The Afghan Queen: A True Story of an American Woman in Afghanistan (14 page)

Compared with the unplanned buying of my first year in Afghanistan, each succeeding year sharpened my perspective. From an artsy-craftsy dilettante, I transformed into an internationally recognized dealer in tribal art. By 1977, my trade associates referred to me as Tycoon Lela. My family called me Typhoon Lela. I, however, considered myself a cocoon morphed into a butterfly.

The process of transformation was clearly defined, at least in my mind. There had been a series of distinct events, and it had been far from a gradual process. I was affected by changes that were rapid, distinct, and largely accidental—or were they? In the hundreds of aerograms that I exchanged with Paul, a pattern was discernible.

Essentially, a pattern of spreading tribal networking became clear. Meeting Kit, the politically savvy Australian nurse, provided the first meeting with Mike, the civil engineer and government minister. From that point on, it was like a stone dropped in a pond. The waves of contacts spread out.

Not that I forgot about the Afghan jewelry importer, my first supplier. I credited him with stimulating my interest in the Afghan trade. Beginning as a sales rep for my friends at Primitive Artisans, I acquired at least six different tribal art importers, before meeting-up with the Afghan jewelry importer.

Soon after starting as a sales rep, I bought a large Chevy van and filled it with samples, like a museum on wheels, building a sales route and refining my knowledge of tribal art along the way.

In time, I realized I could do much better on my own. All I needed was the self-confidence.

As I mentioned earlier, I called my jewelry supplier Flake because he ran a flaky business, and I would become increasingly anxious about getting involved in his suspected drug business. Most of all, I wanted to capitalize on my artistic taste and the customer following I built.

Noting the motivation for my first trip to Kabul, highlighted my extreme fear then, compared to the relative calm that developed as my business became successful. An important factor contributing to my success was that I never got involved with drugs. Most importantly, I avoided known druggies or shit-heads, as they were called.

I had to laugh as the ‘shit-head’ designation became a common part of the Pashtu language. My Afghan contacts continually warned me about the various merchants to avoid. The westerners sporting hippie gear were virtual walking drug advertisements.

While there were many hippies in Kabul on my first trip, by the second trip a few months later there were far fewer.

As I mentioned, my friend, Kit advised me to dress like an Afghan professional and business women. Blue jeans were quite common among Afghan men and increasingly so with Afghan women government workers.

I always wore Afghan women’s long sleeved tunics over my jeans. These usually had high collars covering the neck. Also, in public I made certain to wear a scarf covering my head and neck. As cosmetics were frowned upon, I wore none in the Middle East.

Most families, hotels, and eateries had at least one hajji proprietor. I got in the habit of pointedly establishing a respectful dialog with every hajji I met. For one dollar, I could request a hajji blessing. The hajji would put his hand on my head, say a short prayer, and, with his thumb, smear a rouge streak on my forehead. Thus, I was blessed, and so were my business dealings.

Hajji with rose

Without exception, all business contacts, new and old, told me that they felt blessed by doing business with a person so blessed by a hajji. Often I was asked, “What is your tribe?” I would smile and say, “I was born in America, but my mother was Turcoman, of the Osman-Ataturk clan.”

Some of the hajjis knew of this clan. A few mentioned that Osman Ataturks were Sufi Dervishes. “That’s true,” I replied, “For that reason my mother’s clan was expelled from Turkey in 1910.” Hajjis had great respect for Sufis.

Now, two years after my first trip to Kabul, I was comfortable with my Afghan associates. I spent many hours with the same seller, sometimes days, haggling over kilems, jewelry, brass and copperware, as well as artifacts. Artifacts were antique art objects, often bogus.

The only problem I had on my first trip to Kabul had been with ‘artifacts.’ Most artifacts were forgeries, processed to look old. Whether they were genuine or bogus, they needed to have a museum stamp in order to leave Afghanistan. Rather than go through another hassle with officials, I avoided anything vaguely resembling an antique artifact.

Primarily, I was seeking unusual one-of-a-kind quality tribal art at a reasonable price. When it was made didn’t concern me. Once an agreement was reached, I paid cash on the spot. Most items were sold to boutiques and museums for their tribal art exhibits. A few items I could not bear to part with, and these I kept to display in our new home gallery.

After a few trips to Afghanistan, I was no longer dependent on the kindness of Mike, and at times I traveled with migrating tribes. Sometimes I met tribal clans in the towns they were passing through. If their textiles or decorative designs seemed uniquely appealing, I would ask my interpreter to negotiate travel with the tribe for a few days which would give me time to socialize.

