They decided it was winter today

Will: Winter is slowly settling on Kabul. The early mornings are crisp and clear but the aafternoon air is thick with smoke from four million people trying to stay warm. Women rifle through piles of used clothes on rickety wooden trolleys by the side of the road, looking for warm clothes to keep their children warm. Men warm their hands over roadside fires, clad in leather jackets with scarves pulled tight over their heads. It’s November and everyone knows that the worst is to come: toilets freezing, pipes bursting, diesel heaters leaking, wooden stoves smoking, muddy impassable streets, and a cold so intrusive that people measure time in terms of how many winters they have survived. But I love how new seasons are heralded by slight senses: the air stiffens, the ground grows hard and the leaves tremble on the trees. It is a gentle knocking at the door, a clearing of the throat, a whisper of arrival. The peacocks know what’s coming and have taken to sleeping in the wood shed.  People gather in the kitchen around cups of tea and the warmth of the stove. We came home from work today to find a bukhari installed in our room and plastic sheets covering the windows. I couldn’t help feeling a little annoyed. When you’re living communally it seems that certain things are decided for you. I’ve been enjoying the view from those windows since we moved up here last week. A sharp westerly ridge dominates the skyline. It must be 15,000 feet high and has received the first dusting of snow. Apparently the management decided it was winter today.

 

The bukhari is a large metal drum packed with sawdust which sits in the centre of the room and burns intensely for about three hours. It is a popular form of heating here for those who can afford it. Think Doctor Zhivago: antiquated, romantic, brutally hot, but not so good when the wind blows the smoke back down the stove pipe and you are forced to rip off the plastic and open all the windows. One of our staff has acquired a briquetter. He pours sawdust from our carpentry school into it and watches with boyish delight as warm biscuits of compressed sawdust are spewed out into plastic sacks. A dozen briquettes burn at the same heat as a whole barrel of sawdust and therefore represent a significant saving on fuel over the course of a four month winter.

 

Our building work in the old city will finish for the winter at the end of this week. It will be too cold for the cob walls to dry. We are busy finishing roofs and making each site weatherproof. There will be a small team of barfshui whose job it will be to clear the snow from the flat mud roofs and a team of engineers who will do emergency repairs to houses which are in danger of collapse. Some of the families I have been visiting in the old city have neither doors nor windows. We have protected the most vulnerable homes and are systematically upgrading the whole area. The plastic sheeting they pin up keeps the weather out but provides no insulation whatsoever. In a few weeks, families will gather around low tables called sandali to sit out the winter. They will light a fire under the table and pull rugs up over their knees. In contrast, Lucy and I have managed to find two old leather armchairs. We picked them up from the side of the road. There is a label that describes them as ‘executive easy chairs’ belonging to the American embassy on route to New York. I think they must have been mislaid in the haste of the American evacuation in 1979. We shall sit in these armchairs next to the bukhari, drink some tea, perhaps smoke a pipe, and imagine that we are back beside the roaring Bay Tree cottage fire in Ramsden.

 

Escape to kingfisher valley

Will: Lucy and I escaped into the hills at the weekend. Our starting point was Istalif, an old village nestling at the foot of the Koh-e-Daman mountains on the edge of the Hindu Kush range. We drove there on a road that was built in 1906 by King Habibullah to accommodate the first ever car in Afghanistan. The road heads north out of Kabul across the Shomali plain through vineyards and farms towards Charikar where a whole Gurkha regiment was slain in 1841. There are over a hundred varieties of grape in this region and the roadsides are piled high with boxes full of grapes waiting to be taken all over the country. Looking out across the plain, it is sometimes possible to catch a glimpse of an old sayagi khane: a mud built drying room in which grapes are suspended and dried by wind passing through long slits in the walls. Driving on, we saw men trying to hitch a lift with large triangular bags of cheese, dripping with water in an attempt to keep it fresh. Istalif has long been a popular destination for Kabulis seeking refuge from the city on a Friday. It is famed for its brilliant turquoise pottery and beautiful orchards of pistachio, almond, mulberry, fig, and pomegranate. But the bazaar is quiet now and much of the village lies abandoned following a particularly brutal Taliban offensive in 2001. Many of the potters fled to Kabul but some have returned and we have been working closely with them to promote and preserve this distinctive Afghan tradition.

