by Sally Cooper
Few of us had ever been on a military base before. Development Inc. and the foreign military lived separate lives in the new Afghanistan. There was a lot of short hair and a lot of saluting as the ‘praavit’ led us through a labyrinth of mysterious buildings to the mess hall. The US army came in all shapes and sizes, colours and genders, army and ‘other’. Fully armed soldiers struggled to salute while others strolled by dressed only in shorts, T-shirts, baseball caps and bulletproof vests. There was also a fair number of civilians, those who belonged to the private security companies to whom the US was increasingly contracting the War on Terror.
The mess hall was a large tent-like structure with a warren of rooms of tables, chairs and televisions. The men behind the long cafeteria counter were just as surprised to see us as we were to see them.
‘Where are you from, missy?’ I was asked as I surveyed the staples of the American breakfast diet: pancakes, hashbrowns, eggs over easy and grits.
‘Australia,’ I smiled back. The smell of bacon was sending my senses into overdrive and leaving me speechless.
We were like a swarm of backpackers who hadn’t eaten since they’d first left home. Our plates were piled with everything but the grits, which we followed with Mars Bar ice-creams and a good dose of Fox News.
At 8.30 am we were told we could leave, and emerged into a busy Kabul morning in search of a cab. The five of us eventually walked through the Chez Ana’s front door to find our breakfast laid out as usual. Imran and the guards had stayed behind and endured five toxic hours of gas. After all the war and death they had witnessed, a lungful of ammonia probably seemed inconsequential.
As it turned out, the source of the explosion wasn’t a rocket, a bomb or any of the usual suspects that had been known to intrude on a Kabul night. An ancient ammonia tank in the ice factory next door had finally given in to the forty-three-degree heat and exploded. The surrounding roads had been closed to peak-hour traffic while the noxious gas cleared. The UN, satisfied that none of their charges were in the area at the time, gave the incident only a couple of lines on its daily sitrep.
38
Messing with Mercenaries
There was no denying that Kabul was a crazy town. Development Inc. had brought with it a caravan of foreigners of all shapes, sizes, colours and intents. Somewhere, amid the turbans and the burqas, the Land Cruisers and the palm pilots, was the sub-class universally known as the ‘security guys’.
With their guns and their goatees, security guys got all the exciting jobs: inspecting suspect pizzas or escorting Hillary Clinton to the Karwan Sara for an equally suspect dinner. Security guys didn’t talk to anyone and it was rare to see them out in public unless they were waving their guns out the windows of their numberplate-less cars or hanging around Chinese ‘restaurants’ in search of Jack Daniel’s and other refreshments. Recent events, specifically the explosion of the ammonia tank in the compound next to the Chez Ana, had brought the security guys closer to home.
The mercenaries next door weren’t from the much-reviled Dyncorps, but they did work for one of the many private security companies establishing their presence in Kabul. Like their security brethren, the preferred uniform was the goatee and sandy-coloured trousers with enough pockets to carry their sunglasses, their multiple IDs and their chewing tobacco.
But beyond the darkened windows of their strategically parked silver Land Cruisers, Butch and Sundance had become Passport Lane’s favourite neighbours. They were now regular fixtures at the Chez Ana film night, arriving early for one of Majid’s Women’s Weekly dinners and meticulously ironing the bedsheet that served as the guesthouse movie screen. When the guard lost the key to Kuchi’s pen, Sundance was dispatched with an axe to liberate the Chez Ana dog. Whatever the ‘emergency’, the mercenaries next door were more than happy to put down their guns, of which there were many, and lend a helping hand.
Like all security guys, the boys next door were soldiers once. Unlike most of his goateed ‘bros’ – and security guys really did call each other ‘bro’ – Butch was British. He was tall and blond with the kind of pale English skin only ever seen in cosmetics commercials. Only the crow’s-feet around his eyes suggested he was on the other side of thirty. Sundance, his offsider, was closer to the ‘security guy’ stereo type – younger, darker and significantly balder. Underneath his khaki T-shirt, Sundance sported a muscled arrangement that implied many a long hour spent in the Camp Eggers gym, certainly more time than the slightly podgy Butch who quickly developed a fondness for Majid’s slice.
