rWaiting for Rwanda

stranded in an airport lounge in Nairobi, waiting for a plane to Kigali, Rwanda. Souvenir giraffes as far as the eye can see. A woman’s voice comes over the loudspeaker to signal missing passengers. She’s very polite though. She never uses last names. “Mary S., and Janubu B., please report to Gate 4. Mary S., and Janubu B.” Her voice is tinted with a British accent. There is almost no one here awake. Everybody is splayed in plastic chairs, some sleep right on the floor, newspapers covering their faces. “Joseph K., please report to the transit desk, Joseph K.” On CNN they are interviewing the hostages. I fall asleep and when I wake up the channel is changed to a cricket game. England vs South Africa. I fall asleep again and wake up again. Now a man is sitting at my table, also watching the game. He wears a lycra sweatsuit in the colors of the Kenyan flag. "Is it a good game?" I say. He mumbles. The score is something dream-like, 524 to 208, but the announcers gamely insist that South Africa still has a shot. When I wake up again, the ‘first boundary’ has been penetrated, ‘putting an end to the aching tension of the 5th over.’ Or something like that… apologies to my Pakistani readers. I stumble up with a crick in my neck and wander over to the duty-free. I’ve gone through all the books I brought for carryon so I lurk by the books section. It is all dime novels and self-help books about achieving personal wealth. “Come closer!” says the salesman with the nametag Mike. He asks me what I’m looking for and I don’t know what to say so I say, “Something classic.” (Which may be from now on my go-to answer. Seems that it services pretty much most questions I don’t know how to answer.) Anyway, Mike scans the shelves and hands me “You Can Do It” by Richard Branson. Actually I don’t know if it’s called You Can Do It – this whole blog entry is seeming highly unreliable… but I do know that it’s by Richard Branson and since I took a Virgin Atlantic to get here on the air journey which has gone on forever and forever I just shake my head, quietly, disturbed. Mike shrugs. His favorite book is The Secret, the ultra-best-selling self-help book that I first encountered on a flooded-out street in New Orleans, and since then have had recommended to me a dozen or so times. But Mike gives me a different formula. “God comes first,” he says. “Then read The Secret. Without God, the Secret is nothing. With God, and The Secret, all your prayers will be realized. Eventually.”

RadioLab: The Podcast

So, um, hello again. It's been oh a month and a half since my last post from Pakistan. So here's a quick recap. Since that post, I returned to Afghanistan to file this story for The World about an Afghan journalist who has been in jail for the last 6 months for insulting Islam. (The reason I'm posting the story is that, well, he's still there. Nothing's changed.)

Then I went to Iran with a bunch of American magicians and Canadian poets to meet poets from Iran. It all culminated in one balmy evening in Kashan where we performed our magic and read our poetry and the Iranians read their poetry, and no one quite understood each other, so it was sort of like farce, but oddly beautiful too, given the political realities, like some last-ditch diplomatic effort choreographed by Lewis Carroll. I'll write about that more real soon, but meanwhile, while I was in Iran I met up with a French cartoonist friend of mine who drew these pictures of one of the events:







Well so the artist's name is Nicolas Wild and I strongly recommend his two-part graphic novel, Kabul Disco, as well as his blog, which is great if you read French and even if you don't. Kabul Disco is being translated into other languages as we speak and is ripe for an American publisher.

So, after Iran I flew home to New York, just in time for the podcast debut of the"Radiolab: Pop Music" episode, featuring lots of amazing stories as usual, as well as a story about what happened when I took my accordion to Afghanistan and encountered the ghost of the late great Ahmad Zahir, a/k/a the Elvis of Afghanistan.



For the record, since some of you have asked, the youtube video of my Johnny Cash-inspired accordion performance in Afghanistan is still up. It seems that some servers say the video is "no longer available," but then again about a thousand more people have watched it since then so that's not universal. I'm not sure what's going on, maybe some smarter minds can weigh in on this. Meanwhile, try it from a different computer is my lame advice. Or cross your fingers and click below:




Oh, one more thing. Since I opened this post with a piece of mine that seems to have had no impact at all, here's one that seems to have had a modest one: a few months back I wrote an article for the Washington Monthly, "The Schools That the Taliban Don't Torch," about a neglected program for aid delivery called the National Solidarity Program. Last week Senator Dick Durbin gave a speech on the floor about aid in Afghanistan, and he quoted the article, and at least I'm told by Durbin's office that we'll now see an increase in funding to that program. I think that's a good thing.

target practice

One last Quetta story. My last day in the city, I was in the business district waiting for someone when I saw a kid come out of a shop and stand eight or ten feet away from me. He had a sparkly red cap and dirty clothes. His shaved head indicated he was probably Wahabi, a particularly militant sect from Saudi Arabia. I guess he was about 15. But his expression was what stopped me. I would write that he looked at me with hatred but it was more dead than hateful.

