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Outside Magazine December 2003

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The Kabul Express (cont.)


	MIRROR OF THE WAR: waiting on the banks of the once-flowing Kabul River (photograph by Seamus Murphy)

THE GANDAMACK LODGE, in Kabul, was full of excellent loot. The proprietor, a veteran British cameraman named Peter Jouvenal, had just returned from Iraq, carrying a carpet from one of Saddam's palaces over his shoulder. His gun collection had also expanded, as his regular dealers delivered an armory of loosely stacked trophies to the Victorian manor's front hall. One hot noon, I found the bathroom blocked by a dozen Americans in tan vests and army boots—a grinning Special Forces A-Team—busily racking imaginary rounds on ancient Czech Mausers and vintage Lee Enfields.

House rules at the Gandamack stated that only sidearms are permitted in the dining room, so I got used to finding stacks of rifles here and there. It had always been thus: Before Jouvenal marched into town for the BBC as Kabul fell in 2001, this was an Al Qaeda safe house, where Yemeni men used my own cement room, No. 7, to store rocket-propelled grenades. After just a few hours in my airless cell, the Gandamack began to feel more like Guantanamo.

Setting out on foot, I hoped to discover some remains of the capital described four centuries ago by the Mogul emperor Babur as a city of gardens and promenades, surrounded by orchards and fresh springs, with mountains "like rows of clover." Babur would be crying about now: Kabul 2003 is a spectacular dump. Sitting in a treeless valley at 6,000 feet, the city is encircled by barren, stony ridges. The Kabul River is a putrid trickle. The trees in the parks have been cut down for firewood. Half-destroyed buildings sit next to half-built ones, making it unclear whether Kabul is coming or going. The airport, with its fleet of UN planes and the occasional commercial interloper, is surrounded by a graveyard of blasted, abandoned Soviet-era Tupelovs. Luggage is distributed via the time-honored method of full-scale riot.

The streets of Kabul are named, in the medieval style, by what is done there. I was staying on Passport Lane; I made a right on Interior Ministry, then turned left onto Chicken Street. Half a century after the first foreigners made this street famous, the stores cater mostly to foreign soldiers—Germans, Canadians, Norwegians, Brits. The best-selling souvenir is a small rug showing the World Trade Center in flames against a map of Afghanistan, with a pair of F-16s passing overhead, and any crudely lettered, misspelled sampler of these commemorative phrases:

WAR ON TERIRISM 9-11
AFGHANSTAN AND AMERICA
TOGETHER VICTERY!!!

The Americans always get blamed for bidding up the price of rugs, which is totally unfair: Except for a few Special Forces teams and the embassy Marines, most of the U.S. troops in Afghanistan never set foot in Kabul. Instead, blame Canada, which had 2,000 soldiers in town when I arrived. Street kids tailed every giant warrior in Oakleys, offering Pakistani newspapers, 30-year-old maps, and both the old and new Survival Guide.

The only thing you can't get on Chicken Street is chicken, which is available straight ahead on Flower Street. I bargained for a pirated edition of Eric Newby's A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, the 1958 classic about his bumbling assault on a peak in the northeastern province of Nurestan, and paid an argumentative $9 for an original edition of Nancy Dupree's book. Twenty-six years out of date, this was still the best guide to the countryside.

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