Essay: Back in Kabul, thinking of home

KABUL, Afghanistan — I’ve just returned to Kabul after nearly two months away. Living in two worlds can be severely disorienting, and I am at all sure which direction gives me the worst culture shock.

My first impressions on arriving in my native Boston in early July were far from rosy. No one seemed to know or care much about Afghanistan, my abiding obsession. It never occurred to me that my long-winded diatribes against shortsighted policies and grave injustices could be the problem. I would fume at the fixed smiles and glazed stares of my interlocutors, just before the conversation switched back to Lindsay Lohan’s prison sentence or the daily specials at Stop & Shop.

It took me almost three weeks to get an Internet connection at my house on Cape Cod. Verizon simply refused to get the address right. After days of increasingly acrimonious phone calls I ended up screaming: “It was easier to get Internet service in Afghanistan, and you should be ashamed of that,” right before banging down the phone. A supervisor then called, with a carefully conciliatory attitude, but I have the feeling my name is now on a roster with Homeland Security.

I missed Afghanistan bitterly, even as I delighted in Starbucks and seafood, upscale shopping malls and long walks on the beach. I reconnected with family and friends, recharged my dangerously depleted batteries, and even, after about a month, relaxed. But the tug of Afghanistan was always there. Finally it was time to go “home.”

My return to Kabul began in the Afghan Consulate in Dubai, where I arrived on Sunday morning to apply for a visa.

In my mind I was still on sunny Cape Cod, where swarthy, bearded faces topped by turbans or white prayer caps are a rarity. But I felt a curious thrill of homecoming when I pushed into the shabby waiting room to find a dozen pair of dark eyes fixed on me.

In my halting Dari, I asked the closest man whether he knew what time the visa window opened. At the sight of a blonde, fair-skinned woman speaking their language, the crowd relaxed and began peppering me with questions: where had I learned Dari? What did I do in Kabul? How long had I been living there? And the standard trick query: where is better, America or Afghanistan?

I did my best, exercising what diplomatic skills I possess on the last item, using the standard response I used to give when asked the same thing in Soviet Russia: “Afghanistan is a very interesting country, which is why I like it there. The United States is a little bit boring, because people don’t have so many problems.”

Mind, you, I wouldn’t try that on my out-of-work compatriots in Massachusetts, but at least suicide bombs, Taliban attacks and NATO strikes are not part of their daily diet. Not yet, anyway.

The next day, visa in hand, I was at the Dubai airport.

Traveling to Kabul these days is a far cry from my first trip, back in 2004. At that time I was flying Ariana, the State company, dubbed by irreverent Afghans as “Inshallah Airlines” – meaning it is up to God whether you get there or not.

The plane was one of two still left in Ariana’s fleet after the U.S. bombed it in 2001. It was an old Soviet crate, with seatbelts that didn’t fasten, chair-backs that kept collapsing, and service more appropriate to Pul-e-Charkhi prison than to any industry having to do with the public.

Now I fly Safi, the slick Afghan company that rivals any Western airline. It even leaves from Dubai’s Terminal 1, a first-class establishment that hosts some of the world’s best duty-free shopping.

The illusion of First-World comfort persisted right up until the end, when I was able to leave the aircraft via a jet-way, an unheard-of luxury until quite recently.

“Things really are improving,” I thought.

The new Kabul Terminal has conveyor belts that actually work. Back in 2004 there were “baggage handlers” who threw all the suitcases into a large pile in the center, from which the passenger was expected to extract them at his or her own risk.

Now you pick up your bag quite normally, proceed through X-ray, and then, finally, you are out in the dusty Kabul air.

That’s when my euphoria began to subside. On the surface, everything seemed the same, only more so: streets clogged with traffic where Toyotas and 4X4s fight for space with donkey carts and bicycles; buildings at a stage where one is not quite sure whether they are being torn down or built up; boys in blue shirts and white-scarved girls in black dresses coming home from school; piles of garbage where goats busily root around for nourishment.

But my friends seem strangely subdued. When I ask how Kabul is, they all shrug and say, “Things are fine. Everything is quiet,” even though the latest incident was just a week or so ago. It seems that the concept of “normal” now includes violent demonstrations, regular explosions and the constant threat of an encroaching insurgency.

No one wants to talk about the upcoming Parliamentary elections, despite the candidates’ posters that have disfigured almost every available surface in the city.

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“Who cares? The parliament does nothing, and the vote is fixed anyway,” said Zahel, my favorite taxi driver.

One friend, whose name I must withhold, used to be a party boy, more interested in booze and hash than politics. He has now become a youth activist, and is trying to organize street protests against the government.

“We have to do something,” he sighed, sitting in my office. “No one has faith any more. If we don’t take control, the future is dead.”

Any mention of NATO, Obama, military operations in Marjah or the chaos in Kandahar just brings bitter smiles. No one has the energy even to be angry any more.

So, barely two days after landing, I started thinking about going back to the States. Maybe Lindsay Lohan isn’t so bad after all. And I can buy frozen food without worrying about the electricity going off.

“You cannot leave Afghanistan now,” said Najib, an old friend. “You were here for the good days, you have to stay through the bad.”

When, I demanded, were the good days? Those winters without heat, the 120-degree summers, the months in Helmand when suicide bombs were an almost daily occurrence? The string of kidnapped friends and murdered acquaintances, the fights with bribe-seeking police, frequent bouts of food poisoning, mice in my kitchen and scorpions in my bed?

Najib smiled and shook his head.

“You’ll never leave,” he said.

Kabul now has ATMs and food delivery, and even a company that will bring wine to your door if you ask nicely and agree to pay through the nose. Carpet stores take credit cards and many furniture establishments will ship your purchases to anywhere in the world.

All that’s missing is hope.

So here I am, a foot in two worlds. At home in both, fully happy in neither.