Mazar-i-Sharif

I had planned on traveling from Kabul to Mazar-i-Sharif by land. The Salang Tunnel and the northern slopes of the Hindu Kush in full green were especially alluring. My requisite, Afghan escorts did not finish their duty with the ministry of health and the $39 one way ticket on Safi Air seemed a good price, cheaper than hiring a taxi. The security hassle to fly out of Kabul--the repetitive searching through my belongings by bored women who were more interested in the ongoing TV soap in their hot, stuffy cubicles, the unsubtle gestures requesting bribes, the dirty fingers patting me down for weapons, the superficial, slap-dash irrelevance of it all--is simply a two hour tax on a one hour journey.

Many things in Afghanistan are done by rules and procedures that make little sense to me, but are simply the way things are done in this country. For example, the large plane was only half full of passengers, but they were seated all scrunched together in the front half of the plane, with the back completely empty. I would think for comfort and balance passengers would be best spaced accordingly. But no, this is the way it is done in Afghanistan.

The mountains were partly obscured with cloud, but the short flight in bright late afternoon sunshine was calm and I had a fine dose of mountain and snow and green. A non-military contract manager from Mississippi sitting beside me asked if I believed humans were the cause of global warming. He asked this in the same way evangelicals, whom one has just met, ask if you have taken Jesus as your savior. He immediately told me his position--that man, in God's great scheme, was too insignificant to cause such wide atmospheric changes and the scientists were spinning statistics because they had nothing better to do. Had I pursued the argument, I'm sure he would have introduced the improbability of evolution in the second round. I was reminded that not all people receive the same message from the accumulated data, or some get their data from the same sources.

Mazar city is dustier than I expected. Dr. Rahimullah said that many of the smaller streets are unpaved and after rain, the cars pick up mud and deposit it on the paved roads. He dropped me off at the International Assistance Mission (IAM) guesthouse compound where a room was waiting--clean, with a big comfortable bed, common kitchen and bathroom--the basic unadorned mission-type guesthouse I expected. It was quite full the first night, but has since housed only one or two others. It seems this will be the pattern during my month here.

The small garden surrounding the guesthouse is well tended with grapevines trellised to shade the walkway along one wall, two fig trees with small fruits, and a flowering pomegranate tree. I do taichi beside a profusion of fragrant rose bushes and parterres of salad greens mixed with petunias and stock. The first floor of the house is an English-as-a-second language school, with one American man living here for 5 months to learn Dari. From first light at 04:30 until 20:00, noisy sparrows and soft wooing, (not cooing) doves seem always present. The latter remind me of the ubiquitous presence of doves that I think of as typically South African. A matted, thickly furred brindled mastiff with cropped ears and tail lives in the parking-garage part of the compound. Zambul's (bee in Dari) deep barks set off the nightly neighborhood canine chorus.

I believe this is a typical Afghan urban residential neighborhood. From street level is it all mud. Nothing but perhaps the color of the door, the metal work on the gate, or the shape of windows distinguish one family's compound from another. I suspect that for someone used to mud walls, there are distinguishing features to give one hints, but these I do not know. Time and a conscious effort to put a child's face with a doorway, a frequently seen car, or repeated greetings from the inhabitants would let me classify each compound into my own order. At this point I know I live on the second street from Marmul Street, past a guard house and at the last compound on the right. And after a rain the street becomes thick adherent gumbo.

I am intrigued by these compounds behind mud walls. They mask the gardens. All that is important is hidden, unknown to the casual person passing by. In the US one knows something about the people living in a house or apartment building; we readily display how we live for all to see. From the outside I would have never guessed this house had such a pleasant and well-tended garden, a house with expats, a rough-barking dog, a refuge from dust and noise.

And I would have never expected a bowl of strawberries in Mazar. One of the longer-term residents of the guest house runs an NGO that helps local Afghan farmers establish new cash crops. Besides a lucrative seed oil project, he has some farmers growing strawberries, tut farengi--or in translation--European mulberries. Two nights ago he received a large bag of the berries and offered me a bowl. These were not the "industrial" berries, picked a week before and woody enough to withstand the abuse of a thousand mile journey to market. These were strawberries with a flavor I remember from the past, soft succulent, sweet fruits.

The full moon has just risen over the mountains to the southeast, the little boy flying his kite from the neighboring roof has disappeared inside, and the light just went out in the daily Afgahn ritual of electrical outage during the busiest time of the evening. Inshall'allah it will come back on in a couple hours.