is what it is.
The house is large and, like all the other Afghan houses on our street, lives comfortably behind a tall wall, a strong gate, two friendly guard dogs, and a garden. We have a roof and a barbeque and 10 housemates, though several were there just on business (filming a documentary on an NGO started by one of the men who lives in our house) and have since left. As in many social situations thus far, I’m the only woman there. Talk about a new experience.
Later that night, I go to two parties. The first is held in a restaurant on Chicken Street called Haji Baba’s: the food, terrible (though unbelievably fancy and expensive by Afghan standards); the company, wonderful. It’s a party honoring the teachers at the circus where Z works, and it involves 50 or 60 Afghan men sitting around two tables laughing raucously for hours. At some point there’s a buffet, and everyone gets up to load his plate 8 inches high (not kidding) with oily rice, bland soup with what looked like Kix cereal in it, chicken that’s mostly fat and has been sitting in an ocean of gravy for a while, and some greasy substance that might once have been a vegetable. Then there are soft drinks and electric neon-colored desserts. To return to the company: everyone rough-houses each other laughs and jokes around in Dari (no one really bothering to notice me, even though I’m the only woman there) and finally, after the meal is over, they all get up to tell jokes. The jokes turn into real stories. Then one of the eminent teachers leans over to me and starts to translate, and I find myself learning a whole lot more Afghan potty humor than I ever thought I would.
After we’ve escaped the circus party, we head to another party. This is an expat party, held behind the seriously-guarded walls of a compound, and which allows me to at last remove my head gear. Here I bond with various brave, cool, good-hearted expat women, learn about some journalists’ adventures with the Army in the dangerous southern belt of the country (“but Darfur was much more interesting, really”), and listen to a couple of beefy security-guy types complain about Afghanistan.
So perhaps there are two parties. There is one party in restaurants like Haji Baba, or maybe also at weddings, bumping around in taxis, or just out on the street. This is a party of long jokes and innocent dirty humor, oft-recited litanies of greetings (“How are you? How is your health? Your family? Your house is well? Your business? Your third cousin twice removed in-law?”), oil and rice, mouths wide with laughter, and mostly men. There is another party behind layers of security guards – in ritzy restaurants, basement bars, air-conditioned offices, Western-style supermarkets, and armored cars – to which flock the strangest mix of foreigners. There are adventurers, do-gooders, businesspeople, journalists, photojournalists, videographers, private contractors and private consultants, and security men who look like they just walked out of a gas station on the Jersey turnpike. To all of this, add one shameless tourist: me.
So I walk into customs, and as soon as I get there, people start talking to me in Dari – including an officer who opens a new booth and invites me to be the first person in line. After learning that it’s a small miracle the conveyor belt worked in the first place, I grab my bags and head out of the airport where Z. is waiting for me, complete with his friend E. (and E.’s fast car). Apparently the road running from the airport into the city – a short one, and one that leads almost directly to the place where I’ll be living – is the nicest in Kabul. It’s wide and smooth. It’s also, I learn, one of the more dangerous ones. But that’s okay: soon we turn off onto a dirt road and we’re home. It’s wide and clean, but incredibly bumpy – the car jostles and knocks around as it tries to navigate a terrain that’s more like those mountain ranges I flew over than a nice residential area, which is what it is.
The house is large and, like all the other Afghan houses on our street, lives comfortably behind a tall wall, a strong gate, two friendly guard dogs, and a garden. We have a roof and a barbeque and 10 housemates, though several were there just on business (filming a documentary on an NGO started by one of the men who lives in our house) and have since left. As in many social situations thus far, I’m the only woman there. Talk about a new experience.
Later that night, I go to two parties. The first is held in a restaurant on Chicken Street called Haji Baba’s: the food, terrible (though unbelievably fancy and expensive by Afghan standards); the company, wonderful. It’s a party honoring the teachers at the circus where Z works, and it involves 50 or 60 Afghan men sitting around two tables laughing raucously for hours. At some point there’s a buffet, and everyone gets up to load his plate 8 inches high (not kidding) with oily rice, bland soup with what looked like Kix cereal in it, chicken that’s mostly fat and has been sitting in an ocean of gravy for a while, and some greasy substance that might once have been a vegetable. Then there are soft drinks and electric neon-colored desserts. To return to the company: everyone rough-houses each other laughs and jokes around in Dari (no one really bothering to notice me, even though I’m the only woman there) and finally, after the meal is over, they all get up to tell jokes. The jokes turn into real stories. Then one of the eminent teachers leans over to me and starts to translate, and I find myself learning a whole lot more Afghan potty humor than I ever thought I would.
After we’ve escaped the circus party, we head to another party. This is an expat party, held behind the seriously-guarded walls of a compound, and which allows me to at last remove my head gear. Here I bond with various brave, cool, good-hearted expat women, learn about some journalists’ adventures with the Army in the dangerous southern belt of the country (“but Darfur was much more interesting, really”), and listen to a couple of beefy security-guy types complain about Afghanistan.
So perhaps there are two parties. There is one party in restaurants like Haji Baba, or maybe also at weddings, bumping around in taxis, or just out on the street. This is a party of long jokes and innocent dirty humor, oft-recited litanies of greetings (“How are you? How is your health? Your family? Your house is well? Your business? Your third cousin twice removed in-law?”), oil and rice, mouths wide with laughter, and mostly men. There is another party behind layers of security guards – in ritzy restaurants, basement bars, air-conditioned offices, Western-style supermarkets, and armored cars – to which flock the strangest mix of foreigners. There are adventurers, do-gooders, businesspeople, journalists, photojournalists, videographers, private contractors and private consultants, and security men who look like they just walked out of a gas station on the Jersey turnpike. To all of this, add one shameless tourist: me.
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