Streets of Kabul

Staying in Kabul a few days before going on to Herat, while Bond Street Theatre checks in on its other ongoing youth project, and gearing up for our upcoming endeavor. BST now has a headquarters office in Kabul to manage its youth engagement project spanning the next two years. A whole house with sleeping accommodation, office and workshop space. It's managed by an Afghan staff and they don't want the neighborhood to know there are foreigners here, as it might cause all kinds of complications (due to security concerns and corruption), so we're not allowed to go out on the street.

My first day in Kabul I spent the day inside and watched life go by outside the window. People walking by on the way to work, school, shop. Women with children, a man with a little boy, a couple of teenage boys hanging out, school girls on the way home, old men on bicycles bringing home bread, and children flocking to the ice cream man. Ordinary, peaceful life. (Occasionally interrupted by the loud sound of a military helicopter.)

A couple of days later I got the chance to go shopping on Chicken Street (where they don’t sell chickens, but a lot of traditional jewelry, clothing and arts & crafts). Bought a few things, but mostly enjoyed saying hello to the shopkeepers. Salam aleykoum, khob asti? Nam-e chist? Az didaretan khosh shoudum! Practicing my Dari and making new friends. There was Khoja Sardar, the tailor with fantastic colorful Afghan dresses, and Amin, the tea seller on the street who refused to let me pay for my tea because I was his guest, but also Turyaleh, the little shoeshine boy who was so very sad... I felt so bad for him. 

Everyone I’ve come across is quite friendly. And they all offer tea, of course. Afghans are very hospitable. Watching people go by the window outside the house the other day, I was struck by the ordinariness of it, just regular peaceful life. But then you have what happened to Farkhunda, so brutally murdered in midst of day at the mosque by a mob – beaten, stomped, run over by a car, burned – the level of brutality hard to comprehend. How does a mob form to do such a thing, so suddenly, immediately, on a notion (“she’s burning the Quran!”). Would any of these people walking by on the street do that? This and all the security warnings from everybody (some of our Afghan friends feel it’s too dangerous for us to leave the house), it makes you feel life here is precarious and unpredictable, seemingly calm, but at any moment… shit might hit the fan and you might get killed. As has been pointed out, after three decades of war and conflict, the people of Afghanistan are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. But it seems this incident has been a wake-up call for many.

I went to the Shah-e-Doh Shamshira mosque and there was a demonstration under way with heavy police presence. A policewoman frisked me, and then we smiled and shook hands, and my companion and I chose to go another direction. On the loudspeaker a voice condemned in Dari and English the "vicious cruel attack." I would've liked to have taken part in this protest but it was not a good idea to get too close.

We instead proceeded down the market street on the other side of the river. Bustling with people going about their lives, shopping for all kinds of sundries, and nobody paying me any mind (as the sole foreigner among them). Feeling a little apprehensive, but then quite safe and comfortable. I stopped and chatted with Moska, a young woman selling bangles on the street, and bought a few gifts for the girls in Herat.