A present for Jalil: Staying in Afghanistan part III

On Monday, I needed to go back into the crazy part of Kabul for a few things, so being the diplomat, I decided to drop in on Jalil and take him a present of a few files. I bought some on the way, and without too much difficulty parked in the Ministry of Economy grounds and went upstairs. (Now I know this may look like a bribe. And in a sense, you could describe it like that. Or you could call it an expression of thanks that he helped me with a file of his own when he didn’t have to. And that I was providing him with a spare file for the next person who came along in my position. Obligation, thanks, hospitality and reciprocity are perceived and enacted differently here. Julie and I once admired a carpet in someones guest room, and the next day he gave it to us. In relative value, it was probably worth about $2000 to him…)

I climbed the stairs to the third floor and with some trepidation, knocked on the door, and went in (you never wait to be called in in Afghanistan, you just knock on enter). Jalil was crouched (still) but behind a different desk. He welcomed me warmly and clucked as he took the files. We used one to put my documentation in, which, I noticed with chagrin, was lying precisely where it was left last week: on the bottom shelf of the bookcase, gathering dust. It clearly had not moved.

As casually as I could, I asked about when the High Commission For Approving New NGOs might meet and a crafty look crossed Jalil’s face. ‘Soon, soon’, he replied. ‘Maybe even this week’. A newcomer to Afghanistan would go away encouraged by this exchange, but I know better than to be encouraged so easily. ‘Maybe this week’ is shorthand for, ‘I have no idea. It’s not really my business. I have no control over it, and no interest in it. In fact, I don’t really know what you are talking about.’ I nodded to Jalil, feigning gratitude, and murmured ‘Good, good. That is very reasonable.’

Jalil and I chatted for a while longer, though he soon started using incredibly complicated Farsi which I was troubled to fully understand. I thought of telling him to eschew obfuscation and extraneous prolixity, but I couldnt think of the words in Farsi. No doubt he could have.

After a few more minutes I took my leave, and left Jalil to crouch again. I will call him on Thursday. Just to make sure my file is still where I left it.

 

This moment in time…

 

From 2000:

A short break in Peshawar.

It is certainly time I had a break. Its Thursday; I came out from Mazar yesterday. As I was waiting at the airport, some young Talibs came up.

’Do you speak Pashto?’ – they asked, in Pashto.

‘No’.

‘Why not?’ – in Pashto.

Me, in Farsi: ‘Because I speak Farsi. I haven’t learnt much Pashto yet. Maybe next year.’

‘Your beard should be longer.’

‘It’s not the rule in my country.’

‘It should be longer. Longer is better.’

 

I turned away.

«

 

I arrived in Peshawar about 1.30ish and walked down to the Guesthouse. Peshawar felt hot and slimy. Within minutes of leaving the Red Cross’s soothing, air-conditioned van I was struggling with my bags and Sabina’s box of books that I had agreed to bring out, I was limp with sweat and a comment from the guard at the American club had resulted in me calling him something unrepeatable.

 

Made it to the Guesthouse without further social infringements and found Julie to be out. Nonplussed, I ate lunch, read the paper, sat under the fan. 2.30pm Julie showed up and we were able to share a sweaty hug and then heaps of mail. Some new people coming on the team – Bern and his wife Verity, who is one of 17 children. They themselves have three already, 2 ½, 1 ½ and 6 months. ‘How many children will you have?’, Julie asked. ‘We’ll let God decide that’, Verity smiled contently.

 

Julie and I went out to the Pearl Continental that night for dinner. It being five star, we thought we might get the chance of a beer. Sure enough, we asked at the Taipan restaurant, where we planned on eating, if there was alcohol. Yes, came the speedy reply. Reassured, we sat down and I asked for the wine menu.

‘You must go up to the bar for alcohol.’

‘Oh. Right. Can’t get it here?’

‘No, in the bar.’

‘Can we get it there and bring it down?’

‘No, but you can take your dinner up. Or we can bring it up. Or you can have a drink then come down. Actually it would be better if you ate up there, as we are full tonight.’

‘Well, we’ll go up and see.’

 

We went up to the fifth floor and found the bar, which looked nice enough and had a few bottles of whiskey on the shelves. ‘What have you got’, I asked, leaning happily on the rail.

‘Whiskey!’

‘Great, what else?’

‘Nothing else sir, just there is whiskey.’

‘What, nothing else? What’s in all the cupboards?’

‘Nothing sir, just you have whiskey.’

‘Ahhh.’

 

A pause.

‘How much is a glass?’ Could I go a glass of whiskey? How keen was I?

‘Not by glass. Just you buy the bottle.’

‘What, the whole bottle?’

‘Yes.’

 

Another pause.

‘How much is a bottle?’, I asked, speculative and increasingly incredulous.

‘500 rupees.’

‘Ahhh. Thankyou, you have been most kind.’

 

We went downstairs and sat down again in the Taipan restaurant, much to the discouragement of the waiters and had some very nice chicken and beef dishes, washed down with a cleansing lemon juice. Meanwhile, at the packed tables next to us, a tour group of Japanese drank themselves silly on non-alcoholic beer.

 

Staying in Afghanistan… part II

So now you have a visa, a work permit and a concession from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that you may become a registered NGO. (read it: How to Stay in Afghanistan legally) But this is only enough for you to be in Afghanistan till the visa and work permit expire. To stay here, you must be part of a real NGO, and for that, your NGO must actually become a registered NGO. And for that, the Ministry of Economy is necessary.

Now, you have already been to the Ministry of Economy, because you went there by mistake way, way, way back, when the grass was still green and the humming fish swam and the brown barbaloots hung out in their barbaloot suits eating truffula fruits. Now, with the authorisation letter from Ministry of Foreign Affairs tight in your hands, you must go back… Back to where it all started.