Most of the migrating tribal clans had pickup trucks and motor vans, along with camels, donkeys, sheep, and goats. Different clans had unique textile patterns, much as Scottish clans do. The unique designs extended to clan camels. Camel decorations were often captivating, especially the eye protection.

Camel eye-glasses were handmade and leather-stitched to enclose dark blue glass and designed to fit snugly to protect from blowing sand and dust. In many ways they provided elaborate care for their camels. Light passing through dark blue glass calmed the camels. Camels with bruised foot pads were fit with heavy leather boots.

Camels provided camel-wool, still highly prized and priced. The finest paint brushes are still made with camel-hair. Camel milk is so rich that in Israel, camel milk ice cream has become an important specialty industry.

The migrating tribes would camp for days or weeks outside a town to sell, trade, and auction handcrafts and decorative textiles, as well as handmade jewelry. This was where I came into the picture.

Dyed and raw camel, sheep, and goat wool was mostly used by tribal artisans. Wool was seldom sold in bulk, keeping the price of quality wool high. The rocky land does not lend itself to wool ranching or any other type of large-scale ranching.

While I socialized for days with the clan families, once it seemed proper, I drove a hard bargain. By this time, with more than a few trips under my belt, I was a skilled trader. Haggling or bargaining was a necessary ritual in most of the Middle East, and especially in Afghanistan.

Hanging out with the women for a few days usually provided me with a sense of what they would sell and what areas to avoid. I learned that one clan had quality turquoise, but would sell it only after the purchaser bought lots of other items. I knew enough Pashtu to understand that I should not mention jewel stones until they were first offered to me.

I began trading by offering some gifts from America, mostly jeans, but also cheap calculators and beef jerky. Then I would look around and point to something I liked saying, “My husband would love a prayer rug like yours.” My host would then insist on giving it to me as a gift, which I graciously accepted.

We would then sip some more tea, and I would say, “If you have older prayer rugs that are no longer used, I’d be happy to take them off your hands and pay you for your trouble.” We would dicker with price for half an hour. The host would ultimately sigh and whine, “I’m too old and tired for an energetic woman like you. Name your price so we can discuss other things.”

At that point I would offer a price halfway between my price and his. He would then smile and say, “Yes, you are too generous. How many dozen can you use?” For smaller items, such as camel bangles, I would take many hundreds, if available, at twenty-five cents each. For larger, more costly items, such as uniquely patterned saddle bags, I might take only a few dozen.

Textiles, brassware and jewelry were discussed last. If I spent over one hundred dollars, my host would show me the better jewelry and stones, mostly green turquoise and dark blue lapis. Some of the most highly prized lapis had thin gold veins running through it. Of these stones, I purchased as many as I could. They were popular jewelry items and rapidly sold out.

The initial baksheesh developed into a proper, ritually correct exchange of gifts. Each gift exchange, meeting, wedding, or birth that I was involved in cemented our relations more tightly.

My “Mike-Family” would think nothing of asking me for a gear cam to fit a fifteen-year-old Falcon. They gave me the old cracked gear-cam to match, which I eventually found in a New Jersey automobile junk yard. I sent it via the Afghan trade mission diplomatic pouch. Two weeks later I got a post card saying that ‘the gear-cam works fine, see you soon.’

One business associate owned a hotel in Kabul and wanted a small refrigerator and some waterbeds. These I found in Zurich. My delighted family more than made up for these gifts with the business advantages they provided.

There was no real competition for the business I developed. There were archaeologists, civil engineers, museum acquisition representatives, and many journalists from all over the world in Afghanistan, as well as mining engineers and oil geologists. They were hell-bent on exploiting Afghanistan in every possible way. The rumors of an ocean of oil under Afghanistan persisted.

Those of us involved in global trade were more interested in gold, ivory, precious stones, and art objects. But the diplomatic missions were in Afghanistan long before we were. Long before Americans could join the looting, Russian, British and French diplomats drained the Middle East of their precious heritage via the infamous diplomatic pouch, the diplomat’s swag bag.

Americans, Europeans, Pakistanis, Indians, Chinese, and especially the Russians, were anxious to develop Afghan resources “for the benefit of the Afghan people.” Swiss museums offered to reconstruct the destroyed Buddha next to the original, but what they wanted in exchange, no one talked about.