 

We wound our way out of the village on autumnal lanes bounded by beautiful stone walls and ancient mud houses. The river tumbled over large rounded rocks and men made their way down from the hills to the village mosque for Friday prayers. Small boys cajoled donkeys along the path, dragging long poplar beams back to repair their roofs before winter.  Old men rode past on horses and women made their way downhill spinning wool as they went. We passed a young chap chopping up a large block of walnut for fire wood. He looked as if he had stepped out of a fairy tale. He wore a skullcap and a long brown tunic tied at the waist with a leather belt. We wouldn’t have been surprised to see his lunch wrapped in a handkerchief on the end of a stick. The path took us through mulberry groves where men were busy filling large sacks with golden leaves to use as kindling through the winter. A small man invited us into his small house, which sat astride a tumbling stream and functioned as both a mill and a hydro-electricity plant. We reached a large plane tree which stood at the junction of two valleys and had some tea. It started to snow and we decided to turn back. For the first time since arriving I sucked in fresh mountain air and filled my lungs. On the way down a bright flash of blue drew our attention to a kingfisher perched on a rock beside the river. When we passed the woodcutter he had barely made any progress but seemed perfectly happy. We arrived back in the village high souled and free. The potters prepared some lunch for us and we slept on toshaqs in the afternoon sun.  Kabul seemed a million miles away. We bought some baskets from the bazaar and made our way back to the city.

 

As kingfishers catch fire and dragonflies draw flame;

as tumbled over rim and roundy wells, stones ring;

like each tucked string tells,  each hung bell’s

Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;

Each mortal things does one thing and the same:

Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;

Selves – goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,

Crying what I do is me: for that I came.

(Gerard Manley Hopkins 1844-89)

They decided it was winter today

Will: Winter is slowly settling on Kabul. The early mornings are crisp and clear but the aafternoon air is thick with smoke from four million people trying to stay warm. Women rifle through piles of used clothes on rickety wooden trolleys by the side of the road, looking for warm clothes to keep their children warm. Men warm their hands over roadside fires, clad in leather jackets with scarves pulled tight over their heads. It’s November and everyone knows that the worst is to come: toilets freezing, pipes bursting, diesel heaters leaking, wooden stoves smoking, muddy impassable streets, and a cold so intrusive that people measure time in terms of how many winters they have survived. But I love how new seasons are heralded by slight senses: the air stiffens, the ground grows hard and the leaves tremble on the trees. It is a gentle knocking at the door, a clearing of the throat, a whisper of arrival. The peacocks know what’s coming and have taken to sleeping in the wood shed.  People gather in the kitchen around cups of tea and the warmth of the stove. We came home from work today to find a bukhari installed in our room and plastic sheets covering the windows. I couldn’t help feeling a little annoyed. When you’re living communally it seems that certain things are decided for you. I’ve been enjoying the view from those windows since we moved up here last week. A sharp westerly ridge dominates the skyline. It must be 15,000 feet high and has received the first dusting of snow. Apparently the management decided it was winter today.

 

The bukhari is a large metal drum packed with sawdust which sits in the centre of the room and burns intensely for about three hours. It is a popular form of heating here for those who can afford it. Think Doctor Zhivago: antiquated, romantic, brutally hot, but not so good when the wind blows the smoke back down the stove pipe and you are forced to rip off the plastic and open all the windows. One of our staff has acquired a briquetter. He pours sawdust from our carpentry school into it and watches with boyish delight as warm biscuits of compressed sawdust are spewed out into plastic sacks. A dozen briquettes burn at the same heat as a whole barrel of sawdust and therefore represent a significant saving on fuel over the course of a four month winter.

 

Our building work in the old city will finish for the winter at the end of this week. It will be too cold for the cob walls to dry. We are busy finishing roofs and making each site weatherproof. There will be a small team of barfshui whose job it will be to clear the snow from the flat mud roofs and a team of engineers who will do emergency repairs to houses which are in danger of collapse. Some of the families I have been visiting in the old city have neither doors nor windows. We have protected the most vulnerable homes and are systematically upgrading the whole area. The plastic sheeting they pin up keeps the weather out but provides no insulation whatsoever. In a few weeks, families will gather around low tables called sandali to sit out the winter. They will light a fire under the table and pull rugs up over their knees. In contrast, Lucy and I have managed to find two old leather armchairs. We picked them up from the side of the road. There is a label that describes them as ‘executive easy chairs’ belonging to the American embassy on route to New York. I think they must have been mislaid in the haste of the American evacuation in 1979. We shall sit in these armchairs next to the bukhari, drink some tea, perhaps smoke a pipe, and imagine that we are back beside the roaring Bay Tree cottage fire in Ramsden. 

