Eating Mud Crabs in Kandahar

by Matt McAllester

  EATING MUD CRABS IN KANDAHAR

  CALIFORNIA STUDIES IN FOOD AND CULTURE

  DARRA GOLDSTEIN, EDITOR

  EATING MUD CRABS

  ~ IN KANDAHAR ~

  STORIES OF FOOD DURING WARTIME

  BY THE WORLD’S LEADING CORRESPONDENTS

  EDITED BY MATT McALLESTER

  University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu.

  University of California Press

  Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

  University of California Press, Ltd.

  London, England

  © 2011 by Matthew McAllester

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Eating mud crabs in Kandahar : stories of food during wartime by the world’s leading correspondents / edited by Matt McAllester.

  p. cm.—(California studies in food and culture; 31)

  ISBN 978-0-520-26867-8 (cloth : alk. paper)

  1. Survival and emergency rations—Anecdotes. 2. Food habits—Anecdotes. 3. War correspondents—Anecdotes. 4. Foreign journalists—Anecdotes. 5. War—Social aspects—Anecdotes. I. McAllester, Matthew, 1969–

  TX357.E286 2011

  394.1′2—dc23

  2011017737

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  In keeping with a commitment to support environmentally responsible and sustainable printing practices, UC Press has printed this book on Natures Book, a fiber that contains 30% post-consumer waste and meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).

  FOR HARRY

  AND

  FOR TIM HETHERINGTON, 1970–2011

  CONTENTS

  Introduction: The Name of the Third Chicken: Kosovo

  Matt McAllester

  PART ONE SURVIVAL RATIONS

  Night Light: El Salvador and Haiti

  Lee Hockstader

  A Diet for Dictators: North Korea

  Barbara Demick

  Siege Food: Bosnia

  Janine di Giovanni

  Miraculous Harvests: China

  Isabel Hilton

  PART TWO INSISTENT HOSTS

  How Harry Lost His Ear: Northern Ireland

  Scott Anderson

  Weighed Down by a Good Meal: Gaza and Israel

  Joshua Hammer

  The Price of Oranges: Pakistan

  Jason Burke

  Jeweled Rice: Iran

  Farnaz Fassihi

  The Oversize Helmsman of an Undersize Country: Israel

  Matt Rees

  PART THREE FOOD UNDER FIRE

  Same-Day Cow: Afghanistan

  Tim Hetherington

  Eau de Cadavre: Somalia and Rwanda

  Sam Kiley

  Eating Mud Crabs in Kandahar: Afghanistan

  Christina Lamb

  Munther Cannot Cook Your Turkey: Iraq

  Rajiv Chandrasekaran

  PART FOUR BREAKING BREAD

  The Best Man I Ever Knew: Georgia

  Wendell Steavenson

  Dinner with a Jester: Afghanistan

  Jon Lee Anderson

  Sugarland: Haiti

  Amy Wilentz

  My Life in Pagans: Ossetia

  James Meek

  The House of Bread: Bethlehem

  Charles M. Sennott

  Biographies

  Acknowledgments

  INTRODUCTION

  THE NAME OF THE

  THIRD CHICKEN

  ~ KOSOVO ~

  MATT McALLESTER

  “WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO EAT?” I ASKED THE KOSOVAR ALBANIAN woman, at whose wooden hut in the snow-covered Mountains of the Damned I had just arrived, in the company of her son, another reporter, two photographers, and a translator.

  Actually, I didn’t ask her directly. I asked the other reporter, Philip Sher-well, who spoke German. He then asked the question of the elderly lady’s son, Haki, because he too spoke German. He then asked the lady, whose name was Zejnepe, in Albanian. And back, through Haki and Philip and two languages I did not understand, came the answer.

  “We have some flour and oil for making bread,” Zejnepe said.

