An Armed Guide

I am always complaining that I live in Kabul but I don’t ever know or see or experience Kabul. When people ask: ‘how is Kabul?’ I get flashes of my house, my office or the local restaurants but I am acutely aware that all of these exist within a bubble that is not the Kabul i see out of my car window. So last Saturday some friends and I booked my driver for a day and went on an adventure around the sites and sounds of real Kabul (I admit that the start of that sentence ‘I booked my driver’ is not exactly the best start to convince people that I was experiencing the real Kabul, but I am not ready to don a burka and jump in a cab quite yet). It was a great day. We went to the bazaar and bought cheap out of date food that somehow never made it to the troops here. All these teeny stalls selling oat-so-simple, and fritos and custard and uncle bens rice and boil in the bag dinners for one and salami and venison in a jar and huge tins of peaches or sausages in lard and all the pump me up protein juice you could hope for! Often the stall owners will pull something out of the back, all covered in dust (like a tray of ready to cook potato gratin) and ask us ‘what is this?’ In a land where food is meat, rice, oil and bread, potato gratin is a little difficult to translate! My favourite are pots of chocolate mousse that have as there advertising tag line ‘tastes like somebody loves you’…and seriously it really does!

The bazaar was followed by the famous tombs of the old kings of Afghanistan. The area is mainly dusty, blown up tombs on a dusty, blown up hill above Kabul where dirty kids run in packs playing with beaten up kites. When you ask the kids where they live (surely not on this dusty hillside by a tomb) they point vaguely in the direction of the surrounding area where mud houses are built on top of each other down the slope in to Kabul main city. The kids are great though, I’d much rather meet a pack of these kids than the gangs of boys that used to hang around my street in London. We used my driver as a translator and they demanded we take photos of them saluting proudly with the sprawl of Kabul disappearing into a fog of dust behind them.

Next stop was the old palace. I use palace in the loosest sense of the term because after so many years of war, the building was more holes than wall. We walked in to the grounds and were immediately approached by armed guards, who pointed sternly at the no photos signs and our multitude of conspicuous cameras. 10mins and all the Dari we could muster later and we had won them over (helped having a 3 girls to one boy ratio) and rather than getting thrown off the compound, we got our very own armed guard tour and personal photo sessions, with all the guards posing with their guns. I’ve never seen such photo happy security before. Last stop were the gardens of Baboor, the Moghal King who designed the Taj Mahal and traveled across Asia, but who never forgot Kabul and demanded to buried here, back in his gardens.

And so the day ended in a quiet garden, with roses in bloom, Afghan families picnicking under the trees, water features slowly bubbling and not a speck of dust to be had. And this is why although I loathe, I also love this place. I love how Afghanistan and Afghans can still constantly bemuse and amaze me, I love that the sternest face can crumble into a smile and pose for the camera, I love how the seemingly most deprived children can laugh so easily and it was so good to have a day actually IN Afghanistan and walk away feeling positive about a country and people that so much time is spent bemoaning.