On the way to Kabul

24 April 2009

Dubai Airport terminal 2 is only marginally better than when I last experienced it in the fall of 2005. It remains the quarantine terminal. The preponderance of men--both westerners, primarily engineers and security types, and Central Asians in shiny suits with unhealthy paunches, and common stubble-- give it an unbalanced energy. The Western men are largish, independent-types, well off, but not flashy, the type who venture out to grab the iffy, but lucrative deal or the hundred other "things" obtainable only far from home. The Central Asians seem weighted in a fateful destiny and the debilitating effects of tobacco and ill living.

Considering the shiny, glassbling of the new Terminal 3, the quarantine terminal is a very poor cousin. The most incongruent aspect is that as soon as one passes from the general entrance into the restricted ticketing counters, one must negotiate a quarter mile of movable, gated switchbacks traversing the entire area of the otherwise huge, empty hall before reaching the luggage scanners. The snaking path could easily accommodate 600 people with baggage. But there is no one in the line, and no one has bothered to move the gates to accommodate this wasteful expenditure of energy. The same sort of maze confronts the traveler approaching passport control. Though not exactly the same humbling procession as the supplicant approaching the gates of Nineveh, it seems to operate on the same level of intimidation.

The accomodating Filipino at the Kam Airlines counter gave me seat 9A--the most perfect seat available for an economy ticket. Positioned before the wing and facing NW, away from the sun, and toward the mountains, I again had the sense of coming into the country with oriental fairy tale suspense and anticipation.

Clouds covered the interior of the Hindu Kush, heaped up against the valley walls, mixed in whiteness with the snow. West of Kabul, we dove into the clouds, circled to the north and completed our final approached to the west. Much is green in the undisturbed villages around the city laid out in rigid squares. Nomad tents and brown and black goats. Puddles from an early morning rain glaze the runway; glossy blue-black magpies hop around on the grass. While taxiing, Afghan men walk around the plane, the female attendant is ignored. It is a land of men, not laws.

Our flight has been enlivened by the addition of the Afghan Cricket Team, returning from their recent series of international games in South Africa. They did not win the championship, but neither did they disgrace themselves. The game is new to the country, having been added to the national sports lineup after refugees learned it in Pakistan. (So I assume most are Pashtun). They were honored back as quite the heroes, representing Afghanistan to the world in their green blazers with embroidered pocket patches.

Waiting at the luggage carousel I chanced on another world-classifying scheme: the number of suitcases passing on the conveyer reinforced with rope. Third world airports cater to fewer passengers traveling with cardboard boxes, but not all have graduated to complete reliance on manufactured zippers and nylon straps, allowing them to discard the security of tidy equator-defining wrappings of rope. I don't remember ever seeing rope in Billings; Dubai was pretty unroped, yet Kabul remains rope heaven.

My apartment at the Loma Linda University compound attached to Wazir Akbar Khan Hospital (WAKH) is simple, clean, and the sort of place I like. The IT technician has actually made the wireless connection my computer work. The people sharing the compound are very agreeable and all work at the hospital.

WAKH is typical of public health hospitals in the developing world, with different odors, huge numbers of people milling. I was given a quick tour and some counsel by Dr. Tom, the general surgeon who has been working here for a few years.