  “What else do you have?” I asked, looking around at a few other jars and tins on a shelf that lined the walls of the shepherd’s hut, which was heated with a wood-burning stove. We were warming our frozen bare feet and sodden socks and boots in front of the stove. It was late April 1999 and we had just hiked from the small Yugoslav republic of Montenegro through Serb-controlled territory, at some risk, to visit this old lady who had sworn she would rather be killed than leave Kosovo. Living with her in the tiny hut were five other adult relatives, three elderly, two young. The six of us who had just arrived were exhausted—except for Haki, who strolled through the snow and over the mountains as if he was going down to get coffee from the corner store. Philip and I had not known each other long. We worked for different newspapers and were not used to working together. Our exhaustion, coupled with my need to rely on him as a translator, was creating a timbre of irritation in the hut as we continued this crucial interview, which we knew would constitute one of the only firsthand accounts of life inside Serb-controlled Kosovo.

  Philip asked Haki, who asked Zejnepe what else they had. Zejnepe told Haki, who told Philip, who told me the answer.

  “Coffee and sugar,” Philip said, and I wrote that down in my notebook.

  “Can we move on?” he added. He had stopped writing in his notebook.

  “In a minute,” I said. “Could you ask her if they have any other source of food? They can’t just be surviving on bread and coffee.”

  Philip paused, took a deep breath, and asked Haki, who asked Zejnepe my question.

  “Every day her nephew, Jeton, goes down the hill to where they keep a cow tethered, and he milks it and brings back the milk,” Philip said, and I stared at my notebook and wrote down what he had said and tried not to look at him.

  “Matt, do you mind if we actually move on to the reason we’re here and ask about Serbian ethnic cleansing rather than performing an audit of her larder?” Philip asked.

  “Didn’t I see some chickens outside?” I asked.

  “Yes, you did,” Philip said, without bothering to ask Haki, given that we had unquestionably seen chickens outside the hut pecking in the muddy snow.

  “Could you ask her how many chickens she has?” I said.

  Philip put down his notebook.

  “And would you like me to ask her the name of the third chicken?”

  “No, never mind,” I said, realizing that my volunteer translator had just resigned.

  “Thank you,” Philip said, asking a question of his own.

  In the years since, Philip and I have often laughed about the name of the third chicken, but I can also still see why the precise number of Zejnepe’s fowl seemed important to me then. Zejnepe and her relatives looked hungry and drawn. The chickens bought these people time. In the grassy plain that spread out below the snowy mountains—gazing down from the mountains at the plain was like looking at spring from midwinter—the Serbian paramilitary groups usually showed little mercy to remaining Albanians. There was no extra food to be had up here in the mountains. In fact, Jeton and his equally brave father, Emrush, made occasional nighttime excursions down to the plain to get more flour from their abandoned house, which was in a vi
llage within view. They had checked the refrigerator, and everything inside had gone off. Philip, his photographer colleague, Julian Simmonds, and I debated going with Jeton on his next journey to get flour, but we decided it was too dangerous. It would have been a nighttime raid to get an ingredient.

  War had very rapidly taken a lot from these people: their homes, their freedom of movement, and Zejnepe’s husband, who had been shot dead by Serbs. And what they were left with was basic shelter, a source of heat, each other, and some larder supplies. Flour, oil, milk, coffee, sugar, eggs, perhaps some chicken meat. Food meant survival, which meant the Serbs had not yet won.

  Not all wars are fought over food supplies or other natural resources—although many are—but in all wars food plays a significant role. At some stage in a day’s fighting, a soldier has to roll behind the wall he is using for shelter to open his army-issue rations. In a day of explaining to her children why they can’t go home yet, a refugee mother has to feed them two or three times. In a day of reporting on a conflict, no matter where in the world, a correspondent has to fuel up as well. No matter what role you have in a conflict, you have to step out of it for at least a few minutes every day to have breakfast, lunch, dinner—or a piece of bread. Meals put war on hold, even if the guns are still firing outside. And in these moments families regroup, friends tell stories of the day so far and exchange crucial information, and new friends are made; sharing a meal with a stranger is the best way to make you strangers no longer. Amid the awfulness of war, food is a rare, regular source of comfort. And when there is comfort, there is openness. Confidences are shared and jokes cracked. Philip is one of my dearest friends, and many of our bonding moments came over not-very-good meals in places where there was fighting, beginning there in the mountains as we shared bread—with shame but great gratitude—that Zejnepe and her family gave us.