So, you go. Early in the morning you go, believing this will be a good time to catch people in a good mood. Your drive yourself to town, in the Landcruiser with the faulty clutch that sticks, so that you stall in front of an oncoming amoured personnel carrier, bristling with angry soldiers. But, you make it without being killed or run over, and the happy people at the Ministry of Economy gate let you park inside, unlike the folk at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who made faces and made you park miles away. At the MOE you traipse upstairs to the second floor, and then after a few minutes wandering, up to the third floor, and find, with difficulty, the office of a cheerful elderly Afghan who is nicknamed ‘Urfanzada’. Zadan is the verb to strike or hit in Dari, and so you guess that it means he was once hit by an Urfan. It clearly had a lasting impact. Urfanzada talks a lot, slipping between English and Dari and waving his hands and complimenting you on many things: your language, your country, your aims, your hopes, your life. He is a complimentary fellow. He evetually instructs you to go across to the neighbouring building to the fourth floor, where the big boss, ‘Basirat’ will give the order for your registration process to start. Until then, ‘Nothing, nothing, haha, no, nothing’ laughs Urfanzada, ‘Haha, nothing can happen. You speak beautiful Dari.’

The two buildings are joined by a walkway on the third floor. To save going down three flights, then up four, you decide to use the walk way. You walk over there. To save people using the walkway, someone has locked it. You go down three flights of stairs and then up four, and then down one, because Basirat’s office is now on the third floor, you are primly told. You have no idea who this man is, or what he looks like, and no offices are labelled, so you wander around, calling out, ‘Basirat…Basirat’. Like you had lost a kitten.

Finally you find an office and there is a loud altercation going on within. The men look at you suspiciously, but are all smiles as you explain your mission, and luckily, you are in the right place, but unluckily, Basirat is out. No one else can give the order for things to start without him, you are told. ‘Haha, no’. It seems he is like the man with the starter pistol at a race. Looking disconsolate, you are told to come back at two o’clock. He will be here then. The men resume fighting as you turn away.

It is now 10am. Four hours. Four hours is a long time to pass in Kabul centre. Outside is broiling heat, the traffic is snarling, and you don’t know where to go. You meander around and find a shop that sells roller skates. Another shop that sells pipes and toilets. A man offers to shave your head. A boy comes and peers at you from well within your personal space. And so on. Finally, it is two and you return to the Ministry of Economy. No messing around now, you zoom up find Basirat’s office and he is in, but you will not see him. He stays behind a door. A man comes and takes your letter from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and it is whisked inside, scribbled on, and handed back. As you hasten back to Urfanzada, you ponder. Is Basirat terribly ugly? May no man look upon him and live? Is he a pigmy? A rogue? A talking parrot?

Urfanzada is thrilled to see you, and full of compliments. But, his face falling, he tells you that the Bigger Boss also needs to sign off. Basirat is only the (invisible) second boss. And the Bigger Boss is not here. He will be back at 3pm. You will wait, you decide. And so you sit and Urfanzada and you swap stories and he brings you hot tea, perfect for a 38 degree day in an room facing the sun, with no air-conditioning, and only a fan that chirps and wheezes and occasionally spins a bit.

After a while you begin to suspect. Urfanzada is still talking, chattering, friendly and happy and bright eyed and interested, nauseatingly so. But no sign of the Bigger Boss. Eventually, you ask: ‘Is he coming back today? The Bigger Boss?’

Urfanzada looks crestfallen, slightly ashamed even. ‘No’ he says, ‘But! maybe you could come tomorrow? We could drink more tea. Come tomorrow. How beautifully you speak.’ It is as you thought. You were a great day out for Urfanzada, and he wants more of your delightful company.

You determine you will not go tomorrow.

A few days pass and you go back, this time, taking your charming kids and beautiful wife. They will surely accelerate matters. And to an extent, they do. Clever tactic. Urfanzada is warm and appreciative and hospitable, and with only a few minutes delay, you are brought in to see the Bigger Boss. He takes your form, the one from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with Basirat’s scrawl on it, and appends his own. ‘Why don’t you speak Pashto?’ he asks. (You remember slow-eyed Taliban prodding you with this same question, their AK47’s hanging limply from their hands). ‘Errmmm’ you mutter. ‘Ermmm. But I speak speak beautiful Dari’. 

From the Bigger Boss, you head back to Urfanzada, who trills about your excellent achievements, and tells you with great earnestness that now, you must go to see Jalil. He will give you the forms you need to fill out. Then, your case will be heard by a five member commission. Then if all goes well, (here Urfanzada spreads his hands wide), ‘The High Commission will sign off on it. And why shouldn’t they? Look at you! For the mercy of God! Now, off to Jalil’.

Jalil is in the next office. He is hairy and crouched, and ill tempered. He is possibly psychotic. He is certainly pedantic. He takes your forms and imperiously directs you to sit, on a sagging seat that gives you a toilet posture. He then spends maybe 15 minutes reading the name of your organisation to himself. ‘Hagar. Hajar. Hajra. Hagar. Hajra. Hajr-ah!. Haa-jara. Hagar. H-a-j-a-r-a. Hag-jar.’ He looks displeased. He tries again. ‘Hajar. Hagra. Hagara. Hajira.’ On and on it goes. Finally he fixes you with an evil look. ‘What is your organisation called?’ You tell him, and explain the story. Hagar, a servant of Sarah, who was the barren wife of Abraham. Sarah suggests that Abraham sleep with Hagar, to try to found the dynasty God had promised. Then, Sarah finally does get pregnant and insists that Hagar and her new son be abandoned. Left to die, Hagar and her son are saved by God’ Etc, etc. You wind the story up with a compelling flourish: ‘So, we work with vulnerable women. Like who Hagar was. Or as you say in Dari, Hajera.’ 

