Kabul diary week one

Monday

I have already overstayed by several weeks my planned journey of only a few days, sucked into the Kabul vortex. Despite the fact that it’s a warzone and talk is that the country is going to hell in a hand-basket, life is good.

It’s probably really good for those who are laundering money, and a lot of that goes on. My flight from Dubai is full of men wearing shalwar kameez, and oddly all carrying matching briefcases. It could be a convention, but I suspect they are returning having deposited cash in Dubai, where so much of the stolen money goes.

Tonight I am invited to dinner. My host is a member of the royal family, a lovely man. All over the walls of his house are pictures of Afghan men from decades and centuries ago. "Who are they?" I ask.

Kings, prime ministers, more kings and princes, he says.

Unfortunately all men with moustaches look the same. I must take better care to vet the people I hang out with.

Kabul is full of interesting people, it’s one of the reasons people get sucked into the vortex. That night a French woman, sinewy, with a harsh potato eaters face a la Van Gogh, gives massages to friends. She teaches street children circus skills.

Tuesday

The Kabul social scene moves at a hectic pace. Tonight there is a screening of a film, Reel Unreel, at a bombed out cinema in the old city. What an astonishing place. The peeling paint is from decades ago and an ugly faded hospital green. There is exposed brick and craters in the concrete. Red fold up lawn chairs are set up under the open air, the roof collapsed long ago, in front of a large screen.

Zalmai, the well-known Afghan-Swiss photojournalist, snaps pictures.

Policemen in Clouseau-like uniforms watch as locals, women in burqas and children, as well as ex-pats, gather.

I miss the movie, which doesn’t get great reviews. I gather it is over 20 minutes long and is about a boy rolling an old metal film reel through the streets of Kabul. However, I am around for dinner, held at the Queen’s Palace. Meticulously restored by the Aga Khan Foundation, lanterns hang from trees and people sit on large Afghan rugs ringed by toshaks, large cushions.

Afghan food is served and particularly delicious is the orange rice, delicate, lightly fragrant. It is a small gathering during which I talk to Zolayka, one of the many Afghan ex-pats who returned after the war. Trained as an architect, she now designs clothes inspired by Afghan materials and traditions under the label Zarif.

Wednesday

dOCUMENTA comes to Kabul. It is the first time that this prestigious international contemporary art project has been held in a warzone.

Established in 1955, it takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany,(as well as Banff and Cairo/Alexandria). It has been brought to Afghanistan by the Goethe Institute, and has chosen the Queen’s Palace for the exhibition, an astonishing location, with views over the mountains that form a chanin around the capital. Five international Afghan artists were selected in the process, which began two and a half years ago.

Zolayka Sherzad has made an oversized Chapan, the coat that Karzai wears. Zalmai photographs transformed weapons of war.

By the time we leave that night the lights across Kabul run up and down the hills. Certainly, this is progress. But the electricity comes from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. "They can just switch it off anytime they like," says a friend.

Thursday

My new friend Habib, who I met at dOCUMENTA, picks me up in his 1966 Russian Volga, and takes me to a school where 13,000 children go everyday, studying in two-hour shifts. He wants to show me the appalling condition it’s in. What he is most incensed about is the loo situation. They stink. They stink because there is no money to take away the waste. They cannot afford toilet paper. There is no water.

Kids wipe their hands on the walls. It does not bear thinking about.

As we talk, a boy of about 16, makes a rude hand gesture to my female American friend who has joined us on this mission. She is now incensed and tells Habib and the acting principal, who is with us.

They catch up to the boy and reprimand him. "This is what is wrong with Afghanistan," she says. "They have no respect for foreign women.

Nothing will change if this continues." She talks to another boy, who complains that there is no discipline in the school, and she says he must set an example, and adds, "why do you boys do that. You have mothers and sisters and cousins." He looks sheepish.

A few hundred dollars would fix the loo situation for six months, but more would need to be raised to put glass in the windows. People on an individual basis want to help, but no one is interested in changing the system – not USAID, which funds many projects, or the Ministry of Health or Education.

Friday

It’s the weekend and brunch is the main activity on a Friday. In the spring and summer what better way to spend it than outside eating at Le Jardin, which has recently opened its large premises and vast garden. I order Salade Nicoise, although the Afghans I am with don’t trust the cleanliness, and they go for omelettes. Someone orders a giant raspberry coloured macaron with vanilla ice cream. A little chewy but remarkable all the same.

An Afghan friend of mine arrives from Badakhshan. He has started a café in the capital, Faizabad, and with it a debating society. I love this idea.

Later we call a jeweller, who comes to the restaurant with his rings and things. Afghanistan has amazing gems – emeralds, lapis lazuli, and almost everything but diamonds. The first two are owned by the mafia.

It is cheaper to buy Afghan stones in London than in Kabul; they are smuggled out.

Saturday

A case of beer now costs $140.00. It’s getting more and more difficult to source, The dealer who delivers the alcohol, at some risk, has so many people to pay off. He leaves my friend some hash, although my friend doesn’t smoke, and watches TV with a group of us for a while. He is getting married on Monday, although he wasn’t even engaged a few weeks ago. Tajik vodka seems readily available if you are brave enough to try it. The shop at the corner sells it.

Speaking of marriage, I use Trust taxis to get around the city. There are number of car services that cater to foreigners. They know where everyone lives, know the gossip, and can tell you who goes to what party.

The drivers speak English, and are great. One conversation is about the pull out. There is anxiety about the future. Where will money and jobs come from? We get on to this topic talking about weddings. Karzai has banned big weddings due to the outrageous expense, but no one seems to take any notice. The figures are mind boggling. It’s not unusual for these – by all accounts deadly dull affairs - to cost $30,000. Remember that this is the poorest nation outside of sub Saharan Africa.

That includes renting the wedding hall, food, inviting everyone you have ever known, and spending literally thousands of dollars on gold jewellery for the bride. People are in debt for years.

Sunday

It is difficult to convey how easy life is for those of us privileged to be in Kabul at this time. Some say it is like Saigon during the Vietnam War. There were lots of good times against a dramatic backdrop.

Like Saigon in the final days before the Viet Cong took over, you can see how the restaurants aren’t quite as busy as they were, the big projects – supported by institutions like USAID – are losing their funding, people are leaving, heading for the next big story. The large poppy palaces built in a Pakistani style that have mushroomed over the past several years have For Rent signs stuck up when once they would have had security companies and large NGOs as tenants.

House prices are down significantly from even last year. A friend is selling an old family house that has been restored. He has had to pay a $16,000.00 bribe in order to process the sale. If he doesn’t he was told he would have to wait two years before they would let the sale go through.

Security in Kabul is reasonable. Things are fine until they aren’t, but the mood is fairly gloomy, everyone is waiting. Just like the fall of Saigon in 1975 and the largest helicopter evacuation in history, everyone is waiting for that last chopper? flight out before the city goes dark.