He pulled out a toy gun, took aim, and shot at a railing. A little yellow pellet emerged and made a pinging sound. I watched him, this young radical, with the (fairly realistic looking) toy pistol, and thought “I should really get my camera” which is when he turned to me and pointed the gun at my chest.

“Hey,” I said in Persian, which was probably a mistake because he maybe only spoke Pashto. Then he pulled the trigger, and shot me.

"Excuse me,” I said. Then I tried to think of what to say next. “I’m here as a guest in your country.” He shot me again. I tried out various arguments asserting my right not to be fired upon, but none convinced him, and since I wasn’t going to actually shoot him back, or go find his mother, I gave up. I walked away, not quickly so he’d think I was scared, but hey, who was I kidding. He'd won and he knew it. As I passed, he nodded and smiled, making his eyes seem even more reptilian.

The story unsettled me - well, the kid did too, but also my story about it - because I felt I was missing something. Some hours later, I considered another way of looking at it: At least he didn’t shoot me in the face. Because as I walked casually (not too fast now, expression firm) past him, it would have been quite easy for him to point his pistol at my eye or something where it would actually have caused damage. As it was, the pellets just bounced off my chest – I didn’t even feel them.

Only target practice.

afghan star

It’s 10pm and we’re walking through the abandoned streets of Quetta like the last five men on earth. Shop windows are shuttered; political posters flap in the breeze. The distant sound of a motorcycle fades into infinity. Everyone’s inside. Watching TV. It’s Friday night. And the final episode of “Afghan Star” is on.

It is said that during this hour all crime stops in Kabul. Bored young policemen stand idle at their checkpoints, no cars to check. I don’t know if that’s true, but I do notice that the normally crowded streets of Quetta are sure quiet. Our footsteps echo. I’m with my translator, JD, and four of his best friends. All of them were former translators (“terps”) for the marine special forces.

Suddenly other footsteps, other young men appear. Our band of 5 becomes 10, 20, 40. All of us streaming in the same direction. JD gives me the frantic ‘cut’ sign with his hand, meaning: no more speaking English out loud. Mutely, I follow the crowd into a large dust field. There, an 18-foot Scandinavian man in a doctor’s uniform is projected against the brick wall of the tallest building. He is talking about sunblock. His visage is replaced by bottles of lotion. Then that commercial ends and another one begins, this one for a local airline. The square is still filling up with people staring up at the screen. They crowd around cars, motorcycles, pushcarts. By day this field is the town vegetable market. Tonight the empty pushcarts sit like dumb stubborn animals under the gleam of a full moon. Behind the screen, far in the distance, the mountains of Quetta slice the horizon in a squiggly line of dark and less dark.

Now the commercials are over and the screen shows a guy who looks like my 7th grade math teacher singing under colored lights on a stage. He turns out to be not one of the competitors but one of the judges. For those who aren’t familiar with Afghan Star, it’s a singing competition fashioned after American Idol. Viewers use text messaging to vote for their favorite singer. Each episode someone gets eliminated, and tonight there are only two left. Unlike American Idol, though, Afghan Star has a tribal flavor. Every warlord has their candidate, who they shower with money and support. Votes tend to fall along ethnic lines. Tonight’s singers are named RafÈ and Hamid, but everyone thinks of them as the Tajik and the Hazara.

I have been living in a Hazara neighborhood in Quetta, so for the past few days, well-dressed boys with clipboards have been accosting my friends on street corners, drumming up votes for Hamid, the Hazara singer. The guys with clipboards are Hazara nationalists, members of the Hazara Democratic Party. “A minute of your time, brother,” they cry. One is wearing Malcom X-style glasses.

Why is it so important that the Hazara singer win? “Still the war is not finished in Afghanistan,” explains Triple H. Triple H is one of the former marine terps, a handsome musician-type with curly hair. He once taught singing lessons to the Hazara boy that now stands poised to win. Next year, Triple H plans to enter the competition himself. To do so, he’ll have to get the support of the various Hazara political parties and former warlords. Then he has to hope the show’s judges choose him. If he’s chosen of them, his warlord sponsor will then buy thousands of phone cards and hire companies to make text message calls in his favor. Doesn’t this seem a little undemocratic? Triple H thinks more practically. “They used to fight with guns,” he says. “Now they fight… with us! And we are getting the benefit!”

More singing. More colored lights. I am freezing and waiting for the end. Still we must sit through the standard speeded-up montage of Hamid trying on various blue shirts and ties. Hamid getting a haircut. Hamid walking through the hallways of the TV studio. Then more commercials. Actually, the same commercials recycled. “What is SPF?” asks one of the terps, and I’m embarrassed to see how quickly I answer “Sun Protection Formula.” Why can’t I have that kind of instant recall with, you know, books and stuff?

