Conversations Overheard….

Conversations overheard are in fact one of the idiosyncratic charms of the surreality that is , perhaps more so than almost anywhere else (but maybe common to all war zones? Thankfully ChI has experienced few in her travels.)

“Hotel Kabul –You Can’t Check Out Any Time You Like… or …Perhaps You Had to Be There…”

Tigger the Environmentalist, to Mustafa the (underemployed) Turkish Ericsson engineer: “How was your day?” “BRILLIANT. Something broke, and I had to disable 150 telephone numbers. So I had one whole hour of work today”.

Guesthouse social chit chat: “I can’t remember the name of the guy we met today.” “Which one? The one with the rocket-propelled grenades or the Kalashnikov?”

Separately: “I’m a cook, but I don’t bake – it’s too risky.”

Meanwhile, back at the guest house, Phil the Unexploded returned from a hard day exploding ordinance, to get into techno-talk with Tigger about going down the airport runways on an armour plated tractor with an attached back hoe to explode things. Apparently when he finds a mine, he just hits it with the shovel arm and detonates it. “Those anti-tank mines sure make your ears ring.”

A dull thud as we stand on the tarmac waiting around for our luggage identification and loading. No one reacts. Passing comment from bored mission member: “Ah. That must be Phil the Unexploded doing his thing”. No one bats an eyelid

Walking into a low income area of Kabul, nervously asking Massoud the Minder: “Is it safe?” “Yes if you don’t go too far in”. (But in this particular context, what indeed is “too far”? I am twitchy.) My companions are (to me) overly sanguine and chatty, all blonde hair and Brazilian introductions to passing Hazaras. (“Hello. I’m from Brazil. Do you know where Brazil is?”) Suddenly see a group of armed men in fatigues at the end of the road. I insist (wimpishly?) that we stop and find out who they are before going any further. They turn out to be a bunch of Brit ISAF types. Five stop and chat, and just as they are about to move out in a haze of “Right Sarge we’re heading out now – roger and out” etc., I notice the sixth one who has been crouched on the ground throughout, gun searching and seeking – just in case. Strangely reassuring, rather than disturbing, as was the sight of two of them on a passing rooftop supervising a local football game – just in case.

Shopping expedition to Chicken Street antique shops, and an utterly mad encounter with a stranger. Long lanky aristocratic elderly Brit type with a cut glass accent approaches Tigger, and says “Hellaooo. I’m Fonteskew. (Lord) Fonteskew. Just call me JD. What are YOOOU doing here?”, and hands over a visiting card with a House of Lords emblem. Apparently when asked if he was on a parliamentary delegation, he replied “Naooow, ecktually I’m with CCC out of Malaysia, trying to see if we can do a little business”.

“Must stop off at the Supermarket and buy some Jergens.”
“Too bad we don’t want some Yak butter as well”.
“My chapstick’s run out. Don’t quite think I can explain what I want to Massoud the translator”.

Massoud the Translator: “The Mujahedin only destroyed our city. The Taliban destroyed our minds.”

“Burqa blue – not quite periwinkle, and just this side of lilac”

Security checks in the airport are pretty well as much a matter of curiosity as security. Get rifled (not literally) by a bundle of charming ladies speculating on the nature of the currency I am carrying, and looking at my cosmetics. “What money is that? Oh – those must be dollars, yes?” A camouflage-clad guy in a Northern Alliance hat waved me through, but I explained that I was waiting for a colleague. Unaccountably he responded “Are you Japanese?” Me: “No, I’m British”.

French traveller to British traveller: “C’est d’une tristesse ici……Vous retournez peut-etre en France?”

 

Endpieces: “ShEherazade Stories”

From “Nice” biscuits in workshops, to Scotch in the bar, with tanks in between – the contrasts of Kabul.

It’s like rounding up mercury to get everyone anywhere on time. Once more, not my problem, but it grates – (I am definitely too impatient).

