The Afghan Queen: A True Story of an American Woman in Afghanistan

by Paul Meinhardt

  Some of the Sannyasins were children of Swiss bankers. They were determined to distance themselves from what they described as a dehumanizing environment. Who should know better about the dehumanizing influence of Swiss bankers than their children?

  The progress, if one could call it that, was from one dusty town to the next, from one drug to the next. Most of the drugs were hash and grass. At least, I hoped that was all. One couple was into smoking raw opium. That made me extremely fearful.

  When I realized the drug culture was taking the grand tour of this world’s most dangerous places, I was glad and relieved to leave lotus land in Kabul. I vowed to avoid the caravan people as much as possible. They could bring only trouble.

  I felt ambivalent though. In spite of my fears, a sense of romantic attraction persisted. Superficially, the caravan people had the charm of a 1930’s Preston Sturgis road film. On a deeper level I felt that I was being sucked-in. But I was here for business and determined to exit the caravan with Kit as soon as we arrived in Kabul.

  Some of the caravan people began, like me, trying to grow a business in spite of the endless challenges. After each trip home, the restlessness would set in again. They would be off on the next caravan. They sold enough to support their lifestyle. I did not know what they sold and did not want to know. My rule was “see-hear-speak no evil.”

  My own contraband was blue jeans for baksheesh (definition: gratuity, tip or bribe paid to expedite service, especially in some Near Eastern countries). In the 1970s blue jeans were international currency. Most clans that I did business with accepted blue jeans as gifts. Every clan I visited had at least one sewing machine, and no matter the size of the blue jeans offered, the Afghans made everything fit.

  Afghans obtained bolts of denim, bogus labels and rivets from Pakistan and India. They fit local customers with personally tailored blue jeans. Blue jean labels were sewed in according to customer request.

  Handcrafted blue jeans were often of excellent quality. These were bartered with local merchants for fuel, food and other supplies. Most home crafters were more intent on trading than cash sales, and the social exchange seemed of the utmost importance.

  Afghan women and men were skilled at sewing and tailoring. In the last years of business with the Afghans, I brought them fashionable clothes or just magazine pictures, and they were able to produce knockoffs within just a few days. These were of such high quality and low cost that I was able to sell them at a fraction of the retail price back in the States.

  Many Afghan families enjoyed a substantial boost in income from their tailoring skills. This was especially true of the migratory clans. These itinerant tribes eventually became my major source of tribal art objects, especially tribal jewelry.

  I was less interested in selling knock-offs, than tribal art, but did the knockoffs trade more to benefit the Afghans than myself. My main supplier was a tribe that made a circuit through Pakistan, India, China, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan (the origin of my family), Turkey, Iran, and back to Afghanistan.

  This circuit tribe used dilapidated trucks and vans. Out of necessity, they became mechanically adept at keeping these vehicles running. The tribe made the circuit two or three times a year. They pay a toll by providing a courier service at border crossings—delivering materials and messages that cannot be trusted to established delivery services.

  AUTHOR COMMENTARY:

  Lela’s aerograms described her difficulty flying home after her second trip. There would be no more lotus eater caravans for her. After six months establishing her import business, she was ready to fly home before the holidays at the end of 1975.

  LELA:

  Getting to Istanbul from Kabul was disturbing enough. I could continue on Arianna Airlines (or ‘Scariana’, as it was known to many). As the airline’s nickname implies, the challenging flight from Kabul to Istanbul convinced me to seek alternatives. This must be why road traffic persists in and out of Afghanistan.

  The problem of flights out of Istanbul seemed endless. Kit and I arrived at the ticket office too late. We had to wait until the next morning. Rising early, we took a public bus to the opposite side of Istanbul where the Hilton and major airline offices were located. Another holy day meant that all offices were closed. However, it turned out to be a great tour of Istanbul.

  I hungered for the general post office and mail from home, but we would have to wait for a work day and play at being tourists in the meantime. It could be two weeks before aerograms to and from home would arrive. We hated the tourist role and covered ourselves from head to foot, including head scarves.

