Barbara Brewster: author, presenter, poet, actress, teacher, clown & survivor

AFGHANISTAN DIARY 1970 ... Part 2

19 July - Kabul

It’s like being on a honeymoon here in Kabul. Last night we stayed out exploring and feasting on glorious food. This morning we rise late and go to the Khyber for a breakfast of strawberries and yogurt. We found our way to the Peace Corps woman, Denise’s, and chatted with her and her Afghani girl friends and readily accepted her invitation to join them on their trip to Bamian, where the buddhas are carved into the cliffs, tomorrow.

In the afternoon we go to Shari-Nau, the embassy area, pastry–hopping and gun shopping. Kabul is growing on me. I love the features and the exotic attire of the people and the pleasant banter with the shopkeepers. The bargaining is for fun, not pressurizing or personal. It’s almost as if they know it is part of the role they must play, and so they appeal to our senses of fairness and humor to make us go along and give a fellow a chance anyway.

The biggest problem is finding out where the bus to Bamian leaves from. At 3a.m., yes, everyone tells us that. But where?

Photo by Ian Alexander (website)

20 July - Bamian

We tiptoe from our hotel at 2 a.m. Kabul seems even more like a frontier outpost in the dark of night with its shadows of rough buildings and flickering of gas lamps along the wide streets. Dogs bark furiously as we pass, lurching under our backpacks over the cobbles and stones of the dirt street. Down a dark side street and through an alley and around a corner and inside a mud wall we find the bus—full already with people.

We establish ourselves on the roof and are awed by the amount of luggage already piled on. Then the men start working in earnest and take on an incredible amount of bedrolls, packs and trunks, all the while pushing us aside and wishing us off the roof. But we refuse to yield our places, knowing how easy it is to be superceded by anyone who moves quicker and pushes harder.

Around 3:30 the bus grinds into motion. The air is sharp and cold enough to warrant wriggling into our sleeping bags. Within minutes, there’s the first prayer stop before starting the climb up the mountains, and we can look back at Kabul sprawling pastel and dim in the predawn light.

Chugging across a wide plain, we see trees and mud houses and crops in abundance. The dirt road winds along the contours of countless fertile little valleys. It seems the barren gray slopes always converge in the V of a river, and here the people live in simple mud huts tilling the available soil given them by the river. Sometimes elaborate ditch systems carry water to the fields, past, and even through, houses and for miles along the slope of a hill so that crops can be irrigated higher above the river land as well.

Not too many stops. One for nan (flat bread) and chai (tea) in an open-air "café". We sit crossed legged on reed mats or woven carpets with little tea pots and even tinier glasses. When we pile back into the bus, I look through the windows and am astonished at how crowded the people are inside. Glad we’re up on the roof and can breathe and take in the panorama of the Hindu Kush, a study in rocky pediments, stone formations and shifting colors.

Lunch stop. We break nan into tin panikins of tasty soup. Tea. We skip the tough looking meat, but take the risk of savoring some juicy, plump grapes. Away again, swaying in our high perch, absorbing the intense sun rays, talking with the German man with the straw hat and movie camera and the Aussie chap with the blistering nose. Our conversation is overtaken for a spell by three little Afghanies, jabbering, singing and spitting. One in particular is a nuisance. Only after a while, do I realize that the strange feeling I’m having whenever we are all forced to lie down to avoid branches of trees is this little guy reaching over and groping my chest.

I change places with Tim and soon the squint-eyed Hazarat starts cuddling up. But he is harmless, squinting out from under his enormous turban and babbling to nobody, like a child or a moron, to his heart’s content.

Late afternoon we begin passing through spectacular scenery. After climbing the switchbacks of a pass we drive along vast, open, rolling hills with tussocky grasses and a tundra-looking appearance sweeping toward the peaks of high mountain ranges off in the cloudy horizon. Then we start descending narrow gorges, and soon instead of being at the top of the world we are at the bottom looking up at magnificent towering rock faces. All are rugged and eroded, sometimes, into weird patterns and shapes.

This chasm eventually widens and follows a swift-flowing, clear river edged by lush long grasses, but with an absence of houses or people. Above us are twisted and jagged red rocks, pinnacles, and rows of pyramid peaks and sharp ridges. The late day shadows intensify the patterns of fantastic forms and colors. We pass the 800 year-old "Red City", abandoned since its destruction by Genghis Khan 500 years ago. Still, crumbling walls and towers rise out of the hillside on which it was so grandly built, watching down centuries, solitary sentinels of a life unknown to those beyond these mountain barriers.

We see caves gaping in the red stone cliffs. Now the road is lined with more and more trees whose branches we must scramble to dodge, until finally we are forced into the crucible of the bus. My western mind boggles entering the cramped space which dozens of people sat in for 14 hours. The loader literally walks over me. We take up positions as fantastic as the rock formations we’ve been passing. At 5:30 we arrive in Bamian and quickly find the Guest House. It’s alive with lots of young travelers, but no Denise. Evidently their plane didn’t leave yesterday. Pretty rustic for 60 cents a nite. We eat and are into bed by 8:30.

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7 - Part 8

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