Tigger speaks French with a Toulouse accent – so “Action Contre la Faim” becomes “Action Contre la Femme”. It’s probably deliberate. He also lacks volume control, particularly after a couple of drinks. Good guy, though.

Driving round town – army jeep with imported rocket launcher on back, filled with yet more of the wild eyed boys, filling up a huge jerrycan with water at a standpipe. Fortunately my mission members do not decide to stop and make small talk, for once. Second, bombed out tank with two men and a boy sitting on top, one of whom is playing the flute. Surreal.

There’s a room off the bar of the guest house, which has been dubbed “The Cinema Room” (though it went through a passing incarnation as The Dance Hall, depending on what the social activities were at the time). It temporarily became known as “The Axis of Evil”, because it was inhabited by a North Korean, an Iraqi and an Iranian all bunking together.

Fat, grey 1955 Volga car sitting in the street, like a complacent cat basking in the spring sun. Bus with “Spastics Society of Hong Kong” on the side.

What does one wear to Kandahar? Prada, of course – coupled with two shawls one round body one on head, and very large, very dark glasses (the modern-day equivalent of the burqa).

Hitched a ride to Kandahar for the day on N’s six-seater – R, me, S and N, piloted by two Scandiwegians. (Rhetorical question to self: why are all UN air staff Scandi’s? Is it something to do with neutrality? In which case, why aren’t they Swiss??) The others are faintly jealous since their six hour road trip to Jalalabad has been cancelled due to the un-collegiate behaviour of one of the un-people, and they will have seen nothing except Kabul

Walking around the covered bazaar in Kandahar – rather like Istanbul’s, except less so. Feel a bit odd walking round like a tourist, but my minders seem to think it’s OK. Interesting (? disturbing) comment by a passing guy, on seeing two light haired male foreigners (Yanks, as luck would have it) from our entourage get out of one of the cars: “Are they Muslim?” To which our minder replied with certitude and aplomb, if not complete veracity: “Of course” and we drove off. Fast.

Our “meetee” is a former warlord turned government functionary. Deeply scary. Looks like a podgy Gulfie, with an Arab-style beard, wearing braces over a white shirt, with a faint lisp and a somewhat cruel face with a pendulous, sensuous lower lip.

Apparently a “very effective fighter” against the Taliban with all that than implies. Sidekick intermittently appears to wipe off his shoes, in the course of the meeting. Would definitely NOT like to meet him on a dark night.

All the provincial governors are basically former (?) warlords. Ours emerged late from lunch, which meant that our meeting was delayed and we made a major dash to the airport in a vain attempt to make our takeoff slot – which we of course missed.

Took off for Peshawar, to refuel, where we spent a pleasant 20 minutes in the VIP lounge making mobile phone calls and using the facilities – to return to Kabul in time for a shower and N’s birthday dinner, which included sangria, in the bar of UNICA. Two good meals in one day.

Idle chit-chat with S on the plane (between mutual female shrieks when the plane hits unexpected, and pretty scary turbulence) reveals that there is a whole alternative party scene going on in Kabul among the recently-returned few who have been successful in regaining their expropriated houses – there’s a password which can get around the curfew, which only the very privileged few are meant to have – but this lot clearly were able to access.

It has thus enables some apparently seriously elegant dinners, crystal, linen, music and singers as well, but it raises fears of a return to the lifestyle which brought down the monarch and in the communists in the 70’s. She tells us too of how she has all the required papers to reclaim her family’s house, with the minor obstacle that it is being lived in by a (very) high-up’s brother. She goes there and pleads to be allowed to see inside. Refused. But at her request, they do give her all her old family photos.

S is now the sole support of her parents, and younger siblings, and is desperate to get them to Washington DC, to show her ailing father. It seems she gave them to R, who took them by mistake to Mazar e Sharif in her handluggage, and S is freaking out that they may have got lost……the sole tangible remnant of a family’s past history.