  Thankfully, the next morning was a work day. We went back to the Hilton. Kit had no trouble getting a flight to Sidney and back to Kabul. She had some sort of diplomatic passport that seemed to open all doors. She had to return to Kabul by the end of January, and I did not ask why. I’m learning not to ask the wrong questions.

  Topkapi taken from the open window of a parked bus

  I went to the Pan Am office for a flight to NYC or Newark. As it turned out, I needed permission from ‘Scariana’ as the airline of origin. Since ‘Scariana’ flew me from Frankfort to Kabul, they insisted it had to be the same way back to Frankfort. For some reason, I didn’t believe I would survive another ‘Scariana’ flight. Maybe I’m getting overly cautious.

  The Middle East officials I dealt with seemed unrelentingly pompous until I began flirting with them. I told the ‘Scariana’ agent that I would love to take him to lunch. At that, he smiled broadly, immediately put an off duty sign on his desk, motioned to an assistant to take over, and we were off. I was learning that in the Middle East little gets done without some form of baksheesh.

  The agent took me across the boulevard to a wonderful little café. He told me Turkish food is the best in the world, and after lunch I believed him. I still can’t believe how inexpensive this meal was. The agent apologized for the airline rules and also for the union rules that determined his actions. A small gift here and there certainly greases the wheels of commerce.

  “There are alternatives,” he said as we sipped Turkish coffee. He continued, “I’m going to save you a week of running around and endless phone calls. Here are the options: you can continue on to Frankfort via ‘Scariana’ at no extra cost, or pay $283 for a Frankfort flight on another airline. A flight to London is $203.” I said I was afraid to fly ‘Scariana’, and he said he was also fearful of flying ‘Scariana’.

  Kit and I toured Istanbul for a couple of days, after which she flew home and I was about to book on the Orient Express to Athens, when I ran into an English couple who had been on the bus with us to Kabul. They said they were about to do the same when they passed an auto rental kiosk and decided to rent a car instead. I was surprised how cheap car rental was.

  The English journalists were driving to Frankfort by way of Athens, Bucharest, Budapest, Zagreb and Milano. If I joined them I would only pay one-third of the costs. They told me I could fly out of any of these destination cities if I changed my mind. After my turbulent flight to Istanbul, I decided to stay on the ground for a while and gladly accepted their offer.

  We began our car trip and when we arrived at the Greek-Turkish border, it looked like a war zone. The couple told me to wait in the car as they rushed out with cameras and press credentials. It was too good a story for journalists to pass up. They came back ten minutes later flush with success. Their photos would pay for ten trips to the Middle East; they said and added that I wouldn’t need to pay anything for this trip.

  My journalists went on to say, “It’s Cyprus again. They were about to shoot it out on the border when UN and NATO peacekeepers arrived by helicopter. The border has been like this for almost a week. Since both Greece and Turkey are members of NATO, everything possible is being done to cool the situation. Now there’s a larger UN-NATO presence than that of belligerents.

  Slowly we cruised to the Turkish border Where a Turkish officer stopped us saying, “It is impossible to cross the
border; it’s much too dangerous to cross into Greece.” I then produced a brown bag with a pair of blue jeans at which point the officer smiled and slowly led the way to the border crossing.

  On the Greek side, I produced another bag of blue jeans, and we were waved on our way without any request for papers. My drivers said I was more effective than any passport.

  Looking back, it was a happy day when I decided to buy the Afghan-made jeans. They were a fraction of the cost I paid for American-made jeans and worked just as well as gifts. Being from a fiercely pro-union family, I experienced some pangs of guilt, but reasoned that the Afghans needed the money more than the overfed Americans.

  I have come to understand that the word impossible is only a euphemism for baksheesh and blue jeans were the baksheesh of choice. I was quickly learning the meaning and power of those words.

  Baksheesh is the exact opposite of impossible, and anything was possible with baksheesh. Throughout most of the world of the 1970’s, blue jeans were the global currency. Dollars, on the other hand, were too easily forged. No one cared about knockoff jeans as long as they passed inspection by the discerning eye.

