As former lawyer, I tend to approach issues from an advocacy point of view. At the core of law school, is the training to argue both sides of an issue. Nevertheless, I have to confess, sometimes I struggle to be objective. It took going to Kabul, Afghanistan, to realize that something I had long thought was a straight forward issue, keeping our troops in Afghanistan or getting them out, are two points of view with variations and permutations too numerous to distill into a "stay or leave choice". Kabul's traffic is the perfect metaphor for the mind-numbing status of this ravaged and complex country that our group of nine peace activists visited, with the hope of understanding it somewhat better.
The word chaos leaps to mind as I try to describe what would be terrific fodder for a parody on traffic run amok. Thanks to my front seat vantage point in our nifty little bus and our nerves-of-steel bus driver (I didn't have the heart to tell him he wasn't behind the wheel of a Ferrari), I could leave Afghanistan with enough anecdotes to make this trip a successful traffic assessment investigation. As that is not my purpose, I'll make my traffic observations brief: a mad, no-rules free-for-all game of Chicken with a collective nonchalance that boarders on insanity. That is Kabul.
Kabul's smell is not for the feint of heart. It is a little burning tire mixed with, I want to say, maybe, open sewer? Just severe enough to wonder if my olfactory lobes were going to go on strike. The odor took charge of my nostrils as soon as I arrived. Hard to believe, I got used to it. Did I have a choice? The air quality, the visible junk I had to take into my lungs every time I in haled, was another matter. It is a dense mixture of dust, burning matter, dried feces and motor vehicle emissions that I am sure has compromised my longevity. That said, I didn't go to Afghanistan looking for paradise and, I must say, I was not the least bit disappointed. The sites, sounds and smells were as foreign as this inveterate world traveller had ever encountered.
So was our Guest House #10. We had to drive through a heavily guarded entrance that was only opened after our guide showed papers that apparently proved we 8 middle-aged American women and one man were not going to blow the place up. It would be difficult to exaggerate how basic our accommodations were. Dark, dank and dirty. They were not for the faint of heart. "Dinner" wasn't either. Fortunately, we were sufficiently distracted from whatever it was that we were served by the arrival of the couple who proved to be the lynchpins of our trip, Nooria and Asad Farhad.
We quickly learned that our trip was going to be filled with the gamut of Afghan personalities. The dinner Nooria and Asad invited us to for the following evening sounded irresistible.