A Carpet Ride to Khiva: Seven Years on the Silk Road (30 page)

‘What’s this?’ the driver demands. ‘We’ve been all over Kandahar. You should be giving me at least ten times the amount.’

The passenger looks deep into the driver’s eyes and tells him: ‘Go home, embrace your mother, then go to the mosque and thank Allah for your life.’ He lifts his vest enough to reveal explosive devices strapped to his torso. ‘It was not the will
of Allah for me to find foreigners today, so we both live to see tomorrow.’

* * *

Understandably, there weren’t many international NGO workers in Kandahar, and those there chose to keep a low profile. Our hosts asked to remain anonymous. They were looking for ways to empower Kandahari women, hoping to establish an embroidery cooperative exporting overseas.

Our hosts explained
how embroidery was one of the few avenues of employment open to Kandahari women, who rarely left their home more than once a month, and even then were always under the supervision of their husband or mother-in-law. Within the home, the segregation continued. Two sons and their respective wives might live under the same roof, yet neither son would know the name of their sister-in-law, much less see
her face uncovered. The outside world was almost exclusively male. While visiting a local gym – trying not to get weights tangled up in the baggy folds of my sweat-stained shelwar kamiz – I was chatted up and offered orange juice, watching young men preen and flirt with each other, for who else could they flirt with? This complete separation of the sexes seemed to benefit no one, and I struggled
to understand it.

‘You have to stop thinking of men and women as the same species,’ I was told. ‘Women are like sheep and men are like wolves. Everyone knows that it is in the nature of sheep to be led astray and that sheep make a tasty meal. You never trust sheep – what a notion! – nor do you leave your sheep unguarded, because men are like wolves and the nature of a wolf, given the chance,
is to prey upon unguarded sheep. If sheep and wolves freely mingled together, it would lead only to bloodshed.’

I realised that our challenge was trying to empower sheep within the sheep-pen. We might not free women from their cloistered existence – any attempt to do this would result in the inevitable male backlash – but we could at least liberate them from the bonds of boredom. Embroidery
gave women something creative to do, earned them an income, and brought them status and favour with their husbands and mothers-in-law.

We discussed embroidery designs. The traditional
khamak
that graced the collars and breast-pieces of men’s shelwar kamiz was extremely detailed but unlikely to sell well abroad. Instead, we focused on textiles embroidered with tiny mirrors, and more utilitarian
items like cushion covers, handbags and bed-spreads. The women in our group all wore burkas when visiting the embroiderers, knowing that they were more likely to be tolerated if they showed respect for local traditions. I asked one of the single foreign women how she managed to survive. ‘It’s true, Pashtun culture is a challenge and Pashtuns can be hard to love, but by God’s grace, we try.’
She was later abducted along with her driver, and at the time of writing it’s still unclear whether she’s dead or alive. Five hundred Pashtun women protested for her release.

Even before this abduction, security measures were tight and we scurried in our vehicle from one compound to another. It was frustrating when all I wanted was to wander through the bazaar, my internal danger-ometer
seriously dulled by a childhood growing up in war-torn Beirut where I had a shell collection that had nothing to do with the sea. We made one or two furtive trips to mosques and mausoleums, looking at tilework and other potential sources of design inspiration. A tomb – one of the few pilgrimage sites permissible for women – was surrounded by a metal fence covered in votive rags and rows of padlocks.
The latter represented locked curses placed by women, usually against particularly abusive mothers-in-law.

The night sky lit up with shelling between the resurgent Taliban and Western forces, reminding us that the political situation was far from peaceful. Taliban entered the city for the first time since their retreat in 2002, and our hasty departure was considered prudent. The roads were
too dangerous, so we booked seats on a tiny plane laid on for development workers.

Airport Road was notorious for suicide bomb attacks and I spent most of the journey with just my eyes peeking from under my headscarf, hoping to look as inconspicuously foreign as possible. We turned off the main road where the airport and its surroundings had mushroomed into a giant army barracks – aggressive
Western teenagers in uniform eyeing our vehicle with visible hostility. These were the NATO peace-keeping forces.

