Go with the flow

Lucy: One of the first lessons to be learnt by an international worker newly arrived in Afghanistan is that doing ‘work’ here just doesn’t happen in the way that it does back home. Some of us fight to keep to our well-established work routines but inevitably end up in a frenzy of frustration and madness at our much depleted levels of work output.

For the past three years back in the UK, I’d arrive at school by 8am, and hit the ground running. Sometimes it seemed that there was barely a second to say hello to your colleagues between 8.00am and the start of the day at 8.20am, while pupils came to your classroom to hand in money for school trips, and lessons had to be prepared. I wouldn’t stop until getting home in the late afternoon, only to face a pile of books that needed marking. This week I have sauntered in to work late three times, because all the traffic heading into town was being stopped by the police and the ‘tunis’ (minivans like the one that we travel in) were being turned back. No one knows why, but I suspect they may have had a threat warning of a planned attack. Back in Witney a small 10 metre long traffic jam on West End used to bring me out in a cold sweat but here I am more complacent. We’re in a country where things don’t run smoothly, and where you can’t control every minute of your day. Security alerts and road blocks are just one example. When I finally reach the office, I embark upon a great frenzy of kissing. Not the men, mind you. Just the ladies, some with a burqa thrown back over their heads, who take great pleasure in grabbing your hand and giving you three smackers on alternating cheeks. Then comes the awkward flood of greetings that take us reserved English types a good few months to get the hang of. It consists of two people asking a succession of questions to each other, in a sort of verbal competition to outdo the other with enquiries into their health, house and those of their family and family’s family. None of these questions are actually answered, right until the very end, when all possible variations of ‘how are you?’ have been spent, and the poor looser who didn’t have the last word has to give up with “thank you, may you live long”. An example of such a conversation goes like this (no apologies for my embryonic Dari):

Lucy - Salaam aleykum!
Opponent - Salaam aleykum Lucy jan! Khobasti? Chitorasti?
Lucy - Jan et jorast? Khana kheratist?
Opponent - Bahair asti? Jorasti?
Lucy - Jahan e jorast? Subhat bahair?
Oppon - Taklak tayar asti? Mandana bashi!
Lucy - (Aaah!) Tashakor! Zenda bashi!

Lucy - Hello! (Peace be with you!)
Opponent - Hello dear Lucy! Are you well? How are you?
Lucy - Is your soul prepared? Is your house well?
Opponent - Are you well? Are you prepared?
Lucy - Is your soul prepared? Is your morning good?
Opponent - Is your strength ready? May you not grow weary!
Lucy - (Aaah!) Thank you! May you live long!

Ten minutes later, and you’re ready to sit down at your desk. “Tea?” somebody asks. And soon we’re all sipping away and eating Chinese sweets. Conversation ensues, as I try to log on to my computer and get my emails. More and more people arrive in the office and sit on chairs placed around the edge of the room. I wonder if they’re here for a meeting. I soon realise they’re not. I try to get on with some work, and ask my boss a few questions in stilted Dari, which only invites a flurry of comment and, thankfully, compliment from around the room. Then begins the daily enforced English-Dari conversation exchange where someone points at an object in the room, and I have to say the word in English. I am asked to test them on their new list of English words, and spend a few minutes correcting spellings and meanings (I wondered why one of them had been taught the verb “to dash” when I realised that they were actually being taught the verb “to run”). Finally I start to type an email, and am soon surrounded by inquisitive faces trying to peer over my computer screen to see what I am doing. Someone spots the photo of our village in the UK which I have got as my computer wallpaper and asks to see more. By the time we’ve finished it’s 11.30am and time for another cup of tea. I’ve done nothing all morning and decide to get a move on. I ask the boss if we can have a meeting, but he looks at me inquisitively and says “but it’s almost lunchtime”. He’s right - cutlery and plates have already arrived, computers have gone into energy saving mode and more people have come back into the office again. We eat a very decent lunch, and take our time over it. In the afternoon, the electricity goes off. I manage to work for two hours before my ageing computer battery gives up the ghost and I decide it’s time to go home.