  I told the journalists about my previous adventures with the bus caravan and migrating tribe. They said that migrating people had long ago perfected the art of border crossing with gifts for border guards. They said that Gypsy caravans routinely crossed Soviet borders with gifts of liquor. Like the circuit tribe, Gypsies were also unofficial messengers.

  On the long drive, my journalist friends told me their personal Gypsy story. They were commissioned by a London tabloid to do a really wild travel story. There was but one lead, a phone number for “Travel like the Wind Gypsy Tours.” The tabloid had them sign a contract and they were given a substantial advance, with the directive to get the most lurid photos possible.

  The tour agency phone was answered by a recorded message: “Now you can travel the world with the Gypsies. We travel like the wind. We do not recognize borders, and borders do not recognize us. We practice the art of creating a world without borders. If you would like to travel like the wind, leave your phone number at the sound of the tambourine.”

  8

  TRAVEL LIKE THE WIND - FALL, 1975

  LELA:

  On the trip to Athens, the journalist couple continued to relate their story about their experiences traveling with a Gypsy band. They spent four months on their tabloid assignment, and the story appeared as a series. In Britain, it was titled “Travel like the Wind.” In Australia it was “A World without Borders.”

  The first article in the series introduced the idea that over the last million years, Neanderthal and other humans were forced to migrate continually in search of mates, food and shelter. The preferred meat was grazing animals.

  Early people followed migrating herds as grazers led the way to grassland and waterways. Some of the Sami (formerly known as Laps, which is now considered derogatory) still live this way with reindeer at the Arctic Circle. The couple staged photos of fur-clad hunters stalking Aurochs, deer, mammoths and horses in mating poses. Aurochs were the source of domesticated bovine cattle.

  Last Auroch female died in 1627*

  Traveling with a German Gypsy clan, the journalists were shown pictures of Aurochs pulling caravans over 500 years ago. At that time they staged Auroch bull jumping shows at fairs. Aurochs and people lived together quite well, unless they were teased or hunted. Then Aurochs became extremely aggressive and fast. Fighting bulls are close relatives of the Auroch.

  Up to 10,000 years ago there were probably no more than 15,000 humans throughout the world. Bands of people seldom exceeded 50 to 100 due to the limited resources along the route of migration. Therefore, mating was far more haphazard than today. If the first tribal rule practiced exogamy, or mating outside the clan, then finding suitable mates became even more difficult.

  True or not, I was fascinated by the journalists’ Gypsy stories. Soviet bloc nations were far more tolerant of Gypsies than Western Europe. While Gypsies transferred messages, they were compensated by having a blind eye turned to the contraband they transported.

  On approaching certain border crossings, Gypsies would dress and act like an elaborate wedding party, just as if they stepped out of an 18th Century painting. The bride and groom led the way, followed by a liveried wedding band. Bringing up the rear were servants with bottles of vodka and baskets of fruit. Those not costumed, wore their best clothes. All were exuberantly strutting fashion-plates.

  The journalists showed their photos of the so called wedding party with themselves decked out as classic Perrot and Harlequin clowns and continued their story.

  Bottles of vodka were passed around to the border guards first. The wedding dance started while packets were exchanged between a border guard and the Gypsy chief.

  Pierrot and Harlequin, Paul Cézanne 1888 Pushkin Museum, Moscow*

  Fire eating and sword swallowing clowns on stilts greeted the border guards. The sword swallower did an act that had everyone howling with laughter. She was a tall, attractive middle-aged woman in a medieval mummer’s outfit. As soon as the fire eater in the group did his routine, he introduced his wife, the sword swallower, with a wild pantomime, but no words.

  The sword swallower began by handing around, to the guards first, a long, straight sword. When they returned the sword to her, she walked her stilts over to some low-hanging branches, followed by a helper, and hacked off one of them in a single blow. She then had the helper retrieve the hacked tree branch and pass it to her while she passed the sword to the helper.

