Fast Time in Kabul
Someone shot a rocket near the American Embassy yesterday, which means - among other things I probably should care about but don’t – that I’m confined to the house until further notice. This is for “security,” which means the same thing “bedtime” used to mean when I was twelve: all the fun ends now. I guess it also means the same thing as “always look both ways” or “don’t play with them” but sometimes it’s fun to go zipping across the street anyway, and they might be sketchy, but boy are they a hoot. Being careful is wise, safe, and boring. Nobody writes books about people who were careful, and if they do, no one reads them. Indiana Jones wasn’t careful, Lawrence of Arabia wasn’t careful, Steve McQueen wasn’t careful, Joan of Arc wasn’t careful … that’s why they’re interesting. Sitting in my room in Kabul is safe, but it sure isn’t interesting.
Fortunately for me, some people around here have different ideas about security. For example, for most NGO’s security means staying out of the way of guns, and for other people it means having as many of them as you can. When I arrived in Kabul last Thursday and they told me to stick to the security guidelines, I think they meant the first kind. What unfolded was more of the second kind of security. The exciting kind.
It all started in church. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a large guy carrying what looked like a toy gun. It only looked like that because he was so big himself; actually the gun was quite large as well – and quite real. It wasn’t a gun like the locals carry, made out of scrap metal and rubber tape, good for hitting large buildings at ten paces, it was real American Army issue M-16. The guy carried it so it pointed down which was a good sign, and all he did with it was lay it on the windowsill and sit next to it with some other immense people, which didn’t seem good or bad to me. They just weren’t the usual church crowd.
When they asked all the guests to stand up and introduce themselves, the giants stood to attention and announced that they were US Air Force, and everyone breathed a little sigh of relief, somebody started clapping, and everyone joined in. Everyone American, that is. The Europeans in the crowd sat there the whole time like they had tarantulas crawling up their backs. For Americans, a good guy is different from a bad guy because he has a better character and a bigger gun. Europeans think a good guy is good because he’s so wordy and diplomatic he doesn’t need a gun. I think this is why America is a superpower and Europe is a bureaucracy, but I’m Canadian so I stay out of it. I just sang the hymns.
After church was over I met my friend Jack, who is Australian, so he’s too busy calling things weird names to notice that there are guns around. He’s just started working for a new contracting company in Kabul, whose goal seems to be to become the next big thing. They’re off to a good start. The US government just gave them millions of dollars to build things with. Jack told me he and his mates were going to do some shopping and they’d pick me up later and bring me around to their house for dinner. They arrived in some kind of shiny spacecraft made by Mitsubishi, and we slid through Kabul like an expensive cat slides through the room. I don’t know what the US government expects these guys to build, but it seems like they’re starting off with a palace for themselves. There was a stack of mattresses and box springs on the front porch. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such things in Afghanistan before. Most of the things they had in their house I’ve never seen in Afghanistan before. I got all my return culture shock over with just walking around. Then they brought me a beer. I didn’t recognize it at first because it was cold.
The original plan was for us to have a barbeque for dinner (I guess they had a barbeque as well), but it got changed at the last minute. The CEO had spent some time in Kabul getting chummy with an Afghan American businessman named Naqib, who was connected with some powerful people in Afghanistan. The CEO and Naqib had found they shared a vision of Afghanistan that included each of them making a lot of money among other things, so they’d partnered up, and Naqib had invited everyone out to dinner that night. I went along by default.
Naqib showed up with a guy who looked like an Afghan version of Tom Selleck. His suit was too sharp, he was too tall, and his smile had too many teeth in it. He stood in the exact centre of the lobby, looked me up and down, barked, “Who are you?” and ignored my answer. Later someone told me his name was Ismail. They also said he carried two 9 millimetres in holsters, one under each armpit. Ismail was the head of security for the company. Apparently he believed in the exciting kind of security.
We drove to the restaurant in convoy. Naqib had a Hummer he’d picked up at a US Marines auction in California and shipped over here so he’d have the biggest vehicle in town, I guess. Ismail drove point in some kind of chrome SUV, and the Toyota pickup I rode in brought up the rear. We took every precaution. We drove bumper to bumper at 90 through rush hour with cars scattering out of our way like chickens. When we came to intersections, our pickup would pull out and run interference with the oncoming traffic so that the Hummer wouldn’t have to stop, and when we did stop, the guy with the AK-47 in the front seat of the pickup jumped out and took positions on the street to provide covering fire should the need arise. Despite all this security we arrived at the restaurant.