Over the course of the day, I achieve perhaps half as much as what I would back home. When I write something, I have to wait three days for it to be translated. Conversations take double the time because everything has to be interpreted into and out of Dari. When the translator is not here, it’s hardly worth the effort, because the degree of misunderstanding in a discussion usually leads to nothing being decided at all. But 5 months after arriving here, I’m over it. It was rewarding, inspiring and exciting to work for the past three years in a school with a highly polished routine and high output of ideas and creativity. But a lunch time of conversation with colleagues was rare, a break time even rarer. Here, output may be slow but relationships count. Problems are shared, achievements are celebrated amongst colleagues. Piles of celebratory biscuits are eaten each month and morning meetings might be spent in communal prayer for a lost relative. I would dare to suggest that many Afghans see their co-workers as family, the workplace as a space for socialising as well as working. And why not? Yes, Afghanistan may be struggling economically, but just you wait. One day a big American corporation will decide that its employees need training in relational skills, and who better to step in than a team of Afghans?

Below - a boy tells a story to his classmates during afternoon story club. I'm afraid I couldn't work out how to rotate the clip!

Hammams

Will: I spent the morning with two of our architects in the old city. We walked across the pul-e-paysagi bridge and up to Jade Maiwand. This is a large road that cuts right through the old city on the south side of the river. It was a great feeling of exhiliaration simply to be able to walk. I saw a man cycling with the dismembered parts of a cow strung out all over him and his bike. The intestines were slung over the handlebars, the hooves round his neck and the head and skin strapped to a carrier rack at the back. There were huge stockpiles of wood and carts full of bright red oranges. We entered the first hammam, built in the 60s and were able to have a look round, but not to take photos. It was not hard to imagine whiling away the winter hours here in the warmth with the sound of men’s voices reverberating around the arched hallways and water trickling back down into the drain. One man was astride another in the corner lathering him up. I didn’t look to closely but this sort of male intimacy is quite normal. The hammam is open from 04:30 until 18:00 and people come and wash here daily. The proprietor wanted to give us something to remember him by and so despatched a small boy who returned minutes later with cans of Fanta. Outside there was a stall selling large pants with zipped pockets in the front and pumice stone. It also sold a brown rock which when wet produces a sort of shampoo. We walked on and Mohammad Nazir hailed a car. We piled in but the traffic was so bad that we ended up walking again to Pakhta Firushi bazaar where they sell a lot of pakhta – a cotton like white insulating material in great sacks. We turned off the main street down a small alley heading south. Although Jade Maiwand must have destroyed much of the traditional fabric of the old city, behind the ugly facades there still exist some real treasures. We entered an old hammam called Kitab firushi. The first hall was not particularly impressive. There was a man washing his son. But the second atrium must have been at least 150 years old. It was a perfectly vaulted hall with light streaming in from three sky lights. There was a tiled fountain in the middle of the room and private niches around the edges. From here we jumped in a car and headed up to Kot-e-Sangi to a combined men and women’s hammam. It was was larger by comparison and run by a large Hazara man with a black skull cap. We went round the back to look at the furnace. There were four fires all continuously fed by electric fans. A small Hazara man with a blackened face and one yellow rubber glove stood in a pit and stoked the fires. The grey water streamed out of the hammam full of gunge, hair and shampoo sachets. He said he used 2000 kilos of Balut wood every day and then pointed to a massive wood store in the corner of the compound.

