Places I Have Travelled

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Mykroyan

Before the wars started, Afghanistan was a chessboard of pocketbook power play between the East and West. The Soviets would build a dam in Afghanistan and the Americans a highway. The Germans power lines and Soviets high schools. This was before the Soviets ran out of money and decided to expand south towards warm waters and crude oil. Of course there was an excuse: the Afghans were in debt to the Russians too. When his bald nephew Doud Khan, nicknamed the Red Prince for his Russian connections, ousted Zahir Shah, the King, it all went down hill. The Red Prince borrowed a lot of money from the Soviets in his six-year reign and the Afghans would pay it back with blood in the next decade.

It was during this time of lavish expenditure by the world powers to try to court the Afghans that Mykroyan was built. Mykroyan was state of the art habitats donated by the Soviets during the seventies. State of the art by Soviet standards meant blocks of apartments complete with modern amenities such as toilets and cookers. These blocks could be found sprinkled all around the Iron Curtain from Berlin to Vladivostok. The West would have considered the standard of the apartments no better than the unimaginative concrete housing built in the ghettos of New York.

However, the emerging Afghan middle class loved Mykroyan. It was a piece of modernism that they had read about in schools or seen abroad. It was a progressive community based development. It was to change the way Afghans lived and therefore behaved.

Traditionally, Afghan homes are like the suburban homes we find in North America but instead of the white picket fence there is a thick mud wall separating the house from the rest of the world. You think the Americans are adamant about property rights well the Afghans almost stopped short of putting up their own flag within the confines of their walls. So, for Afghans to move into apartment buildings with large windows, common areas, gardens, balconies, and only one wall separating different families was something incredibly new and daring.

The only thing I remember about Mykroyan from my youth was the stairs. Five stories of stairs. I had never seen so many and would spend hours with my cousin, who lived there, throwing a ball down the stairs and fetching it once again.

These memories of my childhood were rekindled once I found out that I would be spending most of my stay in Afghanistan in Mykroyan. However, as we drove up to Mykroyan I realized that it had degenerated form a Soviet promise of progress to what the West had envisioned - a ghetto.

The common roads and parking lots had been completely decimated as if a tank turned over the earth with its tracks. The gardens had been uprooted and in its place there were vegetable gardens. Children still played in between the blocks but they no longer wore freshly ironed Western clothes. The children's clothes were tattered and they had dirty faces. Beggars lined the base of the concrete buildings, and the trash, which was just a pile of disordered junk in corner, was inhabited by the children of the beggars perusing the refuse for items of use.

It was a surprise that the Mykroyan archipelago had not sunk in a sea of mud and a trash. Cracks and watermarks invaded the façade, and the colour fled long ago. Aluminum sidings probably put up in the time of the Taliban concealed the balconies. Thick curtains covered the windows.

Inside my Uncles apartment I was surprised at how clean and it was. He had taken care to paint the walls and lay carpets on the floor. There was no municipal water system and so the residents dug a well. The water pump did not function at night and electricity, at least for the winter months, was only available every second night. One could hardly hear oneself think over the blare of the gas generators when the power was out in our block. Luckily, my uncle had invested in battery powered backup system that could be recharged on the days we had electricity. It produced enough power for a 12 hours of electricity but that was just the lights, if we put the television on took it up another notch or two, and after a couple of hours it cut out.

I was lucky that I was used to power cuts and cold-water showers from traveling in India the three months before I came to Afghanistan. People usually ask me how I can tolerate such living conditions. I usually respond that they haven't been outside their safe little Western country. Eighty percent of the world lives in these conditions. Life in Kabul is therefore normal when compared to the rest of the world.

However, the weather in early mid-April was terrible. The temperature dropped for the first two weeks to about three degrees Celsius at night. In the mountains such temperatures are intolerable. I had only traveled through warm countries without amenities but living in cold country without a solid infrastructure definitely takes some getting used too.

So, in the end, the dream that was Mykroyan had now turned into a nightmare. The Soviet promise of modernism had been shattered, with the help of the West and militant Islam of course. Now Mykroyan had become the ghetto that the Western powers envisioned it to be.

Side Blog: Answer to a question

My friend Vanessa asked me this question: "Is Afghanistan as war torn and dangerous as the media make it out to be? Is there poverty on every corner like in India? I just finished reading the kite runner, and i am so curious to find out more."

