Authors: Dervla Murphy
A grim night, and now I know what it feels like to be a guinea-pig. The Czech doctor arrived at 7.30 a.m. (an odd chap, who has been here sixteen years; he might be a Graham Greene character), and having taken one look at my ribs he sent for the Afghan doctor. I was made to stand in the centre of the floor and told to turn round slowly while the Czech demonstrated that this was how
not
to strap broken ribs. Then the plaster was removed and the Czech doctor put
on a new lot whilst the Afghan watched respectfully; my ribs feel much better now. The Czech said that I could probably cycle in about two weeks, as all the breaks seemed to be clean. I asked why they were so painful, as I always thought broken bones not such agony, but he said broken
ribs
are, because of nerves that run from the spine between them. He told me that I could return to Kabul by the next jeep going there, but not by truck as it would be too jolting. Mazar-i-Sharif has to be abandoned as it would involve another 300 miles on these roads, which might be unwise. It would be all right if I could fly there and back but the Mazar airport has been swept away by spring floods and won’t reopen for three or four weeks. (It’s swept away every spring with monotonous regularity.) When I get to Kabul I’m to rest until my two weeks are up, and longer if still painful, but my injuries always heal very quickly so I should be in working order by 12 May or so. I feel that Fate has dealt very kindly with me: if I had had to choose a country in which to be delayed I would certainly have chosen Afghanistan. I’m considering returning home this way to see the bits I’ve had to miss.
Not a dull moment today. By 10 a.m. my room was overflowing with roses, polyanthuses and geraniums, and a myriad visitors were in attendance.
This is one of Afghanistan’s very few industrial centres – it has cement, sugar and textile factories, run by Russians and Czechs – so I don’t feel too frustrated at not being able to explore the town. There is a big secondary school (co-educational) and the girls come streaming in after classes to look at me and beam. They go unveiled and are extraordinarily beautiful; unlike the Turkish and Persian girls, who rarely have any colour in their cheeks, these youngsters are all roses and cream, with glossy, wavy waist-length hair. When you see how good-looking they are it makes the veil seem either more iniquitous or more prudent. Undoubtedly the Afghans must be, by our standards, the best-looking people in the world. They have everything; height, proportions, carriage, features and complexion.
The food is atrocious here and even dirtier than usual, or perhaps it’s just that there’s more light to examine it by.
Here in Afghanistan, the majority are Sunni Muslims, with a minority of Shias in certain areas and, as usual, no love is lost between the two sects. Sunnis consider Shias a pack of unwholesome fanatics and Shias consider Sunnis a gang of lukewarm no-goods – there’s nothing like religion for spreading brotherly love!
I have at last, after ceaseless querying, got a definition of
Afghanistan’s
government; it’s a Theocracy, all laws being based on Islamic Law (Sunni interpretation) and the Emir’s first duty is to defend Islam. For this reason I think it unlikely that Afghanistan will ever, in the foreseeable future, turn Communist, however many Russian helpers and however much Russian money she accepts.
One aspect of the Divorce Laws seems very odd: a husband has to return to his wife’s family all the dowry cash, but he automatically retains custody of the children. However, if he can’t return the cash, having spent it, he gives
half
the children instead (it’s not clear what happens if there are nine or eleven children – another case for Solomon!). The manager of Bamian Hotel told me all this. He was married at eighteen to a fourteen-year-old wife and they have six children. Now he has just divorced her to marry the
twenty-two-year-old
daughter of an American posted to Afghanistan. The girl must be badly bitten if she’s willing to take on six Afghan infants as well as an Afghan husband, who rather peevishly pointed out to me that he’s losing a lot of money because of the tiresome American habit of having only one wife at a time. Normally he wouldn’t dream of divorcing and forfeiting all that cash.
I had such a bad night and the pain was so grim this morning that the doctor said travelling today was out, though the police had a Russian jeep going to Kabul all lined up to take me. I feel better this evening so may get going the day after tomorrow in a Swede-driven UN jeep. Meanwhile I’m quite happy here.
