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Dubious Distinctions

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Friends that have spent time in Africa have a catch-all phrase to describe the trials and tribulations of daily life in the continent: “This is Africa”, or simply “TIA”. At the end of an anecdote, a sentence, or even as an alternative to any words at all, “TIA”, they’ll say, with a big roll of the eyes, a sigh, a shrug, or a knowing smirk.

We don’t have a commonly used equivalent of “TIA” in Afghanistan – at least not one that is so pithily expressed in three letters – but the concept of accepting the absurd as normal exists here as well. From the way the windows rattle under the twice-daily flights of ISAF helicopters to the horrendous traffic jams where cars, humvees, push carts, and the occasional donkey all vie for space in the poorly planned streets, definitions of normal change in Kabul.

But lately, I’ve had some experiences that are, if possible, even more “This is Afghanistan” than typical. These include…

1) Falling into an open sewer

Kabul’s streets are notorious for being mostly unpaved, pockmarked even if paved, or both unpaved and pockmarked with giant ditches. Most of them also have open sewage ditches next to them that, unfortunately, do not lead to any sort of sewage system.

This sewage ditch is empty. The one I fell into was, alas, not.

And as I was walking through Pul-e-sur, a neighborhood on the Western side of the city , I stepped too close to a sewage ditch, slipped, and suddenly found myself up to my thighs in a noxious-smelling mixture of shit, run-off, and unidentifiable chemicals. I scrambled out as best as I could, but I could not rescue my shoes from the brown-grey slime, and so I stood, alone on the side of a busy road, shoeless and covered in excrement, as my friend and mardham (male companion) went off in search of some temporary footwear… 

Supposedly, this is common for Kabulis that must daily face the obstacle course that are the city streets. Even so, when I told my driver about this episode the next day, he laughed so hard that he had to pull over.

“Has this ever happened to you?” I asked. He shook his head, guffawing the whole time.

2) Getting caught in barbed wire

Concertina wire, here in front of the Queen’s Palace looking out to the King’s Palace.

Security measures abound in Afghanistan, from armed guards to police checkpoints to Jersey barriers to blast film, but perhaps nothing is quite as ubiquitous as concertina wire. Around wall perimeters to discourage robbers, sitting on roads to block off certain areas, and even – sometimes – in the middle of otherwise perfectly normal-looking courtyards.

And so it was today that, at a friend’s compound, I stepped too close to a chest-high set of coils and found my shirt  stubbornly wrapped around a blade of wire. Luckily, the shirt was baggy – and somehow, after careful extrication, in one piece.

3) Making an appearance on the Taliban’s official website

But perhaps none of these missteps – literal or otherwise – are as “This is Afghanistan” as being featured on Shahamat, the Taliban’s official website, and not for model Islamic behavior.

In a traditional design. More photos at http://buff.ly/16BxLKs

In February, I had the honor of opening a fashion show featuring both Afghan women’s designs, as well as (almost) all Afghan models. The show received a lot of press both internationally as well as in country. The articles, photos, and videos on BBC Persian and BBC Pashto, however, caused a number of problems for the show’s organizers and models, including unknown gunmen that followed us to the show’s location, accusations of prostitution by hardline Islamist Noorin TV, and outcry and threats on Shahamat…

I found out about my Shahamat feature from a close friend who himself made the Taliban blacklist for organizing the Afghan Ski Challenge. Over a cup of chai, we joked that, to make it harder for them, we should never appear in public together.

 

Dubious distinctions all and – with the last at least – potentially dangerous. But in Afghanistan, there is too much to worry about if you start and, besides taking more security precautions, what else can you do but accept, with a big roll of the eyes, a sigh, a shrug, or a knowing smirk, “This is Afghanistan”…?

 

Moments

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When I came to Afghanistan in October, I was irrationally and, perhaps, naively head-over-heels in love with every day and every experience here. Upon my return in January, however, I had a hard time readjusting. But thanks to moments – and people – like these, I gradually began to remember what it was about this country that I fell in love with in the first place… 

Afghan Stars

She has alabaster skin dotted by delicate freckles, big brown eyes, and a quick tongue that sends the girls into fits of laughter. She, along with her sister, adopt Fara and I almost as soon as we sit down in the then-empty soundstage. In the long hours of downtime before and between the shooting of the semi-final episode of Afghan Star, Afghanistan’s answer to American Idol, the pair of them keep us entertained.

