Eating Mud Crabs in Kandahar

EATING MUD CRABS IN KANDAHAR

CALIFORNIA STUDIES IN FOOD AND CULTURE

DARRA GOLDSTEIN, EDITOR

STORIES OF FOOD DURING WARTIME
BY THE WORLD'S LEADING CORRESPONDENTS

EDITED BY
MATT McALLESTER

University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit
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.

University of California Press

Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press, Ltd.

London, England

© 2011 by Matthew McAllester

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Eating mud crabs in Kandahar : stories of food during wartime by the world's leading correspondents / edited by Matt McAllester.

p. cm.—(California studies in food and culture; 31)

ISBN 978-0-520-26867-8 (cloth : alk. paper)

1. Survival and emergency rations—Anecdotes.   2. Food habits—Anecdotes.   3. War correspondents—Anecdotes.   4. Foreign journalists—Anecdotes.   5. War—Social aspects—Anecdotes.   I. McAllester, Matthew, 1969–

TX357.E286 2011

394.1′2—dc23

2011017737

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In keeping with a commitment to support environmentally responsible and sustainable printing practices, UC Press has printed this book on Natures Book, a fiber that contains 30% post-consumer waste and meets the minimum requirements of
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39.48–1992 (
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FOR HARRY
AND
FOR TIM HETHERINGTON, 1970–2011

Introduction:
The Name of the Third Chicken: Kosovo

Matt McAllester

PART ONE
SURVIVAL RATIONS

Night Light: El Salvador and Haiti

Lee Hockstader

A Diet for Dictators: North Korea

Barbara Demick

Siege Food: Bosnia

Janine di Giovanni

Miraculous Harvests: China

Isabel Hilton

PART TWO
INSISTENT HOSTS

How Harry Lost His Ear: Northern Ireland

Scott Anderson

Weighed Down by a Good Meal: Gaza and Israel

Joshua Hammer

The Price of Oranges: Pakistan

Jason Burke

Jeweled Rice: Iran

Farnaz Fassihi

The Oversize Helmsman of an Undersize Country: Israel

Matt Rees

PART THREE
FOOD UNDER FIRE

Same-Day Cow: Afghanistan

Tim Hetherington

Eau de Cadavre:
Somalia and Rwanda

Sam Kiley

Eating Mud Crabs in Kandahar: Afghanistan

Christina Lamb

Munther Cannot Cook Your Turkey: Iraq

Rajiv Chandrasekaran

PART FOUR
BREAKING BREAD

The Best Man I Ever Knew: Georgia

Wendell Steavenson

Dinner with a Jester: Afghanistan

Jon Lee Anderson

Sugarland: Haiti

Amy Wilentz

My Life in Pagans: Ossetia

James Meek

The House of Bread: Bethlehem

Charles M. Sennott

Biographies

Acknowledgments

MATT McALLESTER

“
WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO EAT?
”
I ASKED THE KOSOVAR ALBANIAN
woman, at whose wooden hut in the snow-covered Mountains of the Damned I had just arrived, in the company of her son, another reporter, two photographers, and a translator.

Actually, I didn't ask her directly. I asked the other reporter, Philip Sher-well, who spoke German. He then asked the question of the elderly lady's son, Haki, because he too spoke German. He then asked the lady, whose name was Zejnepe, in Albanian. And back, through Haki and Philip and two languages I did not understand, came the answer.

“We have some flour and oil for making bread,” Zejnepe said.

“What else do you have?” I asked, looking around at a few other jars and tins on a shelf that lined the walls of the shepherd's hut, which was heated with a wood-burning stove. We were warming our frozen bare feet and sodden socks and boots in front of the stove. It was late April 1999 and we had just hiked from the small Yugoslav republic of Montenegro through Serb-controlled territory, at some risk, to visit this old lady who had sworn she would rather be killed than leave Kosovo. Living with her in the tiny hut were five other adult relatives, three elderly, two young. The six of us who had just arrived were exhausted—except for Haki, who strolled
through the snow and over the mountains as if he was going down to get coffee from the corner store. Philip and I had not known each other long. We worked for different newspapers and were not used to working together. Our exhaustion, coupled with my need to rely on him as a translator, was creating a timbre of irritation in the hut as we continued this crucial interview, which we knew would constitute one of the only firsthand accounts of life inside Serb-controlled Kosovo.

Philip asked Haki, who asked Zejnepe what else they had. Zejnepe told Haki, who told Philip, who told me the answer.

“Coffee and sugar,” Philip said, and I wrote that down in my notebook.

“Can we move on?” he added. He had stopped writing in his notebook.

“In a minute,” I said. “Could you ask her if they have any other source of food? They can't just be surviving on bread and coffee.”

Philip paused, took a deep breath, and asked Haki, who asked Zejnepe my question.

“Every day her nephew, Jeton, goes down the hill to where they keep a cow tethered, and he milks it and brings back the milk,” Philip said, and I stared at my notebook and wrote down what he had said and tried not to look at him.