Buddha in Bamian Provence, Afghanistan
*

The farm serving as the staging base for our next trip to Kabul was at the edge of a magnificent forest. It was the deepest, darkest forest I had ever experienced. Europeans, and especially the Swiss, go to amazing lengths to preserve their forests.

A sense of mystery and awe overcame me every time I peered across the road that separated the farm from the forest. Such exquisitely impenetrable darkness set the hair on the back of my neck tingling.

Those dark woods continued to forbid and beckon, as they have for thousands of years. The day before we were all to leave, I finally resolved to walk across the road into the tangled woods. Walking the narrow path into the forest, the trees seemed like towering goddesses.

I told Dharma that I was going for a stroll into the forest. She said she would go with me and grabbed an old pillowcase. “We can pick mushrooms and fix omelets for breakfast.” We walked about half a mile down a forest foot-path paved with a thick layer of pine needles.

The intense musty pine scent and narrow shafts of sunlight provided an overpowering sense of mystery. On that day the attraction of the Wood Goddess was more powerful than my childhood fears. I expected to see Pan or at least a Naiad, but instead we came upon a stand of hardwood oaks.

Dharma walked carefully through the hardwoods, prodding the dried leaves and uncovering large amounts of coprinus mushrooms. She got down on all fours, snapping the groups of young mushrooms at the base. Dharma showed me what to look for and I crawled around the base of other trees, uncovering groups of mushrooms.

She instructed me to avoid any mushrooms that were turning black or liquefying. In ten minutes we filled the pillow case with young coprinus mushrooms. Back at the farm, we gathered a dozen eggs from the hen house. She informed me that we were going to make mushroom omelets.

Coprinus comatus close to liquefying
*

With soft brushes we cleaned and cut off the stems without washing the mushrooms. We chopped the mushrooms coarsely, adding freshly picked garlic, chives, and cilantro. The eggs were beaten with black and red pepper. Small chunks of Swiss Gruyère cheese were mixed into the egg batter. The mushroom mix was added to the egg batter.

To the final mix, Dharma shaved in black truffle and began heating four great cast iron skillets on top of the huge old farm stove. Each skillet was generously lined with extra virgin olive oil.

Most Europeans drown everything in butter; even though olive oil cannot take excessive heat, Dharma preferred the flavor-enhancing quality of extra virgin olive oil, EVOO.

Dharma was going to prove the superiority of EVOO. She took a small skillet, put it on the hot burner, and dropped in a large chunk of her own farm butter. After the butter completely liquefied, she ladled in some omelet mix. She cautioned me to allow the pans to heat, just short of smoking, the oil. There were chalk marks on the black stove to guide the heat-knobs.

She told me to try a forkful of the EVOO omelet first, which I washed down with a mouthful of green tea. Then she pushed some of the butter omelet into my mouth. Dharma then asked me, “What’s your verdict, Lela? Tell me what you really think.”

“We use butter at home. My taste buds tell me that the EVOO omelet is tastier and the taste of the mushrooms is more developed. The butter omelet tastes great, but the butter flavor overwhelms everything else in the omelet. It’s more like a butter omelet than a mushroom omelet.”

Five of us spent part of the morning rolling dozens of omelets in wax paper, twisting the ends and stacking these in a large zipper insulated picnic bag. All we needed was fresh bread and wine for instant meals. This was Dharma’s idea of ‘mealson-wheels.’

The old fairy tales took on a new meaning as we ventured into the dark forest. I imagined Red Riding Hood around the next turn. Walking into that forest was like a stroll through some unrealized dream. The dark tangled mystery of the forest seemed to reflect my innermost feelings.

Switzerland, at least the rural areas, was just a super place for people like us. Some of the caravan people smoked what they called ‘alpine green.’ Many farmers grew this type of marijuana as an income enhancer for struggling traditional farms. The high altitude, cool damp air, and thin mountainous soil permitted a scrawny proliferation of a rather weak form of cannabis.

Americans who pass through these alpine forests call it a “Rocky Mountain” high. It leaves you breathless but elated, like traveling through the Colorado Rockies. Growing marijuana had provided a new vitality to many farms throughout Europe. Many believe that marijuana was the major income generator on European farms. The underground economy was alive and well in Europe.

The Swiss countryside seemed to be teaming with young volatile Marxists. For some reason Switzerland was a breeding ground for Marxists, ranging from the most sublime university theorists to the most ridiculous hippie communes.

On my travels through Europe and the Middle East, Marxists ranged from gentle hippies to obnoxious Stalinists. Most of my business contacts were leftists of one shade or another. These ranged from the gentle Greens of the ecocommunes and farms, to wild-eyed Trotskyists and Trotskyites.