Dinner was a long drawn out affair of alcohol, bad jokes, and flattery. I sat next to my friend, Marina, who tried to hide her distaste for the crowd we’d fallen in with by repeatedly handing me her wine glass under the table for refilling. Without even listening to the conversation at her end of the table, I could tell when it got especially boorish by the nudge of her glass on my leg. The nudges got more rapid when the CEO started toasting Naqib, saying – twice – that without Naqib’s intricate knowledge of the geopolitical situation in Afghanistan none of this would be possible, and without Naqib himself none of us would be there. I raised my glass because it was a good way to hide my incredulity. I imagined that the extent of Naqib’s geopolitical knowledge was a mental list of who to bribe, and he could hardly be credited with our presence; with his driving it was surprising that any of us were there at all. I felt another nudge. I guess Marina was thinking the same thing.
Naqib and Ismail spent the rest of the evening getting sozzled and then drove us home. I got into the back of the pickup again, saying that it was a relief that our driver hadn’t been inside drinking. My two companions, an American and a Kiwi, looked at me.
“Well, he weren’t inside, bit thet din’t mean he weren’t drinkin, mate,” the Kiwi said.
“I drove with this guy up to Mazar and he was smoking hash the whole way,” added the American.
“Oh,” I said.
The Hummer kicked off the rally. AK-47 hopped inside our pickup and we took off after them. The drive home was even faster. I looked at the speedometer once and it was up past 120. It was a good thing it was night and there were few cars out, because ours were weaving all over the road. I saw Ismail’s truck swerve around a boulder. Later I learned he was playing tour guide, slurring descriptions, weaving around, and waving at landmarks with his 9 millie, the whole time driving three meters from the next bumper. Besides being incredibly hazardous, it was quite exciting. I watched Kabul whip past and felt the wind in my hair.
If you’d seen us come in the front door when we finally made it home, you might have been reminded of people coming off a large roller coaster. We all vaguely checked that our body parts were still sound and collapsed in the lobby chairs.
“Well, that’s never happening again,” someone said. “If we ever go out to dinner with him, we’re taking our own cars.”
That’s the funny thing about the exciting kind of security. Afterwards you feel like you have to protect yourself from it. We all agreed, then went upstairs and watched an American TV show about some police who drove too fast and shot people.
Fortunately for me, some people around here have different ideas about security. For example, for most NGO’s security means staying out of the way of guns, and for other people it means having as many of them as you can. When I arrived in Kabul last Thursday and they told me to stick to the security guidelines, I think they meant the first kind. What unfolded was more of the second kind of security. The exciting kind.
It all started in church. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a large guy carrying what looked like a toy gun. It only looked like that because he was so big himself; actually the gun was quite large as well – and quite real. It wasn’t a gun like the locals carry, made out of scrap metal and rubber tape, good for hitting large buildings at ten paces, it was real American Army issue M-16. The guy carried it so it pointed down which was a good sign, and all he did with it was lay it on the windowsill and sit next to it with some other immense people, which didn’t seem good or bad to me. They just weren’t the usual church crowd.
When they asked all the guests to stand up and introduce themselves, the giants stood to attention and announced that they were US Air Force, and everyone breathed a little sigh of relief, somebody started clapping, and everyone joined in. Everyone American, that is. The Europeans in the crowd sat there the whole time like they had tarantulas crawling up their backs. For Americans, a good guy is different from a bad guy because he has a better character and a bigger gun. Europeans think a good guy is good because he’s so wordy and diplomatic he doesn’t need a gun. I think this is why America is a superpower and Europe is a bureaucracy, but I’m Canadian so I stay out of it. I just sang the hymns.