Finally, at long last, the envelope. We all know what’s written there, though. The Hazara guy is going to win. We have it on good intelligence (the show is taped the night before in front of a live audience). This public viewing, this projection screen in the vegetable market in the Hazara part of town, has all been set up last minute so that the community can watch en masse and then celebrate. I wonder how they will react. After a century of persecution, victory! After the massacres, the land grabs, the forced servitude, triumph! Afghan Star style! I have no idea what they’ll do. Will they riot? Will they lift torches and march? Stand atop pushcarts and howl? I am so focused on these eventualities that I don’t even notice when the Tajik guy wins it. The crowd, quiet, immediately disperses. The headlamps of motorcycles illuminate their sad, drawn faces.

“Wha---” I say. “I thought you heard for sure that…” Even hearing myself speak I realize how silly I sound. This is Afghanistan, after all.

On the cold walk home, only recriminations.

And this paradox: In a land of constant rumor, it’s easier to keep the truth secret.

blogging in quetta

Me, and JD.

hawoooooooo karachi

Happy afghan new years. Am writing from a net café in Pakistan where the air is loud with the sounds of Doom, the video game. The volume is on max so I hear every cocked gun, every rushed footstep, and, whenever the character gets shot, a computer voice saying: “The terrorist has won.” This seems strangely funny to me at the moment and I chuckle quietly to myself while waiting for an achingly slow internet connection in my little private booth. Private booths: the big thing now in net cafes here. Is it like that everywhere? Is it so we can view porn with greater privacy? My booth has a frosted plastic window and a seat covered in fake fur. Mrao.

So, a bit of a recap; I arrived in Karachi 10 days ago on assignment for Marketplace. Much like in Kabul, one divides one’s time in opposite worlds; the days I spent in the industrial quarter with the poorest of laborers, the stench of chemicals and butcheries and poverty and decay; my nights out at some restaurant or party, including a soiree at the island yacht club hobnobbing with consulates and former ministers of health and a air-force-pilot-crooner named Johnny who recounted New York stories from his second book. (One of them was rather funny involving three Irishmen, a raincoat, an off-duty mugger, and a pub on St Paddy’s Day.)



But it was nice to leave Karachi for a smaller town on the outskirts, where I’m now living in a house we rented for $50 a month. We have electricity half the time and a gas lamp for the rest of it. The kitchen is a room with a bench. The house has no furniture. The living room has two mattresses, one in each corner, with pillows and blankets and a rug beneath. That’s it, oh and a bound copy of the Koran on a shelf just above our heads. We remove our shoes when we walk in. When we leave, small children peek out of their doors, which are corrugated aluminum cut from the side of shipping containers.

The town is small and people feel safe to walk after dark. The streets are narrow and winding; the houses nuzzle up close to the road like curious but blind animals. It feels like a shtetl – with many little grocery stores, and a few beauty salons, many tailors with their window display of vests (called here ‘waistcoat’, perhaps some piece of European fashion imported centuries earlier). There are sheep in the road splashed with pink paint and a young boy selling bags of yoghurt mixed with green spices. At dusk the vegetable stands are lit by gaslight, while the man with a pushcart and a pot of chicken soup is just wiping down, but willing to serve us two last cupfuls; for 25 cents you get the cup, the soup, and as much pepper as you can take. (“With egg or without?” he’ll ask, and with your consent, he’ll sprinkle chunks of hard boiled egg on top of the soup.) During the day the soup cart functions socially as a barbershop; a clearinghouse for rumor and information. You see two or three men at a time standing at the cart sipping soup.

Today the rumor is me.




NOTE: Tune in Friday in NYC for Radiolab, featuring my accordion and the triumphant return of the Afghan Elvis... Ahmed Zahir. Also in the story is Najib, who you've read about in these pages. Here's a little video teaser: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5nvg0_FfjU

Bush bazaar

There's a little market in a seedier section of Kabul where you can buy almost anything that fell off a US supply truck. The so-called "Bush bazaar" is basically a few muddy alleys lined on either side with large metal shipping containers that serve as kiosks. You walk down the narrow lane stepping over little kids and squeezing past wheelbarrows loaded with washed-up items: tins and tins of microwave lasagna in a rice-eating country with no microwaves, also lots of Dr Pepper, A-1 steak sauce, instant mashed potatoes, ketchup-flavored potato chips, bodybuilder protein powder in gallon-sized plastic jugs, dime novels, zit cream, lime-flavored tortillas, and applesauce in single-serve containers.

i bought a can of Snapple for my translator. He studied the list of ingredients for a long time before opening it and sipping tentatively. "How do you like your Snapple?" I finally asked, and immediately felt like a moron. Like some high fructose ambassador.

"Quite delicious," he said diplomatically. For my part, I'd drunk my can too quickly, hoping for a rush of nostalgia, a sense-memory back to the basketball courts near high school, or the back seat of certain cars, or old Sal's Pizza, or the tuna-on-pumpernickel sandwich at the deli around the corner from my first office job. But, nothing. It was, well, just iced tea. I was thirsty.

God bless it.