  Many foreign correspondents are somewhat food-obsessed. Food can be a rare source of comfort on the road. But even those who don’t carry pepper mills in their backpacks, as my friend Ed Gargan does, are inevitably aware of how food can be a matter of life or death and how meals can reveal secrets. The writers in this collection have reached into their memories and notebooks to unearth stories about food they have never had a chance to write before, or were never able to expand upon in the newspapers or magazines that employ them. Not all of the stories take place, strictly speaking, in war zones, but the shadow of conflict or the threat of violence or oppression looms in all.

  The writers are all British or American print journalists who are among the world’s greatest chroniclers of recent conflicts. The stories they tell mostly take place between that momentous year of change, 1989, and 2009—for little reason other than organizational neatness. They offer stories of the appetites of the powerful—Benazir Bhutto, Ariel Sharon, Kim Jong Il—and of the powerless and, in some cases, starving. There are personal stories, about the birth and illness of a beloved son and about understanding the country of Georgia through one great friend, and there are more traditional reported stories, about the transformative power of food in China and the obsession among the starving millions of North Korea with locating sources of nutrition. And alongside the stories of food, there is a story of drink—bar owner Scott Anderson’s tale of drinking his way into the heart of the Irish Republican Army’s fund-raising crew.

  I have sought out stories from all of the troubled corners of the world, but perhaps inevitably three writers tell stories of Afghanistan and three of Israel and the Palestinian Territories: important conflicts that carry on to this day.

  Amid the tragedy and the violence there are jokes, and great goodwill. And, perhaps, a little more humanity than we can usually slip into our newspaper and magazine stories.

  Zejnepe never left Kosovo. Sometime between our visit and the end of the war, Serbian soldiers or paramilitary troops shot her dead along with two of the other elderly people in the hut. Jeton, Haki, and his brother Naim found her body on the mountainside as the snow melted. After the war I visited her grave with them on a gentle sunny morning. After we stood in silence for a while, they took me home to their village. They had prepared lunch.

  ~ PART ONE ~

  SURVIVAL RATIONS

  NIGHT LIGHT

  ~ EL SALVADOR AND HAITI ~

  LEE HOCKSTADER

  I AM SITTING IN MY APARTMENT AT NIGHT, ALONE AND IN THE DARK. In San Salvador, electricity is as fickle as the weather—you take what you get. Tonight there is none, so I sit in the dark.

  In the dark but not in silence. Directly above my roof, maybe a hundred yards overhead, a Salvadoran army helicopter gunship hovers, its blades thudding against the thick tropical heat. The helicopter’s gunner is firing staccato cannon bursts into the hills a mile away, where the guerrillas make camp just outside the capital. Each burst belches out an angry, mechanical growl, very loud: Bbrrrr! Between cannon bursts I hear a little girl crying, having been jolted from her sleep in the apartment across the hall. Her parents, Seventh Day Adventist missionaries who feed me home-cooked meals and proselytize me at the dessert course, are trying to comfort her. Their voices are murmurs through the walls.

  I have a battery-operated lantern that emits just enough mottled, bluish light for me to avoid bumping into walls as I navigate my little apartment. I set it on the kitchen counter so it illuminates the gas stove and fry some ham and eggs. I’m hungry, and the cooking gives me something to do besides sit and listen to the cannon fire overhead.

  Bbbrrrr!

  I eat my eggs, sopping up yolk with stale bread. I try to read the paper but the light’s no good; I can’t make out the print.

