We had plans to meet an old ISAF colleague, S (name protected because he's one of the good guys in a land of many bad guys), at 11 a.m. for lunch in a new Turkish place. We pulled out of the hotel and directly into bumper-to-bumper traffic across from the Iranian embassy, where a crew of the new Afghan Public Protection Force were standing watch.
Kabul used to be full of private shooters -- everyone's heard of the former Blackwater, and maybe Dyncorps; outfits like that, ex-military crews that provided bodyguard and force-protection services in often contentious ways. Well, on President Karzai's short list of actual representations of public opinion was an order banning the security companies from Afghanistan. They were replaced with a new government agency, which -- for hire -- will provide the outside-the-wall shooters you need to keep your compound safe and your VIPs Very Protected.
Emily, who would follow her viewfinder over the cliffs of Dover, was blithely shooting out the open back window when a bunch of stuff happened at once: I, facing ahead in traffic, saw Afghan troops marching down the cars looking into windows and thought, "Shit, there's a VBIED and we have no out." The hotel driver, sharper than I was, growled to Emily, "No photograph." Karen, sharper still, yelled to Emily, "Show them your hands!"
At the window, in Emily's face, were two large, leonine, AK-toting guards angrily demanding her equipment, while a guard at the embassy entrance was pointing at the car shouting "camera!" Our driver said something quickly in Dari that ended with "delete," which Emily promptly and fairly efficiently, giving her shaking paws, did, showing them the "no image" message on her view screen. Which meant precisely nothing to non-English readers, who pulled the camera out of the car and studied it.
I said, "photographs gone. Mebakhshed," excuse me. They grunted at her some more, grunted at each other, handed back the camera and stalked off.
Emily was very quiet through lunch, complaining briefly of nausea.
We ate tip-top diner kebabs with S, who decided he'd spend the afternoon showing us the city's highlights. After walking me into a travel agency to confirm plane tickets to Pakistan on 4 January -- we'd reserved but were unable to pay online -- he drove us to the National Museum (in rough shape, with a lot of interesting Buddhist-era relics and some snazzy jezails, each easily worth more than 10 rupees) and to the nearby Darulaman Palace, which was, to put it in the most refined terms possible, shot to everloving shit during the civil war of the early 1990s.
In 2005 I went with another ISAF westerner to the palace, where we each posed for one photo before gunmen chased us away, despite our NATO badges; gossip was it was being used by US Special Forces as an operating base. This time we beat through a pack of child beggars to a small Afghan National Army contingent, which told us the palace is off-limits to all but journalists. S had press credentials but we did not, and then S suggested that perhaps an accommodation might be reached. Indeed it could -- the guard post's water pipe was broken, and it'd take about $10 to fix … We strolled happily into the palace.
Emily's photos will do it far more justice, but it was once an amazing building that now stands as testament to Afghanistan's quintessentially Hobbesian history. Shot, as aforesaid, to everloving shit, it also bears slogans from several Afghan factions as well as the graffiti of western military tourists -- we saw English, Hungarian and French at least, as well as some lewd drawings and sketches of airplanes, helicopters and tanks. S shook his head, remembering when, as a child, he accompanied his army general father to the palace; it was beautiful, with bright red carpets up the stairs that now rise precariously to floors punctured by rockets and neglect.
From there, through the old city to Babur's Garden and tomb, a hectare of gardens, mosques and the resting place of the onetime emperor Shah Jehan, who built the Taj Mahal but left his remains in Kabul. The winter showed us only trimmed rosebushes and empty apricot trees, but one gets the strong sense of quiet beauty; someday, in summer, in peacetime, it'll be worth a return visit. (But bring your own toilet paper, ladies, because the 'Woman Toilet' doesn't offer that peculiar western indulgence. And be prepared to cough up a little extra at the gate, which unabashedly advertises separate prices for Afghans, 'Foreigner' and 'Foreigner With Camera.')
Sometime during the day S phoned home to tell his wife he was bringing guests. After a short stop in a naan bakery for Emily to shoot down the tandoor, we were walking up five flights of cold apartment block to a bright, cheery apartment, where the kids popped in to say hello and the chow came out in quantities only Afghans and Italian-Americans foist on their guests: Kabuli pilaw, banjan borani, stewed lamb, vegetables, fried potatoes, and naan in heroic heaps, along with cookies, candy and oranges, festooned a gold plastic floor cover. We leaned back on pillows easing sore feet and rubbing distended bellies, and after I was shooed from the room, Emily and Karen got to meet Mrs S and Mother-of-S before he eased us back through the dark city streets to the hotel. And soon to bed, inshallah.
Emily has her own version of events. In that, 'like a million guys with AK-47s stuck in my face' tried to kill her for photographing a blank wall. And then there was a lot of walking, and some cute babies, and food, and too much editing to do. She's mastered the journalistic bent for pithiness, with a tabloid news sense. Mr Murdoch, if you're listening, she's gonna need a job in a few months.
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