Consolidated photos

In looking back through this blog I’ve realized I’ve buried the photo essays in the midst of the text. To make them easier to find, I’m listing them in chronological order below, please click on the appropriate links… hope you enjoy:

Peshawar
Road to Kabul
Kabul
Kandahar 1
Kandahar 2
Kandahar 3

Epilogue

I finally did get the interview with Engineer Aziz, it was the last night at around midnight, the only time he could really spare. It lasted three hours. It was amazing.

The next day we were supposed to board a bus back to Kabul, the same rout we took in, but plans got changed last minute and we ended up taking the crazy route I told you about in the “Back in Pak” post. I found out that though a grueling trip back, it was actually lucky we went that way when we did. Shortly after we left, a project site of Engineer Aziz’s, a new school, was bombed by insurgents, no one was killed, it was carried out at night. Also, a border town that we passed through had a big shoot out between Afghan forces and the Taliban, we missed that by a day. But most sobering was the bus. The exact one that we were supposed to ride back to Kabul crashed early that morning just outside of Kandahar while trying to make a pass on the highway. Thirty people on board died.

I’m told that in every good story the protagonist undergoes some kind of change, evolution. The only problem with this story is that it too seems to have evolved, now it tells of three main characters: Faridoon, Engineer Aziz and me.

As far as Engineer Aziz, it’s pretty clear that his story is wrought with change and maybe this life will be his final calling… “god on a rampage,” as Faridoon describes him and I think it’s pretty accurate because though he’s experienced his highs and lows, here, now he really gets to apply himself in full force and make a difference in the world.

Faridoon, well, he’s definitely changed too, though I’m not sure he’ll admit it. I asked him if he thought that through this we’d become better or worse friends. He didn’t answer directly. Rather, he said that back at home he has a lot of friends, but they only know one half of him. That’s not to say they aren’t still best friends. Now, however, I’ve seen both his halves-- his American side and his Afghan side, so I know more of the complete him, the two halves that make up his whole. I think deep down though, it’s not me he was talking about. Sure, he’ll go back to L.A., get married, have a career, maybe even start the charity to help rebuild Afghanistan. But most importantly, he’ll go back with a past that’s come to life, that’s become part of his life in the present and he’s the one that will know more of the complete him.

And me? Well, there’s the tricky one. I’ve gone through a lot of ups and downs on the trip but I’m not sure if any of my major questions have been answered. Has it made me different? Have I changed? I’m sure, at some point, in some way, how could I not—it’s said we are a product of our experiences, no? And, after spending the past few days in holding pattern number two waiting for my flight home in Peshawar I notice that I don’t snap photos of the whacky hippie busses anymore, I don’t flinch when I ride in a taxi, I’m not sketched out walking down the street like I was the first day I got here. But that’s more for habitual reasons and life’s all about habits isn’t it? Speaking of habits, I have to be honest with myself and admit that on a certain level I’m really excited about going home, getting back to New York and carrying on… with what though? I’m not exactly sure. I guess to answer the question directly I didn’t have the epiphany I was looking for, but then again, maybe that’s just my excuse to justify more trips like this. The one thing that’s for sure is that the world has somehow gotten a little less foreboding and little smaller. Through its shrinking though, my curiosity has expanded. I wonder what questions and answers the next journey holds…

Generations

Okay, so that last entry was a bit melodramatic, but I’ve decided to include it because I think it shows a bit of what I’ve been going through over here, mentally anyway. Though the new experiences have been rushing in, it’s also been coupled with the mundane. For example, we took a tour of this compound today and saw the new offices that Engineer Aziz is having built in the back. He noted that the offices used to be occupied by Mullah Omar, which on one level it was cool to be standing in the midst of recent history. But then we went back to our rooms to wait again. Then after hours of waiting it was time to go again, where, I didn’t know.

We were still inside the Kandahar city limits when the buildings opened up to a large barren field. The field had mounds of rocks in set in perfect lines. I couldn’t figure out what they were at first until I saw a small plot surrounded by a short wall with tombstones sticking out.

“This is our family plot,” Engineer Aziz said crunching the Land Cruiser into neutral. We got out and walked.

Faridoon and his father both wandered the 40 foot by 40 foot area looking at each grave. Generations of their family were there. Faridoon hadn’t seen his grandfather’s grave because he was away when he died. He stood in front of it for a while, eyes hiding behind his sunglasses probably forming tears. Oh, by the way, I did find out later that in Kabul, driving past his old house, he did cry, “That’s why I wear my sunglasses so much over here,” he said. Apparently he’s been crying silently a lot.

As we were leaving, Faridoon reached down and picked up a stone from his grandfather’s mound, he put it in his pocket.

“It makes me think, seeing those graves,” he said. “Generations of men in my family have been here, done the same thing, tended the land. My grandfather with his father. My father with my grandfather. And here I am with my father…”

Routines

The past few days have bled into one. We’ve settled into a routine here. Aziz wakes up early and heads off to work, he’s a very busy man meeting with everyone and their brother, literally. Sometimes Faridoon, Omar and I stroll the market snapping photos and looking for goods to take back with us, sometimes we sit in our rooms. Even though I didn’t eat the lettuce, and it was Faridoon’s biggest fear coming here, I was the one stricken with diarrhea, so that limited my ability to be too far from the toilet for a few days.

In the evenings, Engineer Aziz meets us and we head out to a project site to check up on it. Then we go to a relative’s house and sit, drink tea and visit with them.

Kandahar has become an old toy and I am a child.

I want action or a story, feel like this one may be slipping away, it’s probably not, but because our pace has slowed down so much, I feel like I’m wasting time even though I feel like I need more time.

I have to remind myself at the outset of this trip I created limits for this dream. I said that it would be okay if I didn’t come back with anything at all more than the experience. But, now that I’m here and all the distractions of worrying about safety and what it will be like are gone, it’s become the same over here as it is in the West. There’s regular life. There are cars, roads. People go to work, they get married, have families. But there’s still something that drives me to accomplish more…

Let me digress into a personal rant here: At the outset of this trip I said my goals were to record and tell Faridoon’s story, hopefully intertwine his father’s story with his (I’m starting to get a little nervous because even though we’ve done a lot with Engineer Aziz and I have plenty of broll of him, because of his hectic schedule, I’m still awaiting a formal sit down interview with him). And, if possible, find other stories. I hope I’ve accomplished those goals. Also, I wanted to find out if this kind of journalism, international, post conflict reporting, is what I want to focus my future around. I’m not sure I’ve answered that question. There is a need for it, I’m sure of that, but I have to be honest with myself, do I want to spend my life telling other’s people’s stories? On that level alone? I’m not sure. I want to understand different cultures and help if I can, but I want to do it for me. I don’t want to be in a situation anymore recording, taking notes because I feel some looming eye above my left shoulder of someone else. I want to do it for me. I guess that’s a bit selfish. But what in this world isn’t? I want to stop proving myself to other people, viewers, readers, friends, collegues… I want to be satisfied with myself. Is that wrong? Also, as long as we’re being honest here, I always thought that at some point the story would be about me and I don’t know when that changed. Now, I seem to have pigeon holed myself into telling stories about others, but that’s not good enough either. I’m looking to find something to have passion in, a way to change the world. A mentor of mine once said, “the secret to life is finding a passion, then pursuing that passion.”

I want to explore more here. I wish I had more time. I wish I didn’t have to rely on protection from my sources. But, the reality is that exploration will have to be on a different trip. Will there be another trip?

Okay, I can feel myself starting to slip into some sort of crazed stream of consciousness probably motivated by the cell I’m trapped within in my own head. I have no internet access here, I can’t speak to anyone except Faridoon, and I’m quite sure now he’s sick of translating for me. I have no outlet for my vices, which actually could be a good thing, it’s forcing me to think about these personal issues that I somehow find a way to distract myself from back in the States. Maybe, at least once a year, I’ll take the time to lock myself away somewhere away from the outside world and focus in on me.

But bas, enough as they say here. We have one day left, I’m going to try to get the interview then change gears and focus on getting out of here alive.

Snippets of Kandahar

Parks and recreation

After the history lesson that night, Engineer Aziz abruptly said, “Okay, c’mon, let’s go for a ride.” He’s a very decisive man I’d come to learn and when he says something, the best thing to do is comply.

I quickly packed my cameras and followed the crew out to Engineer Aziz’s car, a beat up late model Toyota Land Cruiser. I climbed in the back and noticed that he keeps his toiletries and change of clothes in there.

“I don’t really have a place to stay,” he said noticing me noticing them. “I sometimes stay with the governor, but for the most part, this is my home.”

We drove out of the compound and turned right. The sun was starting to set and it was beautiful, a crisp orange globe hanging in the sky, rays obscured by the thick layer of dust and smog blanketing the city.

He gave us a quick driving tour of Kandahar, pointed our attention toward a brightly colored Ferris wheel a few blocks away, it was next to a large stadium. Strange, I thought, to see Coney Island in the middle of a war zone.

“The governor and I built that stadium before the war,” Engineer Aziz said.

Driving by the mini amusement park and stadium boys and young men had makeshift goals set up and were playing street soccer. For a moment, it didn’t feel like there’d ever been a war here.

We continued to drive out of the city and approached a mountain pass.

“Look down to your right,” Engineer Aziz said while honking and swerving to avoid a slalom course of potholes. “That large white complex down there used to be Mullah Omar’s. Now the U.S. Special Forces stays there.”

We cut through the mountain and descended toward a gorgeous river. The land around it was plush, out of place. Engineer Aziz said that the river we now see is pretty much dried up, there’s been a drought here for the past six or so years. Before, the entire area was green with orchards and large farms.

Off in the distance I could tell we were driving toward a large, domed building where beside it there was a lit staircase rising up the mountain, an almost full moon was peaking above the top in front of a royal blue sky. Engineer Aziz spoke to the guard who let a chain down and we drove right up to the building.

It was a shrine of a holy leader, Engineer Aziz explained. Though he personally doesn’t buy into religion, thinks it causes more harm than good to humanity, he knows that most of the people of the area are devote Muslims and sites like this help keep the peace.

Climbing the stairs I tried to film as much as I could, the panoramic views were amazing and would be good broll. Plus, shots of father and son walking and talking weren’t bad either.

