A Burqa and a Hard Place

by Sally Cooper

  ‘Are you okay? Where are you? Are you at home?’ Words and thoughts stumbled. There was no manual in how to deal with staff who’d just witnessed a truck bomb.

  ‘They won’t let us go home. We are standing behind a rope. It’s very terrible.’

  ‘Do you need me to do anything? Can I help you?’ I felt powerless, unable to help and unable to understand.

  ‘No, I’m okay,’ he replied, as if his present situation were no worse than misplacing his mobile phone.

  The bomb had shattered windows in the immediate vicinity, left a sizeable crater in the road and killed ten people. Dyncorps provided the PSD for President Karzai and the US ambassador, for whom traffic stopped and guns were drawn, an unwarranted show of aggression in a war-weary city. On one occasion, as the ambassador was arriving at a function in downtown Kabul, his PSD stopped the IRIN car and a goatee thrust its face through Qasim’s window, veins bulging. Even I, a native English speaker, had no idea what he was screaming. The street that housed the Dyncorps office had been heavily guarded twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, the building anonymous and nondescript. But someone had been watching.

  As an Afghan fifty metres from the scene of the crime, Faheem would be in for a long night. The Coalition forces would be standing guard. All Afghans within a two-kilometre radius, possibly all Afghans everywhere, would be guilty until they could prove themselves otherwise. It was at times like this that I understood why Faheem, who had already been questioned by the Americans for talking on the two-way radio in the IRIN car while driving past Kabul Compound, insisted on wearing his blue UN ID tag everywhere he went.

  I finished my head count and completed my radio check. The UN was now in lockdown; no-one was allowed to go anywhere until it was lifted. I was grateful that the evening breeze was blowing in the other direction and I couldn’t smell the smoke that was now dispersing over the west of the city. The BBC and CNN carried footage of the bomb site, a pile of rubble that a few hours earlier had been the front of the Dyncorps compound, a burnt-out vehicle lying on its side, a three-metre wide crater in the road. The Afghan media claimed a foreigner was involved. Faheem called me four hours later to tell me he had made it home. I imagined he would have behaved impeccably, answering soldiers’ questions with his burgeoning journalist’s eye for detail. My Afghan colleagues and I were a world apart. For them, today was part of a string of events that had spanned their lives. But for me it was a watershed. As I joined Henk and Mathilde for an evening drink, I knew I couldn’t pretend I was in Kansas anymore.

  18

  Democracy 101

  Kabul was tense. Ever since the event now universally known as The Dyncorps Bomb a week earlier, security scares and military inspections of suspect vehicles had multiplied. Now Ismail and I were stranded in the UNOCA compound, at the wrong end of Jalalabad Road. UN security had announced there was a suspect vehicle in the city and the compound had gone into lockdown. The gates had been shut and guards were standing by making sure no-one with a blue ID tag got out – although anyone else was free to go.

  Because it was lunchtime, Ismail and I joined the throng making its way to the cafeteria. We might have been in Kabul but the UNOCA cafeteria was a long way from Afghanistan. It was spacious, light and orderly. Large rectangular tables, the kind generic to cafeterias worldwide, were lined in neat rows across its linoleum floor. Staff were dressed in the white coats and paper hats of ice-cream shops and abattoirs. For me it was a welcome respite from the Karwan Sara’s kebabs and limp lettuce, though I wondered what Ismail’s excuse was as I watched him pile as much food as he possibly could onto his plate. The UN cafeteria was crowded with faces of every shape and colour but there were few beards and even fewer headscarves. On a local wage, Afghan staff couldn’t afford the seven-dollar lunch. The ‘local’ cafeteria, out the door and around the corner, served the ubiquitous kebab and rice for a dollar. I paid the attendant for my modest meal and Ismail’s hefty tray and we went in search of a table.

