by Sally Cooper
On the second day of our workshop, we spent a session discussing topics for the programs the trainees would make with the assistance of Mirwais and Faheem.
‘Local people cannot afford the high rents in Kunduz because the foreigners are taking all the good houses,’ said Massouma, the station manager, through Faheem’s translation. Massouma was Hazara. Though her heavy make-up gave the impression she was older, I suspected she was only in her late twenties.
‘O-kaaay,’ I said and wrote it on the left-hand side of the whiteboard, the ‘English’ side, while Faheem wrote the same in Dari on the right-hand side. Very few of our trainees ever spoke much English, but Faheem and I always divided the whiteboard into both languages. In the constant back and forth of his translations of my words and the trainees’ answers, it allowed both of us to keep track of what we were teaching. Afghans are great debaters and it was easy to get sidetracked.
Massouma’s assertion may or may not have been true, but it probably wasn’t the topic we were looking for.
‘What else?’ I looked around.
Zakia’s hand shot up. ‘There are too many street children and beggars in Kunduz because the foreigners aren’t doing anything for the people.’
The idea of foreigners exploiting Afghans had come up repeatedly in our workshops in recent months. If the foreigners refused to talk, least of all to the struggling local media, then it was no wonder misinformation and supposition had become rife. History had proven that foreigners had never had it easy in Afghanistan; it would be naive to think that the twenty-first century was any different. After much discussion, we eventually settled on two less contentious topics: the plight of the town’s disabled and malaria in Kunduz.
I had done my best to avoid running workshops during the month of Ramadan – or Ramazan, as it is known in the Ghan – but with eighteen journalists left to train, it couldn’t be avoided. Day three of Radio Zohra’s workshop coincided with the beginning of the holy month of prayer and, more important for those in training sessions, fasting, which meant no food and no water from sun-up to sundown.
Ramazan in Kunduz began with the blaring of the town siren in the small hours of the morning. At the blast of the horn, I sat up in my bed at the UN guesthouse, wondering if the Luftwaffe was on its way. I checked the time; it was 2.30 am. Remembering where I was, I rolled over and went back to sleep. The next month promised four weeks of no work, tetchy nerves and bad breath.
Our once-energetic trainees became listless. I had every sympathy for them, but less for others. Walking home from the station that afternoon, a small stone skidded across my path. I took a few more steps. Another stone bounced by. My experience of Afghan stone throwing suggested it was as big a pastime as kite flying among the country’s male population. I cast my eyes about for the source and spotted a bunch of giggly turbans sitting under a tree. I had seen them in the same place each day as I walked back from the station. On a Ramazan afternoon, there wasn’t a lot to do. I continued walking as another stone thudded into the ground behind me. Tomorrow, I thought, I might walk past eating a nice juicy apple.
By the end of the week, and despite Ramazan, our workshop had progressed well. Mirwais was arriving the next day and, together with Faheem, they would spend the following week working with the women to produce their programs. I was returning to Kabul, where Ismail was promising me a desk full of paperwork.
It was not long after 8 am. The Afghans’ pre-dawn Ramazan breakfast had long since passed and, while they were doing their best to concentrate, I saw more than a few eyes glaze over while we discussed the questions they planned to ask in their programs. The discussion was proving as lethargic as the women when, without warning, the entire garage began to sway. None of the ladies spoke much English but no-one needed to. For the briefest moment, we glanced at each other – then ran for the exits. Instinctively, the women, whose burqas still hung on the coat rack, ran out the back. Faheem, who was standing close to the front door, made a beeline for the entrance. On my way out the back door, my shoeless feet narrowly missed a recent deposit left behind by one of the multitude of half-naked, snotty-nosed children running around on the hard baked brown earth on which I now stood. As my entire body swayed with the motion of the earth at my feet, I thought of the halcyon days of life in Sydney and wondered how I ever got here.
