From My Notebooks In 1977: Afghanistan

As seen from Europe, in those days (maybe still today) Afghanistan seemed a very distant country, but for me then in Kabul, France seemed just around the corner. Having to cross Iran and Turkey and the Balkans to get there seemed to offer no problem at all – how different my attitude from when I started in North Africa. The exigencies of travel didn’t bother me, but after three and a half years on the road I was tired, and glad of company to lift my spirits. Ted Holst and his oriental companion were also going my way and a loose relationship with them was comforting.

Scenes from Afghanistan

On the road to Kabul

My first poppy field

Tuesday, May 17th

Met Holst and Mina-san again in the Miami restaurant two nights ago. Yesterday we ate dinner at Sikris – getting a lift in a Mercedes from young man whose wealth had not saved him from the army. Meal was too rich. Ted was very sick. I was less so. From what? Mina later became sick, and hers lasted longer. Yesterday I called consulate. Afghan employee called Dona. No reply yet. Most of my week in Kabul has been spent recovering my centre of gravity. Had been unable to find myself.

[An anthropologist friend in London had recommended that I visit an American, Louis Dupree, in Kabul. Three years later he was still there – an established luminary, very much a Southern Gentleman – living in a house with Nancy Hatch. He was welcoming. Also at his house I met again Peter Wass whom I had met in Nairobi, when he gave me the elephant hair bracelets for his sister in Queensland.]

Particularly bad last Friday on my first visit to Dupree’s house. (Louis and Nancy Hatch). The five o’clock follies. Louis talks like a man who hopes his words will hold the sky up. – “hot as pussy on a Saturday night in a mining town,” his elaborate Southern metaphors are overdrawn. He specialises in iconoclasm but it’s not quite profound enough – not integrated. Second visit on Monday was much better for me. Extraordinary meeting with Peter Wass. He interrogates Dupree on Africa in general. What crops, etc, in particular. They are sparring. Both are basically contemptuous of each other but maintain a wary respect. Wass admits to trying to do good. Dupree claims to have given it up (when I labelled them as agents of progress.)

They discuss – we discuss – the effects of taking roads to the villages. Brings the city entrepreneurs direct to the peasants, who are no match. The despised middleman is cut out, but he was the buffer and has his uses.

Louis castigates the Helman dam and irrigation project. He says it is silting up – ‘not administered’ – i.e the Afghans now in charge don’t do it properly. (It’s a US project but they didn’t carry it right through.) He prefers many small catchments on a village scale. His slogan is “take the politics to the villages.”

Wass is part of a UK project to stabilise wheat prices in the general area. Once based in Beirut – now in Amman, where he and Diane live. “We fight furiously once a fortnight but thank God we have a normal marriage” – referring to his sister and Brian Adams.

Nancy does a guidebook.

At Embassy my first meeting is with Ian Hughes – Acting vice-consul, probably the Security/Intelligence man. Very bland, close and maladroit. “Funnily enough I read your piece about Australia in the magazine.” No comment. Are you busy? I ask. Rather, he says, with all the Hippies. After work? I prompt. Pretty tied up, he says. Are you staying a few days? Then I’ll probably see you around town, he says brightly. Wants nothing to do with me. I do see him around town once on Sunday morning in the impossible dark suit and high white collar, with the Embassy Land Rover, picking up smart tourists in Afghani coats – for the church service perhaps? Or to visit the jail? I am not psychologically fit to mix it with him and let it go by. They all behave as though an armed coup was imminent.

At the Green hotel heavily carpeted public rooms. English woman approaches me. Crisp upper-class style, but no courtesy. (“Show this man the bathroom”) She wants 30 Afs to [illegible]. I say I think 10 Afs is normal. “Good luck,” she says, and turns on her heel and strides off. Business is abrasive in Afghanistan.

[I had a fancy to buy a Russian samovar.]

The samovar hunt. In and out constantly. Once I’m offered one for $45. Next day it’s refused. Another time I’m offered another for the price. When I go back to get it the brother says, “No it’s not ours. I’m just repairing it for some Germans”. But the shops are loaded with goodies. Inlaid pistols, jugs, trays, mugs, knives, rugs, teapots, ‘lunch boxes’, etc. At the Kabul Hotel – a $10 bonus. Followed by rain and bedbugs. The Sikhs at the Khoresan constantly trying to diddle me out of a dollar and finally undercharging me. The Istanbul; 24hrs restaurant, and the splendid Abdul, whom I took for a Turk, perched cross-legged behind the counter with his high domed head and utterly cynical expression, though less cynical in fact than his young partner full of bonhomie and greed.

Today at consulate again., but no message. Dona says they’ll refer clearance to Teheran. So I set out for Ghazni [about 100 miles] to catch up with Holst.

The over-friendly man in the US car who leads us too fast into town.

“You want a ho-tel? Come on!” His room for 120 Afs. “Special student price.” Hah!

The robes worn by women – finely pleated. Underneath, often trousers and shoes by St. Laurent – quasi.

Russians walk leaning forward from the waist, shoulders back.

Traffic police dressed like Germans – in grey one-piece suits. With lots of straps and belts. Was it Calcutta where the police wear a harness to support an umbrella?

Ghazni:

Hotel with Persian name. Wide street of dirt. Horses and carts dashing past, full gallop. Later find Holst at campsite. Next to Col. Gregory’s broken down Comex bus (Commonwealth Expedition.) Fleet of seven buses named after Commonwealth places. Ie. Ontario. Old style enthusiasm. Finale at Wells Cathedral service.

Then comes Das Rollende Hotel. [A German invention seen on the road: A bus with a trailer that sleeps 39 people.] Thirty-nine cells in three layers. A heap of diarrhoea 3 yards from the entrance with a piece of toilet paper, attached like a flag.

It is assumed that because people enjoy themselves, what they are doing must be OK. People enjoy themselves in war. The hardships are what weakens their enjoyment. The trick is to get them to volunteer their money and themselves in the first place.

Great dust storm blows up – lasts for an hour. Then clear night.

Wednesday, 18th

To Kandahar. Lose Holst. Find Aria hotel. Comfortable. 25Afs. Lungful of Hookah hash smoke nearly kills me. Frenchman, hair in long black ringlets and black lace shirt with trim mustache and beard like decadent young blade of 18th Century. [He was fondling and polishing a brick of hash to smuggle through Iran and Turkey. I thought it better not to mention it in my notes. I always wondered whether he made it through, having seen “Midnight Express”]