  Among the sea of strangers I spotted the smiling faces of my Karwan Sara neighbours, Henk and Mathilde, who worked at the Elections compound a few kilometres down the road. The Elections compound was considered a prime target, and as such was the biggest eyesore along the already unattractive Jalalabad Road. Its thick walls were extra high and the razor wire at their rims was extra thick. The fortress-like compound was small and compact, as if hunkered down and expecting trouble. Set back from the road, its perimeter was surrounded by large concrete bollards designed to discourage parking, particularly by anyone carrying explosives.

  Henk and Mathilde had come to UNOCA for lunch and, like us, were being held at security’s pleasure. We chatted about the bomb threat, the weather and the latest shenanigans at the Karwan Sara. Unlike many Afghans, who would have sat at the end of the table and remained silent when introduced to a group of foreigners they didn’t know, Ismail jumped right in, asking Henk and Mathilde about their work and how the election would take place. For someone who had never voted, the logistics behind a national election must have been almost unimaginable.

  ‘Excuse me, Henk, how will this election happen?’ asked Ismail. ‘What about the provinces, how will the people vote?’

  Many foreigners treated questions from an Afghan stranger with a great deal of suspicion, but Henk, who had no time for The Bubble, was happy to answer.

  ‘We have offices in each of the provincial centres whose job it is to make sure there are polling stations in all parts of their province,’ he replied.

  ‘But how will the people know where to go?’

  ‘There are a lot of public information campaigns. Some by us, some by other people – like NGOs. There are announcements on radio and civic educators are travelling in the provinces to all the villages to explain to people when the election is, how it will work and what the ballot will look like.’

  ‘Will it be safe?’ It was the million-dollar question.

  Henk smiled. ‘Inshallah,’ he said with a shrug.

  To kill time and to demonstrate what they were doing, after lunch Henk and Mathilde took us on a tour of the Elections warehouse. Too big for the Elections compound, the only source of light in the cavernous corrugated iron building was the giant doorway at its entrance. Above us were signs, large pictures of cameras with a red bar across them: photographs were not permitted. Inside were rows of neatly stacked wooden crates. Henk pulled out a bulletproof vest from an open cardboard box at the corner of the first row. It was pale blue with the letters UN emblazoned in large white writing across the front.

  ‘These are for the provinces and maybe also for Kabul. It’s yet to be decided but we have plenty just in case.’

  The vests were part of a matching set, to be worn with pale blue helmets neatly packed in boxes on the other side of the aisle.

  ‘That’s a little severe,’ I commented. But after all the trouble they had seen, perhaps Afghan voters wouldn’t be as disturbed as I would be by the presence of electoral officials in bulletproof attire.

  Deep in the bowels of the warehouse was a row of boxes containing large canvas tents. In the absence of a local primary school, which was often also a tent, the Afghan presidential election’s polling stations were strictly BYO. Almost all the election materials were coming from outside, including ballot boxes from Denmark and ballot papers printed in Canada. Because of the potential for disruption, the tents, the ballot boxes, the marker pens and everything else were being transported around the country in Pakistani jingle trucks. The monolithic hulks of the Afghan ‘highways’ were far less likely to attract unwanted attention than clearly marked UN trucks. In places like the Wakhan Corridor in the far northeast, where the road petered out into dusty tracks, materials travelled on the backs of small fleets of donkeys.

  As this was the first election of its kind in Afghanistan, there was no electoral roll and much of the work so far had involved the registering of voters. Hundreds of Afghan election workers had been dispatched to towns and re
mote villages throughout the provinces where they had painstakingly registered anyone over eighteen years of age, often with no more proof of identity than their name. Each voter was photographed and issued with a registration card. The provincial registers were returned to Kabul, many by helicopters flown, in a perverse twist of history, by Russian pilots who had flown the exact same routes twenty years ago as officers of the Soviet airforce.

  While most Afghans proudly stood in line to be registered, those who preferred the old way, the anti-government elements, were doing everything in their power to disrupt it. Some weeks earlier, a passenger bus had been stopped on a road in the country’s restive south, traditional home of the Taliban. Its passengers were ordered to alight, and anyone carrying a voter registration card was shot.