Butch and Sundance spent their time ‘between missions’ hanging out at their guesthouse watching mercenary movies. The Man Who Would Be King was a particular favourite, and Gladiator and Man On Fire were recited word for word. But the best entertainment was to be found in episodes of 24, with Jack Bauer’s every move scrutinised and workshopped.
‘When I was in Baghdad …’
‘I got stuck in Mog[adishu] once and …’
Or, my favourite: ‘A Glock won’t work – you’re better off with something bigger, like a Kalashnikov’ … all washed down with a pot of English Breakfast tea and a plate of chocolate brownies.
In exchange for hanging out in a room full of guns, knives, bulletproof vests and Jack Bauer, today I was taking the boys on an excursion to the UNICA pool. There were a number of swimming pools in Kabul, though most had seen better days. The Russians, ever the believers in the political importance of sporting prowess, had built an Olympic-size pool on one of the hills overlooking the city. These days, its diving tower stood guard over neighbourhood soccer games played within the pool’s empty walls, thus eliminating the heated boundary disputes that so frequently ended the Friday soccer games in Bamyan. Those pools that weren’t empty were patronised by only half of Kabul’s population – the male half – who swam fully clothed in their shalwar kameez.
Such places were, of course, out of bounds to UN staff, who had their own pool at UNICA, the main UN guesthouse, located in Shahre Naw. A small, ten-metre pool of dubious vintage, it attracted every aid worker in town, from the suited and pearled of the UNAMA political office to the dusty and hirsute road builders of the provinces. On Friday afternoons, everyone crammed into its tiny garden and did the one thing they’d wanted to do all week: they stripped down to their bikinis, boxers or any other clothing deemed appropriate. Despite its very obvious temptations and high entertainment factor, I generally avoided the UNICA pool on weekends. By midday, there was barely enough room for a bathmat.
It was late on a hot Tuesday afternoon and the UNICA pool promised to be all but empty. When I was a child, trips to the beach had required nothing more than grabbing a hat, a towel and a pair of shoes. Security guy preparations seemed to take a lot longer.
Rule number one: no guns. UNICA, like all UN compounds, was strictly gun-free.
‘Not even a small pistol?’ said Butch hopefully.
‘It’s still a gun.’
‘Okay. We’ll leave the big ones in the car.’
Rule number two: try and dress like real people so no-one thinks you might be carrying a gun or, worse, you scare the swimmers.
‘What about this?’ said Sundance, bounding from his room in a pair of khaki trousers and black T-shirt.
‘Mmmm, I don’t think so. Don’t you have any shorts?’
‘Shorts? No ma’am, I don’t believe I do.’ He seemed bewildered at the prospect.
Sundance headed back into his room as the game of dress-ups continued. The winner would be the person who looked less like a security guy and more like a human being.
When they finally emerged, Butch was wearing a white T-shirt and a pair of fawn trousers. Sundance was in jeans and a grey T-shirt. Both wore dark wraparound sunglasses. Like working in Development Inc., there was only so much I could expect to change.
‘I’ll meet you outside,’ I told them.
I stood in the garden. It was another ten minutes before they emerged, appearing at the door with M16s – every s
ecurity guy’s rifle of choice – in their hands.
‘We’ll leave them in the car. We promise.’
I wasn’t convinced.
‘What’s that?’ I pointed to a small bag clipped around Butch’s waist.
‘Nothing,’ he said. I climbed into the merc-mobile and hoped that UNICA hadn’t installed a metal detector.
The merc-mobile had tinted windows, and half of the back seat had been removed, ‘for gear, emergencies, you know …’ Small pieces of rope were neatly tied to the inside door handles, ‘to get out faster’. Faster than what? Needless to say, there were no numberplates.
‘Why not?’
‘We don’t know,’ the standard reply of the devious.
The merc-mobile was parked in the small driveway of the Gandamack. Like all Land Cruisers in the Ghan, it faced the gates in case of the need for a quick exit. With rifles across their laps, Butch fired up the engine and we headed out into Passport Lane.