After what seemed like an interminable amount of time, although in reality it was only a few minutes, it stopped. The ladies chattered excitedly as we returned to the office and resumed our class. Just as the Ghan seemed prone to war and misery, it was also prone to earthquakes, but the morning’s rhythmic swaying had been different to the tremors that usually shook buildings and rattled windows. An hour later, a small explosion reverberated through the garage windows but barely raised an eyebrow. All over the Ghan, de-miners cleared a generation’s worth of landmines and the sound of small explosions had become as familiar to me as the whirr of the early morning generator.
I walked back to the guesthouse for lunch, the privilege of the infidel. It was a small building, home to only three people. The common room was a combined dining and lounge with large pine table for meals at the far end and crimson toshaks lining the wall near a large television that stood by the door. I walked in and found all three standing in front of the television. An earthquake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale had devastated much of neighbouring northern Pakistan. There would be many dead. The BBC was predicting a ‘humanitarian disaster’. This was ‘humanitarian’ news.
42
Free to a Good Home
I returned from Kunduz to find that, with the parliamentary elections all but over, the foreign correspondents, real and otherwise, had decamped. The wagon train was headed for Pakistan where some would document a nation’s misery while others enjoyed French toast with maple syrup at the Islamabad Marriott. The Chez Ana was once again our own.
Kabul’s trees were now bare. Crisp winter mornings began with the chorus of the city’s thousands of generators whirring into gear. Four years after the fall of the Taliban and millions of reconstruction dollars later, the Afghan capital remained without power for most of the day. At 6 pm, Kabul was mercifully silenced when the ‘city power’ (sometimes known as ‘shitty power’) came on and anyone connected to the grid could go about their business by the light of a dimly lit bulb.
The Chez Ana was spared the vagaries of Kabul’s electricity supply and, for the most part, ran on an ancient generator which was housed in a wooden shed by the front door and maintained by a young man called Mohib. In the absence of a proper fuel pump, Mohib’s job was to suck the diesel through the hose in order to start the generator. This went a long way towards explaining his permanently glazed look.
I had done my best to shelve thoughts of my departure but it was things like Mohib’s unique mastery of the Chez Ana generator that I knew I would miss the most. In the absence of a real ‘home’, I’d become so used to guesthouse living that I was having trouble with the thought of adjusting to anything else. Like many who worked for Development Inc., in the Ghan and beyond, I rarely washed my own clothes, cleaned my own house, tended my own garden, drove my own car, cooked my own meals or started my own generator. The thought of a life of freedom was tantalising, though, at this rate, I would probably die of malnutrition, frostbite or sanitation hazards unknown.
Most of all, I would miss the people. The Ismails, the Mohammeds, the Mohibs, and the Mahmoods had long displaced the images of the AK47-wielding turbans I’d first seen on the six o’clock news and in the pages of National Geographic. The West insists on seeing Afghanistan in black and white, a ‘conservative Muslim’ country at war with itself. Yet the Ghan is so much more, the sum total of the hundreds of tiny nuances that make up its people, its culture, its laws, its history and its religion.
Afghanistan wasn’t a country that let you rest. But the constant stimulation to my senses was also what made life in the Ghan so exhausting. I was beginning to wonder if I would ever have the energy
to look for a new job, let alone actually function in it. There was plenty of work in Sudan but, after three years in Central Asia, Africa just didn’t have the same appeal. Was there life beyond the Ghan or, like many before me, was I lingering because I couldn’t find the answer to that question?
It was time to tell the lads of my departure. Another reason I hadn’t yet told anyone I was leaving was because in doing so my departure from the Ghan would become real. After all this time, I wasn’t sure I was ready to take that step, but my position would soon be advertised and the lads needed to know before the big wheels of bureaucracy started grinding and they heard the news from someone else. I chose my moment one day just after lunch. Within the confines of The Bubble, the IRIN lunch was a segregated affair. The lads went to the Afghan canteen next to the UNOCA cafeteria and I got a slice of pizza and a cappuccino from the cafe. I sat with them in the office five days a week. I figured their lunch hour should be theirs to enjoy, away from the ‘boss’ and the social intricacies my presence demanded.