Jalil is not convinced.’ But why are you called Hagar?’ You look at him blankly. He is astonishing to you. You tell the whole story again. Jalil nods, agreeing, but he still doesn’t seem to get it, and resumes his chant, pronouncing to himself, ‘Hagar. Hajara.Hajra. Hagara.’

You play your only trump card, and bring in your wife and children from the hall outside. Jalil looks up, frowning. His manner improves, and there is a imperceptible increase in the speed with which he mutters to himself. He gives up. It is too hard. He fools around in a hidden shelf and finally brings out a crumpled collection of papers. He selects a combination of the least crumpled and presents them to you. There are in Dari and English, and are not hard to understand: Name of organisation. Purpose. Budget. Staff. Aims. Signatures. But Jalil is not done, and he takes a further 30 minutes reading it all to you, and explaining in high Persian what each means. ‘Yes, yes,’ you murmer, with increasing testiness, ‘Yes, it is good. I see, yes. Very fine. You have had trouble. Yes, I see. Don’t trouble yourself further with this. I see. Yes. Please don’t trouble yourself.’ But Jalil is troubled by it, and it is only finally after about an hour, with the kids slack with boredom and slumped in their chairs and your wife glassy-eyed, that he finishes and lets you go. ‘Fill it out and bring it back’, he shouts as you leave. ‘Yes, thankyou, yes, I got it. Thankyou. Yes’, you shout back, running from the building before he starts the name-muttering thing again.

It takes only a few days to fill out the forms and get them translated. And so you must go back.

On a fine morning, you return to the Ministry of Economy and to Jalil. Maybe, you tell yourself, he was just being careful. He wanted you to get it. Fussy. He was being fussy.

Jalil is in. He doesn’t appear to have left, in fact. He is still hairy, and still crouching at his desk. He looks up and waves at you to sit. ‘Salaam’, you begin, politely. He silences you and sucks his teeth for a while, and rearranges a pen. When he is ready, he takes your forms. ‘Ahhh. Hagar. Hajra. Haajera. Hajira.’ His eyes are fixed on the first line. But this time, he lurches out of first gear and reads the pages. There is only a few small errata. Firstly, you have not been clear enough as to the nature of the health assistance you plan on giving to these vulnerable women.

‘See here what you have written’, he says, and gestures to a tiny box on the form, about the size of a postage stamp. ‘What do you mean by health assistance? Why haven’t you summarised what you will do? You haven’t summarised it.’ ’But’, you say, ‘the box is very small. There is not a lot of room to write. I think health assistance is ok, it means we will assist them with health issues. That is clear enough.’

 ’Oh no. No, no’ he says. ‘No. NO. It is not clear. Maybe you are giving them medicine. Or maybe first aid. Or maybe birthing help. So. Which is it? Eh?’

You look back at him. ‘It is health help. Health assistance. It will be different with each person’, you reply. Jalil sucks his teeth. His arms are hairier than a bear, and he has large hands. ‘Ahhh, but which kind? Maybe you are giving them medicine. Or first aid? Which? Which is it? First aid, or medical help?’ This goes on for a long time, and in your mind you drift off to the green happy country. Here, time moves differently and so it is, that although this matter is clearly important to Jalil, you out-last him, your stubbornness rating exceeding even his, and he gives up. Rocking back in his chair he fixes you with his evil eye again. ‘Now, then. So you will not change the health assistance summary. Well. Where is your file?’

‘File? What file?’

‘Your file. You must bring a file for us to put all this in.’

You didn’t bring a file. Maybe, after the pink folder thing at Ministry of Foreign Affairs, you should have known. But Jalil said nothing about a file last time, even though you pressed him most closely for all the items you would need. ‘No, you need a file. Look –’ he gestures to a bookshelf. It is filled with files with the names of other NGO neatly typed on the spines. No file or typing is alike, proving, you suppose they had each been purchased and labelled individually, by the unlucky staff of other NGOs,  who like you, had sweated in this very chair, under Jalil’s probing eye.

‘I don’t have one. You didn’t mention a file. Why didn’t you tell me? I would have brought a file. You didn’t mention a file. No file was mentioned’. Your tongue is thick in your mouth and you uselessly repeat yourself, ‘I wish you had said to get a file. You didn’t tell me to bring anything else. No file. I asked you. You didn’t tell me to bring a file.’ You look at Jalil.

He looks steadily back at you, a grin creasing his eyes. He looks almost pleased with himself. ’No, I didn’t tell you.’ He doesnt apologise. ‘Go. Buy one. Buy a file’, he tells you, ‘The stationary shops are just there. Go and get one and come back. You see, we don’t have files. Look – see. Everyone else brought a file. You go and get one. A file. Because a file, a file is needed.’

‘But I can’t go now’, you whisper, you moan, you cry, ‘You didn’t tell me to bring a file. Why didn’t you tell me? I don’t want to go and buy a file. Look out there. The traffic. The heat. The parking. There is no parking. I am alone, I don’t have a driver. The heat, the traffic.’ What is about Jalil’s office that everyone starts repeating themselves, you wonder. Jalil hasn’t stopped: ‘A file! A file is needed!’ he intones, and his secretary, a woman who hitherto has neither spoken nor moved, springs to life. She is wearing orange and pink.

‘Yes, you need a file. A file’, she choruses, and smiles winningly at you. You slump back. And magically, Jalil decides that he has had enough of this, and reaches under his desk and pulls out a file. He blows the dust off it, and hands it to you and smiles. ‘Here is a file. You can bring us one next time.’ Hardly daring to breathe, you punch holes in the bits of paper, using the orange and pink lady’s paper punch, and she smiles again, a lovely happy radiant beam of light, and then she takes the file.