People were off to the side of the stairs sitting on the grass in groups sharing watermelon and tea. They looked serene despite the occasional AK-47 laying next to them, I tried not to film that, I had to keep reminding myself that even though I looked the part, the fact that I had a large video camera and was pointing at them probably made me stick out just a tad.

“This is one of our first projects,” he explained. “It was started before I got here, don’t know if I would have made it first, but it helps with motivation and optimism if people have someplace nice to go to relax.”

That night I slept well, hard. It was so comfortable in my room, I felt fortunate, fortunate to be alive, safe, not hungry. How different than the people right outside the compound walls. Even though on our tour it seemed like things were good, progress was being made, there was still much poverty all around. There has to be something I could do.

Faridoon’s kids

I wasn’t the only one who was inspired by that first day’s speech. The next day I awoke and went into Faridoon’s room where he and Omar were already awake and engaged in an intense conversation. They were thinking through the logistics of setting up a charity organization state side that could have a direct impact on the development efforts here. With Engineer Aziz in the position he is, Faridoon could ensure that any money donated would be used 100 percent for needs that will create and immediate impact.

“The people in the Afghan communities that I’ve been in contact with want to help,” he said. “But they don’t know how or aren’t confident that money they send will get to the right place.”

What he’ll do is start local chapters in cities with high Afghan populations to share reconstruction stories and request money. Omar, being based in Peshawar is the perfect resource on this side of the world to follow through in getting the money to Engineer Aziz. Then, as important, he can go with Engineer Aziz to file before and after reports so people can directly see the impact of their donations.Jumping in I interjected a role for myself to help coach Omar with the stories and also help get a website up where people in the West can see the results.

I guess in a certain sense, this trip has evolved from a personal journey to one’s homeland, to a man being affected in such a way that creates a new, actionable life mission…

Men’s club

The first full day we were in Kandahar was Thursday. Because Friday is the Muslim weekend, Thursday nights are often the nights for socializing. We hopped in Enigineer Aziz’s Land Cruiser and drove about 20 minutes outside of town past one, two, at least three different warlord compounds. He pointed each out with a distain in his voice.

“I hate to see these guys still around,” he said. “But for now, we kind of need them. Even though the governor is not a warlord, a lot of protection and stability still comes from them. Hopefully that will be replaced by the U.S. forces.”

The destroyed buildings became less frequent replaced by simple small farms. We turned off the paved road onto a dirt road and cut between ten foot high mud thatch walls. A metal gate stood between us and an orchard, Engineer Aziz got out, opened the gate and drove through. At this point, I had no idea where we were going.

After we parked we walked over to a small ranch style house that had a large covered patio. A rug and pillows were scattered on the floor and several older men sat around playing cards and talking.

“This is the house of a wealthy friend,” Engineer Aziz said. “He built it so people could come here and gather.”

Appantly, no one lived there all the time. Instead it was used as a hang out house for a sort of men’s social club. We were greeted and welcomed. Most of the men had short hair and long beards. They joked that when the Taliban took over all the men were forced to grow long beards and now, they had just gotten used to it. I wondered what else they had gotten used to.

We settled in and as usual I sat in my silent bubble observing. I saw how happy and open the men seemed to be. Again, I couldn’t help comparing social life back in the U.S. to what was playing out before me and this version seemed so pure, simple. There was no booze, they don’t need it to open up and relax. They weren’t raised that way Faridoon explained, so it’s not even an issue. Also, there were no women, which at first made me feel uncomfortable, a whole half of the species missing. But then, I found a certain peace in that fact too. There’s no need to metaphorically spread your peacock feathers, show off, impress. Here a man could be himself. He could cuss, he could burp, pick his nose, tell jokes without worry of offending.

Here, nothing mattered. All social classes were represented. From government officials to regular farmers each man contributed to the night in their own way. If you were rich, you brought melons or other treats. If you were not so rich, you helped out with food preparation and service.

Dinner was ready and a large mat rolled out before us stretching the entire porch. Rice, meat, fruits and salad all lay an arms length away and people dug in like a Roman feast grabbing handfuls of food and shoveling them into their mouths. It’s the custom in Kandahar to not use utensils. It’s a good feeling to eat like that way. For some reason the food tastes better and you don’t get as full. I made sure to not eat any salad, it’s a promise to my mother. When I told here I was coming to Afghanistan I was a bit hesitant because I know it’s a war zone and she’s probably be a little wary of me traveling in this area. But, surprisingly, when I told her she simple said, “Don’t eat the lettuce.”

Engineer Aziz nodded to me and said it was okay to shoot the gathering, no one would mind. Still a bit hesitant but grasping the opportunity I began to roll and click away. Between clicks I stopped to take note of what I was truly experiencing. Not many westerners, let alone journalists, get this kind of access into the everyday life Afghan men—no politics, no war, no selling, people just being who they are, untainted life. After a while, they didn’t even know I was there.

Tending the lands

The next day we toured one of Engineer Aziz’s orchards. Remember, though he doesn’t have a salary now or a real place to live, he still is the son of a wealthy land owner and now that he’s the eldest son in his family, it’s his responsibility to own them and maintain them.

The drive out was long and yes, dusty. It took almost an hour to get there and along the way we passed several small villages that looked like mud wall mazes. A canal ran along the road and children swam in the murky, almost still water. They don’t get sick because their bodies have become accustomed to the bacteria and pollution, I was told.

We arrived at the family farms and sat for a while under an open air straw roof building and drank tea with the farmers. The farmer’s feet were dry and cracked like the earth he works— as he sat there he looked like he was growing from the land. The pillars of the building had religious verses scrawled on them in Arabic—during the mid 90s while Engineer Aziz was away, the farms were unattended and Taliban used to cut through his land, they were probably responsible for the graffiti. Now the verses were chipped away by bullet holes, even the innards of a private farm hadn’t escaped the fighting.

Engineer Aziz conducted business with the farmers, what crops to focus on, personnel issues. Faridoon explained to me that during the Taliban days the land had become dried up. Again it was noted that the Taliban didn’t have the resources or the know how to govern a land. It would have been like the NYPD trying to grow food for Manhattan in Central Park. But now, pomegranates are starting to hang on the trees again, life is returning.

We took a walk. Their land stretched far in all directions. An old man retied a bundle of crops he was carrying. In the distance two young men approached. They carried guns. I thought they must be hired security. Engineer Aziz greeted them, exchanged words in Pashto. I smiled at them and motioned with my camera. When they understood what I was asking they had the same reactions all Afghans seem to have to pictures. They donned boyish grins and posed. I quickly snapped a few shots off and they thanked me. Again, the same reactions all Afghans have, for some reason when you take their picture they thank you, even though they will probably never see the shot.

Walking away Faridoon slowed down and walked with me.

“Do you have any idea you just came to death right there?” he said matter-of-factly.

What do you mean?

“Those guys were ex-Taliban, now they are just militia,” he said.

You mean they aren’t supposed to be here?

“My father was scolding them, telling them to get off his land, he doesn’t want any guns around,” he said.

I just walked for a bit. I thought about how many times on this trip I hadn’t been nervous and how many other times I probably should have. But my conclusion is why waste the time. The phrase the flight attendant from Cyprus muttered kept echoing back to me: “When it’s your time to go, it’s your time.”

Martyrs

After the walk it was time to go, and we mounted the Land Cruiser, assumed our ritual positions: Faridoon riding shot gun, a pile of Engineer Aziz’s clothes and his toiletries in the back right seat, Omar in the center and me on the left by the window so I could shoot as we drove.

The road back along the canal seemed longer than the trip in. I looked around a lot more and noticed that graveyards were more frequent than the village mazes I noted earlier. They were the ones piled with stones, flags flying signifying the honor of the Freedom Fighters, the martyrs. Between the flags there were other piles of stones, smaller ones. I wondered if they were the graves of children, children affected by the poverty and disease caused by years of war. Are they martyrs too?

Man jammies

Fourth of July has come and gone without much incident. I thought for sure that Bush would produce Bin Laden as a gift for our nation on it’s birthday and I romanticized the notion of me being over here, right place right time sorta thing, to get the story. I’d roll in with camera in hand and get exclusive interviews with the special opps guys who captured him. Heck, maybe I’d even get a few bytes from UBL himself.

But, there were no fireworks that day, not even the rattle of machine gun fire. The day came and went like any others are starting to here, slow, hot, lazy.

The only real fun I had was asking a major in the U.S. Army that was over at the governor’s compound for lunch the next day if the fellas celebrated at all. He reacted strangely at first not expecting an American accent to be coming from a bearded guy wearing traditional clothing.

“You need to have your man jammies tailored a bit don’t ya,” he said laughing, pointing at my outfit.

I guess I do.

Warlord wedding

It’s not easy to eat when an automatic rifle is pointed at your gut, trust me.

We pulled up to large building that I found out was a reception hall. There was a big dirt parking lot with cars arranged in no particular order. The scene outside was busy and it looked like something from the American old west, everyone had a gun, but instead of cowboy hats they wore turbans.

We were going to eat lunch at a wedding reception, a relative of the governor’s. Almost the entire town was invited. Engineer Aziz alerted me that weddings there last days and a lunch like this could serve up to 4,000 people in shifts. Unfortunately, most of the warlords of the town also had to be invited, he said. That’s who was sitting next to me when the food was brought, some of their guards. I guess they were good guards because even when they were digging into the rice, meat, yogurt and more meat with their hands, their guns lay poised on their laps.

I wondered if Faridoon’s wedding was going to be anything like this. He wants to follow tradition as much as possible, he even bought an turban to wear. I just hoped that he wouldn’t allow the guns. Though, it will be in L.A.!

P.S. I've finally been able to breathe a bit here and walk around to shoot some photos around Kandahar. Blow are three slide shows I put together, please click on the links below:

Slide show 1

Slide show 2

Slide show 3

History lesson

Now that we know a little bit about Engineer Aziz, it wouldn’t surprise you to know that as soon as we settled in after lunch we stayed up and chatted with him for the rest of the night and he gave a quick history lesson so especially I would have more of a contextual understanding of the days ahead. I’ll try to sum it up for you quickly, and remember, this version of history is from his point of view.

After the King was dethroned a republic was established in the mid-70s, but that government wasn’t too stable. Men who had studied abroad in Moscow were returning and brining with them the concept of communism. They had a coup and it was successful, but stability again didn’t last too long so the Soviets, looking to propagate communism and take Afghanistan into its empire, sent troops in to quiet the uprising.

