Kabul, Afghanistan trip -- J. Hammer
imbibe@mindspring.com (David P.)
The Mysteries of Kabul
By JOSHUA HAMMER
Published: January 21, 2007
AN icy wind blasted in our faces as we trudged up a rocky
slope on the southern outskirts of Kabul, the war-shattered
capital of Afghanistan. Around us rose a moonscape of
treeless, dun-colored hills, broken by clusters of mud-walled
squatter huts. I squinted into the sunlight, looking east toward
the earthen citadel of Bala Hissar, a stronghold from the time
of the Silk Road to the post-Soviet wars. High above us,
another wall of mud brick and stone - a fragment of the
ancient rampart of Kabul, constructed before the arrival of
Islam in a futile attempt to defend the city against invaders
from Arabia and Central Asia - snaked along the ridgeline.
"It's always been easy to conquer Afghanistan," said my
companion, Jonathan Bean, the American co-founder of the
Great Game Travel Company Afghanistan, which shepherded
about 70 Western tourists, including several dozen Americans,
through this rugged land last year. "The problem is keeping
control of it."
After an hour's slog up trackless scree to the top of the ridge,
Jonathan and I, along with our security guard, a lean, gray-
bearded Pashtun named Shafik Ullah, reached the rampart.
We followed it for a mile, sometimes walking alongside it,
sometimes balancing ourselves on its crumbling surface.
Perforated with apertures for archers, 30 feet high in places,
the barrier climbed toward the summit of Kabul's highest hill,
7,200 feet above sea level.
The Hindu Kush, a massif of snow and ice, loomed 30 miles
to the north; Kabul lay far below us, obscured behind a layer
of dust and smoke that smudged the panorama like a dirty
fingerprint. Jonathan opened a thermos of coffee, and we
warmed ourselves amid piles of stones and spent cartridges,
the remains of a military post used by Ahmad Shah Massoud
and his Northern Alliance fighters during the battle for Kabul in
the early 1990s. "You can feel the history all around us,"
Shafik said.
In the 1970s, tens of thousands of visitors poured into Kabul
each year, when the Afghan capital rivaled Kathmandu as the
favored Central Asian haunt for young backpackers who
bunked down in cheap hotels and congregated on fabled
Chicken Street to smoke hashish and while away the hours in
coffee and carpet shops.
Then came the Russians, then the Taliban, and then the
bombings following 9/11, pretty much destroying Kabul's
reputation as a favored stop on the Hippie Trail. Now, however,
even though much of Afghanistan remains dangerous, tourists
are beginning to trickle back in, some lured by the thrill of the
unknown, others by the pleasures offered by such new tourist
spots as the Kabul Serena, an elegant $36.5-million hotel that
claims a "five-star ambience" in the heart of the city. As many
as 5,000 Western tourists visited Kabul last year, Jonathan
Bean told me, most of them affluent Europeans and Americans
who have traveled to "30 or 40" countries, including developing
ones. "Most our clients are experienced travelers," Jonathan
said. "They've trekked in Nepal, gone on safari in East Africa.
Some have returned after coming here in the 1960s and 1970s.
They see Afghanistan as the next great adventure-travel
destination."
Most tourists who pass through view Kabul as an overnight
stopover on the way to more remote corners of the country: the
rugged Pamir Mountains in the northeast; the exotic bazaar town
of Mazar-i-Sharif; and Bamiyan, the former site of the giant stone
Buddhas that were destroyed by the Taliban. But those who linger
for a few days, as I did, will discover a vibrant capital, steeped in
tumultuous history and rich with Silk Road atmospherics.
"Kabul is the definition of the frontier town," I was told by Rory
Stewart, the British diplomat turned author of the "The Places in
Between," a best-selling account of his winter walk from Herat to
Kabul just after the Taliban's defeat. Today Mr. Stewart lives in
Kabul, where he runs the Turquoise Mountain Foundation, which
trains local craftsmen and is helping to renovate the decrepit
Old Town by the Kabul River. The city is "a pluralistic place, with
a fascinating history, half a dozen languages and countless
subcultures," he said.
