This is Part 2 of the series “Welcome to Kabul: Home of the Taliban Swimming Pool” by Allan Cram. To read Part 1, click here.
On the surface, Kabul seemed no different to me than any other impoverished Third World city — Khartoum, N’jamena, San’a came to mind. Cities built of mud bricks in a mud-coloured landscape that on any given day could just as easily dissolve back into the earth and no one in the West would notice. However, on the day I arrived in Kabul, a security bulletin had been released to all humanitarian agencies and other civilian operators in the country to be on the alert for a yellow Toyota believed to carrying a suicide bomber.
Now this was different, I thought to myself. Welcome to Kabul. How anyone knew that a bomber was loose on the streets hadn’t crossed my mind, but at least someone was looking out for us.
The futility attached to any kind of warning, however, became clear within minutes of leaving the empty airport parking lot—empty, not from any lack of travellers but because vehicles were banned from parking anywhere near the terminal building. One had to walk the equivalent of three city blocks to reach the waiting van and driver, baggage in tow under the scorching noon sun, and once I finally arrived, loaded my bag into the back and sat down on the bench seat I peered out the window. And there I saw next to us, row upon row of yellow Toyotas lined up waiting for passengers.
“And this security alert is supposed to make us feel better?” I asked.
As we pulled out onto the airport road, sometimes crawling along no faster than a walk, the chaos referred to as “driving” in Afghanistan did not fail to impress. The narrow strip of asphalt on which two lanes of traffic would travel in North America appeared more like a living, moving DNA strand of yellow taxis, vans, buses and five-ton trucks weaving and dipping, intertwining constantly as they moved forward, sometimes four or five vehicles across.
Unlike the comfortable distance between fenders and bumpers so highly prized and enforced on North American roads, the Afghans drove as though each vehicle was surrounded in some magnetic field repelling objects only a few millimetres from impact. We were so close at times I winced, anticipating the squeak and squeal of metal on metal. I could count the other drivers’ missing teeth; count the wiry hairs on their nose and peer into the deep, mysterious eyes of a female passenger in the back through the thick mesh of her blue burqa. A suicide bomber, willing to detonate the C-4 wrapped around his chest in such close quarters, could unleash diabolical damage instantly.
A more relevant security warning would have been: stay off the roads, essential travel only. Or watch out for the US Embassy convoys.
It didn’t take long for me to realize that when any US VIP travelled through the knotted streets of Kabul, collateral damage was not far behind. Two or three heavily armoured, black, oversized SUVs with tinted windshields were driven by madmen who ignored the relative flow of traffic and pushed through the intricate chain at breakneck speeds like a rampant virus. Their attempt at anything resembling courtesy consisted of flashing headlights and the constant blaring of the horn, and pedestrians and cyclists all had to leap out of the way to avoid being crushed.
For an Afghan to have an accident, it is both a mortal sin, and against the law—a strange judicial stroke on something that is generally out of ones control. Nevertheless, we saw very few fender benders or injured pedestrians. What often appeared as pure chaos on the roads may actually have been a skill that would be revered by anxious and impatient drivers the whole world over. But the Embassy vehicles left behind a wake of shattered nerves, close calls and cyclists praising Allah for sparing their lives.
The only other vehicles that seemed to slice through the knotted traffic were military armoured convoys. No one wanted to be near them. If the Afghan cars had magnets that repelled contact, the NATO vehicles seemed fitted with powerful electromagnets that attracted vehicles filled with bombs. To this day, every security company in Kabul warns their clients to avoid NATO convoys. Otherwise, travel in Kabul is relatively safe.
On that first day in Kabul, however, watching for a yellow Toyota driven by a wild-eyed suicide bomber soon became ludicrous, and eventually I did what the local Afghan drivers did when driving on the roads—watch for anything out of the ordinary. Unfortunately, the definition of “ordinary” had become very blurred.
Was it ordinary to see a donkey cart overturned with fruit and bread spilling out into the street, the poor donkey’s legs splayed upright as though rigor mortis had already set in? Was it ordinary to see young girls—younger than my 11-year old at home—rushing up to the side of the car in busy traffic to hold out their hands? A would-be infidel killer or just a beggar?
Or what about the narrow trucks piled so high with boxes that the front wheels barely made contact with the pavement and the driver weaved down the road as though holding on for dear life as the truck went where the wind pushed it? Or what about the gathering of official looking Afghans in what appeared to be police uniforms, all wielding AK-47’s? Were they policemen, or wearing a disguise? As well as the report of a suicide bomber cruising the streets in a ubiquitous yellow Toyota, we had also been informed that 500 Afghan police uniforms had recently been stolen from one of the weaving trucks.
Ah, yes—welcome to Kabul, where every day seemed like a visit to the circus.
Photo Credits
All photos @ Canada in Afghanistan @ Flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.
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