For centuries many countries have looked to take Afghanistan because of its geographic strategic significance as the physical gateway between East and West. The Americans at the time were interested in the Soviets not succeeding for two main reasons: One, similar to the domino theory, they didn’t want communism to spread, it was still Cold War times. And two, they were interested in running an oil pipeline through the country in order to avoid Iran. So, Reagan began funding the mujahadeen, holy warriors, or as he called them the Freedom Fighters. Now in the beginning these guys were true patriots trying to fight for Afghanistan’s freedom. But, over time as the war lingered on, different warlords began to arise and assemble their own fiefdoms and armies made up mostly of thieves. They eventually became known as the Northern Alliance, but we’ll get to that in a bit.

With money coming in from the U.S. and fighters being recruited from elsewhere in the Muslim world because the struggle had been put in the context of a holy war, enter Bin Laden, the Freedom Fighters began to put up a good fight and probably could have won quickly, if they had just the right push at the right time. The Soviet Union at the time was a hungry nation, economically crumbling from within and the U.S. saw this, so, most likely they decided to fund the war just enough to keep it going on for as long as possible and maybe with this strategy they could starve their hungry nemesis into submission. Many people believe that this angle worked and Afghanistan was a major reason why communism fell and the Cold War ended. But at what price here? Millions of people died than needed to and the country was pulverized into a state beyond recovery. Worse over, after the war, Afghanistan was all but forgotten by the West and the people were left to pick up the pieces on their own.

With a power vacuum a civil war ensued, which many believe caused more destruction and more death than the struggle against the Soviets. The warlords mentioned above all moved in to stake their claim. Order was attempted at first and Pakistan came up with an idea to rotate the presidency every so many months between the different militia leaders. But by the time it got to the second warlord, he decided he wasn’t going to step down. Kabul was then divided into sectors and fighting broke out again, which lasted until the Taliban rose up and swept the nation.

At first, the Taliban were welcomed. People were sick of being ripped off and having their women raped. And, in the beginning, the Taliban had no interest in governing, they were a religious group just trying to establish peace and order, and they did. In a few short years they succeeded in pushing the warlords north, out of Kabul. But, with no one else to step in and still no help from the West or another third party, the logical choice to govern was the Taliban. As happens too often throughout the history of mankind, they transformed into monsters drunk with power.

Let’s also remember that during this time Bin Laden was still in country hanging out with the Mullah Omar, the spiritual leader of the Taliban, and though Afghanistan’s holy war was over, Bin Laden’s was not… he wanted to take the war global—he wasn’t too fond of the Jews in Palestine or the American infidels occupying the holy lands on the Saudi peninsula. With the protection of the Taliban, he was able to run his training operations out of Afghanistan, still though, for some trade. The warlords in the north were still pesky flies and every now and then would raid Taliban strongholds. One of the most active leaders was a man named Massoud.

On September 9th, 2001, Bin Laden sent three men posing as journalists on a suicide assassination mission. Remember, that at the end of the day, though he’s anti Taliban, Massoud wasn’t a good guy. He alone was responsible for the cold-blooded deaths of thousands of Afghans. The assassination succeeded and two days later, well, we all know what happened.

The Americans came in shortly after, empowered the Northern Alliance and the Taliban was overthrown. Bin Laden scrambled for the mountains and a new government was set up, which brings us to now. Although the new government is supposedly a democracy two main factors hinder it from succeeding now. One, there’s still no separation of state and religion and two, though the president himself is an honest man with no warlording background, 90 percent of the ministry positions are held by warlords who are out for their own interests rather than the interests of a unified Afghanistan.

Listening to Engineer Aziz give us this run through, my journalistic mind couldn’t stop cranking. A phrase keeps popping in that I learned in J-school—in any democracy, a role journalism is to act as a watchdog, to make sure the government is acting honestly. There is a huge need here for that. Moreover, all we in the West hear are the negatives-- the insurgent attacks, how poorly the reconstruction effort is turning out, we never hear the positives. Or, if reconstruction efforts are faltering, then we should thoroughly explore and explain why and find out what some solutions could be.

At that moment I wanted to move here, at least for a while, and develop a series of reports based specifically on reconstruction, show what’s working and why, but also tell how far there is to go.

For example, Engineer Aziz is working with the PRT, a recently new strategy implemented by the coalition forces that provides security on a per project basis, to establish a new road from Kandahar to the north. Unfortunately the ground breaking ceremony will take place two days after we leave, but that kind of story could serve to show the world that the situation here isn’t hopeless. And it would show how effective the Afghan nation could be if more security were provided.

It will take a while, Engineer Aziz thinks, before a full transition of power can take place. We must remember that 90 percent of the government, being made up of warlords, who are basically thieves, will be corrupt. And a system can’t succeed if it is that corrupt. Unless the West and U.N. focus more resources and troops, the limbo here will linger.

From king to cab driver to king

I’ll take a quick timeout from narrating the events to give an overview of Engineer Aziz’s story so you can know more of why I was interested in him. Besides his success in his current job having an extreme social, political and economic influence in Afghanistan and the U.S., his personal story is one of trials and triumph too.

He’s a good chess player, one of the best, I’m told, though I personally haven’t had the gumption to take him on. He can see ten to fifteen moves ahead. But, he admits, he could have never foreseen the moves his life has taken.

Right now, he’s living his third life. He had a full life in Afghanistan before the Soviets invaded, a good one. Then, he spent more than 20 years in the United States in poverty. Now, since January 2004, he’s been back in Kandahar trying to help rebuild the country he loves, but the country he no longer calls home.

The first life

Abul Aziz Baqi was born the son of a wealthy land owner in Kandahar. He was a soccer star, many people in his province knew him. He had the opportunity to become college educated at Kabul University, an American sponsored and accredited university where he studied engineering and he met his wife. He got a good job with the Afghan government building roads and he started a family. He quickly rose in the ranks and his position ended up being pretty high—he had a lot of responsibility and influence, he was respected by many, he said.

He was in his mid 30s when changes started taking place. The king was dethroned and a republic was set up. At first things were okay, but it would soon prove to not be stable. Soon, men who had studied in Moscow began returning home and wanted to institute change. Wealthy land owners weren’t a good part of the communist ideology and their ideas were taking over. Within a few short years the communist party had the power and people had a choice: join, or risk the alternative, which in most cases was death. Engineer Aziz was well versed in world politics and saw that communism, in the practical sense, wasn’t working.

“Just look at vehicles. You see any Soviet made cars anywhere else in the world? No, they’re junk,” he said.

So he chose to not join. But he was still well respected. After a while however, the word got around that he wasn’t buying into the communists. He attended brain washing lectures and refused to take notes, he said. The officials didn’t like this too much. Slowly, he was demoted to positions with less and less power and eventually he was sent out of Kabul to work on projects far in the countryside. Finally, he figured out that his life wasn’t safe anymore and he was told by an insider that he should flee Kabul with his family as soon as possible. Without blinking he went to his home. He gathered the family and took everything out of their house to sell. He stowed the money and headed that night for Kandahar.

After a while in Kandahar he knew he had to get his family out of the country. He decided to go ahead with his brother in law and check out Peshawar, Pakistan, many Afghans were heading there for safe refuge. They grew their beards and dressed in traditional clothing to blend in (a strategy I can now identify with). They had fake passports that a school friend of his had made for them. That school friend would later turn out to be the current governor, the reason why he’s back now, but I’ll get to that later.

They were almost out of Afghanistan when the bus hit a Russian check point. They were sitting in the back of the bus on large sacks of grain trying to be low key, but for some reason a Russian soldier took issue with them, asked them to step off the bus. After a bit of interrogation, they and one other man were kept behind as the bus rolled away. They were transported to the communist compound in the region and put in a cell and told that the director of the district would have a meeting with them that night.

“I was a little nervous,” Engineer Aziz said, “because from being on the inside for a while, I knew what meetings at night meant—torture, even death.”

When the director summonsed them, Engineer Aziz decided the best road to take was the truth, or at least the truth the director needed to hear. He didn’t use his passport. Rather he used his government I.D. He told the director that he was a government employee and he should be treated in this manner. He had obtained a vacation leave for ten days, which was true, and he was traveling to an Afghan border town to visit some relatives.

The director didn’t torture them but told them they couldn’t continue on and that in the morning they would be sent back to Kandahar to check the story with the director in that region, which wasn’t good for Engineer Aziz because some holes would be discovered and his family could then be put at risk. They were put under house arrest at a store near the road and had to wait for morning.

I’ve skipped a lot of the story for efficiency sake, more details will come out in the longer print story I intend to write, but for now, I’ll hit the main points of their escape.

The other man that was held back at the check point turned out to be a communist, or so he said, and when they got to the director’s compound he was let go. He reappeared the next day though when they were being transported back to Kandahar under the watch of a Russian solider when they stopped for lunch. He told Engineer Aziz and his brother in law to eat at a roadside restaurant, a specific one that had a door in the back. So they did. They got a watermelon and sat outside in front of the restaurant to eat it. Engineer Aziz cut it in half and offered one half to the soldier. As was Afghan custom, he asked the guard if they could go inside the restaurant to wash up before eating. The guard said yes. When they went in, the restaurant owner made eyes with them and motioned to the back. They quickly walked back there, slipped out the door and found a man with a small 70 cc motorcycle waiting. They piled on without looking back and sped off into the desert.

Engineer Aziz found out later that they barely escaped. The strange man that helped them was in the area watching the whole thing go down from the front of the restaurant. He said not much time passed before the guard got suspicious and went inside. The restaurant owner played dumb and the guard was furious. The whole scene to me sounded like a movie, I can’t imagine what happened to that soldier when he brought the news of their escape back to the director.

He made it to Peshawar and arranged with that same guide who helped him escape to get his family a few days later, which he did. The family left with only their clothes and were transported in groups by that same motorcycle to one point. Then they all piled in a wagon pulled by a tractor and hid under hay for a long time. Faridoon remembers bits and pieces of this, he wasn’t allowed to talk.

Finally they were all reunited in Peshawar and stayed there for about six months until Engineer Aziz figured out a way to get to America. He applied for refugee status and got a letter from an American professor at Kabul University. And shortly thereafter, they landed in Seattle.