The city's security remains a cause for concern. Although most
of the violence is concentrated in Taliban strongholds in the
country's southeast, a handful of attacks have rocked the capital
during the last year, including a suicide-bomb explosion on
Sept. 8 at Massoud Circle, a major traffic hub, that killed 2
Americans and at least 16 Afghans. Anti-Western riots broke
out last May in the aftermath of a fatal collision involving an
American military convoy and civilian vehicles; crowds chanted
"death to America" and attacked restaurants, hotels, police
stations and shops, and British marines evacuated 21 European
diplomats from the city.
MOST foreign aid workers and diplomats live inside walled
compounds guarded round the clock by private security teams,
and the United Nations restricts its employees to hotels and
restaurants in the capital that meet its stringent security regu-
lations, including high blast walls and buildings set back several
dozen yards from the road. Those who live in the city said the
United Nations also put out daily threat warnings: "Green City,"
meaning one could travel around the city freely; "White City,"
no unnecessary travel; and "Red City," advising foreigners to
stay indoors.
Yet with a few spectacular exceptions, the capital has remained
violence free. "NATO and Afghan security forces have done a
good job," I was told by Vince White, a Ministry of Finance
consultant who has lived in Kabul for nearly five years. "The
security companies try to make us paranoid," he said. "They
depend on expatriate fear for their business."
Jonathan Bean regularly takes foreign tourists on walking tours
of Kabul with a single, unarmed Afghan security guard. "People
love Kabul," Johnathan said. "They've heard nothing positive
about the place - that it was destroyed, that it's dangerous.
Then they get here and get a big surprise - they see a
bustling bazaar city, full of life."
In a week of exploring the city, from the windswept, near-
deserted ramparts to the teeming, labyrinthine passageways
of the Mandayi Bazaar, I never once felt threatened. To the
contrary, I was welcomed everywhere by Afghans eager to
show me that their country and city were groping their way
toward recovery.
My arrival at Kabul's airport from New Delhi, on a dreary
November afternoon, however, offered a hint of the still-shaky
state of affairs in Afghanistan. The electricity in the terminal
had been cut, and, in the semi-darkness, laborers dumped
piles of baggage on the floor beside the immobile conveyor
belt, setting off a scramble among my fellow passengers.
An elderly Pashtun in a shalwar kamiz (a traditional shirt often
seen also in Pakistan and India) and a gray turban elbowed
me aside and lunged for an overstuffed cardboard box. Two
airport policemen stood by idly, watching the chaos. Bags in
hand, I stumbled through the frantic crowd, hailed a battered
taxi, and headed for the Gandamack Lodge, a renovated
1930s villa owned by Peter Jouvenal, an old Afghan hand
and former BBC cameraman. (The Gandamak, which
opened in 2002, originally occupied a house that had
belonged to one of Osama Bin Laden's wives; Mr. Jouvenal
moved it into its current building last year.)
It didn't take me long to discover one of the newest hubs of
expatriate Kabul. A photojournalist friend directed me to the
Cabul Coffee House, a cozy establishment, painted adobe-
pink and filled with Central Asian handicrafts, located on a
muddy alley in the lively Qal-I-Fatula district.
Opened last year by two American women and the Afghan
husband of one of them, the Cabul Coffee House functions
as a sort of cross between Starbucks and a Manhattan
literary bar. In addition to its lattes and double-shot cappuc-
cinos, it offers readings and lectures one or two nights a week.
I got there at about six o'clock on a Tuesday evening to find
several dozen Westerners, including aid workers, teachers,
contractors and consultants, along with a smattering of
Afghans, eating cheeseburgers, Greek salads and kebabs
while waiting for the cultural program to begin. (The fact that
so many foreigners had ventured into the streets of Kabul
after dark was perhaps the most telling indication of the
capital's relative stability.)
The guest speaker was Whitney Azoy, a Princeton-educated
former United States diplomat to Afghanistan. Mr. Azoy had
left the foreign service decades ago and transformed himself
into one of the world's experts on buzkashi, Afghanistan's
national sport, a sort of polo played with a goat carcass.
