30 Days in Afghanistan - Driving to the Taliban (Part 1)

Tank Boys

The boys climb up the green battered flank of the behemoths, they swing from the turrets. They hop up on the gunners seat, and look to see if I'm still taking pictures. An unnatural scene, something so abrasively out of context, like a blemish on smooth skin. I'm out of synch with the normalcy of the setting around me, a foreigner observing a routine in a strange land. I try not to let on, and I take more pictures of the two boys staring at me. They're sitting atop two Russian tanks on the side of this remote stop in the desert north of Kabul.

My fixer, who was the first face to greet me in this country, is with me. He's standing by the car across the road, waiting for me to finish taking pictures of the boys on the tank. He's agreed to take me on this trip. I've been anticipating this since I stepped onto this land. I shoot some more, the kids climb back down, I fish out some Afghani bills from my pocket, and ask Shah if I should hand it to the kids. He says, they may be insulted, these aren't beggars, so I put the money back in my pocket, and wave at the kids, and say "Tashakor". They smile back, we get back in Shah's Toyota, and race onwards.

We've been driving North East of Kabul for over an hour, our destination lies another 2 hours ahead. Forty minutes outside of the city, we run out of road, and we drive at ridiculously high speeds, and brake sharply to avoid rocks, holes, cars, people, goats, cows, and occasionally the sharp drop-off of a cliff. Driving in this country is a discourse between the mass of a car versus the nerve of the driver. After a while, you begin to trust that every time you get into a car, you will not fly through the windshield, or be hit by the bus speeding toward your side. In order to make the trip in three hours, Shah's flooring the Toyota through rugged and winding roads, I cradle my equipment, and try to enjoy the contrasting serene landscape outside.

Remote Lands

The sweeping landscape of this region has been described well in many books, but witnessing the train of mountains rising and falling along the land, with the remoteness of the villages, and dusty valleys, is not justified by any words. The landscape emanates history, you feel the past reeling by, below the high sky is where travelers walked, and rode for centuries. This is where armies rose, and conquered lands, this is where the silk road, and the spice roads intersected, this is where empires fell. Along this unforgiving terrain, great valleys appear between mountains, lush with green fertile farmland, only to fade away into arid dry scorched earth again.

In the desolation, signs of life appear, in what would seem inhospitable, a mud hut alone on a hill, a great big mud castle, flanked by small dry patches of crop fields, a herd of sheep followed by a young boy shepherding his flock. Between two mountains I see an old man riding a donkey, I could only guess where he's coming from and where he's heading. Life persists, life stakes ground, wherever it can.

From an eagle's vantage, our Toyota appears as a yellow speck racing onwards, leaving a dusty trail behind us, every once in a while, braking and swerving violently off the dusty path. In the three hours, we've come across many small villages. We drive at the same speed through the villages until we hit occasional traffic. If Shah doesn't see around a turn he's about to take, he prevents an accidents by blaring the car horn while taking the turn. At one point, we nearly hit a little girl, and of course, I'm the only one who's alarmed. Shah, and the girl, somehow are oblivious to it all.

From Kabul, we pass through Bagram, where there's an American airbase, the lonely road between the villages we drive on is occasionally interrupted by the Chinook helicopters above us. I can hear the wup-wup sound of their blades before I see them. We'll continue onwards, and pass more villages, Shokhi, this is where one of these helicopters went down a few years ago, then Solanak, Tapa, Lal Pul, Mackteb, Sarboli, Landa Khail, Qila E Salah, Duran, Sayed Khail, to our final stop at Joibar, Shah's village.

We make a few stops along the route. Once at the top of a hill, with a majestic view of the valleys below us, and a river running alongside the mountain. We walk thirty or forty yards towards the edge of the hill, overlooking the river snaking through the valley. We come across a square cement embankment two feet high on four sides that is off to the side of the main path. The West side of the cement enclosure has a small minaret on it, the short walls are painted green. A mosque for the traveler in the middle of God's country.

We walk towards the edge of the cliff, Shah leans down, picks up an empty Kalashnikov bullet shell, and hands it to me. I toss it around in my hand, trying to figure out what a bullet could be doing here, in this barren patch of earth, suspecting the answer. Shah confirms it, Russians fought the country throughout these hills and valleys. I put the shell in my pocket, we get back in the car and drive on.

Along the drive, at various places in the desert I notice small areas where piles of stones are painted white, and green. I ask Shah, what they represent, wondering if they have some cultural or religious significance. He explains, the white stones are where mines are still lying in the ground, and the green stones are where they have been cleared. There are more white stones than green.

Graveyards in the Desert

Throughout our drive, I've notice areas near the foot of hills, where small flat rocks jut out of the ground in small grouped areas. It is the work of humans, and at first, I don't make the connection, and then it dawns on me - graves. I ask Shah to stop again, at what appears to be a larger graveyard in the middle of a field. The flat rocks are burial markers for the martyrs and the dead, some have flags attached to them, usually with very colorful cloths placed repeatedly at the grave site.

We get out of the car, and I wander through the rows of graves, it is midday, and the sun is high above us, there's a breeze blowing from the mountains. I walk a distance away from Shah, around a square embankment, that holds a few more graves in it, these must have been either rich families or heroes to be given this prominence. Around the corner, I nearly stumble into an old man, who was hidden from view from our direction. "Salaam Alaikum" he says, extending his hand, I reply "Walaikum Salaam", and greet him. I don't understand his words in Dari, Shah comes over and translates, "He says his name is Nasir Khawray". I tell him "Nice to meet you". We stay together for a few minutes, and I look into his face, and he represents Afghanistan to me in that instant, old, rugged, weathered, and yet still filled with warmth and hospitality.

We get back into the car, Shah explains the word "Khawray" means mud in Dari. I ask him if he thinks the old man was a farmer, and earned his name from his pre-occupation. He replies, "No, he calls himself mud, because he thinks he is as insignificant as mud before the Almighty". I realize this is one of those moments that will mark my life.

A month from now, I'll be back driving with Sonia and baby Zakaria, in our Lexus in North Dallas, smoothie in hand, and PDA in the other, but here I am now, in the desert with a stranger who I am entrusting my life with, and an old man who probably hasn't traveled more than a day's walk from the village he was born in. In his face, I see God, I see His Shadow among the hills, the barren road, the grave markers, the white and green stones.

We return to the car, and drive onwards, passing more hills, graves and villages.