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.