Diary from Kabul

02-01-2012

HPN: They are so kind in this house, just gentle and beautiful. They are also decent and respectful. They all appreciate that it’s not been easy for me being so far from friends and family at this time, they see my constant frustrations as I wait for 8 hours to skype my kids, then just at the last second watch in dismay as the Internet fizzles and splutters and dies. They observe me get up and stalk like a wounded tiger, and they just smile their biggest empathetic smile, as I unplug every cable I can find for 4 hours, even though I know that it is completely out of my control. What’s that about, that sense of thinking we can fix things when we know we can’t, it is simply deckchair re-arranging as people stop waving and start drowning; it allows us to believe that we control our destiny, which of course we don’t, the Internet Gods are in charge of it all.

There is an elderly couple who live here, a complex lineage that I never understand, but permits them to stay here, until death displaces that requirement once and for all, a terminal agreement. The elderly wife speaks a little English, and I confess she has become diffidently maternal towards me. She is perhaps in her mid seventies, but age is misleading in Afghanistan, everyone looks 10 years older than they are, but all the same, she is motherly but not matronly, and I have become grateful of her instincts. It was she who on Christmas day sought me out, gave me a tender hug and in her best English said ‘Happy Christmas Mr Martin’.

Yesterday afternoon, there was a knock at my door, and again I was greeted with a gentle hug and a ‘Happy New Year Mr Martin’. It doesn’t take much to feel valued here, you don’t need to see your kids stripping wrapping paper from a heap of presents, you just need an elderly Afghan Pakistani women to gently put her arms around you and say four words and you can surpass another day on the planet. After she left, I returned to the comfort of my bed, upon which I had been lying and reading a book. I heard a whispering outside on the landing, her elderly husband wanted to wish me Happy New Year, and his wife was coaching him in a quiet timbre just outside my door. I was enchanted as I heard her repeatedly tell him to try again, I listened attentively to his diligent practice. Eventually there was the expected knock at the door, I opened it, and there he was, a rehearsal in waiting. He flung his arms in the air, fixed me a smile and said ‘Haffy pew near Mr Martin’. I threw my arms in the air, we embraced and in his ear I repeated ‘Haffy pew near’. What else to do!

One in the Chamber: I joined with fourteen others on New Year’s Eve for dinner at Le Jardin, a new restaurant that has opened here, two years in the building, the ambition of a wonderful and fascinating French man called Dan. There were amongst us 10 nationalities, a convention of taste and different cultural values, but the Afghans are becoming slowly westernised, and the westerners easternised, so it’s an entertaining melting pot that homogenises many basic instruments of humanity. The Afghans ate steak and drank whisky, and so did we!

After dinner, the group splintered into different factions and we headed our separate ways. Myself, and a couple of friends headed to the Italian Embassy for their traditional New Year’s Eve party. These ‘jollies of debauchery’ are by invitation only, and though we were on the official guest list, I had my doubts that we would get in. I had emailed the head of Public Affairs for the Italian Embassy a few days previously to request my place, and within minutes I had received a reply advising that I was already on the list as confirmed. Happy and bemused I began to question the possibility. It’s tempting to believe we are players in this place, that my legend was already such that a gilded clan of beautiful women had been jamming the Italian Embassy switchboard for weeks demanding that my name be added to the list, in the ephemeral hope of catching just a glimpse of me as the second hand turned passed the hour at 11.59pm on 31st December 2011. Blindness is as much a hobby as an ambition in such circumstances, and I could have whiled away a happy hour dreaming of a welcoming committee that included the great and good of high society ‘Kabul’ style, screaming and flinging underwear. But I am a shadow here, so by my calculations I was not on the list. There was a mistake.

I sent another email but again it confirmed that I was on the list. So giddy and drunk, we navigated a plenitude of checkpoints, until we presented ourselves at a quarter to midnight at the security for the Italian Embassy. The news of our arrival sparked panic inside, women were screaming and undressing, oh yes indeed – it was the sound of moist mayhem no doubts. A tiny aperture in the cold metallic door slid open, and a mouth said ‘passport please’. I handed mine over and the metal plate slid closed. After a silent two minutes, it reopened, a disembodied hand returned my passport with the affirmation ‘not on list’ and promptly slammed the shutter closed. We knocked on the door and tried again. After the now customary two minutes the passport was returned with the same grim news. You could hear a collective sigh cut the ambient inside as broken woman replaced their underwear; a glimpse of my shadow was now unlikely.