Mostly with questions. Where am I from? How long have I been in Afghanistan? Am I married? Do I have a boyfriend? Why don’t I have a boyfriend? Who is my favorite Afghan star? What do I think of Afghan men? Do I want to meet their brother, who is a doctor?

“He’s different,” she promises, “smart and progressive and bishyar maqbul hast*. You will like him.” She pauses, “And besides, if you like Afghanistan so much, isn’t it good to marry an Afghan and stay forever?”

And later, “Can I invite you to my home?” she asks, excited but suddenly bashful. “You can meet my brother. You can meet all of my brothers.” She raises her eyebrows mischievously, and I laugh.

Charming, bold, and vivacious, she seems as much an Afghan star as the contestants on stage before us.

The Problem with Husbands

It is before a big family dinner, and the women are gathered by the bukhari**, comparing bolts of recently purchased cloth that tomorrow will be transformed into outfits. The three men present – the husbands and fathers – are on the far side of the room, lounging with their feet stretched out and their chai and snacks before them. The many children are playing a shrieking game of tag around us. But for all intensive purposes, we women are alone and talking openly. 

“It’s good that you do not have a husband yet,” one of the women tells me. “Men only bring problems.”

“And Afghan men are the worst!” Another chimes in.

They chatter in rapid-fire Dari, and I am made to understand, via their accompanying hand gestures, the smelliness, infidelity, and troubles of having a husband. I glance over at their men, and my friend, the host, catches my eye, shrugs, and grins indulgently. What can you do? He seems to ask.

Later, after dinner, we are lounging around in a food-induced coma. Talk turns to 2014 and everyone’s plans. “Eileen says she will stay in Afghanistan.” My friend informs everyone.

One of the men roars with mirth, “You stay in Afghanistan and I will go to the U.S. in your place.”

His wife quickly jumps in, “No, I will take her place and she can have mine – my life, my tazkeera, even my husband. How about it?”

Laughter all around – with the loudest coming from her husband.

Small Acts of Resistance

We are speeding through the night, six of us jammed into a small red sedan. Western pop music is blaring through the stereo, and as we approach a police checkpoint, Nabil taps on the breaks to the beat of the reggaeton song playing. One of the ANP*** shines his flashlight into the car, and seeing five women inside – four of us stuffed into the backseat and one, her headscarf defiantly down, in the front – he waves us on.

Nabil says something in Dari that I don’t catch but Benazir, who’s sitting half on me and half next to me, hits him playfully in response and the other women laugh.

A small gesture that would go unnoticed in any other context, but in conservative Afghanistan, where five unmarried young women and one unmarried young man should not be together period, it’s a small gesture of resistance.

The song changes and Shakira’s strong voice belts out,

“Cause I’m a gypsy, but are you coming with me? I might steal your clothes and wear them if they fit me.

I never made agreements, just like a gypsy. And I won’t back down, cause life’s already hurt me,

And I won’t cry. I’m too young to die. If you’re going to quit me. ’Cause I’m a gypsy…”

Benazir is the only one that knows all the words, but the rest of us sway along, connecting deeply to the lyrics. “This song is my favorite!” She says feelingly at its conclusion, and I wonder at their resilience. Who are these women, and how have they managed to maintain their free spirits and joie de vivre here?

And perhaps more importantly, how many more women like them are out there, resisting in their own small ways?

–

*Bishyar maqbul hast: He’s very handsome.

**Bukhari: an Afghan metal fireplace used to heat homes in the winter. They are typically filled with sawdust, coal, or wood, though the word “bukhari” has also come to refer to any heater, including electric heaters.

***ANP: Afghan National Police: 

A Wake-Up Call

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It happened so quickly, as these things are wont to do.

One moment I was on the phone, trying to get the last leg of directions to a friend’s house, and then the next, three punches were colliding with my face.