  It had been long assumed by most, particularly those in Washington, that Hamid Karzai would win in a landslide. Nonetheless, seventeen bold and optimistic souls put themselves forward as alternatives. The most notable were Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum and Masouda Jalal, a medical doctor and the only woman in the field. There was no such thing as opinion polls in the Ghan. Few people knew how to run one, security was a big concern and, most of all, Afghans have a habit of telling you what they think you want to hear, which isn’t always the same as their opinion. Most Afghans were backing Karzai. In most cases, their reasons were valid and well thought out.

  ‘He’s been a good leader so far, so I think it would be unwise for the people to pick someone else,’ said Ismail.

  ‘He has a kind face,’ said Mohammed who was, thankfully, too young to vote.

  Although the presidential campaign was now in full swing, it had been a little hard to tell. There was no kissing of babies here. Because of security concerns, electioneering didn’t take the form of stump speeches and rallies as it does in those countries deemed more democratic. The only obvious sign of an election was the number of posters that had begun to plaster walls and fences, gates and shop windows all over town. The posters featured little writing – since most of the electorate couldn’t read – and usually consisted of a photograph of the candidate staring thoughtfully into the distance. On election day, 9 October 2004, the choice would come down to photography and the ability to recognise someone other than Hamid Karzai.

  Because of a number of attempts on his life, Karzai rarely left the Arg and, in his time as interim president, he’d travelled overseas more often than he had travelled within his own country. In an effort to get into the swing of things, the president eventually ventured beyond the palace walls. As he was about to land in Gardez, a town in the southern province of Paktia, a rocket was fired, narrowly missing the helicopter that the US government had generously made available to him. Karzai’s only scheduled campaign speech was abandoned and the president flew back to the palace.

  Despite the fears and the predictions of doom and destruction, the Afghan presidential election went off without so much as a bang. No-one died and no blood was shed. Voting was orderly; men stood in one line, women in another. It was, without question, one of the most exciting days in most people’s lives as, for the first time ever, they got to choose their president. The inevitable victory of Hamid Karzai was unchallenged. He was no longer the interim president of an interim country – he was now, officially and unequivocally, the President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

  With the election over, a large chunk of Development Inc. left town. After a long, difficult but ultimately very rewarding year, Henk and Mathilde packed their bags. Their next mission was the Iraqi elections scheduled for the following January. They were to be based in Jordan, and were looking forward to regular electricity, paved roads, good food and no radio checks.

  Our evening gatherings on the Karwan Sara balcony had provided me with rare moments of sanity in an otherwise crazy world and I would miss them terribly.

  19

  Autumn

  When I first came to the Ghan, kites were simple affairs, often no more than a thin sheet of paper, a couple of sticks and a length of string. The sleek machines that took to the skies over Kabul in the autumn of 2004 were far more intricate than the sloppy workmanship of the previous year. Even on the stillest of evenings, they managed to rise above the rooftops and up beyond the trees.

  Frost had begun to replace the morning dew, the days were getting noticeably shorter and a dusting of snow appeared on the peaks surrounding Kabul. With welcome relief, summer finally yielded to autumn and the evening sky was filled with kites. Traditionally a springtime pursuit, kite flying, like just about everything else that was fun, had been banned by the Taliban. It was October and Kabul’s kite flyers were trying to cram in as many missions before the winter snows made flying difficult, if not impossible.