On the way back Mohammad Nazir asked if we could stop for lunch. He looked delighted when I said yes and he proceeded to take us to his cousin’s restaurant. It was the opening day, the big launch. The small room was full of brand new glass tables and metal chairs. The tables had tomato sauce bottles for show (they were empty) and there were extraordinary pictures on the walls of cottages in front of waterfalls and giant mushrooms or a girl holding a lamb standing next to a water jug. The relatives were there including a local mullah dressed in a smart chapan.  There was also a raised platform for those inclined to the more traditional way of sitting. I was asked to come and take photos of the blessing of the food. The mullah and few elders stood over a large copper bowl of rice and with outstretched arms gave thanks. Large bowls of very tasty Kabuli pilau then emerged with very succulent chunks of mutton buried amongst the raisins, shredded carrots, and rice. A large young man entered with a swagger and demanded to know who the foreigners were. He probably didn’t realise but he was wearing a girl’s fitted jacket, white with a faux fur collar from Top Shop and jeans that looked like they should belong to a painter and decorator. The funniest things of all was that he was wearing a Nottingham Forest football scarf! At the adjacent table there was a whole family, minus the women of course. The grandfather sat serenely in his chapan. The son looked fearsome with a jet black beard and with large hands, helped his son to eat the rice that was placed in front of him. They were all cousins of Mohammad Nazir. 

Poo and the Princess

Will: Today was a typical Turquoise Mountain day. I spent the morning with my community council discussing how to solve the sanitation problem. I walked them over to the open cess pit at the back of a commercial warehouse and they all looked at it as if to say “what?” There were piles of shit everywhere and a  10 metre square pool of it flowing down into the foundations of a house. There were boys preparing chilis and playing footballl next to it. One of the elders slipped as he tottered down the slope. I caught him and he looked at me as if to say, “If you laugh, I’ll kill you.” Everyone else laughed.  After this I went straight to lunch with Princess Bilquis, the eldest daughter of the late king, Zahir Shah.  She was there with her younger sister and chief of staff. It was my first meeting with the royal family and the Princess was particularly charming. Her daugher is setting up a foundation in honour of the king to support agricultural, cultural, and educational projects. Kaka Hussein did a grand job of putting on a delicious spread. We gave her some calligraphy and waved farewell as their blacked out Mercedez left the courtyard.

Lunch with Dr. Forough

Will: Dr. Forough invited Lucy and me to his house for lunch. He works in our clinic. He picked us up in the family minivan, a Toyoya Town Ace (pronounced ‘Tunis’) and drove us back to his mother’s apartment. The apartment is in Microrayon 3. This is the third in a series of fifteen storey Soviet concrete tower blocks. They are much sought after locations and favoured by ministers and MPs. Dr Forough proudly pointed out that they had central heating. They did indeed have radiators and paid $200 a year for the privilege of central heating, produced just across the road by a power station with a red and white striped chimney. Every block we saw was decorated with colourful clothes lines strung out from even the highest windows. The shops are well stocked with fruit and meat and there are allotment and play areas dotted around. Dr. Forough’s mother had moved here from Herat 27 years ago and is the only person to have owned the apartment. Dr. Forough was married in 2005 to Narghiz and they have a 2 year old daughter called Khushi. His brother Farhad came to join us. He is four years younger but speaks very good English and is the country director of Marie Stopes International and travels regularly. In fact he is good friends with Sally, one of Suzanna’s close friends who also works for Marie Stopes. This was a good example of a middle class Kabul family. Dr. Forough is one year from finishing his medical training. The family was not outwardly religious. In fact, Farhad had never been to a mosque until the Taliban forced him to as part of his literature studies at the university. They are big fans of Afghan Star and are glued to it every Friday and Saturday. Dr. Forough’s favourite is a Hazara girl. He has just bought a new Suzuski Jeep and coyly lifted the cover that was protecting it. I understood now why he had asked for a payrise last month! His sister, probably about 16, Tamkina, helped serve the food and did all the washing up.  We were treated to an amazing spread of dupiaza, kufta, kabili pilau, sabzi, coke, and kiwi fruit. Dr Forough explained that the cookies came from Hajji Aziz and are the best in town!  We watched a war film on their cable TV. His mother said that she hates war. She has lived through more than thirty years of it. She said she was beaten twice by the Taliban for not being properly covered. They showed me pictures of the beards they had grown and laughed. For $200 a month you can rent a two bed apartment here. On the way, we drove past an American-Afghan housing project, where the houses were disproportionately large, white, with red roofs. They were advertising two bed apartments for $30,000 and five room apartments for $80,000. When asked if we had any children, we felt it was the one Afghan family who understood why we had not had any yet. Actually when Dr. forough dropped us back at the fort, his brother said, “Just let me know if you need any contraception any time, ok?!”  He said that most of the Afghan religious leaders were in favour of abortion and that now Obama had lifted the funding restrictions, they should be able to get money from USAID to make abortion legal here. This surprised me. They kindly gave us a Maimana kilim as we left. We find it so hard to know how to repay such kindness.

