The Prophet is a Pisces…and other non-PC tales

One of the things I love about Kabul is the sheer variety of people living and working there that I have had the privilege to get to know. My friends and colleagues who are not Afghan, are from every other country and continent imaginable and have brought me a similar range of perspectives on life. What I particularly love is that in this cultural and religious mish-mash, there is a distinct lack of political correctness.

Here’s a little sampling:

1. On finding out we had a public holiday for the Prophet’s birthday, an African friend looked like she was thinking quite deeply about the issue and then said ‘Hmmm, so he’s a Pisces…interesting’

2. A Chinese friend was recovering from an eye op and felt very self-conscious about the bruising and exclaimed

“I feel like I look like a panda!”

To which, she got the compassionate response from another friend, “Well, you are Chinese..”

Was she offended? No. Shocked? No. She simply pondered this and said, “Yes, that’s true”

3. One morning when rockets were had been fired on Kabul in the night, I contacted an embassy friend who was hosting drinks in their garden that evening to see if it was still on. The wartime Britain attitude apparently lives on since her response was simply “Yes of course, it’s hardly the Blitz”

4. A French friend, who had spent some time in the UK was telling me that she reads the Daily Mail online. I was shocked (I have to say) – it’s not regular humanitarian reading material.

For anyone not familiar with this venerable rag, see today’s article on how a ‘Local Hero Turns Villain’ for what crime? The crime is ‘renting her land to traditionally nomadic ethnic groups’ aka. ‘gypsies’ for a Christian festival they wished to hold. The festival lasted a week and the land was cleared up by the next day. Hardly Glastonbury and yet…

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1208579/Local-hero-turns-villain-rents-field-gipsies.html

I often feel as though I am reading the onion when I come across such an article.

Her explanation of her reading choice was simply : “I have to, we do not get wrong news in my place”

I won’t use any cliches about the importance of good friends or laughter as the best medicine. But if I only came to Kabul to meet these people and share these moments, I would do it. Ten times over.

Joy Irrepressible

I recently travelled out of the confines of Kabul and was overwhelmed by some striking encounters of joy, irrepressible:

Joy: Strike One - I was wandering around the beautiful blue Mosque in Mazar when I heard a squeal and a thundering of little feet in my direction – I looked to find these three children standing to joyful attention. Once captured, they turned and ran back into the Mosque behind to join their family.

 

 

 Joy – Strike Two: As part of the trip I visited a school in  a rural area,  where they are bravely teaching both boys  and  girls, despite Taliban threats to the headteacher. On  arrival, many children ran towards me, greeting me ‘Salaam alee  kum’ with outstretched hands, although  many were timid  and held back. During the class, the  girls at the back  were trying not to look round at me and  hid from photos,  then this one girl coyly turned round  and slowly steadily  took me in. Although just sneaking  out, this is joy. And a  lot of spirit too. 

 

 

 

 

Joy Strike Three: At this same school, I let the kids take photos of each other (with my hand pressing their finger down as they were too nervous to press down without it) and I just loved what they captured. 

What I particularly love here is the look on the girl’s face on the edge looking away from the camera at ‘tongue boy’.

Sow Flowers

When I was out visiting a once highly mine-contaminated community a few weeks ago, much of which has now been cleared, a farmer was showing us one part where the community still would not go as they feared it was contaminated. A couple of kids told us that they had lost cows they had been herding that had wandered into that area. Certainly it was wild and overgrown and clearly not in productive use, but I couldn’t help noticing some beautiful flowers growing there. The farmer saw me admiring them and plucked this one from the edge and gave it to me. They are called ‘gul-e-lala’, which roughly translates as ‘tulip’.

At the time, it struck me as somehow poetic for this minefield to have these colourful, soft flowers poking through its soil but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Then I stumbled upon this piece of Pashtun poetry, called ‘Sow Flowers’ by Rahman Baba and somehow it fitted and spoke deeply to me of what Afghanistan needs:

Sow flowers to make a garden bloom around you,

The thorns you sow will prick your own feet.

Arrows shot at others

Will return to hit you as they fall.

You yourself will come to teeter on the lip

Of a well dug to undermine another.