The man grabbed my phone, but I held on. I must have screamed because the next thing I knew, he was running away. The group of young men – boys really – that stood, watching, on the opposite street corner ran after him. In my muddled state of mind, my immediate thought was that, as good Samaritans, they were in pursuit.

And then I stopped thinking, and I too ran.

–

The night before the failed mugging, I sat in N and M’s living room and we discussed the lack of petty crime in Kabul. An older couple, they had lived in Afghanistan for the past six years. N worked in Russia and Kosovo previously, and M joined him at some point from China.

“The currency changers stand in the streets all day with a thick wad of 1000Af bills in one hand and 500Af bills in the other, and no one touches them,” N said. “It’s because they’re part of the community.”

“And in the meantime,” I added, “You have a higher chance of getting shot in some neighborhoods of Chicago than you do here.”

It was a strange irony about life in Afghanistan’s capital city. Plenty of things were potential threats, from kidnapping to traffic accidents to harassment by the security forces to the occasional suicide bomb and large-scale attacks. But mugging? Not something that we worry about on a daily basis.

I would remember this conversation later, taking deep, shaky breaths after I had stopped running.

–

I can’t decide if the young men that attacked me were true criminals or teens that jumped on an easy target.

They were terrible at their attempted burglary. There were six or seven of them, and yet only one of them came for me. He punched me – two times to the left of my face and then once to the right – and grabbed the hand that held my phone, but when I didn’t immediately let go, he fled.

It could have been much, much worse.

He could have punched me again, or broken my wrist to get at the phone. He could have pulled out a knife. He could have had one of his companions, or all of them, join in the attack. The closest one was only ten feet away, and I would have been helpless then, 1 against 7 or even 1 against 2.

Instead, I yelled into the phone, “Oh my God, I’m being attacked!” and he ran.

I was in shock and not entirely sure what shocked me most:

  1. That this happened less than 100 meters from the NDS guards on 24/7 watch outside of Asaddullah Khalid’s guesthouse (where the NDS Chief was wounded last month.)
  2. Or that, somehow, I still had my phone in my hand. (And a good thing too – that I wasn’t completely alone was the only thing that kept me from going to pieces.)

–

There’s another thought that I’ve been turning over in my mind.

Maybe they were criminals and they targeted Afghan women. Maybe they thought that I would be another easy victim. Maybe they were surprised that I did not fall to the ground upon the first blow. I hate this thought, and I hate that they are still out there, but the more that I think about it, the more likely this seems. After all, there were some weird moments leading up to the attack.

Two boys walked past me as I was on the phone in front of what I thought was my friends’ house. (“You’ll know you’ve found our house when you go XXX past the the NDS jeep,” my friends had said, “you can’t miss it.”) The boys stopped not five feet to my left and, after a few moments of listening to my conversation – in English – they made a call themselves. I remember hearing one of them saying “Bya, hala bya,” to an invisible someone on the other end of the line, “Come, come now.”

At that moment, the parked jeep that I had mistaken for the NDS vehicle started up. It revved its engines and blinded me in its headlights, and then it sped away.

As if that was their cue, the two boys split up. One of them stayed behind me as I walked away, and the other walked a little ahead of me and to my left. It was around then, I think, that the attacker came up from behind and started hitting me.

He must have been the one that they called.

–

As I write this, it is the morning after and I’m back home, safe and sound with nothing but a throbbing jaw to show for the incident. Thankfully, there aren’t any bruises yet, though I suspect they might make an appearance later.

I am incredibly lucky that nothing else happened. I run through the scenarios in my head – if they had been smarter, or more prepared, or had more sinister intentions than the smartphone that I had in my hand…

This incident served as a much-needed wake-up call. I’ve been too lax about security, and though I still believe that Kabul is not an inherently dangerous city by mere virtue of being in Afghanistan, and that petty crime is uncommon here, I need to be more careful.

A Kabul Night

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When it is night in the Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood of Kabul, you forget for a moment that you are still in Afghanistan – or at least, Afghanistan as it exists today.