When I arrived, I found Mr. Azoy huddled in a corner of the
cafe with the American screenwriter of "Pretty Woman", J. F.
Lawton, who had been in the country for weeks researching
a documentary about buzkashi. Then Mr. Azoy stood before
the crowd and delivered an hourlong talk, accompanied by
slides, about his discovery of this rough, fast-paced sport in
the mountains of northern Afghanistan during his diplomatic
tour in the 1970s. There was an unspoken poignancy to his
lecture and his slides, all of which had been taken during
that era: the world he was describing in loving detail was
soon to by obliterated by the Soviet invasion and the sub-
sequent civil war. (Although buzkashi is not indigenous to
Kabul, President Muhammad Daoud brought it to the
capital in 1978; matches have returned to Kabul, on a
sporadic basis, since the Taliban's fall.)
The following day I hired a driver at the Gandamack and set
out to see the National Museum of Afghanistan, in western
Kabul. Large sections of capital remained wrecked after
decades of war and neglect; beggars swarmed over us at
intersections, and the traffic in the downtown area, along the
Kabul River, was horrendous. In the heavy rain, the myriad
unpaved streets had turned into quagmires. (During dry
periods, I would soon discover, an opaque layer of dust and
car exhaust hangs over the city bowl.) As we drove west
along the Darulaman Road, past the former Soviet Embassy
- an area of heavy fighting in 1993 and 1994 between
Massoud and rival warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar - I looked
over empty tracts and the hulks of shelled, bullet-pocked
buildings. The devastation was ubiquitous.
The National Museum itself bears testimony to the traumas of
the last two decades. Until 1992 it contained one of the finest
collections of art and cultural artifacts in Asia: 100,000 pieces
from two millenniums of Afghan history. During the fight for
Kabul, mujahedeen armies occupied and looted the museum;
the structure was shelled in 1993 and fire destroyed the roof
and the second floor. By the time the Taliban seized power,
only a few thousand pieces remained; the museum's staff
had hidden away the best works. Then, in 2001, Taliban
leaders ordered all art objects depicting the human form
destroyed, and cadres set upon the remaining exhibits with
axes and sledgehammers, ruining 2,500 more works.
But the museum, like much of Kabul, is struggling back to life.
The two-story, gray concrete villa was rebuilt with Greek,
American and Italian money in 2004. When I arrived, workmen
were laying tiles in the lobby and putting the finishing touches
on a marble staircase, a project being financed by an Austrian
aid group. Though most galleries were locked and display
cases empty, I pushed through a half-open door and came
upon a magnificent collection of 18th- and 19th-century wood-
carved deities and monarchs from Nuristan, a mountainous
province northeast of Jalalabad. These surreal treasures,
reminiscent of West African fertility gods and Picasso's
cubist works, were recently patched back together after
being hammered into fragments by Taliban zealots. After
admiring the several dozen works - hatchet marks and
gouges still visible in the wood - I met with Omara Khan
Massoudi, the museum's general director.
Mr. Massoudi was preparing the museum's second exhibition
since the Taliban's fall, set to open in the winter of 2007:
photographs and artifacts salvaged from the covered bazaar
in Tashqurghan, a unique, mud-walled complex of mosques,
shops and homes, bombed into rubble by the Soviets in 1982.
The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam donated glass cases for the
exhibition, and those cases will later be used to house the
permanent collection. "I hope within two years we can restore
the museum to something like it was," Mr. Massoudi told me.
"It all depends on security."
Many of Kabul's most impressive structures are off limits to
tourists. The citadel of Bala Hissar - occupied over the
centuries by the Mongols, the Moguls and the British - is
now a military installation. The surrounding grounds were
mined during the Soviet occupation and have yet to be
cleared. The domed hilltop mausoleum of Nadir Shah,
father of the aged present-day monarch, Zahir Shah,
remains closed while its vandalized marble facade is
painstakingly restored.