So, I have decided to take a break from my narrative and answer her question. If anyone else needs questions answered please post a comment or email me and i will answer it the best I can.

Well Afghanistan is not all worn torn. Kabul is worn torn. Walking around the streets of Kabul definitely makes one realize that there was a conflict there. I am talking about bullet-riddled homes and bombed out streets. I just went to Herat and it was very nice. In Herat there was no sign that there had been war there. Impressive. I will post more on this later since I am running a little behind on my blog.

Otherwise, the country is very safe and the people love to have guests. I would be careful in certain areas but that is about it. You definitely need to know someone to come here, and, aside from some explosions that happen occasionally, there is nothing to worry about. Your chance of coming here and getting hurt maybe about the same as getting run over in a car in Canada. I mean your chances will go up if you run across the street everyday. So in Afghanistan you just have to stay away from certain places like Kandahar or the Pushtun areas, which tend to be infested by Taliban.

As for poverty: yes it is a huge problem. The biggest problem is that there is no infrastructure -- we are talking about sewage, energy, agriculture, roads, schools, taxation and so on. So, the country is sick from the inside.

For example, people abandoned farming practices during the war because they were paid better wages as soldiers. Now they need to get reeducated on agriculture. By the time that happens, the people are going to have to buy imported goods because the goods created here are just not good enough or too expensive when compared to imported items. Countries like Iran and Pakistan have more efficient methods of farming and therefore make things better and cheaper than we can. So all the money that is coming into the country to help it out is being used to by imported goods and simply flows outside the country. This is the biggest problem we face.

I know you are thinking that we should tax the imports. Well there is no infrastructure to impose such laws. We need to train border police but our border with Pakistan is porous and dangerous. Also, since there is a lot of poverty and the police are not paid well, I am sure you can pay them off to get goods inside the country. In the mean time, people have to eat so they by imported items.

I hope this example illustrates how the country is sick from the inside. The country needs to build its infrastructure and stand on its own feet once again. Only then well the poverty stop.

Afghan Film

Afghan Film at first seemed like my uncles little fiefdom. The driver parked the car and we walked into building that was built by Americans in the seventies. Everyone with in walking distance came up to my uncle and said to him, “Ryees sybe, ” which means, president sir.

Soon I learned he didn't wield total power yet these salutations were a part of the respectful nature of the Afghan culture. My uncle was equally nice back to his underlings. However, that patriarchal nature of a tribal society with chiefs of villages, and heads of family could be seen in how Afghan Film functioned.

If we were to take away the retro-seventies building and replaced it with a tent having everyone sit on the floor below my uncle in traditional Afghan clothes then we would see the conduct of the staff in its natural habitat without the modernist façade. Anyone could walk into my uncle's tent and talk to him. He had secretary but she could barely read or write. In fact half the staff were taking Dari lessons after lunch everyday. My uncle not only had to write his own memos, conduct meeting, write letters, but also meet with anyone who waltzed into his office unannounced. So he works from eight to four, which was the regular work hours, but continue till seven or eight to get his paper work done after the staff had left.

In my eye, what at first seemed like a fiefdom quickly deteriorated over the days into a prison for him. Sure the job had its perks with drivers, decent salary, and endless connections. However, I now that my uncle was the one to set-up Afghan Film in the seventies because he loved film. He sacrificed most of his money into the company at time when most people in Afghanistan thought film was wizardry. Finally, now that Afghan Film was part of the state, a move that occurred during the centralization of industry during the Soviets time in the eighties, he was not making the kind of movies that he wanted. He is being buried in a big pile of bureaucratic paper work.

My goals in Afghanistan so far had been the following and I listed them to my uncle per his request:

1. To do the groundwork for a yearly workshop, taught by Western teachers, and at the end have a short film festival with work done in the workshops.
2. To see if I could teach what I know about the basic of storytelling to film students.
3. To see a game of the national sport - Buzkashi.
4. To see Bamyan, where the giant Buddha statues were; Band-e-Amir, the naturally formed lakes in the mountains; Mazir-e-Sharif, where the blue mosque is located; and Herat, which some say is the first Afghan city to rise from the ashes.
5. Visit the neighbourhood I spent the first six years of my life.
6. To visit local villages.
7. To find the shepherd that saved the seal. This may prove that hardest but I guess you will have to read on to find out what this is all about.