Afghanistan’s Hidden Gems

Afghanistan certainly has a global profile right now, and in fact has done for some years. And yet, most of the best parts, in my opinion, are completely overlooked. For one thing: fruit – just look at these strawberries (on a cart in the centre of Kabul), in season right now. I could hardly believe it when I first tasted one. So sweet and juicy. Why, oh why are these not known throughout the civilised world? And it’s not just strawberries – the oranges have a flavour so round and full it made me wonder whether I’d ever actually eaten a real orange before. I also was informed recently that Afghanistan is officially the ‘historical home of the carrot’. Quite what that means I have no idea, something to do with genetic tracing apparently. But incredibly, the carrots I have seen are not just plain old orange, they are reddy-pink and even black in Jalalabad (although I have not personally seen these yet). Oh yes, and they taste great. Cucumbers, even, normally a relatively dull vegetable, refresh your mouth like a rainstorm in the desert.  In the garden of my house alone, we have a cherry blossom, an apricot tree in bloom, a mulberry tree showing promise and pomegranate trees (which are apparently ‘lazy’) on the way to bearing fruit, and it’s only March! How lucky I am to be here.

Language of Love?

 

Love me, love my liver

There have been many wonderful things about learning Persian (or Dari). I have discovered that the literal translation of ‘rabbit’ is ‘donkey ears’, the word for library is literally ‘home of books’ and that cowboys have made it to Afghanistan in the word for jeans ‘patloon-e-cowboy’ (which can also be extended to denim jacket ‘jockat-e-cowboy’). I have also discovered that the response to someone telling you or something of yours is beautiful is to tell them ‘cheshemet macbulas’; ‘your eyes are beautiful’. Beauty in the eye of the beholder indeed. But my all time favourite phrase  so far has to be ‘tute gigerum’. This literally means ‘you are part of my liver’, but its real meaning is ‘I love you’. The idea behind it is that your liver is such an important part of our bodies, that by telling someone they are part of it, you are highlighting just how important they are to you. On the other hand saying you are ‘giger hun’, is a way of saying you are deeply sad, literally it means ‘my liver is bloody’. Gruesome, but beats ‘I love you’ any day in my books.

Love the light

I have really no commentary on these.  Just that I love the Kabul light.

Where the streets have names, but it won’t help…

I have a terrible sense of navigation. In fact, I don’t think I have one at all. So arriving in a new city where the usual wandering, getting lost and eventually finding myself way of getting oriented is a little too risky, I feel like I may never truly get my bearings. I quickly learnt a few things about Kabul streets. In a way it is quite simple and grid like; there are roads with names and numbered streets which intersect them. However, a house number, road and street name is no good. When you say “Taimani Road, Street 6″, you will be asked “Left or Right?”… “Well, I don’t know, let’s just look shall we?” (cue pitying, ‘How can you know so little of the world?’ look). So, I now proudly scribble down house number, road name, street name and ‘left or right’ to present to drivers. But really, none of this helps. I have realised the only way to direct anyone anywhere is a ten minute charades-esque explanation in Dari, normally involving 2-3 others and elaborate hand gestures. If there is no-one there in person, I call the number and hand my phone to the driver, for the inexplicably long explanation of an intended location, which when I eventually arrive, I can’t really imagine how there can have been so much to say about it. I was joking with one of the drivers without about this and he said “Yes, in Afghanistan, to find this office (which is a big compound right in the centre of town), you will describe this tree here…so if this tree is chopped down, we will be lost….hehehe”. There is no shortage of dry sense of humour at least.

My other favourite feature of the traffic here are the mis-named ’roundabouts’. They look like roundabouts, in fact they often have pillars in the centre where policemen stand frantically directing traffic. The only problem is that no-one actually drives around them. The regular route is to swing round the inside as though the policed pillar were nothing but an inconvenient obstacle. I once inquired about whether it was ever considered to go around the roundabout. “What? Ahha, hehehe, but this way, it’s better.” And that, was that.

While we breathe, we hope

My Afghan colleague was listening to it on his mobile phone headphones. That was until I persuaded him to put it on loudspeaker. My Singaporean friend, now resident in the US, popped up online, excited as her State slowly turned blue. There was no way in which I felt far away from the action as a lead slowly turned into a landslide, the world cheered and then breathed a sigh of relief.  I realise that the biased sample of my global American (as I like to call them) and otherwise left-leaning, change-hungry, friends is not exactly The World, but it is to me

In the run-up to this day, I did have some great, non-politically correct conversations in Kabul.

Asking drivers: “Who would you vote for?”,

Answer: ‘I would vote for Obama, but only because he is a black. Give them a chance. See what they can do”.

For all the confusion of race over ideas, there is no escaping the fact that an incredible event has taken place. I couldn’t help getting goosebumps as I heard Obama’s speech. I had been so nervous that this couldn’t happen. As inspiring as ‘Yes We Can’ was, we all knew that there were too many people for whom this was not a happy day. Who bizarrely believe that the colour of your skin gives any hint as to the colour of your character.

