Walking in Mazar

The ubiquitous Afghan cleaners and tea-wallahs in public places seem to be a generic type of short, bandy-legged, bent, old-before-their-time men. Their shalwar (draw-string trousers) reach mid calf, their clothes are not dirty with only today's dirt, but are discolored with old, old filth washed many times. Inevitably they have straggly beards, and wear a skull cap or a ratty turban. They are in the back ground, waiting for a handout, will clean the OR floors, but only if asked or they will bring you bitter tea with no sugar. No one asks their opinion about the world.

Badrang--cucumbers. They are one of the main items vendors are presently selling from carts in the city. Beautiful, firm, fat cucumbers, sweet as melons. The vendor will peel one for you right there and you can eat it while you walk down the street, but I rarely see Afghans walking down the street eating. However, I saw a lady slip an ice cream cone under the front of her burka. How does one eat an ice cream cone while wearing a burka?

Orthopaedics is truly a social disease in the developing world. The non-trauma orthopaedic patients arrive with some horrendous deformity caused by some inexplicable condition that was or is so severe and has gone on for so long that the bones, joints and the patients have grown into their deformity. The time is past when a solution is possible, or the problem is beyond the capacity of this hospital, beyond the capacity of the patients to follow through with the long drawn out treatment that would be necessary to perhaps help them. Most times I'm not sure that even fixing them into a more normal appearing physical shape will improve their state. The intellectual poverty of the patients is a barrier I cannot overcome.

A man with TB of the spine was admitted to the ward a few evenings ago. He had been on anti-TB drugs, but decided, along with the blessings of the local mullah that he didn't really need them. So, he stopped taking them. Only when he developed lower extremity weakness and couldn’t walk did he rethink his condition and come to the hospital. His paraspinal TB abscess was drained of 800 cc of pus. Now he is back to near normal, oblivious to the severity of his situation and how he aggravated it. It's not that he doesn't care about his health; he is just plain ignorant and has little trust in western medicine. Everyone has an underlying social problem that makes the treatment of their orthopaedic problem difficult and likely to fail. For chronic problems like mechanical low back pain, degenerative joint disease, diabetes, and hypertension, the situation is much worse than for trauma. At least we can fix a certain amount of the trauma. Surgery bypasses some of the social impediments. But not always and never in a completely satisfactory way.

At the hospital I am called "madam-sir." A convenient title that covers all possibilities.

Rahimullah has been very patient with me, giving me the names of the streets we commonly travel on our ride from the IAM guest house to the hospital. It is an easy route and had I paid more attention and kept the shrine in my sights, along with my compass, I could have figured it out, though without the names. Last Friday I was to meet Kristin and some Afghans who had come up from Kabul to see the north. I gave them the name of Marmal Street, the paved road near the guest house and told them to follow it south from Tashqurgan Road, (which is now called Massoud Street just to confuse everyone). Rahimullah told me the name of the nearby school--Sultan Razia. I gave all this information to my friends and told them I'd meet them on the corner at a vegetable/grocery. We actually met up! I was quite proud of this little maneuver in a city neither of us actually knew, whose average citizens don't know the name of the street they live on, and who have no inner map in their head with which to process directions.
Our trip started with a drive north from Mazar to see the Amu Darya. We drove through sparse pasture land of green tussocky grass interspersed with red poppies and small yellow flowers. This turned into sand dunes, which intrigued the Kabuli women who apparently had never seen, walked on, or felt sand. The Amu Darya or Oxus and its other named riverine beginnings form an extensive portion of the northern border of Afghanistan between Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. Historically it is important either as an obstacle or conduit for transport, trade, and war. Today it is a brown, fecal-smelling swift body of uninviting water with little to recommend it for further viewing. I preferred what I knew of it as history than what I saw on Friday. Unfortunately, much of the rest of the world remains preferable in an historical mode than in real life.

Returning to Mazar we stopped to visit the shrine. Walking with Afghan women is a slow ordeal. There is no consensus and no communication of where we are going, no one can quite make of her mind, just a purposeless slow meandering. Walking with a woman who is wearing a burka is worse, especially one with high heels. I've never seen a woman in a burka wearing sensible shoes. After the defeat of the Taliban and their rules forbidding high heels because of the distracting sound such shoes made, keeping men from thinking about god, Afghan women are taking their revenge by wearing the most garishly fancy, uncomfortable, silly looking footwear. Neither Nike nor Adidas fall into this category. So we meandered in the gardens. Beautiful with roses, but far too crowded.

Kristin and I went off by ourselves to walk inside the grounds of the shrine, I believe we were the only infidels of any sex doing so. We were covered, following the rules of Islamic modesty, but the suspicious attention we generated was most amazing. Even the burkas turned around to stare at us. The last time I visited the shrine was with Homayun in the middle of winter on a non-Friday. It was a much more pleasant experience. At that time I felt none of the xenophobic suspicion I felt with Kristin. I was hoping to see someone trip because they were staring at us and not watching their step. Experiencing this, I can only say that Afghanistan is light years away in its preparation for entering a century in which the rest of the world at least gives lip service to gender equality. Though Kristin and I walked around the shrine with only stares and whispers following us, and encountered no physical aggression and no words spoken against us to our faces, I will return with my newly tailored clothes, including a generous chardor and black plastic sandals. I will carry no back pack (a bit of a give away) and will see if it makes any difference.

Kristin has taken the role of dressing for the culture to what I would call perfection. She has stylish tunics of appropriate length, with color coordinated well-made pants and chardor of fine material. She wears them all naturally. She has incorporated some Western ideas into her fashion--I can't say what they are exactly, perhaps it is the color patterns--less dark than the morbid colors worn openly in Kabul, though not as flamboyant as the normal wedding culture sequins and glitter commonly worn every day under burkas. I am covered, but more in the spirit, if not the letter of the law and certainly without the flare that Kristin manages. Still she is stared at. And it isn't just her sensible shoes. I think no matter how one does it, our ideas of dress will always have some element of individuality that is not Afghan. And if the clothes and lack of make-up don't do it, something about our manner will bubble to the surface that shouts out, "foreigner."