My uncle asked me what I know about story. I guess he was trying to gauge my knowledge before he let me loose on his film students. It was kind of like an impromptu job interview. As I talked about my passion for film he jumped up on his cushion and I could feel the heat from the burning of his soul. He wanted to make a film with me. I would write and he would shoot.

The very next day he taught a lesson to film students from Kabul University. He talked about lenses, cameras, and moved onto composition. In the last half-hour he asked me if I wanted to contribute. I don't know anything about production, but I did talk a little about composition, since I am an amateur photographer and used to draw too.

During the next week, as I talked to my uncle each night I could feel the fire in him burn hotter. Finally, when it was time for him to teach his three-hour class the next week, he handed the three hours to me. He would come in occasionally and peak in to see how I was doing but I could tell that I had won his confidence.

I thought about writing a story and having my uncle shoot it. I also thought that it is about time that I actually move on past the pencil to the camera and participate in other aspects of film so that I had a foundation in a more holistic approach to filmmaking. Here was a perfect opportunity for me to write and shoot my own film. I could learn everything form my uncle on the first film that we collaborate on.

So, now I can cross of the first of my goals in Afghanistan, teaching, and add a new one, making a film.

Fortress City

We drove to my uncle's work - Afghan Film, the place that could make or break my grandiose plans in Afghanistan. My uncle kept on turning in the front seat of the car and staring at me, seated in the back. He was smiling ecstatically, and kept on asking me how I was doing.

The driver made his way through decrepit streets with fortified buildings on either side. There was no hiding the fact that this city was ready for war. Kabul itself was originally built here because of the area's natural fortification. It lies on a plateau about one thousand eight hundred meters above sea. There are only a few access points. With a river for water and farmland for food, the city in the olden days could withstand raids seemingly for an eternity.

Within this natural fortress there lies another fortress - this one is manmade. We passed this building, the most fortified building in Kabul and perhaps the world, the American Embassy. It was rumored that this building cost more then the US Military operations in eastern Afghanistan the year it was built in 2002. Now that I have seen it, I believe such reports. Giant Lego blocks of concrete are strategically placed around the compound.

As a child playing war games I used to fortify my side in a similar manner. The soldiers, like oversized GI Joes, patrol the compound in their armored suits with mechanical movements. The only thing that gives away the fact that they are real is their eyes.

It would be five days later when I was being driven to work that a glary-eyed soldier would stop us. It was my first chance to look into the eyes of one up-close to see if he was real. He was six-foot-five, about two hundred pounds of muscle, not including the 100 extra pounds of armor, guns, and bullets he carried. He yelled at the top of his lungs, “Stop!”

Pointing his machine gun at us. I stared into his black eyes and white face. He looked like he was about to overdose on adrenaline. The embassy car with tinted windows quickly drove by, and we were on our way.

I noticed the Afghan soldiers as we drove past the gates. It was as if each one was assigned his own official cigarette that should, according to Afghan Military Law, I guess, hang at an exact thirty degree angle from the soldiers mouth. Most had scruffy beards and over-sized fatigues on. The occasional soldier would actually be standing up. Nearly all were lounging around, tired of war. The only sign of happiness that I could see on them was their boots. You could see the pride reflect off the shine of their boots. These soldiers were glad not to be bare footed.

Somekind'o'Orientalism

My uncle picked me up from the airport and we did a quick drive through the city to show me the sights. There really wasn't much to see. Nor did I remember all the places he pointed out like the place he used to take me to have ice cream when I was child. All I could do is stare out the windows of the car at all the Afghans going about their daily activities.

Girls chatting while walking home form schools with their books under their arms. Boys on bicycles riding beside each other holding hands. Men sitting on curbs, wearing traditional clothes, and Western coats. Boys waddling bundles of money and yelling out exchange rates. Traffic police holding up driver licenses up to the sun.

I focused in on their faces and it slowly dawned on me that we are a Central Asian country. Rarely did I see a dark featured Pushtuns like myself, but I saw many Hazaras, who look Tibetan, and Tajiks, who look European. I guess I had lived so far in the West that I had started stereotyping my own people. Since I hung out with Pushtuns or Iranians or had Punjabi friends in Vancouver, and since Vancouverites clumped me together in that group, I saw Afghans as part of that group also. I only thought I was what society thought me to be.