Tragedy and Comedy in Kabul

Will: Ancient Greeks used to tell the story of two philosophers. One came out of his front door every morning and roared with laughter. The world was so comical that he couldn’t help it. The other came out and burst into tears. The world was so full of sorrow that he couldn’t help it. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry this morning when a mother showed me a martyr’s photo of her son who had died recently; crushed by a falling wall whilst squatting over the loo. Comedy and tragedy thrive in Afghanistan, probably because there is so little order. Recent weeks have seen a spate of kidnappings and the murder of a friend’s friend. There has been a suicide bomb at the ministry of culture and friends of ours have left the country. 8.4 million Afghans are suffering from ‘chronic food insecurity’ caused by rising global food prices and a summer drought. Some of the ladies from our embroidery programme were beaten for having left the neighbourhood to have their eyes checked and one of my staff apparently received a death threat this morning for having shaken hands with a foreign man - me. Equally, I was presented with a parrot during a meeting this week and told by the headmaster of our school that he desperately needed a ‘reproduction room’ (for photocopying). In another meeting a man stated that a ‘secret bullet’ was what was needed to solve a particular voting problem.  I have tried to have a serious conversation with a man who had a chocolate cake stuck half way down his white beard and watched as one of my senior afghan colleagues gave an interview to an international agency saying how proud he was to work for the Turkish Foundation. Our armed guards spend most of their time trying to coax the Peacock down from the tower and my driver asked today if we had dinosaurs in England. But perhaps the funniest story is told by a friend of ours who saw a cart loaded so high with sacks of potatoes that the cart was upended and the poor old donkey suspended in mid air.  The cars grew tired of waiting and started to drive underneath the donkey until some of the cart’s cargo had been removed.

 

Lucy: street scenes and exhibition update

The art exhibition has been taking up most of my energy for the past two weeks since its opening on 10th October. The education programme is now in full swing with one to two high schools visiting every day. It has been a great pleasure to see so many pupils passing through the exhibition with their teachers and tour guides, and asking many questions about the art work. Quite often, the teachers look as surprised as the pupils to see such an unusual collection of art in the most civilised of locations. Most of the schools come from the local district around the restored palace and gardens where the exhibition is being held. Many of the students have not ever visited before, and we hope that this unique opportunity to have a morning off timetable will stimulate their minds and extend their capacity to think outside of the box. We’re looking forward to welcoming other groups in the next few weeks from an orphanage, a primary school, a women’s training centre, and a school for the deaf! On days when the public can come in, we’ve received up to 1000 visitors. In between visits, I’ve enjoyed trying out my faltering Dari on the ten guards that watch over the art work in the exhibition. In turn the younger men like to practise their English on me, and tell me about their plans to study and work abroad. They have asked me to buy them British visas, and are not convinced when I attempt to explain that the consular section doesn’t quite work like that! They are curious to talk to a foreign woman, and although they are kind, helpful, respectful and protective, I often wonder what exactly they are thinking. Is it… “she seems normal enough, I wonder why we don’t talk to more women” or is it “I wonder if she is a stripper like all other western women?”.

On car journeys through the city, you pass by scene after scene of Afghan life, full of colour, noise, smell and dust. Sometimes the things you see make you laugh out loud, sometimes they make you cringe, and sometimes it all feels just a bit too much like a film. It makes me laugh to see rows of shops that all sell exactly the same thing, for example, there’s “Plastic Chair Street”, “Metal Tubing Street”, “Kitchen Cupboard Street” and even “Car Window Street”. I suppose they are all modern-day versions of the better known Chicken Street, Bird Street and Flower Street. It makes me wonder to see herds of goats and big-bottomed sheep making their way up the centre of a 6-lane carriageway, courageously ambling out into the path of speeding cars, motorbikes and bicycles, in pursuit of the next tasty nibble of food. I admire the drivers here who consistently manage to swerve to avoid animals, children, men with fruit carts, boisterous police vehicles and the rest of the road traffic, at times with literally millimetres to spare! The herds of sheep, goats and the occasional donkey are taken around the city to graze on the rubbish that collects at the side of the street. There is no refuse system here to clear it away, and the animals do an excellent job of taking out the edible waste. The donkeys have a hard time of it when they’re not grazing, typically carrying heavy loads for their master, but I was touched to drive past the Kabul donkey pit-stop today, where the local mules are able to stop off for a long drink of water, and a rest before carrying on with the day’s work!