‘You will hear from us if there is a problem’, Jalil says. ‘And… if not? If there is no prob lem?’ you ask, edging toward the door. Jalil shrugs. His altruism is all spent. He shrugs again. Bowing and thanking and thanking and bowing, you back out, the way courtiers used to with kings, kings who could have you beheaded if you displeased them. As you close the door, Jalil crouches down behind his desk, and the lady freezes, an orange and pink statue holding a file.

You know you will be back there again.

 

 

 

 

Not all beer and skittles though

It’s late ish. 11.20pm. The power has just come back on after being off for a day and a night. 

I am upstairs and about 10 minutes ago, opened a window to the cool of the night. I have just heard, from  house a block behind us, the most awful screaming. Like I have never heard before, and I have heard some. Panicked, terrified screaming. Women’s and children’s voices. Calling, ‘Baba! Baba!’  - ‘Father, Father!’. And other words, that I couldn’t make out.

I stood at the window, a voyeur on someone’s terrible pain. I tried to compensate for my inaction by looking for flames - no fire, nothing I could see. Heart attack? Death? I wondered if I should go around. I have before, intervened in people’s anger and pain and violence. Should I here? The answer is obvious.

It stopped. Maybe it was only a few minutes. Did the father wake up? Is everyone ok, or are they just silent. I am relieved of intervening. But I hope I am not relieved too often, or I will soon learn not to hear.

 

How to stay in Afghanistan, legally.

 Your aim is threefold: you need to have a visa to stay in the country, a work permit so that you can officially work, and to be in a legitimate job, in this case, the new NGO named Hagar…

1. 1.       First, you will need to go to Ministry of Foreign Affairs to get your NGO registered. Because if your NGO isn’t registered, you can’t get a work permit, and if you have no work permit, you can’t get a visa. Then you will be kicked out of the country or imprisoned. So, off you will go to MFA. This will be difficult because you don’t know where it is. You will accidentally go to Ministry of Economy, and there you will walk around a large set of buildings until finally someone directs you to the NGO department. There your kids will charm the staff, but you will be told to go to Ministry of Foreign Affairs, that registration begins there. You will leave, but not before your son loses his thongs.

   2.       At Ministry of Foreign Affairs, you will have to be searched before being allowed to enter. You will give your passport to a man, who will give you a little tag, and tell you to go ‘over there’. This could mean the next building, or the next country. the Ministry of Foreign Affairs compound is huge, like the size of the Vatican. You will walk aimlessly, asking people where NGO people should go to get registered. Your kids will love it all, because of the pretty flowers and mulberry trees. Their clothes, designed to impress the Minister and make him want to grant you everything you need, will be blotchy and purple splotted.

   3.       Someone will wrongly direct you to the media department. There you will explain at length, it faltering Dari what you need, and they will listen with interest and politeness and then ask, ‘What is your country’, and you will tell them, and then they will tell you they do Media and PR, and the building you want is elsewhere. Then someone will point you to a far distant building. You walk there, the kids trailing purple splats.

   4.       At the NGO department, you will meet with very amenable men who are impressed with your Dari, your charming wife, and your purple kids, and they will give you a form to fill out and a list of things you need: passport copies, NGO bylaws, list of personnel, a three headed pigeon, six other things. You thank them and leave.

   5.       After a week or so, when you have got all the documents and the pigeon and translated it all into Dari you go back to MFA. It takes 45 minutes to get there. You ask to submit the documents. But you have not put them all in a nice clear plastic folder, and Afghans love nice clear plastic folders. And you have not made two copies. So off you go home again, and head off to the stationary shop. But the stationary shop only has poxy plastic folders and the prepubescent boy behind the counter shrugs when you tell him you want nicer ones. In exasperation you buy what he has.

   6.       The next day you go back to MFA. You get searched again, and get the little tag and all that, but you have the smarts about this process now and it is a quick walk to the NGO department.  You submit all the documents to the nice man. Hooray! you think. Not only that, but you have also brought a letter explaining you need to get visa urgently because yours run out soon, and you are worried the registration process won’t be finished by then. The nice man gives you assurances and tells you to come back in a day, when he will have gotten your letter signed by An Important Man.

   7.       The next day is Friday, so you come back the day after. The nice man tells you to find a woman called Farzana in the next building and she will give you the letter. You go a woman called Farzana who looks blankly at you, and thinks, ‘Wierdo’ to herself, and it turns out she is the wrong Farzana. How many can there be, you think. But then you find the Right Farzana and she gets the letter signed by the Important Man and you put it with the visa application forms (which you prepared earlier). It is so easy. Too easy.

   8.       Off you go now to Ministry of Interior Affairs. It is 20 minutes to the MOI and easy to find. But it too is huge, and filled with policeman and cars and listless people and men pouring cement and long boulevards and dead pine trees and tricky turns and locked doors. But although it is 34 degrees, you eventually find the right place, and the helpful man sends you to the Boss Man who quickly signs your papers and sends you and them to the Little Man, who tells you to come back at 2 pm, when the final signature of the Other Boss Man will be appended. You protest, but for a Little Man, he speaks with authority. 

   9.       You come back at 2pm, slightly fried because of the sun, and quickly get the signed forms from the Little Man. Now you can go to the Passport Office.

   10.   The Passport Office is another 10 minute drive, but it is not hard to find and it is a small building, which you remember well from Taliban times. Only now instead of men with beards and guns, it is filled with men moustaches and guns.

   11.   You find the Passport controller man and give him your forms, and he looks them over and then asks for your work permit. ‘But I don’t have one’, you will say, anguish in your voice, for your visas expire in two days. ‘My NGO is still getting registered, and until it is we can’t get a work permit and the man at Ministry of Foreign Affairs said we could do it all ok with this letter.’

   12.   You realise you are sounding a bit pathetic and silly and attempt to look cool and regain control. The Passport Controller looks patronisingly at you and tells you in clear, short words, that there is no way on earth that he is going to give you visas without a work permit, even if you have a three headed pigeon. He says you can go to the Ministry that issues Work Permits, and there the Head of that Ministry will give you one.