The streets, paved and numbered – a rarity in Kabul – are empty. Here and there a security guard stands sentinel outside of a gated house and a lone dog pads silently towards a destination unknown, its tail low and feebly wagging. For the most part, however, the streetlights cast their pale glow over nothing but the Kabul standard of dust and haze.

It is quiet in these moments after dark. Sometimes you’ll hear a peal of laughter from behind the tall walls that protect its residents – and especially its women – from the gaze of the outside world. Other times you’ll feel even more than you’ll hear the shaking of the pick-up trucks, with their load of menacing armed men in the back, as they speed past you.

For the most part, however, Wazir at night belongs to the few of us pedestrians that want it. And I, for one, want it. I relish the relative peace and privacy and, above all, the sense of normalcy - hypernormalcy, even - that it provides.

I had one of those wonderfully normal nights earlier this week, when Una and I had dinner with two of the bandmates of District Unknown, Afghanistan’s first heavy metal band. Over Lebanese food and shisha, we had somehow gotten onto the topic of our totem animals.

“If you were an animal, what would you be?” One of the guys asked.

Thus started a long and lively discusion and, even after we left the restaurant for the Wazir night, we were joking, laughing, and loudly imitating the sounds of whale and marine mammals. As Pedram was pretending – with surprising accuracy – to be a dolphin, I saw the silhouette of a private security guard, who poked his head out from behind a door at the unexpected noise. I imagined him shaking his head and chuckling at our antics, and hoped that in his dolphin-imitating, Pedram had made his night as much as he had mine.

In that moment, we were just another group of irreverent friends in another tree-lined street in another residential, semi-urban neighborhood. It could have been anywhere in the world – but it was not. It was in Kabul, as the concertina wire curling over the walls on either side reminded us.

But even in Kabul, in that sleepy little neighborhood where a deadly suicide bomb had exploded days before, there was normalcy. And normalcy = hope.

Hope that these irreverent, carefree moments and that “alternative Afghanistan” are neither so fleeting – nor, for most Afghans – so far away.

Security and Insecurity in Kabul

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“From your street, go to XXXXX XXXX.  Go straight through the circle and then take the first right onto XXXX Rd. You will pass a large military compound (XXXXXXX) on your right.  The next road on the right will be blocked, but then the following road on the right will be open and unnamed. It will have a little water pump at the entrance on the right. 

Take the right onto this street and follow it to the end.  Once you reach the end, it will split, go to the right.  Follow this through the checkpoints (should be 2) straight ahead- You will probably need to do this on foot.  Once you pass through the 2nd checkpoint, go to the right and XXXX will be on your left.  There will be a gated entrance past a few barriers that you can either knock on the door or just call me and I’ll come grab you.”

[Actual directions]

It’s Thursday in Kabul, and I am speeding through the dark on my way to the “address” above. Because Friday is Afghanistan’s weekend, Thursdays are the big nights for expat socializing.

Tonight, I am starting my evening with a fellow Tufts alum and his colleagues for dinner; they are DOD contractors with DOD-contractor-security-restrictions. We had planned on meeting at the Serena, one of two luxury hotels in Kabul, but because it is right before Eid, their ops manager denied that “request for movement.”

I am more alert than usual, not because of the supposed dangers of the holiday, but because I am trying to recognize the landmarks that M, the fellow alum, mentioned in his email. The night is dark, streetlights are sporadic, and the taxi is zooming through back roads not in M’s directions.

Suddenly, the driver stops in front of a military compound. “This is it,” he indicates.

“Where’s the circle?” I ask. I feel fairly certain that I could navigate us from there, but we didn’t pass one.

The driver, a twenty-something Kabuli with bright green eyes, is impassive. I’ve driven with him before, and he always enthusiastically teaches me Dari, motivated perhaps by his lackluster English skills limited to the destinations frequented by the city’s expats.

I call M for directions and hand the phone over to the driver.

But I am nervous. We are sitting at the entrance to the military base in an off-white Corolla with the engine still running. There are American soldiers standing guard about 20 feet to our left and, surprisingly, civilian contractors walking towards the gate in front of us. I didn’t know they were even allowed to walk around.