The second life

Engineer Aziz said they had some family on the west coast so they stayed with them and he tried to figure out what to do. He couldn’t get a job as an engineer because that required proof of his degree, but he left so quickly he didn’t obtain proper documentation and because the country was in the middle of a war, requesting the paperwork to be sent over was not an option. So, he had to do what many other educated immigrants in the U.S. have to do, he took whatever job he could.

First he found employment in a bakery but it only paid enough to feed the family, at best. The neighbors of the relatives they were staying with began to complain that there were too many people in one apartment. Engineer Aziz didn’t have many options. He tried to look for another apartment but the only ones he could afford didn’t allow children. So, he borrowed some money from his relative and bought a used old station wagon, one of the big ones from the early 80s with fake wood paneling. The family lived in there.

Coming from a wealthy background, Engineer Aziz obviously wasn’t comfortable with this situation, if anyone could be, and it motivated him to work harder. Welfare was an option, but one he didn’t like.

“What kind of example would that set for my children,” he said.

Over the next few years he bounced around from job to job finding small apartments and trying to better his families life. He was a store clerk, a taxi driver, a land surveyor. And for the most part, his efforts worked.

At one point he was driving a cab in Virginia outside of D.C.—a job he hated. One of his customers was a woman he picked up from National Airport. She struck up a conversation with him and when he said he was from Afghanistan her interest was piqued. When they arrived at her hotel, she told him to leave the meter running and they kept talking. She asked him what he thought of President Reagan’s policy toward Afghanistan, he answered honestly, he said. He told her that for the most part it was good but he had some suggestions to make it better. Before she left she gave him her business card and asked for his phone number.

“I’m just a poor cab driver,” he told her, “I don’t have a phone.”

A few days later he was driving the cab and got a radio transmission from headquarters that the U.S. government had called and to return immediately. He thought he was in trouble. When he phoned back he was told to hold. After a few seconds, a voice came over the line that he recognized.

“He started with his famous, ‘Well’,” Engineer Aziz said. Ronald Reagan was on the other end of the line. “Hello sir,” he replied.

They spoke for about five minutes and as they were hanging up Engineer Aziz said he mistakenly told President Reagan to say hello to Nancy.

“That’s not polite,” Engineer Aziz said. A few days later, a signed picture of Ron and Nancy arrived in the mail for him.

Over time, financially Engineer Aziz and his family progressed and enough stability was created to allow his children to get an education. Faridoon, for example, attended the University of Oregon.

But, through this time, something else was nagging at him. One might think it was home, Afghanistan. That he kept thinking one day that he would return and regain his privileged life. That’s initially what I thought, I admit. But, rather, the poverty he lived through in the U.S. gave him a sense of humility, a drive to help others in need. Besides providing for his family, he wanted to be able to do something to help “the human species,” as he says.

A couple times he tried to go back, but Afghanistan wasn’t ready. In 1999 he tried, but the Taliban had such a stranglehold on the country that he couldn’t breathe enough to help. In 2001 he went back again, was even there during September 11. Faridoon recalls being worried for his safety. After the planes hit they didn’t hear from him, it was chaos here (Afghanistan). Rumors were flying that the Americans would be coming in, Engineer Aziz said, and people were scrambling to get rid of their arms and load up on supplies. He knew he had to make it home. He got a ride to the Pakistan border but couldn’t get through, even though he’s an American citizen, they simply weren’t issuing entry visas and getting an exit visa from Afghanistan was a whole different story, remember the Taliban were still in control and because he was American, that wasn’t the best motivation for them to help him. Steadfast, he stayed at the border and every day went to the passport office to try to get a visa.

One day, around the 18th of September, he was standing in line and noticed a camera crew outside. He didn’t know who they were broadcasting for at the time. He caught eyes with the cameraman and the cameraman noticed he had an American passport. The cameraman alerted the reporter and they came over to gather his story. Back in L.A. his family was watching CNN when suddenly an image of their patriarch came screeching into their living room from across the globe. The last thing Pakistan wanted at the time was bad press about treating Americans poorly so needless to say he was quickly granted a visa. Of thousands of people trying to cross the border that day, Engineer Aziz was the only one to make it through.

The third life

As the cliché goes, the world changed on September 11, but more importantly for his story, Afghanistan changed on October 7. When the Taliban were ousted it paved the way for a new chance. But how could he take advantage of that chance?

Fast forward a couple years. Changes took place and a democratic government began to form, although, Engineer Aziz laments, most of the power still lies in the hands of warlords who make up the Northern Alliance, the same people responsible for the atrocities committed against the Afghan people during the civil war following the Soviet withdrawal. Basically, even though Karzai is president, the warloards have the guns and make up most of the ministry and they hold governor positions in all the provinces, all save one, Kandahar.

Engineer Aziz was from Kandahar. He knows people, still has many childhood friends there. Most importantly, one of his best childhood friends and distant relative is Governor Pashtun.

Pashtun is different than the warlords because, well, he’s not a warlord. Moreover, he’s an honest man, Engineer Aziz said, and has a vision in line with Karzai’s for the future of a free Afghanistan, one that will unite the people under one nation. But Pashtun also knows the reality of the challenges facing him and the reality of his vision.

“A vision must have limits, otherwise it’s merely a dream,” Pashtun wrote in a document. And one of the limitations he identified was his own. He can’t be an island of honesty in an ocean of corruption. He needed help.

When he got the call that day in L.A., he didn’t have to think too many moves ahead, Engineer Aziz realized that the time was now. Under the power of the current governor he could bring his mind back to Afghanistan, help tactically and practically plan the immediate recovery efforts in Kandahar and micromanage his way to success. Not success for him, but success for the human species, as he says.

“I don’t do this for anyone, I don’t do it for me. I don’t get paid a salary, I just want to help people,” Engineer Aziz said.

Engineer Aziz, as he’s known here, is tasked with centralizing, coordinating and streamlining the NGO efforts in the Kandahar province, which isn’t easy, especially when for so long, he says, there’s been no authority determining what money goes to which projects when. In the past there’s been a disconnect between priorities and needs.

“For example,” he says, “An NGO wants to build a school because schools are good and will help educate people for the future and I agree with that. But first, look at some basics. People don’t have clean water to drink. How will they go to the schools if they are thirsty or sick?”

It’s that kind of logical thinking that he used to help come up with and implement first a master plan for the city, then a criteria list to determine priority, then a list of needs. Now, he acts as the liaison between the NGOs and the donors and the process becomes more economically efficient because money is being diverted to projects that will have immediate impacts on the lifestyle and more money actually makes it to the projects because with an uncorrupt person in place, less cash dumps into someone’s pocket.

“Immediate, tangible results that the people can feel will be the true success,” Engineer Aziz said, “because people will have hope for the future and believe that the wars can really stop,”

Afterthought

I guess that was kind of a longer summary of his story than I originally wanted to give, but it’s hard to stop once you start writing an amazing life like his, there’s still so much more I want to include. Also, do want to let you know that a lot of the story is from one or two sources, either Faridoon or his father. Though my access here in Kandahar on one level is amazing— getting behind the scenes of both governmental operations and experiencing otherwise closed-to-outsider cultural events, which I’ll describe later, it is also limited in a sense. I have to rely on my sources to okay my every action, I’m still not forgetting the gravity of the situation I’m in. My safety and life truly lies in their hands, which also has it’s pros and cons. We’re safe staying in a compound surrounded 24/7 by armed guards, but on the other hand, Engineer Aziz, doing what he is doing, hasn’t made too many friends with the warlords or corrupt people who are still in power. And because of his nature, he refuses to have a body guard with him even though he’s a major target and has had public threats made against him. But, though my sources are limited, I can comment on direct observation and after living here for a week and watching what goes on, I can personally verify a lot of the story.

He lives out of his car. He works non stop. He has a makeshift office (where the leader of the Taliban Mullah Omar used to have his office) with piles of papers strewn about in some kind of order specific to him. He doesn’t have a computer. When he buys soda or watermelon at a roadside shack-store, he always leaves the change and usually pays extra. He drives around and gives candy to kids. When he sees people causing harm to a project sight he’s surveying, he doesn’t just yell at them and tell them they are wrong, he takes the time to explain to them that the project is for them, why would they want to destroy something that’s being build as part of their new home? He treats the farmer’s who tend his land well, better than he has to.

“They have a family to feed, better to let them do that than keep extra money for myself,” he said.

After a working lunch regarding the planning of a joint Afghan-Coalition forces project, a U.S. Army major stood outside and commented on how much better efforts were moving since Engineer Aziz came to town. It seems Karzai agrees as there’s talk of opening up and implementing Engineer Aziz’s system to cover five other provinces. He’ll probably be promoted to run those provinces too.

“Kandahar will be the model for the new Afghanistan,” Engineer Aziz said.

And he is the model of the man it will take to run it.

The Kandahar express

This time I was nervous. And I told Faridoon and Omar that as we walked away from Zalma’s home toward the main street to grab a cab to the bus station.

At first they said not to worry about it, everything would be fine. Then I tripped in a pothole and twisted my ankle. Great, an omen I thought.

“Just don’t talk,” Faridoon said. “Not like before, I know we’ve told you that before, but this time, seriously don’t say a word. Just do what we do, don’t look at anybody, but most importantly don’t talk.

Before I came on this trip, I’d done a lot of research, talked to as many other journalists I knew that had foreign reporting experience. I ended up exchanging emails with a man named Robert Young Pelton, he runs a website called www.comebackalive.com and specializes in extreme war reporting, he got the first interview with the John Walker, the American Taliban because he was at the prison when it was raided. He knew Afghanistan pretty well and gave me some great tips. When I told him there was a possibility of me taking a bus between Kabul and Kandahar, his only reply was: “Have you ever seen an Afghan bus?”

So, as you can imagine, my expectations of style and comfort weren’t the highest, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be riding the Peter Pan line between New York and Boston, there probably wouldn’t be a movie. I planned for the worst. But, when the pattern of things not going to plan works out in your favor, I guess you just roll with it.

When we got to the bus station and Omar led us to our machine. It was amazing, almost worthy of the Peter Pan fleet. It was a typical tour bus with padded, individual seats lined two by two with an aisle down the middle. No one had to ride on top or hang off the sides. It even had curtains to draw in case the sun got too hot. There wasn’t any AC, but hey, beggars can’t be choosers eh? I was just happy I wasn’t sitting next to a chicken. The only caveat was because of my own request—I didn’t want to check my luggage and store it below because I have more than 12 grand worth of camera equipment and computers on me, so I had to hold all my bags on my lap… but it would only be for four hours, right?

