Resuming transmission

The last month has involved, in this order, me stabbing myself in my thumb knuckle, deeply, striking bone and rupturing the capsule and rendering me 9 fingered (temporarily); a nasty burn on my calf being the result of a hot water bottle (pathetic, I know); and a sense of being inflated by a bike pump, and a lot of time spent in the bathroom. And being really, really tired. And uncreative.

But things are looking up. Megan the wonder surgeon (taking over from Ken the super surgeon) sewed up my thumb on a Friday afternoon at the kitchen table as I held the torch (power went out as she made the incision). And here’s a tip: locally bought lidocaine is about 30% as strong as it should be. That is, it wears off after 20mins rather than two hours. Or, more precisely, when the surgeon is still stitching.) The leg burn wound thing is healing. Etc. And it is turning to Spring. A few markers of this: it is raining, not snowing. I have stopped wearing long-johns. I have stopped wearing mittens. I have moved back into  my office at work (rendered uninhabitable over winter by the freezing temperatures, the leaking roof and the freezing temperatures. And the leaks.) We have stopped heating our home 24/7. The snow is melting. We played soccer and threw balls around in the yard and  it was great.

Interestingly, today as I walked to work, some guys in a Technical drove past.

example of a Technical.

Ostensibly, I suppose, they were guarding a VIP. But it was identical in appearance and form to Taliban times, and it prompted in me an internal conversation about evidence of real changes over the last 10 years. There was a Government then – as now. Both are seen by a large proportion of the population as illegitimate or propped up by foreign regimes (Saudi/ USA). Both had or have limited power outside of Kabul. Both tried or are trying to win loyalty and support from – or at least create cohesion in, a country that is still not a nation, and where ethnic and tribal links are far more deeply rooted than any kind of allegiance to a central power. Neither has done anything much to improve the rights of women or ethnic minorities. Security under both has been terrible; arguably better under the Taliban. Both stimulated very piecemeal/ ad hoc/ ineffective economic and foreign policies. Ministries are run by commanders and warlords in both cases; both have been hostage to the religious power-brokers. I’m not arguing things were better then; but I don’t thing things are much better now. Not in an enduring sense. This is not what you could call a robust, well rooted, popularly-supported Government, not a Government with effective control and reach, not a country that is united and cohesive, not functional, not secure, not maturing. Not yet.

Images from the Palace

Our good friend Cam T is visiting us from Western Australia. We decided to wander the old, ruined Darulaman Palace together. The guards were initially reluctant, pointing out that we needed ‘a letter of permission’ to enter, though I am not sure who would issue such a pass. Perhaps they meant a different kind of letter. But with a little encouragement, the chief guard, who had a split lip and a loud voice, relented, though not before pointing out some areas where a little donation would help. I demurred.

From within the ruined old palace, the new Parliament takes shape.

We climbed a few internal staircases, somewhat hidden away, and there in a roof space was a pile of school books. It was odd.

The fallen ceiling. It was quite beautiful, the way it hung, a lattice of plaster and wire.

From an upper window. Clearly, someone had been hidden there, sniping at people below. 

On our way out, we passed the guards, and I slipped them 500Afs. I’ll come again, with other visitors, and I’d like to keep the relationship cordial. Needless to say though, the guards looked disgusted at the paltriness of my thanks. ’500Afs? What use is that?’

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Today we learnt that our bush property in the South West of WA has been largely burnt in the bush fires. My uncle’s house is destroyed; my parent’s home damaged. It is hard to be so far away, and the shock has an unreality to it.

Image of hope

Sometimes, at the right time of year, at the right place, Afghanistan is a wonderful place to be. We have had three long days of real heat, and then today, it rained. Not much, but enough. The dust was caught up in the moisture, and as the call to prayer sounded at Iftar, the smell of lamb and chicken on the charcoal spits mingled with the rain and it was all wonderful.

Nothing is ever perfect: last week there was an attack at the British Council, and we fully expect the 10th anniversary of 9/11 to be significant. But we have to take the good moments when we can. In Faizabad, in the north east last week, I helped a new team of community development workers with their training; all going well, we will start work in another set of remote communities within a few weeks. Our renewable energy work there is extraordinary, thanks to a committed Afghan team and a scrupulous German engineer. Villages that would otherwise be forever using candles and torches are now having electricity via hydro-power, every night. And our adult education program is bringing people into new countries: critical thinking, interrogation of long held beliefs, voicing opinions, forming civic groups, standing up against injustice.