   13.   You have a strong, unpleasant sense of déjà vu. ‘But I am not registered’, you repeat, and the man, taking pity on you, phones the Head of the Ministry for Labour and Social Affairs, Martyrs and Disabled People and speaks to him, and surprisingly, this man agrees to give you a work permit. ‘You should go there tomorrow’, the Passport Controller man says. You drive home, it only taking 48 minutes in the 37 degree heat.

   14.   The next morning you head off to the Ministry for Labour and Social Affairs, Martyrs and Disabled People, or MOLSAMDP, or MOLSA for short. This is a huge building on the far side of Kabul and it has only one door. So it is easy to get in, but inside, there are many doors, and none of them have writing on them. But fortune favours the brave and before too many days have passed, you find the man who the Passport Controller spoke with. But he looks grim and as though his wife only gave him a smelly piece of cheese for lunch. He says he will not give you a work permit without your NGO being registered, and that that is the law. You have another sense of déjà vu. You begin to protest and speak in a high pitched voice and inch forward on your chair.

   15.   The Head of MOLSA looks up from fiddling with his lunch bag and he sees that he has a man in his office who is close to the edge,and who might be carrying a concealed, three headed pigeon. So he scribbles on your letter and sends you imperiously into the next office.

   16.   The Deputy Head of MOLSA looks pleased with himself, as though he has a beef and tomato roll for lunch and maybe a little snack to have in the afternoon too, and he looks at the letter and asks laconically where your certificate of registration is. You have to explain it all again, but you can rattle it off in quick fluent Dari now, because by now you have repeated this sorry story about 50 times. The Deputy Head with the nice lunch then says he cannot do it, because your NGO is not registered and so the idiot circle repeats. But he too realises that you looks dangerously unbalanced, and so he changes tack. ‘Why is your letter not in Dari?;’ he asks hoping to find another way of refusing you. ‘ I cannot process this if it is not in Dari. Or Pashtu.’ But you are fixated now, in for it all, and you have thrown out the ballet dancer with the bath water, and so you push ahead, saying you didn’t have time, and that it doesn’t matter, and that you have all the permissions, and… And you do not draw breath until he acquiesces and sends you next door where you fill out more forms.

   17.   You are then sent out of the building to the bank across the road to pay $150 to a man in a booth. He gives you a receipt, which you take upstairs and get three different men in three different rooms to sign. One of them will berate you for not taking off your shoes and they will all ask which country you are from. ‘Hungary. Swaziland. Fiji’, you murmur. You go downstairs again and get the signed receipt stamped, and then you must get it photocopied, so you walk off to the bazaar to find another man in a booth with a copy machine. This done, you return to MOLSA.

   18.   To get the Work Permit you must give two photos of yourself, but you only have one, so you must take one off your visa application form and give it too. However you happily do this because you can see the prize, and within another few minutes you have your work permit. Hooray, you think.

   19.   Now you must go to the Central Bank to pay the visa fee, and this you do with difficulty because the Central Bank, the most important and biggest Bank in Afghanistan is hidden carefully, disguised as a dingy old set of flats. And your driver gets lost and then has to drive another 30 minutes down Kabul’s one way streets to get back there. But once there, you push though milling crowds of men and soldiers and get to a small booth and pay $720 to a man, who sits on a stool and picks his teeth and then 20 minutes later, gives you a receipt.

   20.   It is now time to get another passport photo for your visa form, because you used the earlier one on your Work Permit. You find a photo shop and this bit is easy and only costs 100 Afs and then you are off to the Passport Controllers office again, this time with a Work Permit! You push in happily and jump the queue, citing previous visits as the reason, and ignore the glares of other people. The Passport Man looks at your documents, carefully ordered and drops them all on the ground and a scuffle ensues to pick them up, during which time they all get out of order. But re-ordered, he tells you he needs a copy of your Work Permit. So out you go to the nearest photocopy shop, which is only 100 m or so, and there you get a copy done by a young child who leers at you and spits on the floor, but you ignore him and his spitty ways and head back to the Passport Office. And then, all you have to do is go upstairs and get another signature from a teenage policeman, who writes some blah blah on the forms, and you then can scurry back down stairs to the Passport Man.

   21.   You give him all of it, all the stuff, the whole lot. Not the pigeon though. He takes it all with a nonchalant smile and tells you to come back the next day at 2pm and he will give you the passports with the visas.

   22.   You now skip out of the office and spend only 40 minutes driving home in the 40 degree heat, and the following day, you should… you should… get your legal permission to stay and work in this country…

   23.   Hooray, you whisper to yourself.

    

 

Lost

I seem to have lost my watch. Lost, stolen. It is – was - a very good Seiko diving watch – 23 years old, scratched and chipped, but robust and reliable. It was a gift from a long dead great aunt, who bought it for me when I was 15. It has been repaired twice, lovingly, lost and found, accompanied me all over the world. Of late, though I have developed an itchy rash on my wrist, so I have taken to keeping it in my pocket. And I know I had it this morning, as we watched the kids do a jiggly dance for us right after breakfast. Then I spent several hours trying to repair our crazy hot water system. In a miracle of science, water flows Escher-like, both ways in the one pipe at the same time, and hot water turns to cold in the space of two metres. In vain I emptied the tank, filled the bathroom with sprays of water, took things off and put them on again and rapidly reached the unhappy point of utter frustration and perplexment. I even phoned home to ask my Dad for advice.

Some time around 11.00 I went to the bazaar to buy parts – valves, thread tape, T-pieces. It only took half an hour, and I paused to buy mangoes, which are plentiful and excellent at this time. Several Kuchi women stopped to beg from me. The Kuchis are Pashtun nomads and they orbit between the cities, the highland and lowland pastures. While in the cities, the women are quite aggressive at begging, and rarely accept no for an answer. I gave a few Afs to the young girl with them, and I don’t think they picked my pocket – but I guess they may have. It was later during lunch that I realised the watch was missing from my pocket.

