Hazara Nation

The Times
Lucy Gordon

Flowers amid the rubble, pain hidden by smiles, expats in bikinis just a few feet away from local women in burkas...a diplomat's wife describes her first year in Afghanistan

My husband Jamie and I have been living in Afghanistan for a year now. Jamie is on a posting with the British Embassy in Kabul and I work for an organisation that makes radio, theatre and television programmes for social development. I started writing my blog as soon as we arrived because small details are quickly forgotten, and I knew I would never have time to explain them all to family and friends. Getting to know a place is like slowly peeling an onion - each layer leads to another - but the more I learn about Afghanistan, the less I understand; there are fewer answers and more questions than this time a year ago. But an experience is made up of the people with whom you share it. My Afghan colleagues are the reason I have grown to love a country that is not my own, and it has been the best start to married life I could have wished for.

May 21, 2007

Someone once said to me that they thought the expression “war-torn” must first have been used to describe Afghanistan. But as we flew over Kabul, I noticed how neat it looked. The straight walls around houses, built by men for protection and to hide their women, added to the formulaic pattern of the city. To an accompaniment of snorting and phlegming from my neighbour, we hit the runway. I put on my headscarf and hoped I wouldn't look too much like the new girl.

In Kabul airport's only terminal, a few dirty yellow light bulbs shed a gloomy light. It was dark and hot. I was a given a landing card to fill in and noticed that my hand was shaking so much that I couldn't write my name. I headed out of the terminal, trying to look as if I knew where I was going.

I was looking out for Abdullah Fahim, who was meeting me, but nobody is allowed within half a kilometre of the airport for security reasons, so I had to bump over potholes and through car parks to the meeting area to find him. Behind a wire gate hordes of men were standing around, waving signs and yelling into mobiles. There was Abdullah, standing amid the dust in a crisp white shalwar kameez. A huge grin appeared through the glossy black beard. He is the finance manager for my new employers. I was very pleased to see him and, had it not been for Afghan conventions, would have hugged him.

June 7, 2007

Ahmed, our driver, picked me up late in the morning. He is only 22 but, like many Afghan men, looks at least a decade older. He has piercing turquoise eyes buried in a brown face, and short thumbs which he taps on the steering wheel in time to the Hindi pop on the stereo. He is quiet with a serious disposition, but I quickly managed to shatter this when I tried out my first few lines of Dari and asked him if he had a husband. His face exploded into laughter as we narrowly missed hitting the car in front.

We picked up G, a female colleague, and went to L'Atmosphere, one of many gated places for the xareji (foreigners) to go boozing, tanning, gossiping and skype-ing. As we walked through security, Western girls sauntered in, peeling off headscarves and jeans, heading to the bar to order pinot grigio and spinach salad to eat by the pool. As they lay about in bikinis, five metres away, just through the wall, there were women walking the streets in burkas. It seemed like two worlds divided by an eggshell.

We ordered drinks with a few other girls. The conversation centred on disappointment over a beetroot salad, and an army tank that had driven into a group of Afghan civilians. After a few glasses of wine, the chat veered towards sex, lies and ... a recent outbreak of tapeworms among the foreign community. I'm not sure whether I was more concerned about tales of marauding lonely men (ratio of expat men to women in Kabul, 3:1) or the worms. Maybe being married with a bulletproof stomach is a good start.

*****

Ahmed survived all the bombing in Kabul despite living in the Khair Khana area, which was all but flattened. It is hard to work out who was responsible for most of the destruction of this once-thriving city. The expats say it was the Mujahidin and then the Taleban; the Afghans say it was the Russians and then the Americans. I asked Ahmed how they coped and he said: “We waited to die.” I realised that behind every face I would meet in this country was a labyrinth of painful experiences. A smile can hide so much, and everyone here smiles.

