Kabul 21-7-03 No camel but a great party
22 Jul 2003
[568w]
Yesterday afternoon I went out on the scrounge for information. Kabul has email and mobile telephony now, but not always to the point where it gets you what you want. Sometimes there's no substitute for going to somebody's office and asking a question.
My driver was Shoeib - a very affable fellow I knew from when I was here five years ago. It was the first time he'd driven me this trip but last time we cruised around a lot together and our first journey was one to dine out on. When I'd been in the country a day or two, he drove me on an exploratory trip into the countryside. At the start of the first long straight (through an area designated on the Kabul Master Plan for an international airport - ironically a strip of road used by one of the Muj factions for launching fighter-bombers against the city in the early 90s) he put the pedal to the metal and rammed a camel. I think in fact the camel driver may have been guilty of driving it onto the road under the pretense of trying to drive it off. Camels are tough but not as tough as Landcruisers and this poor beast, though still standing, was pooping itself in pain with its left foreleg hanging all wrong.
Turned out the camel belonged to a small boy, from a family of Kuchis - nomads who shuttle their flocks of sheep and goats up and down between the cool highlands and the fertile plains as the seasons suggest. He came up to town the next day with his grandmother to look after his interests, and she negotiated a handsome compensation package, on top of whatever they got from the butcher, whilst anti-aircraft shrapnel pattered in the street outside.
Everything's more modern now of course. So off we went. But then we took a short cut down a mud alley and there was a lady in a burqa who, seeing that we were an aid agency vehicle, tried to thrust a petition through the window. Shoeib swerved to avoid her. At the side of every road is a "drainage ditch". Not a drainage ditch because they're all full of ancient compacted mud. But this one, along the top of which our offside wheels were now running, suddenly decided to be full of soft and compactible paper rubbish, which the rest of the street was covered in anyway. A perfect trap: front and rear both went in so we were resting on the axles, the whole thing leaning at close to 45 degrees. Even in Low 4 it wouldn't come out, the sunk wheels having no purchase at all and the outside wheels canted off the ground to the point where they could scarcely grip either.
I bought some Pepsis and Shoeib called on the radio for another vehicle; it came; the driver chuckled; he and Shoeib did something implausible with a rope; engines growled; the rope broke. Then I went back to base in the other vehicle and left him to it. This all seemed to Shoeib and me and everyone else like a normal part of urban motoring. They all got home safely in an hour or so, using some combination of bigger ropes and jacks that I didn't enquire into.
Then that evening I went to a top notch party which I'll mention in the next episode.
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