  She stilted back to the crowd and made a big show of handing the hacked branch around for inspection. Her helper then passed her what looked like the same sword. The band played an elaborate fanfare as she slowly waved the sword around her head. The helper dramatically oiled the blade with a bottle labeled Extra Virgin Olive Oil, handing the bottle around for all to see.

  As the sword swallower was about to go into her act, the helper waved a pair of metal mesh meat cutter’s gloves to the crowd. This was intended to further impress everyone with the danger of sword swallowing. The helper then put on the gloves, and the sword swallower threw him the sword. One by one, he took off each glove and tossed the gloves to her.

  The sword swallower adjusted her stance and bent her head back a few times, as if to loosen the neck muscles. She gave out a short whistle and held out her hand for the sword. The helper then unscrewed the sword hilt and carefully handed the naked blade up to her. A short drum roll followed. Slowly, she upended the sword, point toward her mouth.

  Tambourines gently accompanied the movement of the sword as she tilted her head back, opened her mouth wide, and slowly lowered the sword point into her mouth. It took her a few minutes as she carefully rotated her neck and body as if to ease the passage of the sword.

  Onlookers clapped rhythmically along with the tambourines. As the sword swallower held the last of the sword in her mouth, the helper handed her a large white bandanna. This she took with her empty hand, waved it around her head, and covered her sword hand as she extracted the blade a few inches.

  Seeming to change her mind, she lowered the sword again completely into her mouth. At the same time the kerchief hand slowly descended to her rear end. The kerchief hand slowly eased the sword point and the entire sword out of her posterior. The border guards cheered hysterically, and everyone applauded wildly.

  The sword appeared to have a small amount of blood on it. The sword swallower took the kerchief and carefully wiped off the blood, while some of the Gypsy women screamed as if on cue. The helper took the naked sword blade and screwed the hilt back on, lifting the point toward the sword swallower. She then draped the bloodied kerchief over the sword point as the helper circled the crowd with it as if it were a battle flag.

  The sword swallower immediately opened her mouth revealing a compressed sword blade as a cleverly compressed bogus sword. She then lifted the back of her tunic as the helper inserted the real blade into
the leather case strapped to her back. Everyone applauded with sighs of relief and admiration.

  The border guards were especially pleased and laughed heartily. They understood the false pathos was solely for them and that revealing the technology behind the show was meant to convince them that they were privy to Gypsy secrets.

  The Gypsies wanted to assure the border guards that they could be trusted. The wedding party performance was captured on film with a spoken narrative added later.

  The journalists were convinced that the wedding party performance alone was worth the four months “traveling like the wind.”

  9

  SILK ROAD - FALL, 1975

  AUTHOR COMMENTARY:

  Lela wrote extensively about the stories she heard from the journalist couple. They met while studying anthropology at Oxford. She was a cultural anthropologist specializing in human migration. Her thesis was “Silk Road, Pathway of Humanity.” He was into physical anthropology. Both did two years of doctoral work at Çatal Hüyük, the prehistoric city on the Anatolian plain near the south-central Turkish coast.

  They were traveling on a branch of the Silk Road to Athens. Lela’s travels in Afghanistan, Middle East and Europe followed the Silk Road too. The Silk Road was a network of land, sea, and now air routes throughout the world. Its focal point seems to have been Çatal Hüyük.

  The Silk Road may have begun with the first human migrations out of Africa. By the time of the Roman Empire, the Silk Road extended from the cod fisheries of the Newfoundland Grand Banks, in the northwest Atlantic, to China, Japan, and Peru in the east. All branches crossed through Çatal Hüyük.

  Silk Road*

  LELA:

  I hoped to get a flight to Newark when we got to Athens. The airline brochures indicated daily flights to Newark with one stop at Frankfort, and this was going to be fine as I had business with museums and art galleries in the Frankfort area. There are direct flights to Kennedy from Frankfort, but it’s a hassle getting from Kennedy to Newark, and I prefer the stopover.