Posted signs all over the airport politely reminded us, ‘No weapons please’. Our plane waited on the runway. One of the pilots – an American – lounged against a wing, wearing shades, his fingers curled around a belt sporting a large buckle with ‘No more gun laws’ emblazoned on
it. Incensed that anyone who actually lived in a place with no gun laws could really be stupid enough to wear something like this, I was about to engage in ‘dialogue’ but thought better of it, remembering the journey down – and also that this plane was our only option for getting out of Kandahar.

* * *

After Kandahar, Kabul seemed positively Western. Young men loafed in buttock-hugging
jeans and tight T-shirts. In place of the beards a mandatory fist long required under Taliban rule there were trendy sideburns and slicked-back hair. Before Kandahar I’d noticed only the women in burkas. Now I realised how many women wore just a headscarf – teenage girls wearing it Iranian-style, so far back as to be a token gesture. I wondered how the powerful Pashtun tribes of the south felt
when visiting the capital, and whether such rapid change would provoke a conservative backlash.

The General called, inviting me for supper. I was to meet his driver outside the parliament building and could bring a friend. I wore my sweat-stained shelwar kamiz, determined to show my respect for traditional garb. The General greeted us, clean-shaven and wearing a dapper designer suit, smiling
indulgently at my dishevelled clothing. I introduced him to my English friend Will, who spoke some Dari, and the General asked after my mother.

‘You know Mr Chris, your mother, is also like to my mother. She is a very good, very kind, very wonderful person. Come, I will show you the room I am building for her.’

We walked next door with an entourage of armed soldiers covering us from
every angle. The General was building an opulent mansion which he had designed himself. He would rent out this mansion but was building a second, smaller mansion where he planned to live. I was shown my mother’s room.

‘She is very good and trustworthy person,’ he explained, ‘so she can to stay up here in the family quarters with my wife and with my childrens.’

We were driven to the
General’s current home, full of mock-baroque furniture and gilt-framed paintings of shepherdesses, in marked contrast with the ethnic Afghan rugs and Nuristani chests found in the homes of most Kabul expats. I’d mentioned on the phone that I was vegetarian, just in case the General was planning to slaughter a sheep in my honour. The entire banquet was meatless, and the General insisted on serving
us food personally, playing the role of host to perfection as course followed course. Both Will and I felt slightly overwhelmed and humbled by the effort he had gone to. Afterwards we sat replete, drinking green tea with cardamom, and asked the General about Massoud and what he was like.

Smiling dreamily, he described the dead Northern Alliance leader – a man he loved more than his own father
and would happily have died for. Massoud was fearless, wise, humble, strong, and the future of Afghanistan. News of Massoud’s assassination by Al Qaeda reached the General in the Panjir valley where he’d been fighting the Taliban. At first it was unclear whether Massoud was dead or badly wounded. Overpowered by grief, the General was entrenched in the battlefield and unable to return to his
commander. He never saw Massoud again, and had not been present at his deathbed – a fact that grieved him greatly. For days afterwards the General avoided journalists, unable to control his emotions, afraid of what he might unleash.

Talking about it now was still painful, and the General’s eyes flicked up regularly to the gilt-framed portrait of Massoud, incongruous among the shepherdesses.
I changed the subject, asking the General about his escapades against the Red Army, and he was soon entertaining us with tales of bloodshed.

‘I am not so tall, which is also very good if bullets flying at your head. It is also very nice for approaching the tanks and putting the bomb and then running. I don’t know how many Russians I killed. Many, many. But I am not a murderer. I never killed
prisoner or torture. On the battlefield, it is different. It is like the race – you both trying to kill the other and who will be first?’

We left late that night, with promises to visit again and an armed escort back to our accommodation.