As Sundance pointed his rifle out the passenger window, Butch wove the merc-mobile in and out of the busy Kabul traffic. Cars parted like Moses and the Red Sea.
‘Here’s the plan,’ he said to me over his shoulder. I felt like we were about to attack the UNICA guesthouse. ‘I’m going to slow the car down. You get out and go inside. We’ll find a place to park and meet you on the other side of the gate.’
This, I thought, was a very good idea. If there was a metal detector and it picked up whatever Butch had in his fannybag, I could pretend I didn’t know them – though I might miss out on a lift home after my swim.
The merc-mobile barely slowed down as it deposited me at the gate. I walked through the guardhouse and saw no sign of a metal detector. The boys appeared soon after. They still didn’t look like everyone else, though thankfully they’d disposed of their rifles in places unknown.
Sundance stripped down and I noticed a large tattooed crucifix across the length and breadth of his back. The cross bar was made up of a word. I squinted to read the Gaelic-style script as he ran towards the pool. Con … fed … er … ate. CONFEDERATE. Of course!
The afternoon was sunny and warm, and the pool was quiet. Occasionally the dull slap of a hand hitting the water was heard as a brave swimmer attempted a lap. The UNICA pool’s 1960s design makes it looks like the set of an Annette Funicello movie – a long way from the world of goatees and guns. I lay under a tree and listened as Sundance struck up a conversation with a nearby bikini.
‘So what do you do here?’ she asked.
‘I work for the DoD.’ The bikini was American so the acronym for the US Department of Defence needed no explanation.
‘Oh. And what do you do for them?’
‘Anythin’ they want.’
Messing with mercenaries was like existing in a parallel universe, far away from Development Inc. There was no talk of donors and beneficiaries, reconstruction and capacity building. It was just Annette and Confederate Frankie passing the time on a balmy Kabul afternoon.
39
Maimana
Maimana, the capital of Faryab province, is a small dusty town in north-western Afghanistan, not far from the border with Turkmenistan. It would be unfair to call it a one-donkey town – I saw at least three on the drive in from the airstrip. Maimana’s public transport network extended to the occasional horse-drawn buggy festooned with bells and decorations reminiscent of Christmases never past.
Dust-caked trees lined the town’s streets. Men lounged under the awnings of shops selling bags of rice or summer melons, burqas scurried along the edge of the footpath and the entire town came to a standstill for midday prayers. Unlike Kabul, with its underlying soundtrack of humming generators and car horns, Maimana was almost silent; just the tinkle of bells from passing carts, the occasional splutter of a car and, that rarest of sounds in the Ghan, the chirping of birds. Maimana in August was as hot and as dusty as the rest of the Ghan, but I didn’t care. Although I was enjoying life at the Chez Ana, in the midst of a summer of security alerts and exploding ammonia tanks, it was a relief to cast aside my burqa and get out of Kabul. My visits to the provinces were all too infrequent.
For me, one of the many joys of being in the provinces was the freedom of being able to explore as much as my shalwar kameez and my walking boots would allow – much to the horror of my severely Kabulled legs. The morning walk from the Chez Ana’s front gate to the Big Green Car didn’t really prepare me for a walk down a dusty provincial street. Atrophy was an alarming word for someone who didn’t – at least technically – live in a nursing home.
I was staying in a guesthouse belonging to ACTED, an Afghan–French NGO specialising in ‘watsan’, or water and sanitation projects. The large white building housed both the office and, on the floor above, a series of guestrooms. The only other resident was a young, freckle-faced Canadian woman, Ann, who ran the office, keeping its staff of endless bearded men in line.
The guesthouse had no flush toilets so the bathroom came equipped with a large metal drum and cardboard-like toilet paper that made Kabul’s rough pink sandpaper look positively quilted. The ‘bath’ was a lukewarm bucket of water with a small plastic cup. Inside, the bedrooms were a repressive wall of heat that wouldn’t subside until October, so I followed Ann’s example and dragged my mattress onto the building’s flat roof, its height beyond reach of prying eyes. It was a true joy to lie in the silence of a hot summer night, staring up at the stars.