The midget and the bodybuilder

Will: Lucy and I visited the midget in the local post office again to register. Someone had rather unfairly stacked a whole pile of ledgers on his desk all but concealing him from view. The only sign that there was anyone sitting there was a little pair of legs dangling beneath the desk. His colleague was boiling some tea by submerging an electric element into a teapot. Someone had been electrocuted in one of the ministries last week doing exactly the same thing.

I found out today that the man who ran the bodybuilding club where Zia and I used to go two years ago was made Afghan champion last year. He was the little man with huge wings who took me on as his 'project' and used to ask me to bring back white powder for him from UK.

Traffic police, refugees and rammed earth

Will: I seem to have spent a lot of time stuck in traffic recently. Of course this is maddening but it does allow your eye time to pick out things that it would normally miss. This week, I saw a man threading his way through the columns of traffic covered in European baby dolls. They had blond hair, pink dresses, and their blue eyes stared straight at me as they passed. Burqa clad ladies clutching real babies knock on the car window with their hand upturned making the whole scene even more surreal. As the traffic begins to move, it streams past numerous obstacles: ladies sitting cross legged begging in the middle of five lanes of traffic; pot holes large enough to swallow a fiat Punto; a herd of fat tailed sheep being driven to fresh pastures of city refuse. We drove behind a taxi full of cheeky children making faces at me today. I made faces back at them and this continued until we were able to overtake them, narrowly missing a donkey.

The traffic is sometimes so intense that it breaks off the road and streams through petrol stations, gardens, along pavements and through housing estates. A senior ranking policeman who demanded to see my passport stopped us today. Sometimes, my Witney library card or even my Youth Hostel Association card is enough to satisfy their curiosity. On this occasion I handed him my Turquoise Mountain I.D. He pretened to read it and waved us on. My driver Ahmed Shah laughed. He said that last week a policeman had looked at his I.D four different ways before letting him go.  Sometimes a US military convoy careers into your path. This is invariably terrifying as they are not afraid to open fire, nor are Taliban afraid to detonate a roadside bomb at the first opportunity. Often an unmarked convoy of armoured land cruisers will dominate the road weaving back and forth. Last week a door was thrown open and a man in civilian clothes swung out cowboy style and told the traffic to back off. One wonders whether they wouldn’t be better off assuming a lower profile. Afghans must find the sheer power and arrogance of these convoys not only intimidating but profoundly humiliating.

I went to a meeting with the US civil affairs team at the Bagram airbase today. We broke down after five minutes. Ahmed Shah switched off the engine with a sigh of resignation, opned the bonnet, and climbed into the engine to fix a hose. It was actually quite nice to stop for a while and watch Kabul life pass me by. After some time, we drove out towards Der Sabz looking for the new metalled road to Bagram which my colleague was very excited about. Unfortunately it was closed so we followed a few other cars for 20 minutes in a long diversion over waste ground until we circled back round to the road. We hadn’t counted on a big drainage ditch and a small wall blocking our way to the road. There were four cars in front of us, including an ambulance. A digger briefly helped fill in the ditch and then disappeared. Slowly the traffic grew and a crowd gathered. Saboor, one of our foremen, jumped out and began to organise the crowd. After some time we edged our way over this makeshift bridge and got onto the road at last. Two or three diversions later we arrived at the refugee camp where my colleague has been building refugee housing with rammed earth. 