Perhaps my limited descriptions above will help to show that, despite a poor press recently, life in Kabul continues much as usual, for Afghans and for foreigners. It is important to remember that Afghanistan isn’t just a news report of desert, Taleban fighters, armies and RPGs.

Winning arts and minds

Will: Those interested in this part of the world may be accustomed to hearing about our ‘brave boys’ or a ‘Taliban comeback’ but are probably not so used to hearing about international art exhibitions.  It is no small wonder then that a friend of ours has just organised a world-class exhibition of contemporary Islamic art in Kabul. She is working with Turquoise Mountain and has managed to attract some of the most prestigious galleries around the world to contribute to an exhibition of contemporary art in the Queen’s Palace in Babur’s Garden. Paintings, graphic design, neon lights, animated film, and installations have been arriving in all sorts of outsized wooden boxes from cities like London, New York, Lahore, Melbourne, and Tehran. The exhibition is called, ‘Living Traditions’ and draws together art from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran. Each piece of art incorporates elements of traditional Islamic and regional artistic heritage whilst responding to modern challenges of modernisation and political unrest. It is the first event of its kind here and has been funded partly for its role in fostering cultural dialogue as well as exposing young Afghan artists to their own artistic heritage.

 

The opening ceremony was a curious mix of international gallery glamour and amateur Afghan adventure. The Vice President arrived in a cavalcade of five silver armoured landcruisers, but not before the secret police had cleared the road in a furious frenzy of whistle-blowing, baton-waving, and walkie-talkie hysteria. Numerous ambassadors were driven through the gates at high speed behind blackened windows and surrounded by their close protection teams. Doing his best to keep up was a plucky ice-cream seller. I was in charge of VIP parking along with Imatollah, a delightful and calm man from the local neighbourhood. The Agha Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) has reformed and employed local ‘rough diamonds’ from the area surrounding Babur’s Garden to act as guards. They know every undercurrent of activity in the area and provide an effective guard against local criminality. However, even they were at a loss when the ice-cream seller turned up with his little trolley full of Cornettos and Magnums. The secret service ordered the police to search it for explosives; the police ordered the local guards and they in turn looked to me for guidance. “I’ll search it.” I said, but the trolley was quickly surrounded and in typical fashion, a compromise was struck and the ice-creams were brought in on trays.

 

Ministers, ambassadors, journalists, and numerous dignitaries circulated between the various rooms. Some sat to watch a short animated film by Jila Peacock on seven poems by Hafez; others gathered around several site specific installations such as Zolaykha Sherzad’s  fine silk dress adorned with Qur’anic verse suspended from the ceiling. Of particular interest to me was a set of abstract paintings by Nusra Latif Qureyshi and Mohammad Imran Qureyshi from Lahore, based on elements from the miniature painting tradition. A large painting by Khosrow Hassanzadeh of two Iranian wrestlers (pahlawan) accompanied by different figures from Iranian society asked interesting questions about modern role models. A miniature painting depicting the great Rustam from the Shahmaneh (a Persian epic by Firdausi) as a beast in chains was among the most controversial. The Hazara artist who painted it felt that the dominant story of his childhood had been appropriated and abused by the Taliban. There were speeches by the head of the AKTC (who have restored Babur’s Gardens beautifully), the Vice President, the deputy minister for information and culture and our friend, the Turquoise Mountain Director for Culture. A traditional Afghan lunch was served and people settled on brightly coloured kilims to eat large plates of Kabuli Pilau. Threats of a car bomb encouraged some to leave early. Others mingled and enjoyed the plates of ice cream, which had finally reached their destination.