As we clunked down the bumpy roads, I couldn't help thinking that this was a country of extremes. If you half-shut your eyes, against a background of brown dust and rubble you see life - hard life, but life nevertheless - green trees, purple flowers, blue burkas, pink piles of radishes, bunches of bananas, 20 types of Japanese vehicles, and brown-skinned ragamuffins with green eyes. A truck with 50 bags of twinkling goldfish swinging from it creaked across the road. Among the men in faded shalwar kameez, a group of little schoolgirls, looking like penguins in their black coats and immaculate white headscarves, chattered along the road.
June 16, 2007

G and I were sent on the ambush training course with Ahmed on my second day of work. On a hill overlooking Kabul, we were greeted by a huge blond Canadian wearing combat pants and wraparound shades. He stood with his legs about 3ft apart and said: “Youz all are going to get into the car and drive about. These guys with rags on their heads are going to ambush you in various ways with Kalashnikovs or RPG launchers, and we'll instruct you what to do.”

Ahmed hurtled around the dusty tracks, with G and me rolling around in the back seat. Suddenly he braked and shouted: “Ambush, get down!” We had to leap and hide. Instead we fell, howling with laughter, from the car and landed in a heap by the wheel - a tangle of headscarves and flip-flops with poor Ahmed trying to guard us. Then we had to scuttle round the Toyota and leap into a ditch.

For stage two, Ahmed was shot by the Kalashnikov-wielding attacker and G and I had to drive the car out of danger. Even shaking hands with a man here is a reasonably big thing, so imagine having to clamber through the gap between the front seats and sit astride Ahmed, weave your left leg over his right leg, and step on the accelerator.

G had to go next, which meant that I was in charge of pulling Ahmed's torso out of the way so that she could drive. Not wanting to pull his shoulders, I tugged him back by the shirt and, as G sat on top of him, all his shirt buttons popped undone. Ahmed took it on the chin, and we are still on speaking terms.

Our office is in the Qal-I-Fatula district. I have never been received at work with so many smiles, welcomes and general politeness. At our first meeting was an incredible, indelible Afghan lady called Mahbouba. If Afghanistan has a future, this lady will be part of it. She is huge and passionate, wears orange and pink and has a giant Afghan hound. She is one of the grandchildren of the late King Habibullah, calls everyone “sweetie” or “honey” and has a voluminous laugh. The meeting was to discuss her suggestion to be the “voice of hope” on one of our radio programmes. She is brave. Two weeks ago, Zakia Zaki, a radio journalist from Parwan province, north of Kabul, was shot dead in her bed. Her seven children and husband were in the house but could do nothing to help. There are dark forces everywhere in this part of the world who don't agree with women working and will do anything to make this known.

July 21, 2007

Security. It's like a cloud covering the sun. The strange thing is that the fear you feel has no relation to how safe you are. And so, in day-to-day life in Kabul, the pain of the security restrictions is much worse than the anxiety of something going wrong.

Our house is in a quiet street. In the garden are vines, an apple tree, a pear tree and two tortoises, Hamid and Rashid. If I were going to be any animal in Afghanistan, I'd be a tortoise. You look like a hand grenade, so no one picks you up, and when things get too much you can just retreat into a peaceful little shell.
August 3, 2007

The Ministry of the Interior has banned travel for foreigners on all roads in and out of Kabul without armed escorts. There are reports that roadside bombs and abductions are on the rise. I've had my first outbreak of claustrophobia, owing, I'm sure, to not being able to walk about. I think your mind needs to walk as much as your legs do. The pace of walking allows you to look at things in detail and think, slowly working out where you are and why you're there. A car travels too fast for you to take in what's going on around you, let alone process it in your head. So my feeling of frustration was a physical one - a desire to climb out of my own body coupled with a heavy pressure on my chest and shoulders, a bit like you feel when you're taking off in an aeroplane. I had an irrepressible urge to run about in the street like a child, throw a ball really hard, climb a mountain, skim stones and jump in a river. I had to resort to Davina McCall's Power of 3 workout DVD in our sitting room. Her commentary was so irritating that I had to turn the volume off, but I did feel better afterwards.

Sometimes you feel you might cry for no reason at all. Now I know the antidote - you just have to do something constructive. This morning I made a mushroom risotto, and luckily the onions were so strong that Ali Jan, the lovely cleaner, didn't have any idea that I was sobbing.