The refugee camp is situated on a plain at the foot of the Hindu Kush Mountains. The land is poor quality, there are no services, water is pumped in from 6km away, and there is little to stop the wind from tearing across the plain and through the camp. Ironically the Americans have now built a road right passed it so that their base can be better connected to Kabul. This means that the refugees might now have a chance of setting up a shop or a fuel station but it also means that the land now has a value and the government are apparently seeking to move the refugees on once again.  My colleague is looking to set up mud training schools there and has started work on a rammed earth house. We dropped Saboor with a group of men ramming earth into wooden formworks and headed to the Bagram air base. It took us an hour to get in. We waited with a long queue of tankers, presumably carrying fuel for the military aircraft. The first security check point was manned by young Afghan men in leather jackets, all of whom looked rather menacing. They had learned their American well and were suitably aggressive. We eventually made it through to the second check point where we were eventually ushered through by an Airborne corporal with a deep south drawl only to be turned back to the beginning again. After some time, whilst our host found his body armour, we waited and then a soldier turned up on a golf buggy followed by a white land cruiser. They escorted us through the various check posts and we snaked our way around the camp for 15 minutes until we arrived at the relevant office. My phone beeped and I realised by SIM card had been deactivated. Our host peeled off his armour with relief, his job done for the day. We waited alongside ‘Hesco’ crates full of earth which are used as protection against blasts and hostile vehicles.  It costs $350 to build one square metre of wall in this way. There were a lot of soliders milling around, many with a polystyrene box of food in one hand and their rifle in the other (It was lunchtime). There must be about 20,000 personnel on this site. The female reservist officer conducting the meeting has been in Afghanistan for three months. She will leave after a further six months. She was faced with a room full of eight female provincial representatives and nine male representatives. I couldn’t help thinking it was a little humiliating for these tribal elders to be grovelling to a diminutive girl half their age. Lots of ideas were discussed but it was unclear whether any of them would be implemented. It will probably take her three months to make sense of the work left undone by her predecessor. She will then only have a few months to approve a few hastily assembled proposals before she returns to Washington. This will be her front line experience. As the meeting crawled on, I visited a portaloo in the carpark. There was all kinds of graffiti on the wall. “Only 2 months to go!” “The second coming is imminent!” and more besides. On the wall outside, there were two large photo collages in honour of two soldiers killed in the last year. The soldiers were shown pictured with their mums, grannies, class mates, and their comrades. The tone was very emotional and the location – on the front of the HQ building – was presumably calculated for maximum effect. They brought in lunch. The officer, who was of asian origin, smiled and said, “I bet it’s Chinese. They always give me Chinese because they think I’ll like it.” The first box was opened and it was full of noodles and egg rolls.

Snowmen, women and booze

Will:It is Friday morning and it is snowing. From where I am sitting I can see our neighbour on his roof along with his four sons. Like countless others in the city this morning, they are shovelling off the snow before it melts and leaks through their flat mud roof into the rooms below. One of the boys, unaware that he is being watched, is quietly shovelling snow onto the roof of our kitchen below. Kaka Raouf has already been out and brought back a team of labourers known as ‘barfshui’ to clear the snow from our own roofs. They are spread out across the fort sending showers of snow onto the ground below, and onto the heads and down the backs of those unlucky enough to step out of their rooms at the wrong moment. After untold centuries of winter snow, it is surprising that no one has thought to introduce pitched roofs or insulated pipes. Every winter pipes freeze and roofs leak. It is difficult to pitch a mud roof because the mud will run off with the snow but nevertheless, there must be a more efficient way to protect your dwelling from the cold and snow that a flat mud roof. Actaully one of our architects, Grahame, has gone some way towards this by increasing the clay content in the mud mix on the roofs of his rammed earth buildings. Lucy and I spent the morning building a snowman before retreating to the hammam.