 

The Queen’s Palace was built by Abdur Rahman Khan in the 1880s for his wife but had long fallen into disrepair until last year when the AKTC finished restoring it. It is now one of Kabul’s most beautiful sites and comprises three wings set over two floors arranged around a large lawn. It is set against a backdrop of simple mud and concrete houses climbing up the barren and rocky heights of the Sher Darwaza mountain behind. To the front the western suburbs of Kabul are dominated by the large blue dome of an Iranian built mosque and the Paghman mountains beyond. In the next six weeks, 3000 school children will be taken around the exhibition using educational packs that have been put together by Lucy. It will be open to the public at weekend. This morning, there must have been nearly a thousand members of the public who strolled in from the gardens to have a look. Some Afghans I spoke to dismissed the art as ridiculous and only interesting to foreigners. Others were deeply impressed that their artists could put such a professional display together in their own country. It will be interesting in the weeks to come to see how these works of art are received: whether they influence and inspire, or provoke and promote cultural exchange. However it is received, it must be counted a great success in a country that is struggling to emerge from three decades of conflict and is faced with an uncertain future.

 

The mason and the mechanic

Will: I was invited to take part in a shura this week. One of our masons had been hit around the head with an iron bar by a local mechanic. Shura is taken from an Arabic word meaning ‘consultation’ and describes a traditional Islamic approach towards socio-political organisation. An elderly alim (religious scholar) sat next to a younger Mullah at the head of the room. The mullah’s name was Qari Abdul Ahad. He is a well known local mullah and also happens to be the brother of the mason. I took my place beside the alim having greeted the other fifteen reesh safed (white beards) who sat cross-legged around the room. Our senior engineer Hedayatullah Ahmedzai conducted the meeting from his knees in the middle of the room. The wounded mason sat meekly in the corner by the door, sporting a large dressing on the side of his head. Next to him sat the mechanic’s father, looking perplexed, as the elders set about deciding his son’s fate.

 

The mullah spoke with restrained anger, appealing both to the Qur’an and the alim beside him as he sought justice for his family. It was difficult to see what his eyes were doing behind his gold rimmed aviator sunglasses but his words came in a torrent of Qur’anic recitation. His anger boiled and his demands on the community grew increasingly unrealistic. He was allowed to continue in this fashion for a good fifteen minutes until interrupted by an elder sitting to his left. Pleas for restraint came from the floor and the mullah retreated once again to the Qur’an for a just penalty. Nobody, it seemed to me, really knew what the Qur’an had to say in this particular case. It was enough apparently, simply to refer to its inherent authority as if it was the word made flesh with us in the room. At this point, the mechanic was brought in. He greeted the mullah kissing him on both cheeks before shaking hands with the rest of the elders. He took his place between the wounded mason and his father.

 

The engineer took the mullah by the hand and dragged him outside. The room collapsed into a frenzy of argument and counter-argument as the remaining elders offered their opinions. I heard a sheep offered as a sufficient penalty, then two, but the discussion soon settled on an appropriate sum of blood money to be paid in compensation to the mason’s family. The engineer and mullah returned to be told that 15,000 Afghanis should be paid as blood money. The mullah stroked his long black beard.  He was indignant and pressed for more with the engineer in support. They settled on 30,000 Afghanis ($600) despite pleas for leniency from most of the elders. The engineer wasted no time in scribbling down the agreement. The mason and mechanic were thrust forward and were made to sign the agreement. The engineer grabbed the mechanic’s hand and forcefully pressed his thumb into the inkpad and then on to the paper document. The money was produced and thrown into the centre of the room. The engineer took the mechanic and beat him around the head and body in a show of rage, turning as he did so to let us see the mischievous smile which had crept across his face. Afterwards, he privately encouraged the mullah to return half of the money to the mechanic’s family. The shame of receiving such a heavy fine in public would be enough to deter others from repeating the same offence. Too harsh a penalty would kindle resentment.

 

There are a number of important lessons in all this. State intervention was seen as ineffective and unnecessary. The community’s instinctive response was to overlook the local police, as an instrument of state, in favour of the traditional shura. Justice was administered according to a consensus amongst the community’s elders, which emphasises their authority within the community and denies any opportunity for private revenge. The consensual element in this procedure works because of the non-confrontational way in which the shura is conducted. The mechanic and mason were sat side by side as their elders discussed their fate. The decrepit alim who sat in the corner was unable to say much, but his mere presence, as the most senior member of the community, commanded everyone’s respect. The mullah was allowed to vent his anger and the community were able to participate in deciding the final penalty. Consequently, they have a responsibility to make sure that the penalty is enforced. The mechanic was humiliated in front of all the elders by being beaten and thrown out of the room. However, this was done in such a way that he remained part of the community due to the engineer’s quasi-comical beating.

