Preparing to leave Afghanistan

The time has suddenly come for us to start organising our departure from Afghanistan. Ed and I would both love to travel back overland, but we will have to see how forthcoming Afghanistan’s chippy neighbours will be in issuing us with visas. The most obvious route would be through Iran, which we both travelled to in 2001 and loved, but we were told yesterday at the Iranian Embassy in Kabul that there is a “special procedure” for American and British citizens only. Needless to say, given the current political climate, this procedure is anything but special – other than in the sense of longer, more complicated and more expensive.
I pored over the map yesterday plotting alternative routes, but they all involve a huge number of countries (and thus visas), especially if we try to avoid going through Uzbekistan again. One example: we cross from Afghanistan into Tajikistan, drive across Tajikistan over the mountains and eastwards into Kyrgyzstan, traverse the whole of Kyrgyzstan northwards, again across high mountains, up to the Kazakh border. We would then traverse the whole of southern Kazakhstan westwards, a massive trek across the proverbial hungry steppe of Central Asia. From Kazakhstan we would pass briefly into the Russian Federation, go through Volgograd and into Ukraine. Having been granted entrance to the Ukraine, it would then be a simple matter of crossing Hungary and Austria, before taking the night train from Vienna to Venice.
Having contemplated that route, this morning we decided to go back to the Iranian Embassy and submit our application. We took a deep breath and paid 240 dollars for the chance of receiving a 7 day transit visa within two weeks.
In the queue for the Iranian Embassy, I met a small Afghan lady who was also hoping to be allowed to enter Iran. She told me, in hesitant English, that she was a graduate of the Faculty of Law who had remained in Kabul throughout all the years of the war. Her husband and brother had been martyred, and she had no money, but she had heard that it was possible to apply for study grants from the Ministry of Martyrs and Maimed Veterans (that may not be its the exact title).
She told me she has never once left her country, but that she very much wants to, and that she wants to continue her studies. She gazed up at me in a supplicating manner as she spoke, and smiled so that the corners of her light brown eyes crinkled, but I could think of nothing to say.
Already that same morning I had shrugged away two requests for help – while Ed was in the British Embassy having a meeting, I waited in the car with the driver. We talked about boxing – he is a keen boxer and would love us to buy him a proper pair of gloves in England. The gloves to be found here are no good – the label might say they are made in America or England or Russia, but in fact they are all from Pakistan. He showed me his various boxing scars, and proudly pointed out that both his nose and teeth are unscathed. He also told me the interesting, and perhaps little known, fact that all the best boxers in the world always eventually wind up converting to Islam.
Our chat was interrupted by a man in his forties or fifties, with a suntanned face and a neatly trimmed beard, who accosted the window and asked the driver if he might speak to me. Having been assured that I spoke Dari, he explained that he was a teacher, but he was forced to beg because he had five children to support.
I didn’t have any money and told him so, and when he withdrew the driver explained that even experienced teachers only receive about forty dollars a month – which in Kabul can hardly be enough to keep body and soul together, never mind support a family.
Not five minutes after the teacher had departed, an old lady in a tattered burqa, lifted up so that we could see her face, clung to the car window pleading for a few Afghani to feed a poor widow. Again I explained that I had no money, but again I don’t think she believed me. In Europe, it is possible to feel confident that beggars and the homeless can rely on the state or private charities, but in Kabul, where even the teachers beg, there are just too many.