On the surface, Afghanistan seeems to be much more complex. I don't think our superficial makeup constitutes who we are as group. Our culture must be what makes us distinct as a country. I guess I will find out in the coming days if this is so.

Oh My Gosh (to quote a friend)

The thing that made me feel like, “Oh my gosh, I am home,” is that fact that everyone spoke in Dari. It is so strange being in an airport – an international airport – of a big city where everyone speaks a language you understand other then English. As I stood in line waiting for my passport to be stamped I felt a little anxious. However, once I made it to the security guy with a big beard and stomach I was put at ease by his jokes.

The computer would not read my passport. He started bending my passport in different directions and said, “Your passport is a little croaked, let me straighten it out for you.”

He proceeded to try to scan it again but it would not work, so he said, “Oh well. You are just making my work difficult aren’t you.”

He smiled as punched in the numbers. He was bored doing his job and used the jokes to pass the time.

I knew then that I was in a different place – my place. The Afghans had not lost their sense of humor after thirty years of conflict. He stamped my passport without looking at my visa, since it is written that I was born in Afghanistan on the first page of my passport, and said, “Welcome home.”

Mountain Air Can Make You Mad

The captain hollered, “flight attendants get ready for landing.”

I thought we were in trouble; from the eyeballs of the other passengers, which had sprung out of their sockets, I was not alone. Suddenly, our airplane shot out of the cloud into the unadulterated blue sky. With peaks all around, it was as if a god’s hand was about to crush the airplane. On the palm of the hand lay Kabul the city I was born in.

The flight attendants ran around like chickens with their heads cut off. I would have been alarmed if it weren’t for the fact that I was too busy looking down at Kabul. Just looking at my birth city made me feel satisfied. If I crashed into the city, which seemed likely at this point, then what a way to go. And if I crashed into the house I was born, well that would be highly dramatic -- too bad I would be dead and not be able to write about it.

The aircraft did land safely and thank goodness too because as soon as I had stepped out of the airplane that memories of my childhood flooded through my nasal passage and into my lungs. I know some of you might be thinking that it was Afghani hashish but it was not that. It was the crisp mountain air -- air that cuts up your nostril like a knife, drops into your lungs like lead. Air that is a shot of adrenaline when mixed with your blood, letting wings rip out of your backbones, and your mind soar with its purity into the realms known only to the imaginations that created the gods.

Or at least the mountain air seemed that way to me. That was when that stupid smile appeared on my face. It is still on my face. I am unnaturally ecstatic. Like the character Joker from Batman who fell into the vat of chemical ecstasy and had a permanent smile put on his face to hide the madness of his mind. Perhaps, I am going a crazy. I do not care. It feels damn great.

Flying and Dying

I have lived two lives. My first life started in Kabul, Afghanistan in 1975. My second life started the day I left Afghanistan as a refuge at the age of six. I have spent the majority of my second life in Vancouver, Canada. Now after twenty-four years I am here in Delhi International Airport waiting for Air India Flight IC 843 - Delhi to Kabul. I am about to return to my first life.

The excitement that comes from traveling was something that I had forgotten before this moment. Airports, airplanes, attendants, passports, and pilots do not have the same mystery to them that they once had. The thrust of the engine during takeoff only makes me yawn as I turn the page in the newspaper. I do not bother to look at the people below, inching along like ants, in wonder.

I remember when I first flew. It was in 1982. Pakistan International airport with its greasy floors and cigarette puffing security guards was the first place that I caught a flight. There is only one word that could describe the experience - awe. Staring out of the giant windows of the airport at the planes, roaring back and forth both on the ground and in the sky with their metallic hulls glimmering in the sun, made my belly rumble like the engine of a jumbo jet. However, beside my wonderment their quickly manifested a fear also when the Pakistan police dragged my father away into detention room minutes before our flight. The blades of the engine in my belly, going too fast, were tearing at my insides.

Now as I sit in the airplane my eyes are as wide as the wings of the largest jumbo jet and deep within my heart I feel a certain acceleration long forgotten. I feel like the Afghan child that I left behind once I adopted my new country, Canada. My head, however, is spinning out of control in a deep dive overloaded with anxiety that only an adult mind might think about.