 

The contrast with our own legal system is striking. It is likely that the mechanic would have been arrested, charged with aggravated assault, perhaps awarded an ASBO, bailed, and released back into the community. This whole process removes him from the community and identifies him as a criminal. It deprives the mason and his family the opportunity to express their anger and to participate in the administering of justice. Ultimately, it weakens the community. The mechanic is not held accountable to anyone in the community, allowing him to continue whacking people around the head. The community is powerless to impose their authority. The mason remains a victim and is unlikely to benefit from any penalty imposed on the mechanic by the government. Whilst consensual and consultative governance is preferable to authoritarian decree, it is only possible in the Afghan context because of the authoritarian influence of the community’s elders.

Fruity business

Lucy: There’s one thing (amongst others) that Afghanistan does very well, which is fruit and veg. I’m always slightly surprised when driving through the city to see stall upon stall of the biggest, brightest, most colourful fruit and veg you’ve ever seen! They seem such an anomaly in the dusty, brown landscape that surrounds them. Where did they find all the nutrients to develop those colours?! Some of the prize winning specimens are giant tarbuz (watermelons) that are sometimes over a foot long, enormous cauliflowers bigger than your head, lovely plump tomatoes that an Italian would be proud of, and bright red pomegranates in abundance. And grapes… you’ve never seen so many. There seem to be endless varieties, all deliciously sweet and seedless. The wine lover in me weeps for the lost opportunity to make probably some of the best wine in the world!

Another hidden treasure of Afghanistan are the gem mines. Lapis Lazuli, rubies, emeralds and sapphires are all found in the deep folds of rock to the north east of Kabul. I did some research recently to look into the state of the gem mining industry here and was troubled to discover that 90-95% of the gems mined here go straight to Pakistan. The low-value stones are cut for the domestic Pakistan market and the high-quality stones are sent around the world for accurate cutting for the western markets. Because of this, Afghanistan gains little value from its gemstones, perhaps just over $2million annually, although it is hard to estimate as the industry is completely unregulated. It has been suggested however that the potential annual value of the industry would be $160million if the country was able to exploit its gem mines fully using better mining techniques. It has been reported that in areas where gem mining is successful, the poppy cultivation has completely disappeared. What potential there is! And my hopes for a sapphire ring this Christmas are steadily increasing…

Will: first week in Kabul

We are now officially resident in Kabul having been registered by a transsexual dwarf in our local post office. She-err-he-sat behind a desk with an air of absolute authority in an office full of men all trying very hard not to look her. I saw her as I entered the office. She was wearing a karakuli hat; a hat normally reserved for tribal elders. She looked at me and I lowered my gaze, taking in her tiny men's sandals underneath the desk. I was still feeling a little delicate having just had my hair cut. The barber shop banter had been going quite well until I asked the barber's son, "When you grow up, would you like to become a son-of-a-bitch like your father?" What I had meant to say was, "Would you like to become a barber like your father?" Unfortunately for me, the word that I head learnt as barber, 'dalok', is now used as a fairly serious insult. In revenge, I was ejected from the salon with a hair cut that is somewhere between Gary Barlow and Gary Rhodes and managed to draw more attention in the post office than the transsexual dwarf.

Despite this mild setback, we have made a good start here. Lucy has made astonishing progress both in researching the gemstone industry in Afghanistan and in learning Dari. This is a bit worrying for me. I am supposed to be able to speak this language but the first words I said to the cook this morning were, "Me go pancake." Even more worrying is the fact that I was asked to translate for Grahame, one of our architects, as he taught some students from a local college how to make energy efficient structures from mud. We mixed 40 barrows of mud with 7 sacks of straw in an 8ft square pit by rolling up our trousers and trampling it all in. The students however had other ideas. Most of them live in a hostel and did not want to have to wash their clothes. More seriously, the students found it almost impossible to entertain the idea that a mud mason might actually have something to teach them. There is a great deal of snobbery here. Should the students return to their villages being able to construct a building that not only requires less maintenance but is stronger and warmer than existing structures, their status could be significantly improved.