Side note: the rest of the description of this trip will have to come mostly from memory because in order to blend in best, I wasn’t able to film, take still pictures or even pull our my notepad to take notes. It’s probably best though on the note thing because I know at some point I began to hallucinate.

The silence game

I know everyone remembers being little on a road trip with their family and at some point the dad leans back, annoyed from the ruckus in the back seat, and says, “Hey, you guys want to play the silence game? Whoever talks first loses…”

I was winning.

We were about a half hour outside of Kabul. The broken city streets turned into the immaculate, repaved road that I heard reported early this year the Americans help finish. Burned building and car carcasses lining streets were replaced by rolling desert hills, sheep herders, wheat fields and gypsies. I even spotted a few camels. I was pretty excited by that, I love camels. But, the scenery soon became old, repetitive and the ride very boring. I wasn’t alone in the silence game, I realized. No one on the bus was talking. It was very strange, eerie in a way. I wondered if it was a cultural thing. I fell asleep.

The people on the bus go up and down

I woke with a jolt. Like the ride from Jalalabad to Kabul, our bus was now suddenly off roading. I was no longer comfortable. It was hot, very hot and my bags were heavier than before. I wanted to say something to Faridoon who was looking over me to the outside world, but when he felt the words straining to escape my mouth he shot me an intense glare. I held back. I turned back to looking out my window and wondered why the heck the road was no longer paved. I thought it was reported that it was finished. I added it to my list of what’s reported isn’t always reality.

I found out later that in fact the road was finished, but done so in such a way that haste compromised quality now they are having to rip parts of it up and repave it. See, about this time last year President Bush, so I’m told, needing a big win in Afghanistan, ordered the road to be finished by year’s end, which was an absurd pace, especially in the latter months of the year when encroaching winter would make the frozen ground not susceptible to new surfaces taking. And that’s exactly what happened. The road was finished by year’s end and the world celebrated, the U.S. checked a notch on its belt and diverted attention. But, when the spring came and the ground thawed, expanding caused cracks and shifting in the road and the effort now has to be repeated, but we don’t hear about that of course.

Afghan rest stop

The bus driver popped a tape in the radio and blaring traditional Afghan music took over the silence. I really don’t have a good way to describe the sound of it other than at first it’s fine, but after about three hours of the harmonium, simple drum beats and high pitched voices singing words I can’t understand, it becomes a bit unsettling. So much so I welcomed our lunch break.

I stepped off the bus and felt like the bottom of my legs no longer existed. I followed Faridoon to a spot behind the bus and Omar went to get packaged goods for food, he came back with a juice box and cake. Faridoon said we had about two hours left. More guys with guns pulled up in a pick up truck. I tried not to look.

After the lunch break we went to pull away and the people noticed two seats were vacant, the driver looked all around but couldn’t find them. A sketchy man got on and said he was supposed to be there but couldn’t find his friend. I was more nervous, I kept thinking that whoever seats those were had planted a bomb that would go off as soon as we started moving again. I couldn’t voice my concern so that made it worse. But nothing happened, the man ended up being on the wrong bus and a man and wife ended up catching up before we rolled away.

Golf balls in sand traps

The road was paved again, the music was off. I stared out the window. Again, desert for as long as I could see. I thought I could see dunes in the distance but didn’t really trust my vision anymore, I was probably hallucinating.

I noticed the little painted white rocks dotting the side of the road like golf balls caught in sand traps at a driving range. Near the rocks this time there were also mounds of earth piled in semicircles. I imaged they were fox holes dug back in the fighting days. A day dream caught me and I was out there, wrapped in a turban screaming in Pashto to a fellow Freedom Fighter to keep his head down, there were tanks in the distance. One of the tanks fired at us, I ducked and covered. The shell exploded. My fellow fighter went to run back, retreat and suddenly he was blown to bits by a land mine. Then I realized these weren’t fox holes purposely dug, they were craters left by detonated mines. There were hundreds of them. I awoke from reverie with a sudden sobering feeling. Each one that passed by made me wonder, create a scenario of how they exploded, who they had killed, how many limbs were taken.

Sex and booze

A couple more hours whizzed by my window. It was hotter. We still weren’t there. I still hadn’t talked. My luggage was still on my lap. The lower half of my legs were still missing. I was sweating. My day dreams stopped becoming dreams and mixed with reality. I realized that so far on this trip, I hadn’t seen a woman’s face. Though the Taliban had been ousted, all the grown women still wore full coverings, even in the cities. Moreover, I began to realize that the culture is completely void of any form of alcohol—what do they do for fun? These two realizations made my hysteria worse because I realized more and more how much in the West we are addicted to booze and sex, or at least I am. To this point I hadn’t even thought about it. But when you’re alone, locked in the prison of your own mind, I guess the basics rise to the surface. Suddenly I couldn’t stop thinking about it: my first kiss, Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl breast, drinking beer in the woods in high school, sharing a cocktail with friends in the East Village, how the hell was I going to survive another two weeks of this celibacy, sobriety?

No stop till Kandahar

I pulled myself together the best I could. I basically let the voices in my head start having their own conversations. I tried to focus on sleeping, that way time in this prison would pass faster. I stared outside at passing tribal lands, mud huts, kids running. Every five miles the bus would detour onto a rocky road, then onto pavement. My body was limp letting everything happen.

Finally, Kandahar crept up on the horizon like a, shoot, I don’t know, at this point my mind was tapped of metaphor. All I knew was that a four-hour ride turned into ten and I couldn’t wait to get off the bus, which we did, and followed the same routine as we did in Kabul. We hopped into another cab and Omar told the driver to take us to the governor’s compound.

I had no idea what to expect. Looking around this city it felt nicer, more active, more happy than Kabul. Though still war ravaged, there were more signs of actual completed rebuilding projects. It was a sign of hope.

The governor’s guest house

We arrived at the compound and had no problem getting in. Dusty, sweaty, loaded down with bags we walked up to a brand new building that looked like a Holiday Inn Express. About five men stood under the roof of a breezeway. One of them was Faridoon’s father, Engineer Aziz. Another was the governor, a childhood friend of his. Most of what happened is a blur. I know we shook hands, patted our chests, said salaam alaykum. Engineer Aziz showed us inside. We washed up and walked into a large dining room. A servant brought in lunch. I was dizzy, it was surreal. Earlier that morning we were in a house with no electricity, now we were eating where government officials dine.

I was excited to meet Engineer Aziz. Originally, the story I pitched CNN and Frontline was 100 percent about him. It was slugged: “From King to Cab Driver to King” and was about his return to glory in a sense, but I’ll get to that in a bit. Right now, he sat across from us as we devoured our food. He was happy to see us, especially his son. It had been so long since they were together in their homeland. Neither of them ever imagined this day would come. They exchanged formalities. Engineer Aziz asked how the family was. Faridoon gave updates one by one. My brain wasn’t processing much anymore, I was concentrating on eating correctly with my hands, the Pashtun way, in a way I wanted to impress Engineer Aziz.

We finished eating. Engineer Aziz lead us upstairs to our room, he pointed down a hall, “There are three rooms, each pick one,” he said.

Each pick one? Did he just say we get our own rooms? Wow. I opened my door and it was a regular hotel room, luxury bleeding from the walls. Air Conditioner, bed, TV, separate bathroom with toilet rather than hole in the ground, shower. Faridoon said his father held pretty high position in the Old Country, but I never imagined this, and neither did he. I guess he has a way of not exaggerating enough.

Ashes to ashes

Finally, after a five-hour trip that had turned into nine, we passed through another check point and saw a sign that said “Welcome to Kabul.” The next five-mile stretch showed us lumber yards, big machinery and concrete mixers walling the road on both sides. These were construction companies from all over the world that had set up shop. I guess that’s a good thing because it shows there’s so much focus on the rebuilding effort here, something that the mainstream media doesn’t really tell us. All we hear and see that shapes our view of this land are the attacks, the atrocities still going on, the wars still lingering, but maybe, this time, war will finally be over.

After the construction zone, we passed a set of identical buildings, like projects in the Bronx or on the way into Chicago. They looked run down, dilapidated, bombed out.

“This used to be where the rich people lived,” Faridoon said, not yet aware of the true devastation that awaited us.

We got dropped off and changed cabs, took the new one to Omar’s sister’s house. On the way, rubble, roofless buildings, bullet-marked walls and poverty surrounded us like a bad dream.

“Before this trip, I told my friends back in the States about the destruction in Kabul, but I thought I was exaggerating.” Faridoon said later on. “Now, seeing all this, I realize I wasn’t exaggerating enough.”

The cab dropped us off in front of a walled building. It was the only one really standing on the block. We opened a metal gate and walked past a hand-pump well and a drying garden bed trying to grow feeble vegetables. We entered the building and went upstairs. Omar’s sister Zalma greeted and hugged Faridoon for a long time, the last time they saw each other they were children. Now, she’s in her fourth year of medical school at Kabul University, an impressive feat in a society where equal rights for women aren’t exactly the highest priority. For example, while the men in her class have paid-for dormitories, she and the other women, about 20 in her class, have to fend for themselves.

We unloaded our bags and sat for some tea, they drink a lot of tea here. We were exhausted. We learned that one month ago this building had been one of the burnt out shells that we passed on the way in. I tried to plug in to recharge my batteries. Zalma laughed. She said they hadn’t hooked up electricity yet. I wondered how she manages to study and make it through med school living in a recovering war zone in a house with no running water or electricity. I felt small. Here I am worried if I have enough juice to record our upcoming tour of Faridoon’s birth neighborhood to tell some menial story of, for all practical purposes, an American returning home after avoiding the hardships of war while she sits across from me, glowing, happy to see her cousin but tired from enduring a medieval environment while studying to be a doctor, real work that will someday directly help people, that will make a difference, an impact.

In jail with the self

I’ve been over here almost a week now. And though I’m learning a lot and having an amazing experience, I have to admit that not knowing the language is becoming increasingly lonely. Though I’m picking up on some basics-- how to say hello, thank you, please, how are you—most of my time is spent isolated in a room while people talk, laugh, share stories, memories. Most of the time I pretend to be following the conversations, try to read body language and hand gestures, falsely laughing when they laugh. I guess it’s okay, because it gives me time to observe and process all that’s happening, but to be honest I’m not really sure how the next two weeks will feel. I’m afraid I’ll start to go crazy locked within my self.