I sat tonight and smelt the rain and felt grateful that I can be here.

Bomb disposal at the Sound of Music.

My wife and my daughter have been going to dancing lessons the last semester. I know that sounds out of place in Kabul, but several years ago, a woman from the US, mainly through vision and raw determination, set up the Kabul Dance Studio. In a context of war and violence and chaos, dancing seem to her to be a sign of hope and beauty. And for lots of the young girls and their mothers – Afghan and expat, it has become so.

Yesterday was the performance, and most of the day the dancers were all in doing final rehearsals. The performance was at the Serena Hotel – the most fortified of hospitality venues you are ever likely to encounter. At 2.30, we arrive, well in time for the 3.00pm start, and are directed through a chicane, where we are stopped behind heavy boom gates.  I produce ID and we are asked if we are carrying weapons. The car is inspected for bombs, and we then pass through the blast doors. We are then bag scanned and body searched, and finally permitted entrance. The Serena has been a target for suicide bombers in the past, and some parents refused to let their children do the dancing, or attend the show, on security grounds, but it is a risk we decide acceptable. You have to take fun where you can here.

We settle into the Grand Ballroom in the seats Julie has reserved. A few minutes later Pete notices a bag lying on floor near us. It looks to be a video camera bag. We joke that it might be a bomb. Haha, yes, a bomb. After another few minutes we look at each other, and Pete says, with a tone of nervousness, as though apologising for worrying about such things, ‘You know, maybe it is a bomb. We should check.’

He’s right that it is odd, that a camera be left there, with no one claiming it, minutes before the show starts. I take the bag and gingerly open it. It looks like a video camera. I speculate aloud whether if I turn it on, it will trigger the bomb. ‘Haha, yes, could be’, says Pete. Haha, yes, I think, not turning it on. I fiddle with it a bit, in a very uncommitted way, remove and replace the battery, and declare with a complete lack of conviction, that it is probably ok. But it is still making us fidget, and so Pete goes and hides the bag behind a large pillar, so that if it does blow up, the blast will go away from us all. That’s bomb-disposal 101 folks! See how easy it is!

The curtain goes up, and if you thought tap-dancing in Afghanistan was anachronistic, try watching the ladies and girls perform the Sound of Music in Kabul. Ballet, waltz, lyrical dance, tap, shiny taffeta dresses and make up like Spack-filler.  It is great though, and most movingly, the dance instructor has this season worked with half a dozen girls from one of the orphanages. Six girls, from ages four to eight, performed Edelweiss, and it was lovely. I can’t imagine a day in the life of a girl in a Kabul orphanage being much fun, but yesterday was certainly an exception.

The end to the camera bag bomb incident comes as Pete notices that a group of boys – my son included, are now hanging around the pillar where we have so cleverly hidden the bag. In a final decisive move, we take it outside and leave it on a table. The performance ends, the dancers are cheered off, no bombs, and we all eat icecream in the grassy grounds of the Serena Hotel as sunlight streams through the green mulberry leaves.

Images of Kabul

I took the below photo without the boy’s permission. I had meant to take it with his back to the fire, but at shutter click, he turned. I felt unhappy about that, it felt like I had taken something from him.

The Kabul River. If you google for photos of the Kabul River in the 60′s, it is devoid of rubbish. People swim in it. It is clean and while not beautiful, at least appealing. These days, it is a drain and a rubbish bin.

Images of destruction at Eid-e Quorban

The last three days have been Eid-e Quorban, the Festival of the Sacrifice. For those of you who went to Sunday School, you’ll know that Abraham was told by God to sacrifice his first born son, Isaac, on the mountain (one of those bible stories I end up shaking my head at). At the last minute, as Abraham has sharpened up the knife and is preparing to slit his son’s throat, God intervenes, thanks Abraham for his devotion, and in gratitude, Abraham kills a nearby sheep instead. In the Islamic tradition, Abraham is told to kill Ishmael, but the rest of the story is pretty much the same.

So at this Eid, which remembers that event, lots of sheep and goats are killed, and the meat distributed to the poor in thanksgiving. Quite a nice tradition, unless you are one of the sheep, I guess.