I had dreaded this day; it would make my departure official. The lump in my stomach negated the need for prosciutto and caffeine and I stayed in the office, staring out the window, wondering what the lads’ reaction would be. They returned from lunch, walking into the office in the usual order: Faheem opening the door with confidence and a ‘hello’, Mirwais slipping silently in behind him and Ismail shepherding from the rear.
‘Where is Mahmood?’ I asked.
‘I think he’s in the car,’ said Ismail. Like all drivers, Mahmood liked to sit in his car, sometimes with a gang of his UN driver mates and sometimes on his own, listening to the radio, reading or napping.
‘Can you please go and get him? We need to have a quick meeting.’ Our ‘quick meetings’ usually encompassed a plan for the next workshop or the advent of a new security rule. This one would be different. My heart was beating fast and my palms were beginning to sweat.
Rather than walk the hundred metres to the car, Ismail phoned Mahmood and, in sharp tones reflecting their relative places in the office pecking order, told him he was needed in the office straightaway.
Mahmood soon appeared, and the lads took their seats.
‘Okay … I want to tell you that I will be leaving IRIN and Afghanistan.’
I hadn’t thought much beyond the delivery of that one particular line and wasn’t sure how to continue. Their expressions remained unchanged, except Ismail, who looked at first surprised and then sad.
‘When?’ he asked.
‘The position will be advertised from next week so hopefully we’ll know more by the end of next month. The whole process might take a while so I don’t know when my replacement will start. If they already have a job, they’ll have to give notice.’
Mirwais and Mahmood were, typically, silent, watching as Faheem and Ismail did all the talking.
‘What will happen to our contracts?’ asked Faheem.
‘That will be up to the new manager,’ I replied noncommittally.
Silence. The lads stared at their feet. I wasn’t sure what to say next.
‘Does anyone have any more questions?’ I asked vaguely.
Their faces were blank. There were no questions about me, my decision and my future. It would have been naive of me to think there would be. The discussion had been surprisingly brief. It was only two thirty in the afternoon but I felt it wise to leave early and let them digest the bombshell I’d just thrown at them.
‘Mahmood,’ I said, turning to him, ‘can you please drive me home?’
‘Sure, boss,’ he said quietly. He stood up and waited while I packed my laptop into its large black leather bag. I handed it to him and he carried it out to the car.
Faheem, Mirwais and Ismail stayed in their seats and watched as I gathered my coat and scarf. I couldn’t recall the office ever being this silent. I felt self-conscious, keen to get out the door as fast as I could.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘See you, Sally,’ said Faheem as I quietly shut the door behind me. I took a deep breath and navigated my way through the Christmas decorations that had recently appeared in the UN corridor. For the past week, the bizarre sight of singing Christmas trees, fairy lights, tinsel and stuffed teddy bears jostled with hordes of Afghan staff who brought their families to stare at the display in awe, amazement or incredulity. To the tune of ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’, I walked out to the car park.
I sat beside Mahmood in the front passenger seat as we bounced along Jalalabad Road in silence. Reaching Abdul Haq Square and turning right into Shashtarak, Mahmood cleared his throat. ‘I can’t work for the new boss,’ he said.
Mahmood had just paid me an enormous compliment.
‘But this is a good job. It’s better than driving for the ministry.’ I thought it best to stick to the obvious.
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘I will look for work with another UN office.’
‘But what about Ismail and Faheem and Mirwais? You’d miss them too much.’
He smiled.
‘And IRIN is better than working for a big agency. You’d be just another driver. None of the people in your car will ever remember your name. I think the new boss will be okay.’
‘Inshallah.’
We wove our way through Massoud Circle, with its massive brown marble monument to Ahmad Shah Massoud, and drove on in silence.
Donor money exists within the life of the project it funds. Offices open, equipment is procured, staff is hired. Projects end, reports are written and offices are closed. A few months later, new money is granted, another project starts, a new office is opened. The revolving door of Development Inc. continues to turn. Foreigners come and foreigners go. Afghans stay, they never go; jumping in and out of the door as it spins past them, hoping for a better life and a new beginning.