But as the lead turned to a landslide, change arrived. Or at least we hope so. We hope that this will mean change for the world. That there will be more peace and less war, more understanding and less unneccessary hatred, more equality and less poverty. And we hope this presidency will survive the inevitable hatred it will inspire. A landslide cannot cover the bitter racism that still exists in the world. Not just America, I think we should be honest. But in the words of the man of the moment, “while we breathe, we hope”.

Riverbed Road

I have just returned from a trip up to the North-East of Afghanistan through the stunning Hindu Kush mountains. We went to take part in a ceremony of ‘handing over’ land cleared of landmines back to the local community. After travelling an hour out of the town, we branched off onto a road on a dried up river bed.Driving through this barren wilderness for almost an hour we began to wonder whether anyone really lived here, and then, out of nowhere, a bustling village appeared. Shepherds were herding sheep, children danced at the rare sight of a vehicle and finally a row of heads popped up from behind a wall, which turned out to be a school. When we eventually arrived at the site itself, we found the men of the village congregated waiting for us.

Before the ceremony, we went to visit the demining that was still taking place and so were kitted up in our protective gear. By the way, don’t make the mistake of thinking that this will make you look like Princess Di. Remember she looked good in white cycling shorts. I look much more like the Michelin Man in a identity protecting visor than a princess. And so, tossing glamour aside, we hiked up the mountain where deminers were carefully clearing the remaining areas. This mountain top is almost on the border with Tajikistan and was the frontline between the Taliban and Northern Alliance up until 2001, hence the large amount of landmines. The skill of the task blew me away as we slipped and struggled up the skree-heavy slope in our heavy protective gear, I couldn’t help feeling flummoxed by how the deminers had done this and managed to carry out such a careful task at the same time.

Demining on the edge

Returning down to the base, the villagers told us about how 20 people (out of just two hundred families) had been killed in landmine accidents in the years since the war. They had also lost over 400 sheep, a harsh blow to a community which depends on these sheep for the livelihoods. They related how they had been trying to keep their children from playing away from the houses as they were worried what would happen to them. Now that the land is gradually getting cleared, they are able to start planting and grazing their animals again and the children can run freely.

The ceremony itself was touching as the villagers shared how many people they had lost and had injured over the years because of the mines and how happy they were now the land was cleared. Then the village elder ’signed’ by scribbling an inky pen on his thumb and pressing it onto the paper. Who needs an ink stamp? Caught up in the ceremony, I had forgotten that the deminers were contuining to work and destroying landmines on the mountain behind us, so I jumped out of my skin when there was a loud explosion. At this, the village men almost rocked off their haunches laughing while I tried to regain my composure and look cool and calm around explosions again.

Travelling back down the riverbed, I felt incredibly privileged – from the media it would be very hard to believe there was anything good happening in Afghanistan and that any progress was being made. And yet I had the chance to see first hand that some things are getting better. Life in this community deep into these remote mountains won’t be easy now, but it will certainly be a lot better.

Treading carefully

Today I had my first experience of visiting a minefield and observing the deminers in action, although this being Afghanistan, before we did anything we first had to drink choi sabs (green tea) and eat pistachios, all beautifully presented on a perfectly laid table at the entrance to the minefield. This particular minefield protected an important base over various wars and so is incredibly heavily mined. Thousands have been destroyed already and yet it is slow, hard work (wearing the deminer’s flak jacket and helmet in the heat today was a small insight for me how tough it is for the guys working in those conditions).

Landmines on their doorstep

The mined strip lies right by a village where the people rely on agriculture to make a living, not an easy task when so much of the land nearby is ‘contaminated’. 50% of the villagers have mine-related injuries and so the progress of the demining there is much welcomed. In fact, some land has already been completed and so declared safe for the community and now grapes grow in land which was unpassable just a year ago. Looking across just 50m of formerly mined ground, children were playing; the demining cannot happen quickly enough (the yellow stone marks where a mine was found and destroyed).

On the return journey we stopped at a roadside ‘restaurant’ for boorani, a sort of cross between naan bread and a pancake, filled with spicy potato curry and accompanied by yoghurt. It was the most satisfying and refreshing meal I have had for a long time. In true Afghan style, the driver insisted on paying for both me and the senior staff member who was with us. Of all the things that it is difficult to adjust to, the unstoppable generosity of Afghans is one of the most difficult!