Kabul by car

Sitting and relaxing felt great, but we realized we only had a few hours of daylight left and we had two main points to accomplish since it was determined that we’d only be staying in Kabul one night. We had to go to the bus station and get tickets for an early bus to Kandahar and we had to visit Faridoon’s old childhood neighborhood, the proverbial town of his birth that we’d been talking about this whole time—that was it, no? The big plot point of the trip? The film I was making?

Omar had a friend in town whose family owns a pharmacy. After securing our places on the bus for the morning, something I personally wasn’t too psyched about but what other choice did I have at that point, we went to the pharmacy. He met us, and pointed outside to a minivan, through the body language and hand gestures I figured out we’d been touring Kabul by car.

That’s okay, I thought, as long as we’re able to get out when we get to Faridoon’s neighborhood. I had this whole plan worked out in my head: I would wire Faridoon with a wireless mic. I’d shoot him with my good camera and I’d give him the little hand-held camera. As we walked and he relived his childhood narrating and pointing out the present versions of his memories I’d cut between shots of him walking, close ups of his eyes swelling tears and the hand-held point of view from the little camera. It would look real cool. The viewer would be able to see exactly what he was seeing. He would cry, we would cry, the story would have a major arc. The experience would change his life, my life, the viewer’s life. I had it all planned out. But, I should have known by now that anything planned on this trip doesn’t really work out.

We hopped in the car and Faridoon and I settled in the back. I looked up and noticed a giant moon roof. Excited, I asked Omar if his friend would be okay with me standing up through it and shooting as we drove around. I imagined myself in a limo riding through Time Square drinking in the scenery. Now, thinking about it, that probably wasn’t the best view to a passerby—a stranger half out of a van holding some unidentifiable object pointing it at them. They probably thought we were attempting a drive by or something.

The jerking back and forth didn’t feel too good as I learned that the crazy driving isn’t just for cabbies and my torso took much of the brunt and I had bruises all over me later on, but the view from the moon roof was amazing and the footage I got should be much better than the stuff so far pointed out the side of the car. We passed a few Kabul landmarks early on and I’m glad because it gave me practice.

“Get that,” Faridoon said tugging on my leg and pointing to an ancient wall that traverses an entire mountainside and rises above the city. Besides the footage for the film, I’m also tasked at capturing general sights and sounds so his family and other Afghan friends back home can see what it’s like over here now. But it was tough to quickly react to his direction from inside the car, I couldn’t really hear him and had no idea which direction he was really pointing when he pointed.

Suddenly we were in a residential neighborhood and I overheard Faridoon saying “we used to live there for a while, my mom used to teach at that kindergarten, I used to buy candy from a story that was there. I skinned my knee on that wall.”

I was dizzy, trying to react and figure out what he was talking about. I spun around, zoomed in and out trying to lock on steady shots as the van rolled by my climatic landmarks. We have to be stopping at some point, I thought.

“There’s my old house,” Faridoon said pointing at a large pink structure that was rebuilt, the only one on the block, recently painted and totally stuck out. See, his old neighborhood used to be nice, normal, an upper middle class area with decently sized houses and safe streets. Now, there was basically nothing left but partial walls propped up by fallen pieces of themselves. It looked like what may have been left of Hiroshima the day after. It was one of the worst sections of town affected by the wars.

Some children dressed in rags at best ran across the streets but they didn’t stop and wave up at the camera with awe like other children in other sections of town. Before I could really get a good, steady shot we had turned and were leaving the area. I slumped down from my perch into the backseat. I wasn’t in a good mood. There goes my whole film, I thought. What the hell am I going to do now? He didn’t even cry. He said he was going to cry.

Screw it, I thought and jumped back up. I’m going to at least shoot the hell out of this god forsaken city then, besides feeding his families curiosity, maybe somehow when I get home I can still do something with the footage, sell it as stock somewhere, this still was decent access, I’m seeing a lot of what most westerners would never see. So we continued to motor around the city: a park, people here love parks, the famed Intercontinental Hotel that overlooks the city and gives good panoramic shots, and finally Kabul University.

Busted

The guards at the first gate wouldn’t let us in. Omar’s friend sped around the corner to the next entrance into the university. Omar’s friend islight skinned and therefore often gets taken for a northerner, Faridoon explained, which in Kabul gives him privileges. Though Afghanistan is made up mostly of Pashtuns, who are mainly from the southern regions, after the war with the Soviet union a civil war ensued and broke Kabul up into several sections each controlled by a different Northern Alliance warlord. The northerners, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Hazaras, are lighter skinned and though the civil war is now over and Afghanistan is trying to unite under one nation, the warlords still have influence over the city. This is most visible by the dozens of billboards that show the face of Massoud around the city. He was the warlord that was killed on September 9th, 2001 and is now considered a hero by the Northern Alliance, though he was responsible for the cold blooded murder of thousands of Afghans during the civil war. But I’m off on a tangent again, the point was that Omar’s friend gets special treatment sometimes and at the next university gate, he was able to talk his way in allowing me to shoot video.

We drove slowly through the campus, although, it didn’t look much like a campus in American standards. The buildings, though not bombed out, hadn’t been maintained in years. Weeds grew from cracks in the concrete, doors barely hung on their hinges. Students, all visibly men, sat in fields silently studying and others walked with open books reading aloud to themselves. After passing the engineering school where Faridoon’s father had studied, we started to make our way back out. We almost made it until an older, heavy set man dressed in fatigues stopped us. I slumped back down in the back seat and stopped recording. He mumbled a few words to Omar’s friend in a stern tone and Faridoon told me to give him my tape.

The blood rushed to my feet. Though it was hardly good footage there was no way I could give up the tape holding the footage of Faridoon’s old neighborhood. I quickly thought of ways I could get a different tape out to give him, or have Faridoon take the tape out of his little camcorder instead, but I was trapped.

The man came around to the side of the van and opened the door. He said something to Faridoon and Faridoon asked me in English if I brought my permission documents with me. I tried not to show my confusion and play along, but “no” was all I could muster. The man continued lecturing for another five minutes. Finally though, he let us leave-- with the tape.

Phew, I thought, maybe the footage isn’t so bad. I could use slow motion during post production, maybe, just maybe it won’t look so bad.

Kabul take-out

As we drove back into the Kabul streets, I welcomed the nightfall as it gave me an excuse to stop taping. After the exchange at the university I didn’t want to press my luck any further. We drove to a nicer section of town, a strip where most of the government officials live, I was told. We stopped at a restaurant called the Blue Pearl. It was a nice restaurant, had a mid 70s from Jersey feel to it, black marble bar, blue velvet on the walls. A table of Brits, probably NGO workers, were the only patrons. Omar ordered chicken and french fries to go.

As we waited for the meal to be made, Faridoon sat with the door open of the van. He was caught in some kind of memory and when I asked him he said he wasn’t remembering. Rather, he said he was trying to imagine what it was like when his father and mother were in college. He said the whole city looked like this, no war, no poverty, no throw back religious morays, just nice city streets with progressive people hanging out, being productive and having a good time. He imagined his father on a weekend night going to a coffee shop and reading or waiting there for his mother to arrive. She probably would have snuck out or told her parents she was going to meet girlfriends. It was probably so innocent back then, he said. He hopes someday it may be like that again.

When we got back to Zalma’s house everything was dark save a few moonbeams shooting through bullet holes in a tin sheet covering a window near the door. We took off our shoes and felt our way inside guided only by the low flicker of a small propane lamp. On the floor of her room Zalma had spread a table cloth, she offered me the seat on her bead— a small mat on the ground. Her room was about eight feet by six feet, similar to a New York apartment! Just kidding, it was much smaller. Again, I wondered how she managed to get through medical school living in these conditions. Faridoon commented that people adapt. For example, this neighborhood during the civil war was a hotbed of activity. Every day and all night there would be gun shots from building to building, rockets whizzing by each other. To still carry on with daily life, the residents built underground tunnels between the buildings so they didn’t have walk through the streets and risk their lives. So, I guess he’s right, people do figure ways to live through even hopeless situations. So far I’ve been adapting—sitting on the floor Indian style to eat, though my knees were starting to hate me, removing shoes when you enter a home, though we do that in Syracuse too because of the crappy weather and snow all the time, greeting people with a shake, a salaam, slight bow and a pat on my chest, breathing dust… I mean I even stopped being awed by the freaky hippie busses clogging the streets.

“Kabul take out,” I said and laughed. Omar or Zalma didn’t really get it. Faridoon gave a little chuckle, I think more to make me feel good.

Too tired to sleep

After dinner we were all tired. Faridoon said he couldn’t do an end-of-the-day interview for me because he’d fall asleep in the middle of it. Perfect, I thought, fits right in with how the rest of the day for filming went. I learned later, though, that we didn’t stop in his neighborhood to get out because it wasn’t even close to safe there. We shouldn’t have even been driving through it. I’m kinda glad they don’t tell me these things until after the fact, in this situation, ignorance sometimes goes beyond bliss and enters the realm of confidence. Little did I know that that night, my confidence would toss and turn out of me as I tried to sleep—all I could do was think about the bus ride ahead of me, unlike the drive through his neighborhood, I knew the bus ride wasn’t the safest place in the world—just a week ago, sixteen people were shot and killed on a bus, all because they carried voter registration cards. I wondered what treatment I’d get for carrying an American passport.

For a photo slide show of Kabul scenes, please click here.

Road to Kabul

I apologize that it’s taken me so long to update—on the road into Afghanistan, through Kabul and into Kandahar, we haven’t been as fortunate as we were in Peshawar with internet access, I don’t even know when I’ll be able to post this entry. But, right now I am fortunate enough to be safely in Kandahar writing from a lush, air conditioned room at the governor’s guest house—an environment that was not expected at all, but welcomed, at least at first, after two long, grueling days traveling. I say welcomed at first because the respite of “western” style living conditions are nice—clean shower, toilet that you can sit on, bed, refrigerator-- but after settling in, a certain level of guilt beings to mount because we’re surrounded by such devastation and poverty, but I’ll get more into detail about that later on. Right now, let’s try to recap the past couple day’s events…

Early to rise

We got done with our post-Peshawar interview late, about 1 a.m. local time, which didn’t leave much time for sleep, though Faridoon and I both knew that sleep that night would be difficult because after being in Pakistan so long we were aching, anticipating the journey ahead. We had to rise by 4:30 a.m. to quickly eat, wash up, say our good byes to his grandmother, aunt and cousin and go outside to grab a taxi.