The ribs are much better today,
Deo gratias
, and the doctor said that I could go tomorrow if a jeep is available and if I sit in front. However, after today’s developments I’m not all that keen on going tomorrow. The centre of life in this town is a textile company founded by Germans in the late 1930s and now run by Afghans. It owns the hospital and also the local hotel, built by the Germans as a club for themselves when they settled here. At 10 a.m. today the manager of the hotel arrived and invited me to stay there as a guest of the textile company till I could find transport to Kabul, so off I went with him in his jeep to this palatial outfit, built in a semicircle around a garden that is quite breath-taking, with a superb view of mountains in the near distance. I was shown over the whole building and in one of the vast lounges the manager said casually, ‘That’s a radiogram and there are some records in the cabinet.’ I made a dive for the cabinet and the first thing I picked up was Schubert’s Trout Quintet. Further investigation revealed four Beethoven symphonies, Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony, Brahms’ Violin and 2nd Piano Concertos, and a selection of opera – what
bliss
! They were, of course, the old 78s, but so are all my own at home. I had the Fifth on before 12 o’clock lunch and was edging back towards the relevant lounge when the factory manager collared me to come and tour the works. I could hardly refuse and found it quite interesting watching the whole process, from raw cotton leaving the growers’ sacks to the finished product – some quite lovely fabrics – emerging at the other end. Two thousand are employed, including four hundred boys and girls in the ten to fourteen age group; for certain jobs their small fingers are best: pretty grim. As a result of the industrialisation of Pul-i-Khumri one
sees more unveiled women here than in Kabul, and there are hundreds of neat little houses built by the Germans for their workers. The two electricity plants were also built by them and this is the only place in Afghanistan where you can depend on the electricity supply.
The ribs are very much better today but my big toe got bitten by a scorpion this morning, so I’m having serum treatment. It was a very traditional scorpion, lurking in my boot, and I’ve never seen anything quite so horrifying; the sooner the better I wake up to the fact that I’m now in Asia and act accordingly. I’d no idea the creatures were so enormous; my picture was of something about the size of a black beetle but this brute was as big as an adult mouse. I’ve decided that even the fattest and hairiest spider would be companionable in comparison. The morning was spent nursing my foot with Brahms to soothe the nerves.
Life is becoming dangerous! I was hardly out of bed this morning when a hornet stung me on the neck, but evidently the scorpion serum is still operating as there were no ill effects, apart from the immediate pain.
All the jeeps that might possibly have been going to Kabul today (two in number) were not going after all, so I was entrusted to a svelte Russian oil-tanker instead. With my infallible instinct for being in every country at the time of the national annual Big Feast (end of Ramadan in Turkey, Now Ruz in Persia) I find myself stranded this evening in central Afghanistan on the eve of their five-day Id holiday, when no trucks will be travelling. As other traffic is almost non-existent it’s anybody’s guess when I’ll get to Kabul. The idea today was that I’d go all the way with the Russian tanker, but (
a
) I didn’t want to travel in darkness through this lovely region and (
b
) the ribs, which seemed almost cured when I was sitting in Pul-i-Khumri, became acutely painful again on the road.
Today’s journey taught me that despite the tribulations incidental to travelling by Afghan buses and trucks, they are in fact the vehicles best adapted to Afghan roads. On being helped into the Russian tanker this morning I felt as disconcerted as though I’d been transferred without warning from a local eating-house to Dublin’s Shelbourne Hotel. Sinking back in the well-upholstered seat (with arm-rest) I stretched out my legs and put down the window (with glass) and watched the clean-shaven driver in his neat Western clothes hanging my wind-cheater from a hook. Definitely, I thought, this is the next best thing to the comfort of an ambulance. Then as soon as we started I realised that Comrade Ivan, lacking that native Afghan philosophy which alone makes such journeys tolerable, was in a
hurry
, which jarred me in every direction; mentally it was incongruous and physically it was hell. Holding my semi-knit ribs together with one hand and hanging on to the door with the other, I found myself being bounced off that excessively well-sprung seat every five minutes; I longed then for a vehicle with no springs and six passengers in a space meant for three, each keeping the other firmly wedged. We passed a total of eight happily broken-down Afghan trucks surrounded by little groups of ragged, barefooted, undismayed men; looking
enviously
at them I pondered the symbolism of luxury trucks being so uncomfortable on Afghan roads. Our smug engine had no breakdown though we did suffer four punctures, which even the best bred tanker could not avoid on such a surface, but each time the wheels were changed with disgusting speed, giving me no opportunity to see what lay beyond the nearest hill. Russians use a newfangled thing called a ‘jack’; Afghans, on the other hand, dig a hole in the road beneath the relevant wheel …
Many changes have been taking place since I first travelled this way a week ago. Melting snow on the high peaks has transformed what were mere streams into wide, frenzied rivers, the colour of café-au-lait, which forcefully sweep giant boulders along their course. Several new rock-falls are keeping the Russians busy, the wheat is almost turning colour, blue and orange migrant birds flash splendidly across the sky and shrubs that were just coming into leaf are now feathery masses of
pale green, like enormous ferns, showing a profusion of tiny, mauve blooms. Right over the tops of the rounded, earthy mountains (2,000 feet above the valley floor and over 10,000 feet above sea level) patches of cultivated land are visible in neat squares of green or brown. (Who’s going to get up there with a tractor?) The few flat expanses where the valleys widen are covered by a thick, smooth carpet of dark golden moss. The tender rice shoots have sprung up, the blossoms have fallen from the fruit trees and, now that the lambs and kids are of grazing age, sheep and goats have bound udders to save milk for butter and cheese.
