Kabul, and a furrowed brow

Yesterday morning early Ed and I left Mazar for Kabul, a 9 or 10 hour journey by 4x4, over a newly rebuilt road and some very spectacular scenery.
It is so much cooler in Kabul that it feels like a different season, because Kabul is quite high up in the mountains.

And here's my worry:

I fear that so far, the name of this blog could seem a misnomer, in the sense that I have so far collected but few crumbs of convincingly Afghan experience. Yet, as an ex-pat living in this country, I am within the norm. Great efforts are made to shield us from experiencing the lives of ordinary Afghans – for our safety and comfort of course. The trials that we are pleased to complain of – cooped up in guesthouses with nothing to do but read or watch telly, driven everywhere in a 4x4, intermittent electricity, infrequent hot water, patchy mobile coverage… well, if only, is what the average Afghan would say.

I had a humbling moment as I sat cradled in a wooden swing this morning, on a bright green lawn under a tree in the grounds of our Kabul guesthouse, my brow furrowed as I worked my way through a Farsi lesson. I was feeling annoyed with the inaccessible style of the author, seeking to draw my attention to the behaviour of categorical predicates of copulative verbs, and looked up to meet the eyes of a man mowing the lawn with a rickety mechanical device. He was an elderly man, with a long white beard combed out into a smooth mane, and clothed in an austerely elegant way, in a mud coloured shalwar kameez, with an extra cloak round his shoulders and a turban wrapped round his skullcap. When our eyes met, he gracefully raised his hand to his chest and inclined his head forward in a wordless greeting, and I did likewise. Then it struck me that, judging by the statistics, this man can probably not read, and it would be hard for him to find the time to learn now. A large majority of adult Afghans cannot read. Those who are learning now, mostly children of course, are learning to recite the alphabet over and over again parrot fashion, in schools with no books and badly paid, under qualified teachers. My information comes from the reports produced by the international donor organisations, upon which we all rely for our knowledge of the country we live in, we cocooned foreigners.I am very grateful, of course, not to be living the life of the ordinary Afghan, but it is alarming to think of the important decisions, with far reaching consequences, made by professionals hermetically sealed from this society, working on second hand information. So far, I differ from this model in that I am not responsible for any decision making at all.

exercise

I have not troubled this page with my attempts to find a job in Mazar and give a more ordered shape to the next chapter of my life. I do not have a job yet, but I have, as they say, some interesting leads, one of which is tangentially related to my discovery that Mazar has a swimming pool. It is a semi private pool, set in the well watered and rose scented grounds of the Khifoyat hotel. At my first, tantalising glimpse of it, the pool was effervescing with little lithe bodies, leaping in and out of the water clutching items of garden furniture as props to their acrobatics. Not having a bikini to hand, I consoled myself with the thought that I could hardly hope to swim there without the risk of concussion, as I surveyed a rippling line of boys teetering on the high diving board from my vantage point on the lawn.
The hotel staff courteously assured me, quite unprompted, that they would get rid of all the little boys at once should I wish to swim myself.
Until I made this happy discovery, I was sure that the prospects for agreeable exercise in Mazar, for a genteel married lady such as myself, were very limited, given that I am lucky enough not have to pound the household's laundry by hand (the chief form of exertion for most Afghan women of the city). The main other aerobic exercise is sweeping the yard and house, a truly Sisyphean task in this dustbowl. Which is why I had come up with an elaborate plan, prior to arriving in Mazar, for establishing an exercise club for women, to be hosted initially by myself on the basis of expertise gleaned from a pile of assorted exercise DVDs bought in London at a greatly reduced price. Having watched the programmes, I now know that the reason they were so cheap is because they were all made in the early 80's, which to me gives them a charmingly retro feel.
I am too young to blush at seeing those haircuts, the fuchsia lycra and the neon leg warmers, and I thought an Afghan audience might enjoy them.
I don't know yet, though, because the exercise club is still a twinkle in my eye.
I have yet to identify a group of willing guinea pigs, but next week I have an appointment to meet the female students of the English language faculty of Balkh university, which I hope will prove my core constituency in this venture.
The new peak of my ambition, imagined a couple of months from now, is to lead a group of my aerobically toned new friends to a swim in the Khifoyat hotel pool, which will have been booked out for our exclusive use for the occasion.

Mazar's hero, Ahmed Shah Massoud, can be seen brooding soulfully on the passing burqas from atop a cafe 

pedestrians 

street signs in Mazar 

Flora in a Mazar juice bar 

street children

Yesterday evening I heard that one of Ed’s Afghan acquaintances had congratulated him on his marriage. “And how old is she, your bride?” When he heard that I am the same age as Ed, 27, there was a slight pause “Ah, well, the important thing is that you love her, isn’t it?”. There is nothing like travel to Central Asia for feeling at one time both over the hill, and yet also curiously young and frivolous... I was very distressed to hear on arrival in Mazar that a day centre for street children, one of the most impressive and worthwhile projects I visited on my last visit in November, has since been forced to close down for lack of funds. The centre provided hot meals and a variety of activities, from sewing to calligraphy and computer lessons, to over a hundred children who are out of school and on the streets all day. I treasure the mental picture I have of the children having lunch, sitting in two long rows around a cloth laid on the floor down the side of a long basement hall. They all looked up from their plates of rice pilau when I came in, and gap toothed smiles rippled at me from up and down the room. I had heard something of this financial crisis, and had resolved to do what I could in terms of fundraising once I arrived, in gratitude for the hospitality of my old agency, but it seems I am too late. At the moment I am a lady of leisure in Mazar, having come here on the heels of my husband, who is engaged in an ambitious cultural project, so I have plenty of energy, pace the climate, to dedicate to finding out what happened to the funding and what can be done to find more... you can expect to hear more about this (hoping this does not sound too like a threat).