Three days later the General called to say that some friends of his were having an evening of concert music. Would Will and I like to come? This
time I dressed in my least scruffy Western clothes. We were picked up by the General’s driver and taken to the home of another distinguished general. Four or five other generals were already present, and we’d barely sat down before three more arrived. Our General wasn’t among them, but we managed stilted conversation over green tea, feeling conspicuously aware of our un-generalness. It became clear
on our General’s entrance that he was held in the greatest esteem by the others. It was only after he arrived that we were ushered upstairs, to the quiet rustle of women hurriedly vacating the dining area.

Here a huge banquet had been laid out on a giant dasturkhan. The layout was much the same as in Uzbekistan, although here it was permissible to step on a corner of the dasturkhan and there
were no bottles of vodka congregated in the middle.

After the banquet, we were led to the basement. This was the best place to host domestic concerts – a new tradition established during Taliban rule when music was outlawed. A
tabla
player adjusted his two drums and began a hypnotic beat. One of the generals played the accordion and another sang mournfully.

‘It’s about love,’ the General
whispered to me, somewhat superfluously. The song was followed eventually by another and another. The lilting melody combined with a recently consumed banquet created a powerful soporific effect and I soon found my eyes growing heavy. Our compound’s curfew time came and went and the music continued. Finally, at around midnight, one of the generals begged leave.

‘Please excuse to my friend,’
the General requested. ‘Now he must to sleep. Tomorrow he will be to Kandahar to fight Taliban.’

I explained that we too should leave, as our nightwatchman would worry at our absence, having missed curfew. The night drew to a close.

* * *

The following day Madrim arrived in Kabul, exhausted and traumatised. He had been stripped naked on the Uzbek side of the Uzbek/Tajik border.
The guards then discovered $200 he hadn’t declared, taking this from him without a receipt and relieving him of his remaining 50,000 som as a ‘fine’. I had yet to witness such rapacious border guards anywhere else. He had to borrow money from the Operation Mercy office in Dushanbe to continue his journey.

Seeing Madrim again was wonderful. It felt like a triumph over the Uzbek government
that borders couldn’t contain our friendship. For the first hour or so I had to reach for words, my Uzbek rusty, but soon we were chatting away as I caught up on the goings-on in Khiva. My Uzbek family were doing well and sent their greetings. Malika, my Uzbek sister, was expecting her first child. The workshops were running OK, but there were still lots of problems and Madrim missed me, finding
it lonely being a director, shouldering most of the worries and stresses. Aina had also been told to leave by the authorities. But hearing news from home was exhilarating. Every now and then one of us would break off our conversation just to sit and grin at the other, still amazed at our reunion.

I still didn’t know why I’d been deported, and speculated on this with Madrim. He thought it
was because a guide I’d upset had connections with the secret police. Equally possible was that an informer had been present at an illegal gathering of Uzbek Christians in Urgench where I’d led the singing. There was no way of knowing for sure. What I hadn’t known was that the Tashkent authorities had demanded a letter of recommendation from the Mayor before considering my case. Koranbeg and Madrim
waited outside his office for hours, hoping for an audience. He finally emerged and they chased him to his car, begging him to sign a letter of recommendation, but he refused.

* * *

We began our dye workshop in Dashti Barchi with the assistance of a local Uzbek boy who translated into Dari. A few days previously I’d bought huge copper cauldrons perfect for dyeing. It had taken us months
to find just one of that size in Uzbekistan, but in Kabul these cauldrons were sold in towering stacks. It was our first time dyeing with wool, but the resulting colours were vivid and strong and the six apprentices seemed keen to learn.

I had just three days left before my ticket expired, and I wanted to extend it to spend more time with Madrim. This proved impossible, but while I was in
downtown Kabul I decided to visit Chicken Street one last time. This was where most of the carpet shops were, and I also wanted to pick up some necklaces for my mother. I was rooting through a pile of kilims in one shop when the owner suddenly appeared, urging me to leave immediately as he began frantically packing down his stock. Confused, I left the shop to see the scene repeated up and down Chicken
Street. Shop-owners feverishly slammed metal grilles shut and fled. I tried to ask why. No one knew, but they’d learnt to flee first and ask questions later. A sense of fear hung in the air as the street emptied.