For Muslims around here, it is a time to visit, share meals with each other, and judging by what I see on the streets, give beebee guns to your children. I wonder how much the incidence of eye injury rises during Eid…

Julie took the time to visit and hold a wee, premature baby that has been left at nearby Cure hospital. The young mother had twins, a boy and a girl, prematurely. The boy has been taken home; the girl left at the hospital. It desperately needs touch and love, and so a roster of expat mums has been there to hold and cuddle it. I don’t think it is the case that the mother is disinterested – she is young, it is a long way to travel every day, and she has the other child to care for. It is predictable though, that it was the girl child who was left. Hopefully, if she gains strength, she will rejoin her family when she can come out of the Intensive Care Unit.

I and the kids took the time to visit the old Ministry of Defence, further up Dar-ul Aman.

We have visited previously, but the military then took a dissuasive position with regards us going in. This time we were more lucky, and the lone guard was happy to let us poke around. It appeared to be thoroughly demined (it was certainly thoroughly graffiti-ed, and in many places, thoroughly used as a latrine), and it was also thoroughly destroyed.

Kabul used to be full of such buildings or remnants of buildings, there are fewer and fewer as they are bulldozed for the construction of new narco-palaces.

Walking through it with the kids was strange. It was moderately nerve-racking, wondering if there was still any UXO around;  it was depressing – seeing the ruin and devastion of what had once been a beautiful and grand building; and it was a bit numbing. The Afghans I spoke too were ambivalent about the building: I don’t think they saw it romantically. It signifies loss and destruction for them, a sad time when the Mujahideen blew Kabul to bits. It is also simply a building, home now to some 30 refugee families.

Afterwards, we drove back to the hospital and shelled peanuts until Julie came.

 

(* all these images shot with the superlative Tokina 11-16 F2.8 lens, a fantastic wide angle lens, superior in construction, speed, performance and price than the Nikon equivalents – and I am normally a Nikon purist.)

Well, we are leaving in a few weeks. Now that all the boxes have been ticked and we have the final permission to go, I am lined with doubts. Ambivalence. Uncertainties. Will it work out – what ever ‘it’ is? This is the fourth time we have accepted a posting in Kabul. Why are we doing this again? Will our kids be ok? They are older, they know what is happening, they feel some of the losses of leaving. Will we be able to stick it? Will I?

And fragments of memories lurch up at me. Riding in a boot of a taxi from Mazar back to Kabul, a freezing 14 hr drive in early winter, 2001. A recently exploded vehicle on the road, victim of a land mine. Roses in the gardens. Old friends, who have long left Afghanistan, who I took to buy chickens, and we went from place to place to place, ending up at the Hill of the Sacrifice of Forty Virgins, where we drank tea under the mulberry teas and were at last permitted to purchase 5 chickens from a boy vendor. We took them home in the taxi’s boot, where the chickens squatted in darkness and fear, pooing uncontrollably.

When I arrived back in Kabul in 2008, I was so happy to be there I knelt and kissed the tarmac. US soldiers and Afghan businessmen looked at me, puzzled. Later, with my family, leaving the terminal, a policeman got in a fight with a passerby and my daughter got struck in the face. Such are the ambivalences of Afghanistan.

A few days of silence

Sorry for the silence. We are back in Australia. It is not an easy transition, and we are lying low. Many people are very happy to see us, and we are happy to see old friends too, but that does not make this place home. ‘home’ has become a layered concept. It is not Perth anymore, it is not Kabul, nor Mazar, nor the other places we have lived. It is not the friends we have, nor where our family are.

I guess where I now feel most at home is a place where I am part of a community with shared goals and hopes. Being part of a committed group of people, all oriented towards a similar goal. Living closely with people in a life and with a lifestyle where we feel tangibly, daily, viscerally, the urgent needs of people who are poor and marginalised and suffering. And where we try to do something about those needs.

It is going to be hard to build such a community here in Perth.

A few days back, Dave asked me how I could be missing Afghanistan and why I was so ambivalent about being back here. It seemed to him from most of my writings that I was generally not happy living in Afghanistan. It was a good question.

My answer then was trite and a bit clever. My more reasoned response now, is that being happy is not really that relevant. Happiness is not a sign to me of doing what is right. Happiness has nothing to do with following the call of my conscience and my faith. I would rather be unhappy and faithful than happy, any day. Happiness ranks very low on my personal priority scale.

That said, it is quite happifying being here in the bush in SW Western Australia for a while. But I know within a month or so, I will be pining for blackouts, cold showers, suicide bombs, crap roads, the wail of the azan and the smell of the sewer. Pining for a life more miserable, but infinitely more meaningful.