 

I had a meeting with four community elders last week to discuss our plans for a large Noruz (Persian New Year) party in the old city in March. I produced tea and a large plate of biscuits. One of them took a glass of tea, swirled it around his glass, and then hurled the tea against the wall of my office, before refilling the now clean glass. At that point, the Wakil-e-Guzar  (community leader) launched into an epic monologue directed mostly at me. He had heard that women have been meeting together to discuss community issues such as literacy, health, and cooking classes and demanded that we put an end to such activities. I waited to see if he had anything else to add and then, wiping his spit off my jacket, gently asked him why he was so concerned about these women’s gatherings. “Whenever women get involved they always cause trouble” he said. There was some grumbling from the others and they all nodded in agreement. He continued, “The gathering of women is unacceptable.” He didn’t wait for affirmation from the others but they murmured their approval anyway. Pointing at me he said, “Britain used to know everything but now Afghanistan is one metre ahead.” He took a biscuit from the plate in front of him and I took the opportunity to ask whether the women could participate in the Noruz festival. “Certainly not!” said one of the others. When I asked why, he mumbled something about them not knowing how to behave at such events. I laughed. They laughed and I felt a slight improvement in the atmosphere. “Are you telling me that your women are going to stay at home while you eat all the food and enjoy the music, poetry, story telling, and craft displays?” I asked. One of them said coyly that they would probably turn up and take all the food home with them. After a good humoured exchange we agreed to two things: I would stop women meeting in my office if they could continue their literacy training and health work and the women could come to the Noruz festival if we gave them a briefing on how to behave. They seemed happy with this. I was glad that they felt able to be so honest with me. This is definitely a step forward from formal politeness where one thing is agreed and then totally disregarded. We swung our hands together in agreement and they thanked me for my understanding quoting Hazrat Ali, “If you learn one word from a person, he will become your brother.”

Lucy and I went to an evening of traditional music last week. There were five men who performed brilliantly.  Their bodies swayed from side to side in rhythm with the music and as they hit the tabla harder and harder sweat flew from their brows. I was tapped on the shoulder by the evening’s host. “The WHISKY is upstairs” he whispered. At the interval we were spirited upstairs to a hastily arranged VIP lounge in his office. The door was shut behind us. The room was full of bright young Afghan men wearing shiny suits and pointy shoes. Many of them were junior advisors to ministers or else were working for civil society groups. One of them had half a tankard of Johnny Walker. Others were drinking gin from paper cups. The room was full of smoke. I felt like I was fourteen again. ‘This is what this music is all about!” said one of my new friends. I felt for them. They are ambitious and intelligent and they want to engage with the world as equals. Their hedonism was raw, unabashed and highly irregular. I remember having supper with a senior politician two years ago. We had to go down to the basement in order to enjoy some music for fear that his opponents would hear about his immoral behaviour and end his political career. 

Philip has been released!

Will: He was dropped outside his apartment in the early hours of Wednesday morning, following five days of interrogation. A significant campaign organised by friends and family and a German passport undoubtedly helped secure his release. Others are not so fortunate. Political prisoners have been detained for many different causes and remain incarcerated under Mubarak's brutal regime. Philip's own story emphasises the danger of speaking your mind in Egypt. Yet the public response to Philip's detainment and others like it, is perhaps a sign that the Egyptian public are growing tired of Mubarak's thugs.  The prospect of a democratic Egypt is as yet confined to political activists and bloggers. How long before western governments start taking notice of these harbingers of democracy and stop ignoring the brutal suppression of liberal democratic values in this regime and others like it in the region? Thank you to those of you who prayed or acted on Philip's behalf. 

Philip abducted by authorities in Cairo

Will: My good friend Philip Rizk was abducted by the Egyptian secret service on Friday. I say good not because I know him better than other friends, but because he is one of the most genuine thinkers I know. But he does more than think.  And this is what the Egyptian authorities have decided is unacceptable.  According to those who were with him, he was detained during a six mile solidarity march just north of Cairo, bundled into an unmarked van, and taken to an undisclosed location.  Sadly, this is part of a wider effort by the Egyptian state to silence bloggers and political activists.  The last time I saw Philip he told me about the protests in the Nile Delta town of Mahalla, which were partly organised through a Facebook page, which had 64,000 members. During the Police response, three people were killed and 500 were detained. Please look at http://philiprizk.org for more information and for advice on how to help. Also... www.tabulagaza.blogspot.com and www.thedailynewseyypt.com/article.aspx?ArticeID=18931 Thank you.