After church was over I met my friend Jack, who is Australian, so he’s too busy calling things weird names to notice that there are guns around. He’s just started working for a new contracting company in Kabul, whose goal seems to be to become the next big thing. They’re off to a good start. The US government just gave them millions of dollars to build things with. Jack told me he and his mates were going to do some shopping and they’d pick me up later and bring me around to their house for dinner. They arrived in some kind of shiny spacecraft made by Mitsubishi, and we slid through Kabul like an expensive cat slides through the room. I don’t know what the US government expects these guys to build, but it seems like they’re starting off with a palace for themselves. There was a stack of mattresses and box springs on the front porch. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such things in Afghanistan before. Most of the things they had in their house I’ve never seen in Afghanistan before. I got all my return culture shock over with just walking around. Then they brought me a beer. I didn’t recognize it at first because it was cold.
The original plan was for us to have a barbeque for dinner (I guess they had a barbeque as well), but it got changed at the last minute. The CEO had spent some time in Kabul getting chummy with an Afghan American businessman named Naqib, who was connected with some powerful people in Afghanistan. The CEO and Naqib had found they shared a vision of Afghanistan that included each of them making a lot of money among other things, so they’d partnered up, and Naqib had invited everyone out to dinner that night. I went along by default.
Naqib showed up with a guy who looked like an Afghan version of Tom Selleck. His suit was too sharp, he was too tall, and his smile had too many teeth in it. He stood in the exact centre of the lobby, looked me up and down, barked, “Who are you?” and ignored my answer. Later someone told me his name was Ismail. They also said he carried two 9 millimetres in holsters, one under each armpit. Ismail was the head of security for the company. Apparently he believed in the exciting kind of security.
We drove to the restaurant in convoy. Naqib had a Hummer he’d picked up at a US Marines auction in California and shipped over here so he’d have the biggest vehicle in town, I guess. Ismail drove point in some kind of chrome SUV, and the Toyota pickup I rode in brought up the rear. We took every precaution. We drove bumper to bumper at 90 through rush hour with cars scattering out of our way like chickens. When we came to intersections, our pickup would pull out and run interference with the oncoming traffic so that the Hummer wouldn’t have to stop, and when we did stop, the guy with the AK-47 in the front seat of the pickup jumped out and took positions on the street to provide covering fire should the need arise. Despite all this security we arrived at the restaurant.
Dinner was a long drawn out affair of alcohol, bad jokes, and flattery. I sat next to my friend, Marina, who tried to hide her distaste for the crowd we’d fallen in with by repeatedly handing me her wine glass under the table for refilling. Without even listening to the conversation at her end of the table, I could tell when it got especially boorish by the nudge of her glass on my leg. The nudges got more rapid when the CEO started toasting Naqib, saying – twice – that without Naqib’s intricate knowledge of the geopolitical situation in Afghanistan none of this would be possible, and without Naqib himself none of us would be there. I raised my glass because it was a good way to hide my incredulity. I imagined that the extent of Naqib’s geopolitical knowledge was a mental list of who to bribe, and he could hardly be credited with our presence; with his driving it was surprising that any of us were there at all. I felt another nudge. I guess Marina was thinking the same thing.
Naqib and Ismail spent the rest of the evening getting sozzled and then drove us home. I got into the back of the pickup again, saying that it was a relief that our driver hadn’t been inside drinking. My two companions, an American and a Kiwi, looked at me.
“Well, he weren’t inside, bit thet din’t mean he weren’t drinkin, mate,” the Kiwi said.
“I drove with this guy up to Mazar and he was smoking hash the whole way,” added the American.
“Oh,” I said.
The Hummer kicked off the rally. AK-47 hopped inside our pickup and we took off after them. The drive home was even faster. I looked at the speedometer once and it was up past 120. It was a good thing it was night and there were few cars out, because ours were weaving all over the road. I saw Ismail’s truck swerve around a boulder. Later I learned he was playing tour guide, slurring descriptions, weaving around, and waving at landmarks with his 9 millie, the whole time driving three meters from the next bumper. Besides being incredibly hazardous, it was quite exciting. I watched Kabul whip past and felt the wind in my hair.
If you’d seen us come in the front door when we finally made it home, you might have been reminded of people coming off a large roller coaster. We all vaguely checked that our body parts were still sound and collapsed in the lobby chairs.
“Well, that’s never happening again,” someone said. “If we ever go out to dinner with him, we’re taking our own cars.”
That’s the funny thing about the exciting kind of security. Afterwards you feel like you have to protect yourself from it. We all agreed, then went upstairs and watched an American TV show about some police who drove too fast and shot people.
posted by rjs | 9:57 PM
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