We pulled up outside the Chez Ana.
‘Thanks, Mahmood,’ I said, taking my bag and my briefcase and climbing out of the car.
‘See you tomorrow, boss,’ he smiled.
Mahmood waited while the chowkidor opened the front gate. I walked inside, through the screen door, up the grey stairs and unlocked the door to my room. I sat on my bed and cried.
43
And Man Shall Live
Forever More
Once I’d been told the truth about Santa Claus, I’d never been a fan of Christmas, an event which, in the West, started in October and lasted long into the New Year’s credit card cycle. Christmases in Africa were marked with less accessorising than they had been in Australia, though there was just as much beer. One of my most memorable Christmases had been spent in Ethiopia, where, as Orthodox Christians, the birth of Christ was celebrated, amid great ceremony, on 7 January, the Feast of the Epiphany.
For reasons more to do with my own bad mathematics than anything else, I was spending Christmas in Kabul, my R and R cycle not permitting another break until January. For people who don’t like Christmas, the Ghan is just the place: no shopping centres, no credit cards and none of the aesthetic vandals of the Australian suburbs whose Santas and flashing lights displays are said to be visible from space. Kabul is delightfully quiet when Development Inc. takes its Christmas break; there are fewer Land Cruisers on the road, less fake tans in restaurants and a strangely relaxed feeling engulfs the city, as if it were taking a deep breath within the eye of a storm.
Still in a quandary about ‘life after the Ghan’, I’d been entertaining the thought of taking up some freelance reporting. With a view to my post-Kabul life, on Christmas Eve, while most Australians were wrapping the last of their Christmas gifts and finding extra space in the bathtub for the Tooheys and the Foster’s, I went to meet Ahmed Shah.
Ahmed Shah left Afghanistan for Pakistan in 1999. He had no idea where he was going, but he knew, as an ethnic Hazara, he had to leave his village in Ghazni as the Taliban closed in. He left behind his wife and three-day-old daughter. In August 2001, the Palapa, the ramshackle fishing boat he believed would t
ake him and his fellow passengers to a new life in Australia, started to sink. They were rescued by the M.V. Tampa. The rest, as they say, is history – but a ‘history’ that finished on Nauru. I was interviewing Ahmed Shah for a piece I planned to write on what became of the 179 passengers of the Palapa who were repatriated to Afghanistan. Because Ahmed Shah spoke minimal English, I took Ismail with me to act as translator.
Ahmed Shah was a small man. The lines of his weatherbeaten face congregated around dark eyes and a small moustache. His features were unquestionably Hazara. Ahmed Shah was a man ill at ease. His movements were jerky and through the course of our two-hour interview, he smoked one and a half packets of cigarettes. We met him in a small, single-storey concrete building by the side of a busy road on the edge of Kabul, far beyond The Bubble and Development Inc. It was a mild afternoon, the sky was grey and so were the surroundings. The small building was the property dealership where Ahmed Shah now worked. Beyond its glass front was a small, sparsely furnished office with an aluminium desk and a handful of chairs. Through a door at the rear, I saw a small alcove no bigger than a closet. On a small bench was a plastic washing tub, a tray with cups and saucers and a kettle for making tea.
‘Everyone knew the Taliban were trying to remove the Hazara, or kill them. We had all heard stories of graves of three or four thousand people,’ he said, once the interview began. He lit another cigarette. ‘I knew they were coming to my village so, one day, I left. I didn’t want to tell my family where I was going; it would only make more trouble for them.’
Ahmed Shah went to Quetta, in neighbouring Pakistan, where he found work and stayed over a year. When I asked him how he found a people smuggler, he and Ismail both laughed, as if at a very obvious joke. ‘You can find the people smugglers everywhere,’ said Ahmed Shah. ‘In every hotel, every guesthouse, every business. They are very easy to find.’ I had a mental picture of people smugglers sidling up to their quarries in a manner similar to carpet sellers on Chicken Street.