I have now spent several hours searching the house, doing that foolish thing you do when something is lost, when you look in ridiculous places that you know there is zero chance it being. So it was that I looked down drains, in washing baskets, in boxes I haven’t opened in weeks, in the fridge, in bins, in jackets I haven’t worn yet, behind huge immovable wardrobes. Stupid, pointless. I went back down the bazaar and of course there was nothing. Came home. Felt irritable and sad. Looked in empty cupboards, twice, then again with a torch. Patted my pockets for the hundredth time. Squeezed my fingers down the back of our comfy chairs, when it was obvious that the only way a large diving watch could get down there was if forced with a hydraulic press. Looked in the toilet. And again. I even got Julie to pray we would find it. But no joy yet. And the evil water heater isn’t fixed either.

 

Blast film and black baths.

 

In my last post I referred to the newer Kabul mansions being a horrible fusion of Pakistan kitsch, Afghan decay and Hollywood grandeur. Well, we have now, after more than six weeks here, and four temporary accommodations, moved into our place. It is great to be here. It is not a new Kabul mansion. It is more the decaying Afghan grandeur style. But we are very happy to be here. Ecstatic would be too strong, but only just. Though, from an objective point of view, it is a very odd home indeed: Chandeliers adorn every room, but their elegance is diminished by the missing beads, the string and rubber bands holding them together, and the alarming angle at which they hang. Blast film covers most of the windows, a leftover from the angry Mujahideen years, when this part of Kabul was practically reduced to dust. Though the kids and I spent a happy hour pulling it off some windows this afternoon, and suddenly, instead of blurred and muted shapes, we could actually see out, the thick layers of dust and paint specks still hinder a clear view.

The saloon (the Afghan term for a living room) has a ’70’s style (painted) stone feature wall and more chandeliers. The kitchen, complete with more of the ill fitting cabinets that are so ideal for hiding small mousey snacks, is tiled in dark cement tiles. These tiles are not limited to the floor, no, they were so in vogue that they come half way up the walls, giving the room an uncanny resemblance to a public lavatory. More of the lovely kitchen tiles are found in the bathroom, where some one must have once cleaned the bath with an acid wash, as a result of which, over the following years it has become a stained tint of yellow and grey, with smears of rusty brown and black. The diesel heaters used in past winters have darkened the walls and ceilings with soot, so most rooms have a dim and cave like feel.

But it is a great home. It has lovely tall apricot, mulberry and almond trees, grape vines and a good well. The ceilings are high and there is a wonderful sense of space. The kids have a room for homeschooling, where Julie sets out each day to teach. There is a very good solar power system installed, so when the power fails each day, we have a back up system. The drains drain (mostly), I have fixed up a water heater, and we have no mice.The washing machine has not produced any evil smelling laundry; the oven, unlike our last home in Kabul, does not explode when lit; and the sandflies… well, actually there are plenty of sandflies.

And they seem to find the kids, with their nice sweet tender skin, just delicious. Which means our son looks like he has chickenpox again, and daughter is similarly covered in raised and virulent welts and bumps. Julie and I are more discreet in our itching, but just as committed. We bought this little zappy thing before we left, that when you click it on a bite, is meant to remove both the itchiness and other symptoms. It works by giving a tiny electric shock, and it seems to actually do what it claims (though it may just be killing off parts of our brains). For adults, the application doesn’t hurt (much), but the kid’s enthusiasm for it has quickly evaporated. So there they are, itching and along I come and zap them, and then they are itchy and crying and shouting at me. Not a good scene. We have to get mossie nets. Not only will they stop the flies, but the draping folds of white gauze around each bed will look just right alongside the chandeliers, feature stone walls and blurry blast film.

 

 

Not all joy

We had dinner tonight with old friends.

If I remember it all correctly, we met them in 99. We were new in Afghanistan, they had been here a year or so. We were in language school and they welcomed us, had us over to dinner every Tuesday. We had our first Christmas here with them and I shared the Pan Forte my Mother sent. One night we took soup for our Tuesday dinner there, and when we walked home from their house in the dead quiet of a Taliban winter, we were attacked by a crazy dog and I beat it off with the saucepan. Then we moved to Mazar, and later, after 9/11, and when we returned to Afghanistan, they moved up to Mazar too, and again we were friends. I borrowed Ken’s bike, and I remember riding through the thick mud of Mazar’s raw streets, a stripe of syrupy brown up my back and coating my legs. I bought Ken a coffee grinder for his birthday, which he happened to share with Jesus (the birthday, not the coffee grinder). It took me hours of searching in Mazar’s eccentric shops to find one – an old Russian one, with Cyrillic script on the bottom. When Richard was killed in the plane crash, I told Ken. I used their piano tuning tools to tune the old church piano in the basement where we used to meet.

Now, after a break they are back in Kabul, and so are we. We sat with them tonight – it must be their fourth or fifth home in this country. We are in our seventh home, if you count only stays of more than a month, and we will shortly move to our eighth, where we will live for the next few years, all going well. We talked about the new times here – frozen chicken breasts are available in the bazaar, wine glasses, wine, power tools (even if there is no electricity). Everything is now available, and if you can’t get it, talk to a shop owner. He probably has a brother in Dubai, and he will get it for you. And there is Bush Bazaar, so named because of the huge quantities of American goods available from a row of shipping containers. I haven’t been there yet, it is near Pashtunistan Square, where the old Electric Street is. We would go there to get switches and wire and globes, it was the only place they could be found in Kabul. Illicit TVs and satellite dishes were sold from under the counter, and I once walked into a shop where three Talibs were loading a sports bag full of banned cassettes and music tapes. They glanced up at me, disinterested and unembarrassed. I suppose it got boring being a good moral Talib sometimes.