  If kite flying were an Olympic sport, Afghans would win gold. Sending up a kite was like sending up a flare, telling all around you that you were ready for a challenge. A lone kite was like throwing down a gauntlet. I stood on the balcony and watched the evening’s offering, wondering who would spot it first. It was Mohammed. He came running out the kitchen door and down the steps, two at a time, shouting at the new waiter, Sameem. There was a flurry of activity as the rest of the male staff raced out of their foxholes: the guardhouse, Reception, the basement. Mohammed and Sameem ran inside and reappeared moments later with a large purple kite attached to what seemed like miles and miles of bright yellow string. Kite flying was as much a team sport as hypercompetitive Afghans would allow. One person, the assistant, held the bundle of string while the pilot, the man in charge, did the flying, holding the taut thread between his fingers. Onlookers offered advice, solicited or otherwise, itching to get their hands on the thread. The goal, amid the power lines, trees and rooftops, was to use your kite’s string to break your opponent’s flight. It was definitely a skill and, despite his enthusiasm, not one Mohammed appeared to have mastered. Sameem was even worse and they lost more kites than they won. The pair lacked the killer instinct of the champion kite flyers, the ones who laced their threads with glass, ensuring a smooth cut to the opponent’s line. The victors would send an envoy to collect the vanquished kite of their opponent. For the guests of the Karwan Sara, the nightly display of kite flying was the evening’s entertainment. We sat on the verandah, cheering for our team – though we were never invited to participate.

  Another symptom of the season’s change was the appearance of an ancient Afghan heater – a bukhari – in my room. My bukhari was black and looked like a local variation of a potbellied stove, barrel-shaped and upright with a circular lid on the top. The bukhari came with an equally ancient tin pipe, around six inches in diameter, that contorted its way upwards, fitting into a neat, ready-made hole in the wall just below the ceiling.

  Some bukharis used wood, some sawdust and others, like mine, used kerosene. At five thirty each evening, without fail, Sameem appeared with a box of matches and a small black jerrycan of kerosene. Bukharis are an engineering feat born of generations of cold Afghans and, like all things Afghan, took a while to get used to, so I was very happy to allow Sameem to do the honours. He carefully poured the kerosene into a small metal box on the right-hand side of the bukhari, adjusting the small tap at the front, so the kerosene dripped slowly and regularly into a thin pipe at the rear. Once it reached the bukhari’s circular base, Sameem lit a match and expertly lowered it inside. The kerosene caught fire and my room was soon warm, with just the barest aroma of burning oil. ‘Have a good night,’ were always his parting words as he bowed in my direction and backed out of the room.

  Sameem, like Mohammed, was in his teens. Like many of his young compatriots he dressed in a tight-fitting long-sleeved T-shirt and tie-dyed blue jeans flared from below the knee. Tie-dyed jeans were all the rage among young Afghan men. I had no idea of their provenance – perhaps a consignment from the 1970s that, like the Ghan itself, had been lost in time. Sameem’s thick brown hair fell in a clump across his forehead and he spent much of his day perfecting the art of the DiCaprio
flick. He was a great deal shyer than his ‘boss’, as Mohammed had proclaimed himself, and while Sameem’s English was rudimentary, he was a vast improvement on the waiter he had replaced, Yama, whose English never really got beyond ‘good morning’. Yama had given up his job at the Karwan Sara to finish his studies. Like Mohammed, Sameem was still at school. This was his first job dealing with foreigners and he took it all in his stride.

  As well as the bukhari, for the first time in my life I was the proud owner of two sets of thermal underwear, a pair of thick winter gloves, a woollen hat and, most importantly, a hot-water bottle. I had bought my supplies on a recent R and R break ‘outside’, as the world beyond the Ghan was generally known. If an Afghan winter was as bleak as my colleagues kept telling me, what I really needed was a good winter coat. So one Saturday afternoon, my friend Peter and I went shopping.

  Peter was Dutch and a recent arrival at the Karwan Sara. I had first spotted him a few weeks earlier while standing outside Reception waiting for my car. It was early in the morning and the guesthouse was still. Walking towards me across the garden was a tall man dressed in a navy blue tracksuit and glaring white running shoes casually carrying a tennis racquet under his arm. I watched bemused as he approached, wondering if he was yet another ‘consultant’, parachuted into the Ghan to advise on security and work on his tennis. ‘Good morning,’ he said cheerily, not stopping to chat as he continued past me and down the driveway.

  I came home from work later that day and found him taking in the afternoon sun on the verandah outside my room. The tennis gear was gone and, in its place, he wore jeans and a knitted sweater. A leather-bound notebook, a sketch pad and a rusting tin of colour pencils were lying on the table in front of him.