August 4, 2007

I'm growing really fond of my team at work, but we have a long way to go with our quality control. Six years ago this country emerged from 30 years of fighting and political upheaval, a tyrannical regime and mass emigration. I was expecting shattered buildings, broken lives and scattered families. But the thing I'm finding hardest to get used to is the lack of training, organisation of thought and confidence. Confidence is what enables you to dare to try something new and to learn from it. But no one has put their trust in our team before, so they aren't very confident - how could they be?

September 16, 2007

We had to film a theatre performance in Baharak, a village three hours' drive south of Faizabad. Women and men can't watch together, so we laid on performances for women in secure zones such as girls' schools. This one was for the men. By 9am there was a crowd of 200 in the bazaar, where the cast were setting up the stage. It was my job to film the audience, so I walked into the crowd. As I tried to focus on a father who was holding up his young son, I felt at least three hands on my bottom. I turned around to an infinite horizon of dark eyes, black beards and turbans. I yelped and shouted in English, and three policemen with Kalashnikovs came to shoo away the bottom-pinchers. So much for the respectful: “Salaam Waleikum, hand on chest, I would never dream of touching you, let alone shaking your hand, madam.” Despite the crushing weight of conservative and religious conventions, there is always something human buried beneath, trying to get out.

October 14, 2007

Editing a video with a charming Hazara man, I asked if he was looking forward to Eid. He said no, as life was so hard. You are often brought back to the grim reality of the present situation for ordinary Afghans. There is no luxury for people here. There is no padding. No heating in winter. No hot water. Intermittent electricity from a loud and smelly generator. No socialising with the opposite sex. No cinema for girls. No holidays. No travel, except trips to see family in Pakistan. No fun. Life is tough. Like brakes with no brake pads, flesh and feelings rub directly against the cold bare steel of life.

November 20, 2007

Ahmed was telling me that he used to watch football matches at Kabul Stadium. But when the Taleban took control of the city, they held public executions there instead. Sometimes he would turn up thinking he was going to a match, and have to watch Talebs slitting throats. He admitted there was a mixture of fascination and fear. Maybe his recent grumpiness is only a tiny sideeffect of the memories he carries around.

As Jamie and I began our holiday, the Afghan flag at Kabul airport was hanging at half-mast. The day before, there was a huge suicide bomb in the northern town of Baghlan that coincided with a visit by some MPs, five of whom were killed. About 70 people died, mostly children who had been taken out of class by their teacher to greet the dignitaries. Such events in Afghanistan are remembered for a month or two before they are replaced with the next one.

December 7, 2007

Ahmed has stopped working with us. I miss him. Much to his annoyance, Ahmed wasn't armed, but I always felt that the relationship of trust that we had established with him would be more valuable in a conflict than a weapon. What's the use of a gun if you don't care much about your passengers?

February 1, 2008

The irony of the attack on the Serena Hotel in Kabul is that it has always been viewed as one of the safest places in the city. Many people who come to Kabul see only the inside of that hotel and the journey to it from the airport. Seven people were killed.

Suddenly all those regulations don't seem so ludicrous. When attacks are turned from army convoys to civilian hang-outs, the layers begin to peel off to reveal the true challenge of establishing peace here. Whoever said that all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing had a point. Yet in Afghanistan the good man has no choice. For every human being, the first priority is keeping our families alive. What goodness is left to help to patch up your country?

March 21, 2007

Yesterday the finals of Afghan Star, the local equivalent of Pop Idol, were held in the ballroom of the InterContinental Hotel, on a hill overlooking Kabul. We were invited. The event coincided with the republication of the Danish Muhammad cartoons and there were demonstrations all over Kabul. We drove past rows of riot police and soldiers on rooftops who were pointing their guns at the crowds below.

What an interesting juxtaposition of fledgeling popular culture only metres away from chanting mobs of protesters. Angry mullahs at the bottom of the hill, pop idols crooning at the top. Teenagers with greased-back hair, tight jeans or white suits were jostling for space in the aisles and performing on the stage. Quite a lot of the girls in the audience were wearing baseball caps on top of their headscarves.

One woman from Kandahar was knocked out in the semi-finals but allowed to sing at this event. These women risk their lives by competing on national TV. One of the Afghan Star contestants now travels everywhere with a bodyguard. The risks for ordinary Afghans trying to make it to the top far outweigh the risks for foreigners here.
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