I used to hate it that you couldn’t get a decent bag of coffee anywhere in Afghanistan. My mother had to send it from home. Now, you can get bags of Lavazza and Vittoria, and you can have a latte or an espresso at the Kochie Coffee house, and I hate that even more.

We have found much joy in coming back here. But it is not all joy.

 
 

 

Amoxicillin, of course

 
 

 
 

 We were in a village the other day, assessing the quality of the development efforts that have taken place there in the last few years. It turned out the female Community Health Worker had died two years previously. Her husband, the male CHW was still operating though. He looked dangerous. I asked him a few questions.

‘How do you treat diarrhoea?’

‘Amoxicillin!’

‘What about pneumonia?’

‘Amoxicillin!’

‘And vomiting?’

‘Amoxicillin!’

‘Rii-i-ight. What exactly is the difference between a cough and pneumonia, do you think?’

‘Oh, with pneumonia, you have a cough, fever. You know.’

Confidence and ignorance. A bad combination.

 

The Colours of Afghanistan.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back. Back in Afghanistan. Back in Mazar-i-Sharif. Back in the winter’s adhesive mud and bitter cold. Shivering showering in a bucket. Stinky, sooty diesel heaters that… no, no wait, that was 2003.

We are back in Afghanistan though. And we are showering in a bucket. But, it is great to be back, and we feel strangely happy. It probably seems hard to understand why we keep coming back to this place: you may have to come and visit to experience the particular beauty of this country and the pull it exerts on your heart.

We arrived in Kabul last Friday – a week ago. It was a long flight via Singapore and Delhi, but comfortable. On arriving in Kabul, we were pleased to find all our bags had come with us and not ended up in Bogota. Then began the long ridiculous trek from the airport to the carpark: because of security, cars are not permitted closer than a kilometre to the airport, thus ensuring a brisk trade for porters and an annoying end to the journey. While we were locating our transport, a fight ensued between two porters, which was resolved by a policeman wading in and swinging his fist; unfortunately on his backstroke he biffed our daughter in the face. Welcome to Afghanistan.

After a few days in a guesthouse, we flew in a tiny plane up to Lal wa Sarjangal, in central Hazarajat. This part of Afghanistan is easily the poorest and most marginal in a poor and marginal country. The town, Lal is a street with mud houses scattered either side, a scrounge of stray, violent dogs and a river. Onions and flat Afghan bread are generally available, as is tea, second hand clothes and a smattering of other goods – soap, rope, broken motorcycles and oil cans, tyres and shovels. My colleague here, Andy, needed a key cut – a modern type key that you would typically use for a door or padlock. He asked his Afghan co-worker where he could get another cut here, and the co-worker laughed, as though he’d been asked where the local gym and day-spa was. ‘You can’t do that here! No, no, no! you have to get that done in Kabul.’

Andy then produced another key, an old-fashioned one, the sort your grandmother used to lock her wardrobe with. Here, these keys are still in common use and are cast in cheap metal and then filed to shape. It is iron-age technology. ‘What about this key?’, Andy asked tremulously. ‘Ha! No! No, that you must also get done in Kabul. Here is it impossible. Send it on the plane that comes next week. In a few weeks he will bring you a new one.’

Such is life in Lal. We travelled out to a village last week, as part of the assessment Julie and I have been asked to do. This village is 40km away, and it took us two hours to get there. Andy was wearing a pedometer, wanting to know how far we walked around the village, but before we even got out of the car, it registered 5.2km in bumps travelled.

But our children are happy. Our son in fact told us he wants to buy the house we are staying in and live here when he is married. It is unlikely that even by then (he is 4), there will be running water or electricity: presently, we pump water by hand from the well and cart it to the house. A fair part of each day is simply spent filling buckets. But it is comfortable and clean and warm, unlike the homes of people we have seen in the villages. It is difficult to imagine how life in some of these villages goes on. It is something like -30 in the winter, and the ground so unyielding that only potatoes and onions might grow. The diet here, day in, day out, year in, year out, is bread and tea. People count themselves lucky to have a spud: meat and fruit are luxuries in the same way that a ride in a limousine might be in Australia. No, not a limousine. That is attainable for most people, and probably not novel. A ride in a private jet, is a better metaphor.

Poverty and peace. It is interesting: those parts of the country that are in some ways wealthiest from poppy crops, are also attracting the greatest donor interest, in an effort to stem opium and replace it with legitimate, ‘friendly’ crops. Peaceful areas, like Lal, on not on anyone’s radar screen for investment or reconstruction.

 

 

Birth of the Saviour

 

Laptop crashed and burned

Well, it happens to most of us. On my second week in Kabul  a power surge struck my laptop, and it went quietly to the great cyber-vault in the sky. On reflection, I’ve had a good run with laptops. Especially in Afghanistan. I’ve driven off with a laptop on the roof, and had it crash to the road at ~20kmph. My old laptop was dropped and the hinges broke, leaving the screen dangling by its umbilical cord. They have been covered in dust, had red wine spilled in them, kids bang them and suffered numerous power blips. So it was about my turn. I recovered the hard drive, but it has taken 2 weeks to buy a new one and get all the data back up. Credit to CARE Afghanistan, especially Lex, who paid for the new one - I was working on their stuff when my laptop died. Thanks Lex.

So as soon as I can get my pictures off my camera and onto this new laptop, I’ll post some more.

 

A look at a latrine

I’ve been up in the Panjshir, evaluating an aid project. Latrines, water supply and health promotion training.

I do wonder what the Afghans made of it. A group of men, wandering around their village. One of them bangs on the door of a yard and calls out that we want to look at their toilet (imagine the converse: you are sitting at home, and a group of Afghans bang on the door and call out they want to see your bathroom).

