Afghanistan

Arriving in Kabul

GRASSES, GREENS, GONE. There was nothing green, just dull camels, browns and dusty russets.

There was nothing green, just dull camels, browns and dusty russets. There were no gleaming towers or buildings to be seen, just carcasses of planes, wrecked tanks, and rusty, twisted and gnarled metal sculptures which installation artists in New York can only dream about.

The first sign of life was a group of young Afghan teens cutting the grass edging the runway who waved cheerfully as we taxied to a stop just steps from the run-down and decrepit terminal building. Long disused, the terminal was dark, unheated, wrecked, and freezing. It's easy to understand how pilgrims could freeze to their deaths waiting for their flights to fulfill one of the pillars of Islam - the holy pilgrimage or haj.

It had been barely 10 minutes, and already the toes within my fleece lined gore-tex boots were numb with cold. I looked around at the men waiting to earn "bakshish" (tips) from foreigners by porterage. Many had bare feet, and seemed inadequately clad. But none appeared to feel the cold. The soldiers that acted as impromptu customs and immigration officials looked like mercenaries with guns. I did not relish dealing with this, and in true avoidance style, left the building and entertained myself by taking lots of photographs and jumping up and down to keep warm in the glorious sunshine on the tarmac. I was joined by two of my colleagues, and we delighted in taking photographs against a backdrop of burnt out warplanes.

The sunshine was, as Jason Elliot describes in his An Unexpected Light, an "unaccustomed brightness". Looking into the terminal, I thought my fellow travelers looked cold, unhappy, impatient, and uncertain - and entirely incapable of enjoying the beauty of the moment, caught up as they were by the tense, depressing and chaotic atmosphere of Kabul airport; and driven by the need to get warm, and to wherever they were going. I expected that life would get colder and was in no hurry to give up the sun's warmth. It was as if I was trying to save up the sunshine for later.

Most were surrounded by barbed wire fences, and huge barrel like cement barriers, to fend off suicide bombers.

Our liaison officer, Salim Qayum, who seemed to magically wave away the bureaucratic red tape by his mere presence, soon whisked us away in two gleaming white Toyotas. The drive into Kabul gave us a glimpse of what was to come.

So far, I saw none of Nancy Dupree's Kabul - there were no tall modern buildings, and we had not yet happened on the Kabul's bustling bazaars. There were wide avenues, but they were not filled with brilliant flowing turbans, gaily-striped chapans, mini-skirted schoolgirls, and multitudes of handsome faces and streams of whizzing traffic. Instead, the large and small compounds that lined the wide avenues in the center of Kabul looked like they had seen happier and safer times. Most were surrounded by barbed wire fences, and huge barrel like cement barriers, to fend off suicide bombers.

Mostly, they looked rundown or derelict, with walls riddled with bullet holes. There were no signs of modern society. No telephone lines, no bus stops, no modern buildings built within the last 10 years, and no traffic lights. Kabul resembled a crippled city, where dusty streets played host to scores of bearded men with intense stares, blue wraiths in ankle-length burkas, steely-eyed children and crippled old men whose eyes bespoke hunger and cold.

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