‘That’s not a tank,’ says H, when I point out the first of them ‘It’s a BTR-70. Armoured personnel carrier. That one over there’s a BMP combat vehicle.’ He knows his Soviet armour from the days when the West feared the might of the Red Army, which fought its last engagement not in Europe but in the valleys and passes of Afghanistan.
The landscape is beautiful none the less. Perhaps it’s even more beautiful because the evidence of destruction is never far away and makes us think of the fragility of life. It’s also as if we’ve gone back in time. The surrounding villages, clinging to hillsides as if they’ve grown out of the ground itself, are made from timber and adobe and have a biblical look. White-bearded men in turbans and flowing gowns lead camels by the roadside or guide wooden ploughs behind oxen. We return briefly to the twentieth century as we enter Jalalabad, where the streets are paved again, and we stop to eat kebabs and freshly baked bread at a tiny stall. The owner jokes with us and asks if we are looking for Osama.
The capital bears all the scars of war. We drive in from the east, about six hours after leaving the border, and pass the shattered suburb of Microrayon, where every building is half-ruined by gunfire and rocket blasts.
‘Bloody hell,’ says H gloomily as he looks over the destruction. ‘They really went to work here.’
Even on the outskirts of Kabul there are hollowed-out carcasses of Soviet-made tanks, whose turrets have been blown from their housings by anti-tank mines and lie upside down a few yards away. I wonder how many wars some of them saw before they ended up here. Some date from the era of the Soviet occupation that ended twelve years earlier, others from the long civil war that saw the city torn apart by rival factions. Some may have even seen action in the Gulf War, after which the CIA had the bright idea of gathering them up from Iraqi battlefields and bases and sending them on to Afghanistan.
Kabul seems half-deserted since I was last here, probably because the Tajik population championed by Massoud, the Taliban’s arch-rival, has largely fled. Nor is there any sign of the pakoul, the flat woollen hat worn all over the north of the country. On the advice of our taxi driver, we’ve already hidden ours. There are few cars other than taxis and the occasional pickup truck with tinted windows, the preferred means of travel for Taliban commanders and their bodyguards. It’s as if the place is on holiday and every normal activity has shut down. There are no kites in the sky. The Taliban have seized a ghost town.
Our guest house is in the least-destroyed residential part of the city called Wazir Akbar Khan, where a grid of homes for Kabul’s most prosperous families was built in the 1970s. The trust provides a housekeeper and a chowkidar, who welcome us warmly and fuss over our every request. The windows on the ground floor are heavily sandbagged, and upstairs the panes have anti-shatter tape across them in case of nearby explosions. We install ourselves gratefully in big rooms with marble-floored bathrooms where the taps don’t work because there’s no electricity to pump the water. But we’ve made it to Kabul and we’re happy to be here.
From the upstairs room we can just see a snow-covered ridge, miles away in the high mountains to the north. The final moments of sunlight are just settling along it with a bright pink glow, and it looks almost as if a luminous flamingo feather has gently fallen to rest there from the beyond.
13
The mine clearers are brave men whom I respect. Their work is dangerous and by normal standards they are paid a pittance for it. Though they save countless lives, they don’t get the recognition they deserve and are frequently treated with suspicion or ridicule, especially in rural areas, by people who are too stupid to understand the importance of what they do.
They have never been introduced to the notion of life insurance. When one of their team is wounded or dies, the others contribute to a sum which is then delivered to the man’s wife, who may be able to live from it for a few months. But this is Afghanistan, and they are among the most privileged of the city’s employees.
We walk to their headquarters in Wazir the following morning, and are greeted with spine-crushing hugs from the manager, a burly and jovial Pashtun in his fifties who I’ve known for years. I call him Mr Raouf because he used to call me Mr Anthony, and the habit of using our first names stuck. Even as a junior member of the de-mining team his natural confidence and authority told me he’d do well, and I did everything to see he was promoted as swiftly as was fair. Now he’s the local director and has thirty men working under him.
‘Thanks be to God,’ he smiles, ‘life is good. You see how religious we have all become?’ he asks with an ironic chuckle, and tugs at his thick beard. It’s a decree of the Taliban that men let their beards grow. Being clean-shaven is associated with the irreligious devilry of the communists, who brought ruin to Afghanistan, though not everybody agrees. Like many Afghans, Raouf doesn’t see why not having a beard should make him less religious, and like any Afghan, he dislikes being told what to do.
Mr Raouf gives H and me a tour of the trust’s new facility in Wazir, then drives us to a training area on a hillside in the east of the city, where his men are learning to detect mines. We have lunch in his office, where the shelves are lined with a slightly macabre collection of deactivated anti-personnel mines.
‘In a few days,’ I tell him, ‘I need to drive to a place in the south-west of the country. I need a few reliable men who can help me and who will not talk about what they have done.’
‘Dorost. Right. They will be at your service,’ he says without hesitating. ‘What will you do in this place?’
‘I will make a big explosion.’
A smile spreads slowly over his face, and he strokes his beard as he nods admiringly at us both.
‘I am proud to help you,’ he says. ‘Especially for an explosion.’
To confirm that I will make it worth his while would be to offend him, so I don’t.
‘Your men will be generously rewarded,’ I say.
There’s a knock at the door and one of his staff announces that the men are ready for their afternoon game of soccer, but that they’re short of two men. Mr Raouf looks at us with a questioning twinkle in his eye, and we’re too surprised to refuse. I am lent a pair of boots several sizes too small, and hobble to the pitch outside. It’s a grassless stretch of land that’s as rough and hard as bulldozed rubble. The air is so thin I can’t seem to suck enough of it into my lungs. And since the Afghan body is made out of a substance harder and more durable than ordinary flesh and bone, when our shins and arms make contact with our opponents, H and I agree that it’s as if we’ve been hit with wooden bats.
We haven’t had so much fun for ages.
The mornings are quiet and cool, and on the balcony we soak up the rays of the sun like lizards. There’s little to suggest that the country is a place torn apart by conflict. The occasional rumble of artillery far to the north can be easily mistaken for distant thunder, and the sound of AK-47 fire on the outskirts of the city is indistinguishable from that of a horse trotting on tarmac, carried from afar on an uneven wind.
H busies himself with the equipment we’ll need for the overland journey, with which Mr Raouf has agreed to help us. We also receive a message from London to tell us that the special items we’ve requested are ready to be picked up. The friendly embassy is one of the few that has not been abandoned, and lies in the centre of town. We are given two large black nylon bags, which we take back home and unpack on the floor of a locked bedroom. It feels like Christmas, and we lift out the layers of supplies with the thrill of children who’ve never had presents before.