Well I have to tell you, this did not amuse one of my friends, who started banging on the door and shouting ‘he’s on the list, he’s on the list’ in the manner of someone who’s hair is on fire. What follows is a snapshot of life in this place, an explosive microcosm of a teetering existence. After about the third bang on the door, it suddenly flung open and we were confronted by three Afghan security guards, one with such menace and anger in his eyes that my skin began to flake. He grabbed his Kalashnikov and in a single movement and the flick of a switch, his weapon went from inert to loaded, a bullet in the chamber, ready to fire and he lunged dangerously towards us. I put my arm around my friend, said to the security guards ‘no problem’ and gently coaxed my friend back from the abyss, and after a tense 10 seconds, a concession was agreed, we strolled back to our car and headed elsewhere.

I wanted to say ‘Happy New Year to you too buddy’ but what would be the point of that, there is percutient disinterest in living here it seems, but a malevolent interest in the reverse. We were two westerners, one happy, the other slightly miffed, and the son of a high-ranking Afghan official, you really shouldn’t pull a semi-automatic machine gun on us with intent to use, just because some Italian couldn’t be arsed to do their job properly! I am fairly sure that if this had happened in the UK, well firstly you would all be pretty shaken, but next would be a public enquiry and common outrage, the public dismissal of those in charge and possibly the resignation of the Home Secretary. What happened here, was that we got in our car, giggled a bit and went to someone’s house to continue our new years celebrations unabated. This place is full of dangerously unstable people. And Afghans!

Caveat Emptor: When you buy a product in Afghanistan, you are always slightly circumspect of its providence. Everyone will tell you that if you are ill, and in need of medicine, don’t go to an Afghan clinic. It’s far safer to re-mortgage your home and auction your pancreas on e-bay, and head to the German Clinic, where you can be assured for the not unreasonable sum of $250 that your prescription of Amoxycillin tablets is not talcum powder compacted in a Pakistani sweat shop, and trucked across the border to an unwitting and sickly consumer. I recently bought two packets of Cadbury’s chocolate from Finest supermarket, and on opening it was clear that these had not left the factory in the UK three days earlier. They will have arrived in Islamabad circa 2008, and then the palettes will have been placed in an unrefrigerated truck, that will have travelled by dangerous convoy to Kabul, during which time it will have melted, and then frozen, and probably melted again. When you finally open it, the remnants inside are misshapen and splintered, and covered in a white powdery residue of milk whey! However it will taste just about fine, and if you consider the journey that its been on, and accept that you need this piece of chocolate more than life itself, then it is the tastiest chocolate you will ever eat.

And it’s the same with most things here, it’s probably fine but it might just be fake. Before I headed to Dubai and Beirut recently I popped to Finest to pick up new shampoo and toothpaste and deodorant, all well-known western brands, but mostly packaged for local markets. Well I don’t mind saying that I haven’t smelt my best this last 3 weeks. It started in Dubai, continued throughout my week in Lebanon, and finally ended 3 days ago when my deodorant ran out and I headed out for a replacement. For 3 weeks I have woken and showered and sprayed under my arms. It’s not complex, I have been doing this all my life, and in all that time I have just smelled the same, like me really, certainly never offensive. There have been times this past couple of weeks that I have found myself sprinting from a fast moving smell that won’t give up. I have been the person you don’t want to stand next to in queue. I don’t know how you can go from smelling temptingly satisfactory all your life, to smelling like an abattoir in 24 hours, but that’s what happened to me when I replaced my deodorant in early December.

However I now have a new can, and I don’t smell like a dead cow anymore, which is a blessing for me, but mostly for you. Buyer Beware!

Careers Advice: Whilst driving back from lunch with friends on New Years day, there was low murmuration and muted enthusiasm for the weather today. The temperature had risen and the sky was blue, and the combination massaged and soothed our beating temples. The temperature at this time of year can be bitter and most houses are heated by Bokhari’s, traditional wood burning stoves that stand in the centre of rooms, and vent through the ceiling. It is the constant output of a million of these that stains the air brown and induces a constant wheeze in every one you meet, and whenever you enter a house, instinct and frostbite draws you to the nearest one, and for while you all huddle together and thaw.

It was odd how clear and still the air was, a rise in temperature and people weren’t burning wood today, Kabul seemed pleasant for change. Tim turned to me and asked if it was cold in my house. I explained that the owner was very wealthy and did not like being cold, and so the temperature was a constant 30 degrees centigrade. I continued ‘It’s stifling, everyone walks around in t-shirts and shorts, even on the coldest days, I constantly overheat’. I commented that they spend something like $15,000 a month just heating the house, and that being British I just wanted to put an extra jumper and feel cold, after all it’s winter. I said that I would rather they just paid me $4000 a month to be cold, it would save everyone a lot of money and magnify my income enormously.

‘What do you do for a living?’ Tim asked.

‘Freeze’ I replied.

We were both happy with that.

Happy Birthday: And for two people who’s birthday’s I forgot yesterday due to the ‘haze of plenty’, well happy birthday to you both, to the oldest of you, and the newest!

Photo of the week: Uhm, I'll give you a clue, it's not Kabul - I don't have a minder darn it!