My work here requires me to coordinate a programme of restoration and urban regeneration in a quarter of Kabul's old city. It was once a thriving commercial district and home to some of the city's finest houses on the banks of the Kabul river. But the area has suffered from years of decay, warfare, and ill-advised urban planning and had been condemned in a previous east German master plan. We are conserving some of its most significant buildings, including a beautiful 19th century serai which has three courtyards and will eventually house the Institute for Traditional Afghan Arts and Architecture. I am also developing our community development work. The community is a pluralist mix of sunni and shi'a landowners, tenants and squatters, most of whom are too poor to afford the subsidised medicine from our clinic. There are high levels of TB, Hep B, and malnutrition; human and household waste is emptied in the street or dumped in the river; and much of the housing stock is on the point of collapse. We are working with the community to install drainage, sanitation, sewerage, and waste disposal and have set up a school. The community development work also extends to a village north of Kabul where Turquoise Mountain is working with the potters's community to produce high quality tiles based on traditional designs which will be used in restoration projects and exported to international markets. For more details see www.turquoisemountain.org


Istalif is a beautiful village of mulberry and fig trees nestled amongst the foothills of the Hindu Kush. Much of it was destroyed by the Taliban but people have begun to move back and the potters are throwing again. The village is renowned for the deep turquoise lustre of its pottery and traders come from far and wide to buy whole kilns of Isalifi pottery for sale throughout Afghanistan. On this occasion, I accompanied one of our international potters into the mountains to get GPS coordinates for various sites where betters sources of clay have been identified.

Lucy: Arrival and settling in to the fort

Salaam from Kabul!

I am writing from the office of Turquoise Mountain which looks out over the western part of the city. Now it's the afternoon, the dust has been stirred up enough to yellow the air and partially obscure the mountains that surround us. The sun is shining however, and it is hot! In fact, the weather so far has been lovely - warm sunny mornings, with a cool breeze that gets stronger with the heat to produce the dust clouds that fill the afternoon. Admittedly, Kabul isn't a very pleasant place to drive through when it's hot, dusty and smelly, but the fort where we are living is a real sanctuary. Since we were here two years ago, there are trees, plants, flowers and grass all growing in the courtyard where our bedroom is. It is also home to a peacock and a peahen, baby pigeons, Pahlawan the dog, and apparently a centenarian tortoise called "The General" who doesn't seem to have appeared from his hibernation this year.

It is Ramadan at the moment, which presents its own challenges for the nationals working at the foundation. An early start with a pre-sunrise meal gives them enough strength to start work. While the non-muslims in the office wander off to the kitchen for cups of tea and biscuits during the morning, the rest are left trying to keep their mind off food and the thirst that comes on easily because of the dusty air. Lunch is eaten away from those who can't have it. Muslims have to keep their fast until 6pm, but fortunately they are given time off from 2pm to go home and rest. That means that come the afternoon, the office falls quiet, except for the international workers who can't seem to stop working, even into the evening. Will is doing his best to catch up on a rapidly expanding job description, so he may well have to join the worker ants in the evening for a while.

While Will has been working I've been resting, but I've also gone on a few visits - I went with some colleagues here to a clothes shop yesterday to buy some shalwar kameez outfits (trouser and tunic combos with a matching scarf). Although I was sceptical at first, I now love my new outfits as it's just like wearing pyjamas! I also feel more comfortable out in the city as I fit in better. The tunic comes right down to my knees, and the headscarf swathes me in material to cover my head and most of my upper body. Dressed like this, I visited the Kabul museum today with Helen who is a visiting woodwork advisor here. There isn't a huge amount in the museum but we studied what we saw with great interest, as they are some of the few artefacts that remain having been rescued before the Taliban destroyed them back in the late 90s. The scars of Taliban destruction could still be seen on some of the buddhas which had their noses chopped off and on statues of animals that had been reconstructed after they had been smashed to pieces. It gave a very small glimpse of the vast pre-islamic heritage of this country with buddhas, pagan statues and royal jewellery dominating the collections.

The next week will bring lots of new experiences and surprises, i'm sure! Until then...