Friday afternoon vasectomy

Thursday and Friday are our weekends here; so today was our Sunday. In Australia, on a Sunday afternoon you might go for a bike ride, have a coffee at the cafe, watch a game of footy*, mow the lawn. 

Here in Kabul, I spent my Sunday afternoon equivalent being the surgical assistant on a vasectomy operation. My good friend F, who we have have known for many years now, has had enough kids to pass the vasectomy threshold. Back home, it would cost him $1500 for the operation. Here in Kabul, he can get it from Ken, the Canadian super-surgeon, for the price of a box of nice chocolate. And I was invited to come along and pass the forceps. Wow! Who would pass up such an opportunity. 

 

 

 

Ken the super-surgeon is a nonchalent fellow. Ken distressed and freaking out, and Ken happy and peaceful are hard to tell apart.  This operation he did in his own home, on the spare bed. He was kneeling for most of it, because the bed was low. And the light was poor. All up, it took about 40 minutes, but that was mainly because Ken fooled around putting the Eagles on the stereo first. (Eagles =  good music to listen to when your manhood is being assailed.) And because we had to find the sutures, which he had left in the basement. Ken has previously done the vasectomy op. of another friend of mine on his kitchen table, while his wife held the tools. Legend has it he did his own, by himself, one afternoon.

I have to say, I quite enjoyed it. I thought Ken could do the first snip and tie, and me the second, but selfishly he did it all himself. I’d make a good surgeon, and here in Afghanistan I have done more than my share of stitching up peoples heads,  hands, feet and so on. But two sisters before me are doctors, and when it was my turn to go to university, medicine was no longer in fashion.

There’s still time.

Happily, F came through it all smiling. There was the odd grimace and I’m not sure it was fun, but he held it all together. He is staying at our place tonight, before he heads back to his home elsewhere in Afghanistan tomorrow.  I’m considering offering this as a service to friends and colleagues back in Australia. Home-based vasectomy and sleep-over. Email if interested.

 

 

* anyone who knows me, would know that me watching a game of footy on Sunday afternoon is totally anachronistic.

Kabul…

We are back in Kabul two days. We arrived 5.30 on Tuesday night – it was dark and cold, but we had asked our watchman to light the diesel heater, so one room was warm enought. And friends had cooked us dinner. But! Kabul had a surprise in store. The cold weather had frozen the gas bottle, so there was no way to heat our dinner. Job no. 1 on arrival was to disconnect the gas bottle and move it inside, where it was marginally warmer. Mostly it is best they are outside, because of their tendency to leak and explode (more than once we have rescued screaming neighbours with singed hair from burning kitchens because of exploding gas bottles). But in this case dinner took priority.

Day two dawned bright, clear and freezing cold. The kids refused to get out of bed to get dressed for school. Eventually pressure, threats, blackmail and force did the trick and wrapped up like Eskimos,we all toddled off to our various occupations. On returning home at 4pm, job no. 2 awaited: the water pump wasn’t working, so we had no water. About an hour later I had fixed that one and we were all in business: water, heat, gas. What else do we need?

As a result of all this, I thought up a new song for the AfghanTourist Board:

Ah the joys of living in Kabul

The joys of living in Kabul

The joys of living in Kabul - 

Are very very few.

I am also thinking up new slogans for the Board:

 Afghanistan: makes you appreciate home.

Afghanistan: every day an adventure in home repair

Afghanistan: Come on in, the war’s lovely

Bound to think of some more soon. I will pitch them to the Tourist Board (if there is such a thing) later on.

—

Why do you bother sometimes? Why do you come here and move yourself and your family halfway around the world and leave all the nice, good, fun things, why leave a place where you are appreciated and come here? Why put your kids through chaos and risk a bullet to the chest and live in dust and crap and cold? Why don’t we go? Isn’t six years enough? If people can’t learn the basics of honesty and respect in that time, when they have heard and seen it from 20 different sources, then what does it take? Why the lies and irresponsiblity and continual exploitation? More, more, just a little more?

…

Don’t worry about trying to convince me of the worthiness of our work. I knowit, I know the answers. It’s just that the answers aren’t enough sometimes.

Untitled

 

Thank you again those folk who have persisted in reminding us they love us, care for us or are thinking of us (or all three). Special note to those people who I didnt know, up until they wrote in to say hi, and let us know of their care. (did that sentence make sense?). 