As is custom, Faridoon’s aunt brought the Koran to the door where stood loaded down with backpacks like mules and she held it out for each of us to press first our right eye, then left eye then kiss it then walk under it, this would ensure us a safe journey. I abided, trying as I have been so far to learn as much about the culture and blend in—also, anything that could add to my safety at this point was very welcomed, though for some reason, I wasn’t nervous yet, though danger possibly, seemingly, lurked and the next few hours of the future were completely unknown. I felt confident in Faridoon’s cousin Omar’s ability as a guide, as I mentioned before, he’d made the trek between Peshawar and Kabul several times, knew the nuances and would be able to tell us exactly what to do when and what not to do.

When we left the gates of the home, I peered over my shoulder for one last look at the place that had been both our safehouse and jail for the past few days and I noticed his aunt throwing water on the ground, another custom I learned that meant she was wishing us safe travels… “Inshallah,” I thought, with God’s will.

Kyber pass

We hopped a cab to a section of Peshawar nearer to the outskirts where busses other taxis were waiting. Though it was so early in the morning, the streets were bustling-- motorized rickshaws hummed and sped by kicking up dark clouds of exhaust, men pulling donkey’s carrying large loads lumbered along avoiding thickening morning traffic. Road side stores, which are basically shacks manufactured out of any materials found along the road—wooden planks, cardboard, license plates-- had already opened selling candy, bottled water, Pepsi (Pepsi seems to own this side of the world) motor oil any anything else you can find at a 7-11.

It was dirty. Everywhere I looked now that we’d left the Afghan section of Peshawar was dirty. Faridoon said that Pakistan, directly translated, means “clean land.” How ironic, I thought, and we both laughed because the smog hanging over the city that morning would make L.A. look like a fresh mountain village. But, I don’t want to assume that all of Pakistan is dirty and I’m fairly sure that it’s correct not to assume so, as I later learned. The area where Peshawar is located, along with other towns along the Afghan border, may be handed over to Afghanistan at some point in the near future and the Pakistani government has stopped investing money it the upkeep in case this does come true. I’m not exactly sure of the facts yet, I’ll have to research it when I get back home because it could make an interesting story, but as I’m told, about the turn of last century the British, who colonized the land at the time, made a contract to give control of the land back to Afghanistan in 99 or 100 years, similar to the Hong Kong deal. Now, Afghanistan has enough to worry about with the rebuilding process, but it seems to be that proverbial pink elephant in the room that no one talks about and as a result puts the area in a limbo state. Anyway, I digress…

So we were on the road in another taxi rolling further and further out of town. Omar is pointing out landmarks along the way and Faridoon is translating, which I’m pretty sure by this time he’s pretty sick of doing, but I’m sure it’ll get worse. We passed a large walled compound equipped with its own armed plain-clothes guards. I learned it’s where one of the big drug dealers in the region lives—this road is where much of the opium and heroin traffic comes through. For some reason, at this point, I’m still not nervous, maybe it was too early for my senses to allow me to feel fear.

Finally we cross under a huge arch over the road that says “welcome to the Kyber Pass.” Now, I’d always imagined the Kyber Pass as a grand, ancient thoroughfare where traders like Marco Polo would cut through snow-capped Himalayan mountains bringing spices to the West from the East. But, looking around, all that came to mind to describe the area was dust, dust, dirt and dust.

We ascended the winding one-lane-that-fit-cars-and-mules-going-in-both-directions road slowly, mostly caught behind overburdened trucks, which hauled cargo and humans inside and then more humans on top and dangling off the sides and back. The taxi driver, like all in Peshawar passed with reckless abandon honking before during and after he made his skin-tight moves around other vehicles. I didn’t mind much because I’d become numb to the jarring, jerking feeling and just stared out the window at the small guardhouses empty on each hilltop and the several “welcome to Kyber Rifle” messages written into the mountains with painted white rocks. I tried to snap off as many photos as I could (and unfortunately I didn’t discover until after Kabul that the settings on my camera were messed up and most of my shots came out pretty dark, which I have been able to lighten up in photoshop, but they could have been better. Oh, well, live and learn, as they say). I was amazed that tiny villages still dotted the roadside—I wondered how the people lived in such poor air quality. Soon, I couldn’t take it anymore and I rolled up my window choosing sweat-drenched air inside the cab over moving-car shots.

We stopped at one of the villages for a moment and Omar muttered something to Faridoon in Pashto and got out. I gave Faridoon a questioning look and he nodded at me not to worry and not to get out, a silent command that I’d soon get very used to as my part of my mission for safety over the next few days would be to blend in as much as possible, and like wandering around Peshawar, part of that process would be to not talk and to follow orders without question, something that those of you who know me I’m not too good at.

When Omar returned he handed back two black and white checkered scarves and kept one for himself. I didn’t question, just accepted. After we got going again, Faridoon said under his breath, “for to breathe.” And it helped. The moist, recycled air behind the scarf was much better than the tainted fumes hanging in this decrepit Pass—I was hoping this leg of the journey had almost passed.

From purgatory to heaven

With a jolt the taxi stopped. I peeled my face from behind the lens of my camera and realized we’d reached the border. Quickly I gathered my gear and stepped out into a swarming crowd of pre-adolescent boys tugging at my clothes and grabbing my bags from the trunk loading them onto a flatbed wooden wheelbarrow. Omar moved with haste to the back and took charge shoeing the boys away and shoving our luggage toward us. We strapped up our packs and headed for the passport office. I still wasn’t nervous.

The passport office operated with unyielding entropy and somehow order flowed out of disorder and within fifteen minutes we were out, heading for the gates separating Pakistan and Afghanistan. People and merchants flowed through the gates and in the crowd somewhere I saw a few armed guards randomly picking people to check. A sense of urgency swarmed in my stomach as I began to realize we were almost there—we’d been waiting so long in the purgatory of Peshawar and finally now I felt like our trip had begun.

After a couple nods from the guards we were through, no search, no questions. Omar looked over to us and said, “you are now in Afghanistan.” And I looked around. I wanted to take out my camera but Faridoon motioned no. I started snapping mental photos, which are better in a sense than two-dimensional still pictures because you can add other senses to the captured memory. People dressed more brightly. The air smelled sweater. The hum of foreign language suddenly swirled into rhythmic ballad. A sign stuck on the mountain to our left said, “Welcome to Afghanistan,” I wondered why it was in English.

Okay, I realize at the end of the above paragraphed I slipped into some sort of romantic description of reality, but truly, in reality, there was a noticeable difference between the two lands. The garbage strewn on the streets seemed to be gone, the crowd seemed to thin and the noise did lessen—I guess not as many people travel in this direction.

We had one more passport office stop, which again, was not an issue. I just gave my passport to Omar, he handed it to the official and I patted my chest while slightly bowing saying “salaam” to the man behind the desk.

We continued our walk away from the border in search of another taxi. A few men stepped to us and Omar started to haggle. He found one with air-conditioning, something I didn’t expect at all, but something that I’d later learn was a blessing.

A fish out of water

The vastness was amazing. I’d been to Montana before, driven through, it’s called “The Big Sky State. But here, everything is bigger. Giant brown mountains circling the horizon don’t cut down on the acreage of sky doming overhead. Stretches of rocky desert disappear before they hit foothills far in the distance. Rivers and green wash valleys spring from nowhere and cover the earth like Astroturf. Again, I found myself drunk with awe, I couldn’t believe I ever questioned coming on this trip.

Oops, this trip. I almost forgot the reason why I was here, rolling down a pockmarked road heading to Kabul, the town of his birth. I picked up my small, handheld video camera and asked him what he saw, felt.

“I feel,” Faridoon paused. “I feel like a fish that’s been out of water for a very long time, squirming, suffocating then suddenly put back in. I can breathe again.”

He continued to look around and describe the farmers in their mud huts, active, working the land, re-building. Other than the disproportionate amount of small, simple graveyards lining the road, it’s hard to tell that war ever stomped its foot here. He remembered stories of the beauty of the land and the rivers, specifically the rivers that his mother, father, aunts and uncles used to recall of the Old Country after they had moved to America. He said he remembered bits and pieces from his own childhood but now, seeing it again first hand with adult eyes, he understood the source of their passion.

“And,” Faridoon continued, his tone changing into teacher mode, which it had done often as he’s been dropping in-the-moment culture lessons on me then following up later with pop quizzes. “You’ll never find a more hospitable people in the world, that’s another thing that different than America.”

Check point Charlie

The taxi began to slow. At first I thought it was the hospitable driver doing another drive by check up on a broken down vehicle along the side of the road to offer help, but it was a check point. I thought we were done with those and I’d made myself and my gear comfortable in the back seat. I quickly pushed my still camera and my lenses to the floor and pulled my hand away from filming Faridoon’s face. I put the camera on my lap and scanned the car for something to cover it with, for some reason I thought that was a good idea, that the guards would be somehow suspicious of a video camera. I found my checkered scarf and put it over the camera on my lap and tucked the edges underneath trying unsuccessfully to make it look like a natural lump. But this strategy failed. As we rolled by, things seemed to be fine until the guard saw the blob. He ordered the driver to stop and me to roll down my window. He reached in and pulled off the scarf revealing my weapon. I’m sure he didn’t suspect a real weapon, but I’m pretty certain he didn’t like attempted deception. The driver was busy speaking to another guard on the other side. I looked at Faridoon. For some reason, I still wasn’t nervous and it seemed to pay off as the driver rolled up his window and we began to speed away leaving my guard’s arm reaching into nothing.

Phew, I thought and began to reach for my gear on the floor. We’d made it about one hundred yards when the driver slammed on his brakes and pulled over. He rolled down his window and hollered something behind him, jammed the car into reverse and sped back almost at the same speed he took off with. I still wasn’t nervous, and I swear I’m not just saying that to sound tough, there will be a point, I promise, where I am no longer not nervous.

Omar and the driver get out and walk to the trunk. Apparently the guard from my side not only doesn’t like attempted deception, but I don’t think he likes people to speed away while his hand is still inside a car. And, he has the gun, so the way he feels is really all that matters.

