Kabul…Ahoy
Four days in Kabul… was it Kabul or heaven…Much of what it meant to me, was said in a form of text message that I sent to my wife… it went like this
“Reachd Kbl… wlkd unescrtd on its streets… sw women widout burqas… actually saw women… wrld seems nrml agin… dint knw sch small thngs matterd so much”
Last time when I was in Kabul… it was two and a half months ago… chilling winters (by my standards), sleet beneath the feet, lonely roads… Kabul was not the best place on the earth to be… after Delhi.
This time around… things were different… spring, lively streets, freedom, women- in fact very beautiful women-… Kabul was heaven after Kandahar.
On my flight to Kabul… which is operated by United Nations Humanitarian Air Services… and which takes 357 American greenbacks for that flight… and which ensures you for about 7 million Indian rupees… and which coaxes a senior leader in Kandahar to say “there is nothing humanitarian about it”… I met a FAO official.
He was an ethnic Tajik from Panjshir Valley… place from where the great Afghan leader Ahmed Shah Masoud came… (More I read about the person, more I am impressed with his greatness… alas he is dead today… he was a real Afghan hero… not a Tajik, Uzbek, Hazara or Pashtun hero… but as I said… no political views on the blog)
So this official of FAO told me his story… how he used to work for the UN even during Taliban days… and how he was arrested by it on suspicion that he was a spy of Northern Alliance… and how he was detained in an underground cellar in Kabul for about three weeks in chilling December… and that the underground cellar had a small uncovered ventilation, that made his life hell… and how he had lost all hopes for life… and one day, when a Talib came to put a plastic sheet over the open ventilation… he thanked Allah for sparing his life… and that he was out of it all when Red Cross took him away.
Read any book about those days… and they are replete with such anecdotes… yes anecdotes… which you go through, passively and vicariously… anecdotes… that extract expressions and not emotions… and here I was meeting a person, who told me, what death was like… what suffering was like… I tried looking into his eyes… there were no emotions… for people like him have forgotten how to emote… it is just not the way of life in this part of world.
Kabul, I realized, is fairly big city… with a lot of life… its like an infant trying to find its way in a new world… new malls are coming up, lot of construction everywhere… a senior Pashtun leader, once lamented, in front of me… we are like small child… who is trying to walk… and every time we take a first step… somebody pushes us to fall… and we have to begin afresh.
Afghan women, mostly Tajik-Hazara and Uzbek in this city… are a beautiful lot… much of what they dressed like… reminded me of Egypt… long skirts and hijabs… I took a long walk at around 4 pm in the evening, around my hotel… it was an opportune moment… as a number of school going girls were on their way home… they were giggling… they were enjoying… world seemed normal again…
The unescorted walk took me to Safi International Hotel… which houses one of the most posh shopping malls of Kabul… one step in and you are blinded by the affluence… you wonder if you are in Dubai… some place else, I would have lambasted this affluence in a country where masses live in penury and die in penury… but, here and now, this mall represented a hope… that Afghanistan would be normal again…
At a coffee shop in the basement of the shopping mall… I met a Hazara boy… speaking in English… we chatted for over an hour… he worked in a computer firm… which paid him enough to enjoy a lavish life style… and an I-phone… we talked about Hazarajat… about Bamyan… about Band-e-Amir lake… and how I wished to visit it… he told me ways and means to get there… and I said insha Allah… I would be there, one day.
In the evening… I checked out a new Indian restaurant… Namaste… not so good when compared to Anaar… the next day I went back to Anaar, to relish the laid back atmosphere… the naan, the tandoori chicken and all…
The day next, I checked out street food in Kabul… the potato-stuffed naan… French fries (arrrrrrrrgh, even here), checked out Kabul Fried Chicken (with almost the same logo… an IPR violation… but who cares in this part of the world… I am told there is a Afghan Pizza Hut… even in Kandahar)
My time in Kabul floated… like a hope… the place where I stayed… Hotel Park… had an open courtyard… where they had placed a huge birdcage with a number of exotic birds… feeding them… hearing them chirping was a bliss… I refrained from staying in Hotel Safi (much expensive and modern… and as my employer would have paid for it… it didn’t matter)… I wanted the bliss of being in a courtyard.
The maids in the hotel, referred to as Khala… were mostly Hazara… in their forties and fifties… all beautiful, motherly… they smiled after seeing me… and said Hindi… here I was in a place, where I am respected for what I am… from where I belong…
I also met a number of Pakistani young men… who work in Kabul; mostly in Call Centers… unaware of the politics… they seemed genuinely warm towards me… and wondered when Afghans would stop hating them…
Kabul was an experience… a great experience.