First day in Mazar

Mazar-i-Sharif is very hot today.
Even in my underwear with the fan turned up high, I feel rather heroic mustering up the energy to tap feebly at the laptop keys in our new bedroom. I hope this is only because I am still recovering from my travels, and in particular from yesterday’s exertions. The crowning glory was walking across one of those heroic Soviet misnomers, the Friendship Bridge, which crosses the sleepy Jaxartes river to link Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, and was used first by invading armies of the USSR. It is a long and monotonous bridge, and I walked it in the midday sun, shrouded in layers of suitably modest garb, trailing my 30 or so kilos of truly indispensable belongings. When I reached the other side, the friendly group of Korean NGO workers who had walked a few hundred yards ahead of me, smiled encouragingly. The man among them detached himself from the group, and approached me proffering a bottle of cool water with these words “We think you should drink some water. Your face is red and your lips are already cracking”. They knew I was about to meet my husband and so must have known I wanted to look my best.
Once the Afghan border guards, who seemed rather festive and ceremonious in comparison with their truculent paunchy Uzbek counterparts, had cursorily inspected my passport, one of them invited me to sit under a tree and lay down my bags. He handed me a note from Ed saying that he had gone for lunch (having waited all morning, I supposed), and brushed crumbs off the bench on which I was to sit. I did not sit long, for as soon as I let out a little cry of dismay at the thought of lunch being had without me, another guard immediately brought out his mobile phone to dial Ed’s number.

My favourite aspect of the Uzbek side of the crossing, which consists of many hurdles and booths to be visited for various inspections, stamps and mysterious scraps of paper, was a swallow’s nest. It had been built in the corner of the ceiling directly above one of these booths, which presents a face of shaded glass, with a small round hole at about the height of my navel, through which travellers hasten to stuff their passports for inspection. When I arrived at this booth, it was already surrounded by a little group of Afghans who clustered around the port hole, anxiously awaiting the fate of the passports they had earlier thrust through the aperture. As I hung back waiting, I watched the mother and father swallows ministering to their brood. The four seemed rather a spoilt lot: although they were nearly as big as their parents, indeed too big for the nest, so that one had been pushed out on to the adjacent ledge, the all opened their yellow beaks very wide and round as soon as one of their valiant parent approached with a morsel. I was fascinated to watch how the parents fed their children in strict rotation, and never gave a morsel to the same one twice in a row. They I noticed that almost as soon as each fledgling had finished swallowing, he or she would nudge around in the nest so that his back end and tail would be poking over the nest, and release a round and perfectly formed poo. These were moist and thus invariably adhered to the hair of whichever supplicant happened in that moment to be bent over with his face pressed against the round hole in the glass of the booth. Having taken note of this, and had a secret giggle about it with one of the Afghans who had also noticed, I approached the booth from the other side when my turn came.

I was sorry to be so puce of face when I met Ed, but otherwise it was of course a delight to be at last together, and in a big jeep speeding towards our new home. In all the excitement, he forgot to carry me across the threshold, but I now know that he had meant to.
I had already spent a week in Mazar in November, and so did not add anything new to my impressions of the city in the course of yesterday’s drive to the guesthouse: dusty roads, hastily erected Soviet style apartment blocks daubed in Dari signs, and ramshackle street stalls. But different produce glimpsed on the stalls: I was pleased to see piles of mangoes, melons and aubergines. When I got out of the jeep outside the guesthouse, again as last time, a woman in a skyblue burqa wafted by, turning the lace portcullis like a submarine’s periscope to keep me in her sights for as long as possible as she hastened by. Was there any point smiling at her as I could not hope to see a smile in return? I noticed that she had shiny, high heeled shoes though.
In the guesthouse where Ed and I will live for the foreseeable future (up to a year, I have been telling people), we are looked after by two men whom I shall call Sugar Lump and Friday, as this is how their names translate into English. Between them, they guard the premises, cook and clean for us and whoever else among the employees and friends of FACTUM happens to pass through town. But there is also a washerwoman, as Sugar Lump reminded Ed when he came back from the office today for lunch. Why had I not ventured out of the house all morning, he wanted to know. I should not have been afraid (or shy, perhaps), because the washerwoman was about, too. He asked Ed over lunch if I had not been very bored, all alone all morning. They will continue to speak to me through Ed, I expect, even when my Dari does improve beyond the mere basics, as they are very polite.

Ed came back for lunch brandishing a clutch of wedding gifts from one of his new friends, an archaeologist: the most unexpected was a plaster cast in Italianate style of the Madonna and Child, in a very elaborate baroque architectural setting. Ed suspects his friend of being a bit of a Sufi. We had a very nice meal of stewed aubergines with rice, chips, salad, and two kinds of melon. It makes me feel rather sleepy, in this heat.