We appreciate it, we are taking things seriously, we are feeling the pinch. While we don’t feel it would be an embarrassment or a failure to come back to Perth, it would, at some deep level feel like we were abandoning this place, and calling it all darkness. 

Of course, Afghanistan’s future does not lie on only our shoulders, and in our leaving, we would not be missed for long. But still, I do feel, that even if we can do very little here that is practically useful, simply by living here and resisting the urge to flee, we are communicating hope, belief. The idea that this place need not always be hostage to war, crime and violence.

I know the calculus of leaving vs.staying is not as simple as that – we have our kids to think of; we are here to work, not just to ‘be’; we need to enjoy the confidence of our Board, etc. So we are doing the sums. But we have not reached the bottom line yet.

Part of the difficulty is the indirectness of the threats and incidents: Yes, another person was kidnapped. It was, however, over in a part of town that is known to be subject to a lot of criminal activity. Does it raise the threat? For sure. We are not walking anywhere now (and that is really dull, and really frustrating). The local cafe thingy set up by some enterprising foreigners as a meeting place and the only place where you could get good coffee, is now on the ‘no go’ list. We have to take the kids to school via a secure route. And so on. How long we can live like this is not clear, many of us are already feeling the strain. But neither is anyone leaving. We are hoping it will get better, expecting it to get worse, and planning for it to degrade steadily. Most of us have set thresholds, both on a time frame, and in terms of incidents, that would trigger departure. 

But we love this place, and the thought of leaving is hard to consider. As my friend Nathan writes, ‘It is too heavy to carry and impossible to put down’.

 

 

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water.

Part of the reason for my taciturn retiscence over the last weeks can now be revealed: a close colleague and friend had been kidnapped about 2 months ago, and we were, on request, all keeping quiet in order not to further jeopardise his situation and the negotiations.

It was very hard not to talk about it, and we were increasingly worried, when we received the good news a few days ago that he had been freed. He is ok, and we are grateful.

 

This morning a colleague was shot and killed just a few streets from our home, on her way to work.

We need to make some decisions in light of these events.

The Final Countdown

I am listening to Europe’s anthem, ‘The Final Countdown’. One of those semi apocalyptic sounding songs that people like to play loudly at certain parties, while punching the air with their fists. I am not sure why it is appealing to me, except that I remember it as a song that used to get played here, in Afghanistan, in the clandestine parties we used to have during Taliban years. In those days, the curfew was at 8pm, so parties would start at 6. There was no alcohol, except for the occasional vodka the Red Cross used to bring in, so we’d sit around drinking Sprite and Mirinda. Then, at 7.45 we farewell each other, and trundle home in the cold, dark of a Northern Taliban winter, in time for the 8pm radio check. One night, a team member failed to answer his radio call, and so at 9pm, in the pitch black I had to go rouse a taxi and cross town, going through several check points and having too many guns shoved in my face, to ensure he and his wife were ok.

Here, now, winter is coming on. It is dark by 6pm and the nights are cold. The kids complain at their nightly wash time, as I squirt them with the chill water. There is so little electricity that the water in the boiler is warmed only every few days, and none of us seem to use the shower at the right time to get any of it.

If I seem subdued, it is the combination of the still worsening security and the nearing winter. Time to draw a deep breath.

 

Ice seller in the street near the Lion’s Gate mountain. There will be more ice before long.

missing the greenery.

For reasons a bit unclear to me still, the last week or so I have felt kind of empty of thoughts and reflections. Hence the blank spaces here. I’m not sure what it indicates. Partly, perhaps, a kind of settling in. A bedding down. In the early days of a new experience, much is new and difficult. As time passes, the extraordinary becomes less so, routines assert themselves. 

Partly also, I have been fatigued. This morning I got up at 6am for a conference call, went back to bed at 7, slept till 8.30, dozed from 10am till lunch, then slept from 2 till 3 again. Everytime I got up and got pretty quickly back down again.

Partly, I have been missing things about home. Greenery. The sea. The wind off the West Australian coast. We are on the end of summer here, and everything is dessicated, dry and dusty. With autumn the leaves are turning golden green, and there are some beautiful mornings now, but it won’t be until spring next year that clean green leaves emerge – albeit briefly, before the ubiquitous dust adheres. The nights are cold now, and already we are discussing winter, how to plan for and cope with the cold.

 Some recent photos in the absence of words.