  My apartment, on the ground floor, is cheerless and shabby, furnished with rattan chairs and table. In the living room, louvered glass slats give out on an overgrown garden that frames a miniature, scum-crusted pool. Vermin of every description enter my apartment through the glass slats, which don’t close convincingly. The living room’s damp shag carpet is alive with beetles and crickets and slugs. Except in bed, I keep my shoes on at all times. If I were in El Salvador more often than a few days every month or two, between reporting trips to Haiti, Nicaragua, Cuba, Guatemala, or Honduras, I’d probably move to a better place.

  Bbbrrrr!

  The helicopter is still going at it. Sleep is impossible, and it’s not late anyway. If I had friends in El Salvador I could go out, but after just a few months here the people I do know—colleagues whose offices flank mine in an office building downtown—aren’t really friends. Besides, I have no car here, and taxis are scarce when the gunship is doing its work.

  Sending me off on my three-year assignment, my editor in Washington had told me I should think of myself as a sort of one-man news-gathering hub for Central America and the Caribbean—the eyes and ears of a great metropolitan newspaper. He said I should be better informed than the local CIA station chiefs, and have a wider range of contacts. At the moment, I might as well be locked in a sensory-deprivation tank.

  I lean back from the table in my folding chair and mutter, What the fuck! I’m going nuts. I’m stuck. I can’t read. There’s no light. I carry the lantern back into the kitchen and fling open the cabinet and fridge doors. What I find is mildly encouraging, thanks to a recent foraging trip to Miami. There is a French garlic sausage. Some packets of Japanese rice crackers, spicy little crescents flecked with red pepper. A jar of Moroccan green olives. Then I remember that Doña Marta, my housekeeper, has left me a batch of her refried beans, irresistibly oily and black as tar, made fresh that morning. I find them on a plate under waxed paper. And there is beer, still cool in the lifeless fridge. This is good. This is solace. I have the makings here of a feast.

  I’d begged to be a foreign correspondent, and dreamed of it, but my sketchy fantasies hadn’t included gunfire and power outages and loneliness. Ambition, restlessness, a vague idea that it would be good to be far from editors and paid to travel the world—this is what had led me, like generations of correspondents before me, to appl
y. At my newspaper, the Washington Post, three postings were available—Germany, India, and Central America. When the foreign editor had asked my preference I’d more or less shrugged, saying I’d be thrilled to go anywhere.

  Now, months later, I’ve arrived in Central America at a pivotal moment, just as communism and the Cold War are unraveling. The Soviet Union, having financed and sponsored the region’s leftist combatants in order to bleed the United States, has suddenly disappeared from the world stage. Like a slow leak from a balloon, the logic is seeping out of two decades of proxy wars, death squads, massacres, and fraternal bloodbaths.

  But it’s harder to stop the armed young men who know nothing but fighting and killing. The momentum of revenge impels them; repurposing them will take time.

  As I work my beat, traveling among Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and Haiti, I’m struck by the relentless grimness that has settled in after so many seasons of violence and despair. In Nicaragua, where the United States has spent billions arming and equipping the Contra rebels, families are bitterly divided and the economy lies in ruins; there are just two or three working elevators in the entire country. Honduras, equally bleak, is crawling with CIA agents who are busy tracking and manipulating the region’s various small wars. In Guatemala, a team of American forensic specialists is digging up the remains of leftists murdered by death squads. Moving among these countries is grinding and joyless.

  Everything besides work feels like a welcome escape, and nothing more so than food. In Nicaragua, my colleagues and I eat in open-air restaurants after the day’s heat has eased. We trade rumors and feast on skirt steaks with chimichurri sauce served with huge platters of French fries. We eat bull’s testicles a la parilla, sizzling from the grill, and garlicky shrimp and baby eels drowning in olive oil.

  The bills are a pittance, just ten or fifteen dollars a person. But inflation has atomized the local currency, so to pay for dinner we all produce stacks of pesos whose huge denominations obscure their actual value, which is close to zero. Just counting it all takes forever—it’s like paying with pennies, only this is paper money—and by the time we’ve finished, the table is covered with an impressive dune of cash. The photographers climb up on chairs to take pictures of this hillock of nearly worthless bills.