“Reachd Kbl… wlkd unescrtd on its streets… sw women widout burqas… actually saw women… wrld seems nrml agin… dint knw sch small thngs matterd so much”
Last time when I was in Kabul… it was two and a half months ago… chilling winters (by my standards), sleet beneath the feet, lonely roads… Kabul was not the best place on the earth to be… after Delhi.
This time around… things were different… spring, lively streets, freedom, women- in fact very beautiful women-… Kabul was heaven after Kandahar.
On my flight to Kabul… which is operated by United Nations Humanitarian Air Services… and which takes 357 American greenbacks for that flight… and which ensures you for about 7 million Indian rupees… and which coaxes a senior leader in Kandahar to say “there is nothing humanitarian about it”… I met a FAO official.
He was an ethnic Tajik from Panjshir Valley… place from where the great Afghan leader Ahmed Shah Masoud came… (More I read about the person, more I am impressed with his greatness… alas he is dead today… he was a real Afghan hero… not a Tajik, Uzbek, Hazara or Pashtun hero… but as I said… no political views on the blog)
So this official of FAO told me his story… how he used to work for the UN even during Taliban days… and how he was arrested by it on suspicion that he was a spy of Northern Alliance… and how he was detained in an underground cellar in Kabul for about three weeks in chilling December… and that the underground cellar had a small uncovered ventilation, that made his life hell… and how he had lost all hopes for life… and one day, when a Talib came to put a plastic sheet over the open ventilation… he thanked Allah for sparing his life… and that he was out of it all when Red Cross took him away.
Read any book about those days… and they are replete with such anecdotes… yes anecdotes… which you go through, passively and vicariously… anecdotes… that extract expressions and not emotions… and here I was meeting a person, who told me, what death was like… what suffering was like… I tried looking into his eyes… there were no emotions… for people like him have forgotten how to emote… it is just not the way of life in this part of world.
Kabul, I realized, is fairly big city… with a lot of life… its like an infant trying to find its way in a new world… new malls are coming up, lot of construction everywhere… a senior Pashtun leader, once lamented, in front of me… we are like small child… who is trying to walk… and every time we take a first step… somebody pushes us to fall… and we have to begin afresh.
Afghan women, mostly Tajik-Hazara and Uzbek in this city… are a beautiful lot… much of what they dressed like… reminded me of Egypt… long skirts and hijabs… I took a long walk at around 4 pm in the evening, around my hotel… it was an opportune moment… as a number of school going girls were on their way home… they were giggling… they were enjoying… world seemed normal again…
The unescorted walk took me to Safi International Hotel… which houses one of the most posh shopping malls of Kabul… one step in and you are blinded by the affluence… you wonder if you are in Dubai… some place else, I would have lambasted this affluence in a country where masses live in penury and die in penury… but, here and now, this mall represented a hope… that Afghanistan would be normal again…
At a coffee shop in the basement of the shopping mall… I met a Hazara boy… speaking in English… we chatted for over an hour… he worked in a computer firm… which paid him enough to enjoy a lavish life style… and an I-phone… we talked about Hazarajat… about Bamyan… about Band-e-Amir lake… and how I wished to visit it… he told me ways and means to get there… and I said insha Allah… I would be there, one day.
In the evening… I checked out a new Indian restaurant… Namaste… not so good when compared to Anaar… the next day I went back to Anaar, to relish the laid back atmosphere… the naan, the tandoori chicken and all…
The day next, I checked out street food in Kabul… the potato-stuffed naan… French fries (arrrrrrrrgh, even here), checked out Kabul Fried Chicken (with almost the same logo… an IPR violation… but who cares in this part of the world… I am told there is a Afghan Pizza Hut… even in Kandahar)
My time in Kabul floated… like a hope… the place where I stayed… Hotel Park… had an open courtyard… where they had placed a huge birdcage with a number of exotic birds… feeding them… hearing them chirping was a bliss… I refrained from staying in Hotel Safi (much expensive and modern… and as my employer would have paid for it… it didn’t matter)… I wanted the bliss of being in a courtyard.
The maids in the hotel, referred to as Khala… were mostly Hazara… in their forties and fifties… all beautiful, motherly… they smiled after seeing me… and said Hindi… here I was in a place, where I am respected for what I am… from where I belong…
I also met a number of Pakistani young men… who work in Kabul; mostly in Call Centers… unaware of the politics… they seemed genuinely warm towards me… and wondered when Afghans would stop hating them…
Kabul was an experience… a great experience.
1 comment:
You are a lucky fellow..
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