 

When I was last in Afghanistan at the COIN Academy, military intelligence issued daily BOLO lists of suspicious activity to look out for. (BOLO stands for “Be on the lookout for”.) Men in white corollas always made the list. This was of course problematic and indicative of the vague and often inactionable intelligence the Americans collected, since half the population drove white Corollas, but that’s for another post…

I imagine how we must look to the always skittish soldiers: two Afghans sitting in a car with the engine still running; the driver speaking rapidly in Dari into a cell phone; pointing every few minutes towards the base’s front gates. All of this, of course, at the very scene of a deadly suicide attack about a month ago.

But the soldiers aren’t paying us any attention. One of them is joking with the civilian contractors; another is petting a stray dog. This is the same military that drives around the city dressed in full battle rattle with M4s/M16s in hand, looking paranoid and ridiculous surrounded by the rest of us in our beat-up old cars. I am confounded by their perspectives on security and insecurity.

 

My driver hangs up and returns my phone. “So you know where we are going?” I ask.

“No problem,” he responds, but “no problem” is the Afghan response to everything. Before I can clarify, we are off, heading in the same direction that we had come.

Five minutes, and numerous sharp turns later, we stop in front of a blocked-off road. To the right is a tiny square out-building. I can just make out half a dozen security guards with AKs crammed inside around a pot of chai and some kebabs.

One climbs over the sandbags that block the entrance, and he and my driver converse in rapid-fire Dari punctuated only by gesturing – at me, at the blocked-off street, at the car.

Finally, I am told that I must go the rest of the way alone. I peer down the road, lit by a single flood-light and surrounded by high walls and concertina wire. This must be the first of the checkpoints that M had mentioned. I don’t like the idea of walking down by myself, but the head security guard promises an escort. Not that that is necessarily any better.

I get out. I am nervous, just as I was earlier in front of the military headquarters, and that sense of unease only increases as we reach the second checkpoint, manned by two bored Afghan National Police that sit up and nudge each other when I approach. One of them looks me up and down; I hate that of all of the cultural nuances, the male once-over of a woman is universal.

I wrap my headscarf tighter around me.

“Card.” The ANP demand. I shake my head; I don’t have the CAC (common access cards) that everyone working with the military has. “Card. “ They insist.

Reluctantly, I pull out my passport and show it to them. They grab it, and I remember what  a friend once told me about never physically relinquishing passports to the ANP. We tug at it – they try to take it, I try to hold on while still allowing them to see my photo – but finally, I give in.

After what feels like ten minutes – really it couldn’t have been more than one – they return my passport and wave me through.

Another stretch of carefully watched road and I finally make it to the guardroom at the guesthouse entrance. More security here, of course, and the guard searches my bag. “Gun?” he asks.

I laugh. “What gun?” There is a strange shrillness in my voice. He laughs too, sheepish that he has to ask.

But tonight, I – my anti-NRA liberal self – wish, as I have never before wished, that I am armed.

 

–

I am often asked about the security situation, and my security situation, in Kabul. To the outside world, this city and country are a warzone, a perpetual trap of IEDs, suicide bombers, and firefights. And certainly, these things do exist, even in the capital.

On my second week in country, I was in a café when we heard the unmistakable sound of a firefight in our vicinity. For at least half an hour, the shots started and stopped and, most worryingly, seemed to move closer.

I was with two women that had been in Afghanistan for years, and they made light of it (on the surface at least – they also made numerous calls to try and find out more information.) Following their lead, I tried for calm as well. It wasn’t until I stood up from the table that I felt the tension that had settled into all of my limbs and the adrenaline that shook my hands.

But even in that incident, I knew that I was not in direct danger. In fact, I have never felt truly unsafe in Kabul – and the closest to fear was the night before Eid as I was heading to dinner with the contractors. Ironically, I was afraid of the very security systems meant to keep us safe.

Don’t get me wrong. I often feel uncomfortable as a woman alone in the city, sometimes lost, often with my headscarf slipping and a sliver of back or collarbone inappropriately peeking out. But there is an important distinction between insecurity and discomfort.