A small boy is deputised to run around the yard and hustle any women inside so the strange men (and I mean strange in several ways) won’t see them. We are then permitted entrance. My Afghan colleagues demure, but I am here to evaluate whether this significant sum of money has been well spent or not, so I stride over to the newly built latrine and switch aside the sacking that acts as a door and disappear inside. All that can be heard now is me taking a long deep sniff.

Some latrines barely smell at all, and they are clean. Fresh almost. That could be a sign of a well used, well built, properly ventilated latrine. A tick for the book. Or it could be a sign that the latrine is not used at all. Sometimes it’s not so hard to tell: I have discovered latrines used as storerooms, as chicken pens, as dog houses. One had a 500 pound bomb sat upright it in. Well, the answer there is obvious. But clean empty latrines?

So, undeterred, I exit and walk around to the back, where the cover is, where the dried crap is meant to be dug out and spread on the fields for fertiliser. It is no fun, examining a large pile of someone else’s poo. But it is a good way to tell if a latrine is being used or not. Except if the little chamber is dark. It can be hard to see then. The answer to that is the squat down and look deep inside, trying to assess the freshness of a pile of drying shit (something I have done in many meetings in countless boardrooms). If I was really keen, I would have brought a torch.

I am not that keen. I do not want to look like someone really freaky.

Meanwhile, the Afghans, both my colleagues and the local people look away embarrassed, or stare incredulously, or make small talk. ‘Where is he from? Ahh, Australia. That is a good country. Hmm, yes, a very good country.’ It would be easier if I didn’t speak the language, then I could be referred to obliquely, through a third party. But I force them to get involved, I turn to them, ask, ‘who uses this latrine? Who? You? Your family? All of them? Do you empty it? When did you last empty it? What do you use the stuff for?’   I am hard to ignore.

Anyway, I get the information I want, and we move on to another site. I have a phrase for all this in my mind, which makes it easier to hold together. DOA. Directly Observed Assessment. You want to know if an aid project has made any difference, you need to get close to it. Smell it. See it. Be ruthless with it. Most people who deliver aid want it to have all worked as intended. They want to know their efforts have been useful and valuable. They don’t want it to have failed, and they generally don’t want you to discover too many failings. But good aid is not about making people happy.

  

 

Afghanistan.

The first time you come to Afghanistan, it is all new. No lines have yet been drawn across your heart. The smell of diesel and dust is raw, but not yet evocative. The bloody carcasses hanging at the butcher shops, the blaze and slap of the tandoor ovens, where flat bread is furnaced, the unforgiving land; all of it is new and enticing, and it draws you in like a lover. 

And like a lover, Afghanistan disappoints, and hurts, and burns, and abandons, and whispers to you and gently asks you back. And so, it becomes so layered, like a marriage, like a life. No longer can I walk down any street here, without a cascade of memories sifting back over me. Here was where we emerged from a friend’s home one night, in the dead of a Taliban winter, the sky dark like pitch in the absence of electricity, to walk home, and be attacked by a crazed dog. Here is where we lived, and where I killed the chickens for our first Christmas here.  Here is where I stumbled across the bits of a man, killed in a suicide bomb. Here is where I walked with my friend in the bazaar, shopping, and where I was beaten for not going to pray at the mosque.  Here, at the Hotel Intercontinental I walked, in the chill despair of December, 2001, to search for interpreters, amidst the gaggle of reporters screaming into their satellite phones their latest dispatch on America’s campaign. This road, here, I travelled in 1996, 99, 2001, 2002. In this place, there were mines; Tim and I had to walk carefully around them on our way to Mazar-i-Sharif. Here, on this road, my wife was struck by angry Talibs one day. Here, at this guesthouse, I played squash with my friend Dave (I miss him so much), the court lit by a hole in the roof, torn open by a RPG, shadows slanting across the walls.  Here, at this place, as we left Afghanistan for the last time in 2005, at dawn, a man lay dead, curled under his motorcycle, blood pooling on the black road. Here, here, here. 

Each time I come here, another layer is added, a layer of love and pain. This time, as I arrived and walked through the new airport customs area (finally renovated after for years being a bombed ruin), I knelt down and touched my head to the dusty ground. An acknowledgement, a kiss. Soldiers and aid workers, veterans of maybe five months here,  looked at me puzzled.  That excitement, that passion that crackles in the new days of a relationship will never happen here again. Not for me. Some part of me was lost here, for ever it seems: my innocence perhaps. In those terrible days in the evacuation and chaos of 9/11. Some part of me died then.  

I wonder if it could have been different.

  

 

Laptop needed

Readers! (all six of you) 

I will travel to Afghanistan in a few weeks (Nov 14) for some work with different aid agencies. I have an Afghan friend and colleague who is now working with a respected aid agency in Kapisa, Central Afghanistan. I have worked directly with him for three years in community development work, when I was with IAM back in 99-01 and 03-04. He is a man of high integrity and commitment. And he is a really nice guy.

He has asked me to buy him a laptop, which I would bring with me when I come.

The reason for this post is to see if there is out there, amongst the waste-heaps of Western affluence, an unneeded laptop lying around. I hope you won’t think him (or me) picky if I say that an old 1990’s style laptop won’t really do – Afghanistan may not be Australia, but they run the same software on the computers as we do, and are trying to do the same work. So it would need to be fairly recent model, with reasonable specifications, and no problems – they have even less access to repair and service (especially in Kapisa). He was willing to pay for the laptop, but I know that what he could afford would not buy very much, and would in any case represent many months salary for him. I don’t think I have ever made a request like this before and I will not make a habit of it. 

If you can help, please let me know - leave a comment and we’ll work out how to get in touch. If you can’t maybe you can think of someone who could – let them know!

My thanks.