It is astonishing to me that all this times that I flew, I had never been afraid of flying until now as I sit in an airplane on my way to Kabul. When we left Pakistan as refugees with fake passports, I was not afraid of flying but getting caught by authorities. Now I feel a certain satisfaction in my own understanding of how an airplane works. This understanding keeps my fears at bay. I came across this knowledge of flight first when my uncle, a devout Muslim, asked me how airplanes fly when I was a teenager. I responded to him that there must be some kind of physical thing going on with the wings and engine. He responded, “No one. Not even the scientists know truly what is going on.”

We were flying to Germany. It was my first summer away from home and my first flight since we moved to Canada. I thought about airplanes as we gained speed and were flung into the rainy Vancouver sky. I could not stop thinking about the miracle of flying on silver wings so I came back home at the end of summer I did some research. After sifting through volumes at home and in the library I came across the Bernoulli Effect. This effect is simple to explain, if you have ever been annoyed at the curtains being sucked towards your body when taking shower then you have experienced this effect. If the curtain is the wing of an airplane and the stream of water is the engine accelerating the air passing over the wing, while outside the shower the air is not moving then the shower provides a lift to the curtain. Similarly, the air moving over a wing is moving at much faster speed then the air underneath it, this lifts the wings and hence the plane.

Armed with this knowledge I became smug about the experience of flying. It was no longer a miracle but simply mechanical. Then why is it that now I feel fear of crashing?

I have flown to Winnipeg, Toronto, Seattle, San Francisco, Dallas, Indianapolis, London, Düsseldorf, Amsterdam, Damascus, Bangkok, and Delhi. I have flown for thirty-minutes to seventeen hours. I have had from a one-hour layover to four hours, due to bad weather. I have missed a plane in Dallas, almost had a heart attack in Damascus International, and got in a fight with check-in person at Weeze Airport in Germany. Yet all this time I have not gone anywhere.

I am afraid now because Kabul is where I was born and it is where I will finally return. I am proud of my new home, Canada; yet, the blood that flows from my body has been Afghani for over one thousand years. When I left Afghanistan, it was as if I was born into another world, a simulated world of glass, concrete, planning, and positivism, my new home in Canada. Coming back to Afghanistan will be like waking from a dream to the dirt, poverty, guns, and simplicity of the mountains. I cannot die before I wake. Some say that if you die in your dream then you will never wake.

My Secret Family

I am on my way to Afghanistan this Saturday. Up until three days ago I had no idea were I was staying. My father told me last night on the phone that he had tracked my closest relative in Kabul down. I will be staying with my Uncle Latif. I have not seen my uncle in the last twenty-four years but for three days in Seattle eight years ago. I will have to live with him for two months. Sounds strange but this is the way Afghan culture works. It is not even a requirement for me to have every seen my family to be accepted, but simply to have blood relations.

The depths of Afghan hospitality run deeper than what I have described here. Even if you who are reading this blog at this moment and have no relations to an Afghan and you were to come stay with a family then the same courtesy would be extended to you. However, you would not receive their affection and certain behaviours would not be exhibited since you, the guest, were present.

My Uncle Latif is my father's cousin. They are one year apart, best of friends, and were impossible to separate when children. My Uncle Latif's father had died at an early age and since his mother, known to me as Khala or aunt, was my grandmother's sister it was up to family to care for them. My grandfather loved Uncle Latif like his own child. When my father got a brand knew clothes from France, then my Uncle Latif would also receive gifts of clothes. If my grandfather hugged, kissed, and wrestled my father when he was a child (since he seldom did this when his children were older) he would do twice as much with Uncle Latif.

When I was born, Uncle Latif and I would spend hours with each other, since my father was not in Afghanistan but in Kiev, Ukraine studying. Shortly after I turned one year old my mother left Afghanistan to go to Kiev to get her education. It is acceptable in Afghanistan that the extended families, especially grandparents, take care of the child's welfare. However, the times that I spent at Uncle Latif and his mother's welcoming home was were some of my most loving memories come before the return of my parents.

Since I last was in Kabul, Uncle Latif has started his own family. Khala is grandmother to five kids. I wonder if they will remember all those years when it was just the three of us?