And so it is that when I am pretending to be Afghan and far away from the security forces – both Afghan and foreign – I feel perfectly safe in Kabul. I have no armored vehicles, no armed guards, and no movement restrictions. Instead, I depend on a network of trusted friends – especially Afghans; staying low-profile; and my own gut feelings.

But when I am confronted with security forces, my sense of security goes out the window. I feel the irrational urge to shout, “Don’t shoot, I’m an American!” – as if that is any safeguard at all. And if I feel this way, as someone that first came to Afghanistan with the U.S. military, I can only imagine the terror of the real civilians.

Snapshot of a city

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Since I arrived in Kabul on Wednesday, music has been a steady companion. From the daily calls to prayer to the trance of Sound Central, music has been both orienting and wonderfully disorienting, strangely familiar and – at times – just strange.

And “strange” was definitely the right word for it today, as I was shuttled around the city from meeting to meeting courtesy one of the taxi services that caters to expats. First it was the beloved beats of Reggaeton “Number 1 in Afghanistan!” the driver assured me as Daddy Yankee shouted about how much his girl liked La Gasolina.

“Do you know what they are singing?” I ask.

“No,” he responds, “my English is not so good, but I listen to music to learn.”

I wonder what the results of his lessons with the Daddy will sound like, but my thoughts are interrupted. At that moment we come to an intersection and face-to-face with a vehicle turning forcefully towards us. Because of the narrowness of the roads, the cars parked to either side, and the endless construction – for some reason, all of the city’s streets are being redone at the same exact time - driving in Kabul is a constant battle for right of way, with drivers playing chicken until one finally backs up and lets the other through.

The song changes, “Don’t you wish your girlfriend was hot like me? Don’t you wish your girlfriend was freak like me?

I watch the construction beside us. Laborers dig ditches on either side of the road and layer them with concrete. One day, there will be a working sewage system – or so they say. In the meantime, the ditches are open-faced, with narrow planks of varying sturdiness that allow pedestrians to cross (and sometimes fall, as was my case on Day 1 Hour 1 in Kabul…) Piles of gravel form complex obstacle courses for cars and people alike. Teems of workers, armed with diesel-spewing machinery, try to build around the moving mass of cars.

A victim of its own ambition. Most of#kabul’s roads are under construction, with piles of impassable rubble. This is what happens when you attempt to pass… #latergram http://buff.ly/Tb8kWO

A worker pushes a wheelbarrow of gravel towards one of these ditches, whistling at the driver next to us to move. Another song comes on.

“I just want to fuck bad bitches…”

The driver next to us inches forward. He is trying to squeeze past us and into the tiny sliver of dirt between two parked cars that, clearly, will only bear one of us to pass. He glances at us and quickly rolls up his window. I wonder if he understands the rap song and finds the lyrics offensive? Unlikely, though I would be offended too  … if I weren’t so amused by the absurdity of hearing it blasting out of a car in Kabul.

With a sudden lurch, we win that sliver of dirt and leave the offended driver behind.

“You can find me in the club, bottle full of bub…”

We drive past a twenty-something man sitting on a chair on the roadside. He is dressed in desert camo and has his AK splayed across his knees, oozing alpha male. His ACU jacket is casually unbuttoned, revealing a tan t-shirt that can barely contain his muscled chest. The pattern of his uniform looks suspiciously similar to that of the U.S. Marine Corps. It wouldn’t be the first time that U.S. military uniforms are purchased on the black market, if my suspicions are correct. Combat chic is a hot look – and not just for expat contractors, it seems.

The next song surprises even me, as the Arabic rap is literally punctuated by the sounds of a woman’s pleasure. After about 30 seconds of this, the driver flips to the next song – whether out of sensitivity to my female ears or to the drivers on the other side of the rolled down windows I do not know.

We are treated instead to a Spanish language edition of Ricky Martin:

“Un, dos, tres, un pasito pa delante Maria. Un dos tres un pasito pa ‘tras.”

(One two three, one step forward for Maria. One two three, one step backwards now…”

Somehow, I can’t think of a more fitting song.