I saw an unusual sight in the middle of the road today – an eagle killing a snake about two and a half feet long. We stopped and watched him start to eat it, then, when the engine revved, he picked it up and swept off to the mountains to lunch in peace.
Tonight I’ve rejoined Roz at the home of my good friend the Provincial Governor, who has been cherishing her since I went to hospital. A few moments ago he announced that he himself is going to Kabul tomorrow, to be with the family for Id, but his jeep is so decrepit that he regretfully advised me against accompanying him; he thinks an ordinary truck, if such were available, would be better for the ribs. He has promised to bring Roz with him in the jeep – so now I have only myself to worry about.
I can’t give an address, for God alone knows where we are; an hour ago we found ourselves stranded in the mountains miles from the nearest tea-shop, not to say village. This Afghan truck rolled up to Doab at 8 a.m., on a day when none was expected, because it had had nine engine breakdowns and four punctures en route from Russia yesterday. But now it’s the road which has broken down – a rock-fall, estimated by the Russians who are blasting it away at 500 tons. There is no hope of the job being done before morning so we will sleep on the tyres that are our load: they should be comfortable enough. I’m writing this by the light of Roz’s lamp, sitting on a rock by a crashing torrent under a sheer precipice in magically bright
moonlight. I notice that the authorities seem to have given up trying to cope with the situation and have left me to my own devices. In the circumstances it’s just as well I’m over my initial nervousness of Afghanistan. This is the only country I was ever in where not one single man of any type has made the slightest attempt to ‘get off’ with me, so I feel no qualms about a night at the mercy of my five companions. They all look as though murder was their favourite hobby (and maybe it is – among themselves) yet they’re as gentle as lambs with me. The Russians wanted me to spend the night on a camp-bed in their tent but as all except the foreman are convicts I prefer to stick to my Noble Savages. We’re all desperately hungry but there’s nothing to be done about it; the Russians have so little food and are so isolated that we couldn’t accept any from them.
It cost me 7
s
. to post the last instalment of the diary on my arrival here at 4 p.m. yesterday and this was such a shock to the system that I couldn’t bring myself to start writing it again last night.
I’m feeling rather miserable today, having left the Hindu Kush behind, yet the past weeks have given me something that I know will prove permanent. It may sound ridiculous, but I feel I’ve been privileged to see Man at this best – still in possession of the sort of liberty and dignity that we have exchanged for what it pleases us to call ‘progress’. Even a brief glimpse of what we were is valuable to help to understand what we are. Living in the West, it’s now impossible for most of us to envisage our own past by a mere exercise of the imagination, so we’re rather like adults who have forgotten the
childhood
that shaped them. And that increases the unnaturalness of our lives. So to realise this past through contact with a people like the Afghans should help us to cope better with our present – though it also brings the sadness of knowing what we’re missing. At times during these past weeks I felt so
whole
and so at peace that I was tempted seriously to consider settling in the Hindu Kush. Nothing is false there, for humans and animals and earth, intimately
interdependent,
partake together in the rhythmic cycle of nature. To lose one’s petty, sophisticated complexities in that world would be heaven – but impossible, because of the fundamental falsity involved in attempting to abandon our own unhappy heritage. Yet the awareness that one cannot go back is a bitter pill to swallow.
Today I met a twenty-five-year-old American boy in the Museum who was typical of a certain category of youngster – European, Commonwealth and American – I’ve met all along the route. To them, travel is more a
going away from
rather than a
going towards
, and they seem empty and unhappy and bewildered and pathetically anxious for companionship, yet are afraid to commit themselves to any ideal or cause or other individual. I find something both terrifying and touching in young people without an aim, however foolish or even wrong it may be. This young man was pleasant and intelligent but wasting himself and resentfully conscious of the fact. He doesn’t want to return home in the foreseeable future, yet, after two years of it, is weary of travelling, probably because he always holds himself aloof from the people he travels among – not through hostility or superiority but through a strange unconsciousness of the unity of mankind. Is this something else our age does – on the one hand make communication easier than ever before, while on the other hand widening the gulf between those who are ‘developed’ and those who are not?
Continuing the ‘gulf’ theme – what an artificial life is led by the foreign colonies in these Asian cities! The sense of their isolation from the world around them is quite stifling. At a dinner party tonight I met a European couple who have been in Kabul for eighteen months without once entering the home of an ordinary Afghan – and they are not exceptions. The attitude is that the ‘natives’ are people to be observed from a discreet distance and photographed as often as possible, but not lived among. The result is boredom and
an obsessional longing for home leave. The collecting of souvenirs seems to be a substitute for the cheaper and richer experience of being temporarily integrated in the life of the country. Apparently if you can bring home to Malvern or Minneapolis or Munich a sufficiently overwhelming bulk of ‘typical native products’ this concrete evidence of your travels is enough.