I did gain entry to the Babur Gardens, a rehabilitated com-
plex of rose gardens and poplars beloved of the Mogul
emperor who won Kabul from a rival in the 16th century and
made Kabul his capital. Among its treasures is a small
marble tomb, built by another Mogul emperor, Shah Jahan,
who later built the Taj Mahal. I also visited the OMAR Mine
Museum, which displays hundreds of Soviet-era personnel
and anti-tank mines, along with an arsenal's worth of mortar
shells, bullets and cluster bombs, a testament to the brutality
of the Soviet occupation.
The real fascination of Kabul, I found, lies in the ordinary
rhythms of life here, in the bustle of a reviving city. Early one
morning Jonathan and Shafik met me in the lobby of the
Serena (perhaps the only luxury hotel in the world that
operates on a cash-only basis), to which I had moved after
a few nights at the Gandamack, and led me on foot along
the Kabul River to the Mandayi Market.
Destroyed by British forces in the 1840s, and again during
the 1990s civil war, this rebuilt bazaar is the nerve center
of the Afghan capital. Shafts of sunlight penetrated serpen-
tine alleys lined by canvas-covered wooden stalls; the harsh
light illuminated the bearded faces of Pashtun merchants
and their bountiful wares: nuts, spices, dried fruits, tea, slabs
of raw meat, live turkeys, blankets, beads of lapis lazuli.
Sparks flew from the spinning wheels of knife sharpeners,
and strips of beef sizzled in huge pans of sesame oil. Adoles-
cent boys careened through the passages pushing wheel-
barrows, sending shoppers scurrying for safety; two butchers
led a bleating black sheep to a rear courtyard for slaughter.
We turned into a cacophonous bird market, where bright-
green parakeets and budgies flitted by the hundreds inside
bamboo cages. Five ethnic Uzbek men, swathed in wool
blankets, with dark faces and almond eyes suggesting their
Mongol ancestry, marched single-file through the alley and
struck a deal for a fighting partridge, a large, red-beaked
bird whose killer instinct is legendary. "The High Court has
ruled bird fighting illegal," Shafik told me, "But it happens
every Friday morning across the city. It's a part of life in
Kabul."
THAT evening, Vince White, the American consultant, took
me to a teetering building in the shadow of the domed Pul-i-
Khishti Mosque, the dominant edifice of central Kabul. We
had come to attend a weekly gathering of Sufi Muslims,
members of a mystical sect whose ritualistic music, qawwali,
and dance were banned during the Taliban era but have since
been revived. We slipped past hashish-smoking men in a
muddy alley, climbed to the building's second floor, removed
our shoes and entered a fluorescent-lit room.
Seated on the green-carpeted floor were burly ethnic Tajiks
wearing the beretlike brown pakul, popularized by Massoud;
Pashtuns with prophets' white beards and billowing turbans;
sloe-eyed Uzbeks and Hazaras; and a Medusa-haired ascetic
in rags who flopped down beside me and began haranguing
me in Dari, Afghanistan's dominant language (close to Farsi).
All other eyes were focused on an elderly sitarist in a white
turban, an adolescent drummer, a harmonium player, a
virtuouso of the rubab - a mandolinlike Afghan instrument -
and a black-haired young vocalist who is regarded, Mr. White
told me, as one of Afghanistan's finest Sufi singers. "All of
these people are poor," he said, over the singer's wailing
vibrato. "This is a great escape from the problems of life in
Afghanistan."
I stared across the room at a black-bearded gnome
shrouded in a white robe. His head was bobbing, his face
frozen in a rictus of ecstasy. The wild-haired ascetic
clapped his hands to his cheeks and began to sway back
and forth. A young Pashtun poured me a cup of Afghan green
tea, and I sipped contentedly as the music wafted over me.
Then, near midnight, my companion and I headed back to
our car, through a darkened alley, past the sweet aroma of
hashish, and the huddled forms of men warming themselves
around a wood fire glowing in a barrel. Kabul - raw, ruined,
yet stirring back to life - had never seemed more magical.
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