IRIN was in Maimana for a workshop at Radio Quyaash (Radio Sun). Like Radio Sahar, Radio Quyaash was a women-managed station established by IMPACS. It was housed in a small building on the edge of a dusty mud-walled compound a few streets back from the bazaar. Like Radio Bamyan, many of the stations that had sprung up since the fall of the Taliban were now showing signs of progress. The quality of programming had improved, schedules were drawn up and followed, there were fewer technical hitches and staff operated as a team. For the most part, the journalists at Radio Quyaash had no problem identifying what was ‘news’, and by day two of the workshop I was able to pass the afternoon’s training in minidisc recording to the Dari speakers. Mirwais and Faheem had by now become model trainers and together they were an impressive double act. Mirwais patiently guided his charges through the technical intricacies of minidisc recorders and computer editing while Faheem’s skills lay in the technique of journalism. More than any other novice journalist I had come across in the Ghan, Faheem understood the concepts of accuracy, neutrality and relevance.
The lads certainly didn’t need me hovering like an anxious parent so I went exploring. The object of my excursion was the kilims for which Maimana is famous. The rugs, brightly woven chequered designs, came from all over Faryab. I strolled through the afternoon heat of the bazaar, amid the languid stares of shopkeepers, some of them no older than the average shoe shiner. But there were no carpets, only the rolls of grey nylon matting found on the floors of guesthouses. I wondered if Maimana’s carpets bypassed the local bazaar and went straight to Kabul to be sold to wealthy foreigners. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a small kilim, no bigger than a cushion cover, hanging on a shop door. Peering inside, I found what may have been Maimana’s entire supply.
The shopkeeper sat dwarfed in the far corner of his cavernous showroom. He was surrounded by kilims – hung on walls, laid out on the floor, folded into neat stacks reaching as high as the roof. He was an ancient, stooped man, his face a map of deep contours framed by a wispy white beard.
‘Salaam aleikum,’ he said, slowly rising to greet me as I entered the cool relief of the room. He spoke no English but I’d been followed by a small train of onlookers, one of whom, a small brown-haired boy, stepped forward and nominated himself as translator. Despite his frail appearance, the old man began effortlessly lifting rugs from the piles, unfolding them and throwing them on the floor, one on top of the other, standard procedure in all rug buying and raising enough dust to elicit a sneeze or two from the gallery of onlookers hovering at the door.
; ‘WHICH-ONE-YOU!’ shouted my young translator, my inability to speak Dari taken as a sign of deafness.
‘Er … I don’t know’
‘WHICH-ONE?’
Pressure!
‘You like this?’ my translator was rapidly transforming himself into a carpet salesman.
‘That one.’ I pointed to the enormous kilim, unusual for its dark reds, which had just landed on the top of the pile.
My translator and the shopkeeper conferred and I wondered what the former’s cut would be.
‘Sixty dollar!’ he shouted.
‘What?’ I was confused. The going rate for rugs this size in Kabul was several hundred dollars.
‘SIXTY-DOLLAR!’ Louder, in case I really was hard of hearing.
‘Show me,’ I said.
After a brief discussion between the two, the old man produced a calculator from behind a small tray of the ubiquitous teacups and thermos sitting in the corner. He punched the buttons with a spotted, arthritic finger and handed me the machine. My translator was right. I probably should have observed etiquette and offered a lower price, beginning the long-winded and theatrical process of refusal that’s universally expected of any carpet buyer, but sixty dollars was an absurdly low price and the bleeding-heart aid worker in me felt it would be wrong to argue. So I nodded in agreement and my carpet was quickly packed into a dusty sack – quite possibly before I realised I’d paid too much.
After declining the shopkeeper’s mandatory offer of tea, we made our way through the now-sizeable crowd standing outside. My small assistant stopped to put on the shoes he’d hastily dispensed with before entering the carpet shop, something I, the ill-bred foreigner, had neglected to do. The carpet was heavy and well beyond my atrophied muscles. Besides, it wouldn’t do to have a shalwar kameezed foreign woman struggling down the street with a heavy wheat sack over her shoulder. My translator offered to carry the bag which was almost as big as him.