It took them about fifteen minutes to go through our bags. Could have been much worse and as we were driving away, this time for good, I learned it would have taken less time if they had known what the heck baby wipes were and what they were doing in Faridoon’s bag (I actually have them too, they are a great inside tip for traveling, don’t think I need to go into much more detail).

Skeleton bus

I learned along the way that before their exodus, the road between Kabul and Jalalabad had been one of Faridoon’s father’s projects. (Can’t remember if I mentioned him yet, but in the Old Country he’s known at Engineer Aziz and used to be a civil engineer working for the government heading many road building efforts before the Soviets invaded. He will play a much larger role in this blog in the days to come). Right now, we were passing through Jalalabad, one of the larger cities in Afghanistan but still pretty small compared to U.S. standards, it took us about a half hour to pass from one end of the city to the other and most of the delay was due to some sort of demonstration in city center—there were cameras and guns and a lot of people—we tried not to look too hard, rather, took advantage of the slow moving car to try to snap off some non-moving photos.

As we finally made it through the traffic jam and were heading more to the outskirts of the city, the taxi driver pointed to the left off the side of the road. I looked, scanning the shoulder but saw nothing. Then Faridoon pointed too saying it was further off the side of the road. I saw a small, upside down, charred remains of some sort of vehicle. It was so destroyed that only the skeleton of what seemed to be a bus was left. It was the UN bus blown up a few days ago, which killed three women and wounded many others. Now, on the side of the road, it sat there, drawing no real attention from the daily life buzzing by it, not even sticking out of the scenery too much as I had to sort of search for it. It’s sad, I thought to myself, when destruction and tragedy blend in to well to a place’s natural environment.

By the riverside I will rest my bones

After the city to road quickly deteriorated into what I could describe as a dirt road, if there were no giant rocks strewn all over. Suddenly we were off-roading in a Toyota Corrolla and it was fun! At first. Maybe because the driver was like a sure footed mountain goat behind the wheel cutting left, pulling right, avoiding any dangerous rocks and pot holes—his speed and agility made it feel like we were on an amusement park ride-- a mix between a roller coaster, the tea cups and bumper cars. But after about an hour of it and the realization that it wouldn’t end any time soon, fun became less of a word I’d used to describe the road.

I still had the scenery though and tried to keep my gurgling stomach at bay by checking out the jagged rock formations that began to form as we ascended higher into mountains and gorges. The mountainsides reminded me of Zion National Park in Utah—cut deep with a river flowing at the base of the valley then windswept so a sandpaper finish paints the rock face.

We turned a corner and the world flattened out for a stretch presenting us with a seeming oasis—the river slowed and widened, turned bright green and the area produced a tiny pine forest. We turned off to a real dirt road—meaning no boulders—and headed toward the bank. We parked and I was told it was lunch time. Faridoon’s aunt had packed us a lunch consisting of bread, hard-boiled eggs and salt. I love salt. We took a blanket and spread it on the ground. We sat with the driver, relaxed for a spell and ate.

“This is what I was talking about,” Faridoon said. “The beauty of the river, the picnic, this is what my relatives remember Afghanistan to be.”

How strange that we were living their memory. How strange that this experience didn’t even register on my list of expectations. Who would have though I’d be having a picnic in a war zone? I looked around.

About a hundred yards down there was a small, bridge and under it people were swimming. A hundred yards up there were some people tossing lines into the water trying to pull out some trout—they sell it from one of the villages further up the road. And right now beneath us, closer to the river, there was another group of men sitting on a blanket eating their lunch. They had fresh watermelon. They look up, saw us looking at them.

“Come on down, have some food,” one of them shouted up (Faridoon translated).

Faridoon looked at me.

“Afghan hospitality,” he said.

The driver went down, sat with the men. Faridoon, Omar and I politely turned them down, we were already full and we decided to dip our hands in the river and wash our faces.

It felt so good, refreshing. I joked with Faridoon, “It’s like you’re being baptized by Afghanistan, you’re a born again Afghan.”

He laughed.

When we packed up and readied to go, I got my first glance of sobering reality. Though they were there to do the same thing we had just done, have a peaceful lunch by a beautiful river, their presence still jolted me, reminded me of where I was.

A pick up truck rolled up, full in the back with about six men, head wrappings, long beards, rifles strapped over their shoulder. We got in the Corrolla, drove past them, I tried not to look, draw attention to myself with eye contact. After we were clear, Faridoon turned to me, “How’d ya like your first up close look at Taliban?”

Russian tanks

The rest of the trip to Kabul was pretty silent. The road was still throwing us around and we all just stared out the window, snapping photos every now and then of the more visible remnants of war that littered the street. This area was worse than before because the mujahadeen, which means holy warriors, or as Ronald Reagan used to call them, the Freedom Fighters, they used to sit up atop the mountains shooting rockets down onto the road as Russian tank convoys passed through, which is why the road was in such bad shape. Tanks, APVs and other metal objects were now fossils, giving hints to fragments of what the history could have been. I daydreamed and saw them come to life, heard the bombs screaming before impact, saw confused Russian soldiers scurrying around shooting aimlessly to the sky. War, destruction, killing, why? I don’t think that’s a question I’ll find an answer to on this trip.

For a photo essay of this leg of the trip, please click here.

Back in the Pak...

First off let me thank Francis for keeping to my blog duties way better than I and let me give a hearty apology for not being in touch more often-- i guess after a while of being "unplugged" one can get lost in some sort of idea that the rest of the world isn't that connected either.

With that, i've realized on this trip that i'm an addict. Not in the convential sense of sex, drugs and rock and roll-- the drink, i haven't even thought of a drop, the sex, well, out of sight out of mind is all i can come up with since i can't remember the last time i saw a female face... and the rock and roll, well, afghan music ain't the Bee Gees, but it ain't bad either. No folks, what i'm truly addicted to is this damn interweb thing and my friggin' cell phone. I'm serious-- the first few days were not bad but this last week i've been going bonkers. I'm so pissed at the sat phone company and i'm hoping to get my money back because it hasn't worked once. the most handy it would have come in if we did get into trouble would be for barter-- i heard terrorists really dig sat phones because they are more difficult to trace-- but then again, it may have pissed them off more if i tried to give them a bunk phone. let me scratch my head over that one for a while...

Also, it's true, i did email once when i was in kandahar for about a total of five minutes on a 14.4 modem running windows 95 that kept crahing... so i again apologize if i was not able to fire one off to you.

All this is long way of saying i'm back in Peshawar, Pakistan and fine. More than fine, considering a crazy 17 hour day of traveling. It was seriously crazy. we set out this morning in an plush isuzu SUV with the governor of Kandahar's son and a driver. they took us to the border of Pakistan. The border was fun as i was questioned by a passport officer who said i looked afghan and when i told him no, American, he asked what the hell i was doing there? was i a journlist? of course not, i answered because the last thing i want at the end of my trip is a tail by Paki intelligence, they're aren't too kind with journalists in this country, so i'm told. But after that check point, the first of about 2,000 today, we changed to a ratty taxi. This guy was genius. After being surrounded by guns, rocket launchers and war for 10 days, you'd think my worst fears of this trip would be over, but, not so fast. Curling up a winding mountain road at about 90 miles per hour passing trucks and tractors without regard for oncoming traffic wasn't even the scary part, it was only a warm up. when we decended the first mountain and pulled into a town, he stopped at a store/shack where you can get pepsi and biscuits and the such, but the guy that ran the shack brought him out a nice long stick of hash. i'll tell you, after this guy blazed he drove like a banchee, i mean he was in the zone, one with the pavement and i was hoping that i wouldn't become one with the pavement-- there's no ride on magic mountain that could even compare to this-- i rolled on a lot of it with my little video camera so hopefully it will be entertaining about a month from now. we somehow safely arrived in bordertown of Quetta and drove straight for the airport because we found out there was a flight leaving in two hours... after about five security check points and playing tetris with my luggage trying to repack time and again, we got on the plan and headed for islamabad, or so we thought. for some reason we ended up landing in karachi-- weather, thunderstorms or something they said had diverted us and we were destined to wait on the ground for a couple hours. finally we were airborne again and did make it this time to islamabad only to hop another taxi to the bus station to catch a bus to peshawar. But, the next bus was at 1 a.m. and it was only 10, so we got another taxi-- this guy was much, much tamer though, he actually drove the speed limit and wore his safety belt, which i found out later was because he hadn't slept in two days because he'd been working non stop trying to make extra cash. Awesome.

the check points along this road didn't cease and neither did the guard's curiosity with my stuff. at one point the officer made Omar, Faridoon's cousin who's been our arch angel on this trip, open the wrapper of a power bar i had stashed in the depths of my pack. he also loved the fact i was american and dressed like an afghan-- two countries i'm sure on his top ten list. the rest of the check points we decided just to bribe the cops-- the cash outweighed the hassle at this point. gotta love corruption.

so anyway, like i said, i'm here in peshawar more tired than a lost, wandering camel but so friggin' happy to have the internet, my crack pipe, back in hand. though i didn't have access whilst in kandahar i still kept a running blog and over the next couple days i'll post the entries and a few photo essays-- our flight doesn't leave here until july 13th.

and though i don't really believe francis that there've been people calling-- i honestly figured no one even really read this thing-- i'm sorry if anyone was worried, access to communication was unfortuanately mostly out of my control but i didn't act with any sense of urgency because i was totally safe the entire time-- it was truly amazing, i learned so much about this side of the world and what's really going on here, i can't wait to tell you, it's really much more of an optimistic situation than the news portrays.

so for now, good night, more posts will be coming as fast as i can edit.

Joe's fine...

It's Francis...Again...

All right, so I wasn't able to reach Joe directly but I spoke with one of his first hosts--a woman in Pakistan who I believe is Faridoon's aunt.

She said she heard from Joe's posse (my colloquialism not hers) two days ago. They were totally safe and having a great time.

She is totally in the know so if something had happened within the last two days she would have been notified.

Therefore: JOE'S GREAT!!!

While I have the stage, I'd like to give a subtle but anonymous shout out to an egomaniacal Joe fan who tunes in regularly and asked to be recognized...
"Yo, What up..."

On a serious note...

Joe,

Please know we're all psyched you're doing well. I've received many calls and e-mails with much love, respect, and worry...so keep up the work and have a good time. We'll see you when you get back.


Francis