The followers of Trotsky Marxism or
Trots
, as they were sarcastically called, confused me. The difference between the ‘-ists’ and ‘-ites’ warranted a fine distinction. The first, I was told, were the true believers. The second were reformed versions of the original.

After being active in various leftist causes, the Swiss Marxists were just plain fun to pal around with. It sure brought back some great memories. Switzerland was a sort of way station for the revolutionaries of Europe, the most famous of which were Lenin and Trotsky at the turn of the 20th Century.

Revolutionaries spent months and years making contacts, gathering funds, and plugging into the most promising movements in their native lands. When they were ready, they returned to their homeland to do what had to be done. Switzerland was still the primary staging area for European radicals and revolutionaries. All parts of Europe were seething with unrest in the 1970s.

The most prominent groups in the struggle were the Palestinians, Ethiopians, Eritreans, Irish, and Germans. We discussed the Pan Celtic Liberation Front, organized by Cornwall and Scottish nationalists. These had some success for a time with their offshore pirate radio.

At times, they broadcast in Cornwall and Scottish languages. They referred to themselves as the other BBC, Buccaneer Broadcast Conspiracy. Inspired by the Israeli success reviving ancient Hebrew and the Irish success reviving old Irish, similar attempts were underway with the old Celtic tongues: Cornish, Welsh, Manx, Scottish, Normandy, as well as Brittany and Orkney.

Revival of ancient languages was quite the fashion in Europe in the 1970s. Dharma spoke about possible revival of ancient Helvetian, the Celtic language spoken by Helvetians (Swiss) at the time Caesar fought the Gallic Wars. The great Swiss national hero is Orgetorix who troubled Caesar for many years before he was routed by Roman Legions.

ON WITH THE TRIP:

Finally, the caravan was loaded and ready to go. On this trip, the bus carried fourteen passengers, plus a driving maintenance crew of four, including me. The baggage compartment contained trunks of tools and repair materials. The repair materials included special bus jacks, solid foam replacement tires, aluminum patch plates with special rivets, window-windshield repair kits, extra spark plugs, paint, and much more.

All these maintenance materials were itemized on the bus manifest papers. This was necessary to avoid being stopped as smugglers. The European Value Added Tax, VAT, encourages a lot of smuggling and we did not want to take any chances with the border guards.

A few days before the trip, Dharma and I cooked up a batch of chicken oregano and were subsequently voted expedition cooks as well as members of the crew. In fact, two more people joined our little band of travelers after dinning with us. The chicken oregano consisted of old spent hens. Dharma had a huge old electric crock pot, which we used to slow cook the chicken parts with fresh garden greens and yogurt. Fresh honey was added in the old Roman Empire style.

We started at six in the morning going south, but I soon dozed off. I woke up just before we approached the Italian border when it was necessary that I drive the bus to the checkpoint crossing. I held out my passport and bus papers, and a smiling border guard waved us through without further inspection.

High in the Italian Alps, our muffler fell off. We rigged the muffler on with wire and duct tape until we found the nearest service station. The fun was just starting. Between bouts of oohing and ahhing at the spectacular scenery, I was fast becoming an adept mechanic.

Alpine scenes
*

It was amazing how fast cracks developed on the Mercedes bus. I must have been cracked to take yet another trip in the same worn out bus. Towering ice-cream cone mountain peaks were separated only by hairline thin roads, looking narrower than our bus.

Continuing on, driving through Zagreb, Yugoslavia would have been a lot more interesting if it had not rained so much. Since leaving Milano, it had been rainy and foggy for three days. I was beginning to worry about how long the drive to Kabul would take. We had estimates of four to six weeks. Taking it easy on this trip was considered necessary for our well-being and that of the bus.

Between driving the bus, overseeing vehicle maintenance, and cooking, Dharma and I worried less about other issues. Parts of the traveling costs were paid by the passengers for petrol, oil, food, and other supplies.

When we stopped at various camp grounds, Dharma and I provided the passenger teams with lists of supplies they were to procure at their own expense. As the travel arrangements were made clear to all passengers signing travel agreements before the trip, there was no grumbling. We were all a happy, generally cheerful group. Except for the foul weather, we would have been positively joyful.

The cooking and bus maintenance work allowed me to get to know some of the local population wherever our caravan stopped, as cooks and mechanics have to deal with local market and garage people. As I was the senior member of the caravan and an established business person, I was considered the caravan mother.