“Matt, do you mind if we actually move on to the reason we're here and ask about Serbian ethnic cleansing rather than performing an audit of her larder?” Philip asked.

“Didn't I see some chickens outside?” I asked.

“Yes, you did,” Philip said, without bothering to ask Haki, given that we had unquestionably seen chickens outside the hut pecking in the muddy snow.

“Could you ask her how many chickens she has?” I said.

Philip put down his notebook.

“And would you like me to ask her the name of the third chicken?”

“No, never mind,” I said, realizing that my volunteer translator had just resigned.

“Thank you,” Philip said, asking a question of his own.

In the years since, Philip and I have often laughed about the name of the third chicken, but I can also still see why the precise number of Zejnepe's fowl seemed important to me then. Zejnepe and her relatives looked hungry and drawn. The chickens bought these people time. In the grassy plain that spread out below the snowy mountains—gazing down from the mountains at the plain was like looking at spring from midwinter—the Serbian paramilitary groups usually showed little mercy to remaining Albanians. There was no extra food to be had up here in the mountains. In fact, Jeton and his equally brave father, Emrush, made occasional nighttime excursions down to the plain to get more flour from their abandoned house, which was in a village within view. They had checked the refrigerator, and everything inside had gone off. Philip, his photographer colleague, Julian Simmonds, and I debated going with Jeton on his next journey to get flour, but we decided it was too dangerous. It would have been a nighttime raid to get an ingredient.

War had very rapidly taken a lot from these people: their homes, their freedom of movement, and Zejnepe's husband, who had been shot dead by Serbs. And what they were left with was basic shelter, a source of heat, each other, and some larder supplies. Flour, oil, milk, coffee, sugar, eggs, perhaps some chicken meat. Food meant survival, which meant the Serbs had not yet won.

Not all wars are fought over food supplies or other natural resources—although many are—but in all wars food plays a significant role. At some stage in a day's fighting, a soldier has to roll behind the wall he is using for shelter to open his army-issue rations. In a day of explaining to her children why they can't go home yet, a refugee mother has to feed them two or three times. In a day of reporting on a conflict, no matter where in the world, a correspondent has to fuel up as well. No matter what role you have in a conflict, you have to step out of it for at least a few minutes every day to have breakfast, lunch, dinner—or a piece of bread. Meals put war on hold,
even if the guns are still firing outside. And in these moments families regroup, friends tell stories of the day so far and exchange crucial information, and new friends are made; sharing a meal with a stranger is the best way to make you strangers no longer. Amid the awfulness of war, food is a rare, regular source of comfort. And when there is comfort, there is openness. Confidences are shared and jokes cracked. Philip is one of my dearest friends, and many of our bonding moments came over not-very-good meals in places where there was fighting, beginning there in the mountains as we shared bread—with shame but great gratitude—that Zejnepe and her family gave us.

Many foreign correspondents are somewhat food-obsessed. Food can be a rare source of comfort on the road. But even those who don't carry pepper mills in their backpacks, as my friend Ed Gargan does, are inevitably aware of how food can be a matter of life or death and how meals can reveal secrets. The writers in this collection have reached into their memories and notebooks to unearth stories about food they have never had a chance to write before, or were never able to expand upon in the newspapers or magazines that employ them. Not all of the stories take place, strictly speaking, in war zones, but the shadow of conflict or the threat of violence or oppression looms in all.

The writers are all British or American print journalists who are among the world's greatest chroniclers of recent conflicts. The stories they tell mostly take place between that momentous year of change, 1989, and 2009—for little reason other than organizational neatness. They offer stories of the appetites of the powerful—Benazir Bhutto, Ariel Sharon, Kim Jong Il—and of the powerless and, in some cases, starving. There are personal stories, about the birth and illness of a beloved son and about understanding the country of Georgia through one great friend, and there are more traditional reported stories, about the transformative power of food in China and the obsession among the starving millions of North Korea with locating sources of nutrition. And alongside the stories of food, there is a story of drink—
bar owner Scott Anderson's tale of drinking his way into the heart of the Irish Republican Army's fund-raising crew.

I have sought out stories from all of the troubled corners of the world, but perhaps inevitably three writers tell stories of Afghanistan and three of Israel and the Palestinian Territories: important conflicts that carry on to this day.

Amid the tragedy and the violence there are jokes, and great goodwill. And, perhaps, a little more humanity than we can usually slip into our newspaper and magazine stories.

Zejnepe never left Kosovo. Sometime between our visit and the end of the war, Serbian soldiers or paramilitary troops shot her dead along with two of the other elderly people in the hut. Jeton, Haki, and his brother Naim found her body on the mountainside as the snow melted. After the war I visited her grave with them on a gentle sunny morning. After we stood in silence for a while, they took me home to their village. They had prepared lunch.