Drug Treatment Centre

Afghanistan is a war-torn country, and has been for 30 years. It has been described in the many conversations that I have had of late, as a "bipolar" society. In many many ways it is a country at war with itself. Out of a population of 32 million, one million Afghans are drug addicts.

That would be just counting the men, of course. Gender roles mean that women may too be affected, but since they don't always step forwards, they are often not counted in the same way. 

I went to a WADAN drug treatment centre yesterday, and was humbled to follow the programme, which included a chance to sit in a group therapy session. Relapsing is all too real and there is a critical shortage of mental health workers, since invariably much of the addiction is spurned on by the various troubles this country faces. The dedicated workers and volunteers who make up the programme are truly soldiers of the best kind.

Road to Jalalabad II

The 40-mile stretch, a breathtaking chasm of mountains and cliffs between Kabul and Jalalabad, claims so many lives so regularly that most people stopped counting long ago. Cars flip and flatten. Trucks soar to the valley floor. Buses collide.

On paper, the government of Afghanistan requires that drivers pass a test to get a license, but few people here seem to have one.Then there are the cars themselves, battered Toyota taxis and even Ladas from bygone Soviet days. A typical Afghan car has bald tires and squeaky brakes—not exactly ideal for zigging and zagging through the mountains.

The mayhem unfolds on one of the most bewitching stretches of scenery on all the earth. The gorge, in some places no more than a few hundred yards wide, is framed by vertical rock cliffs that soar more than 2,000 feet above the Kabul River below.

Over the centuries, countless invading forces passed through or near the gorge on their way to the Khyber Pass. Among them were a group of 17,000 British troops and civilians, who were massacred as they beat a retreat from Kabul at the end of the first Anglo-Afghan War in 1842. Dr. William Brydon, who rode into Jalalabad on a horse, was the only European to survive.

The Kabul-to-Jalalabad road was paved for the first time by the West German government in 1960. In the 1980s, it was obliterated during the insurrection against the Soviet invasion. In the decade that followed, when the Taliban and other armed groups fought to control the country, the road was blasted and the craters were so large that taxis would disappear for minutes at a time, only to reappear as they struggled to climb out.

It was a tough road, and it had its own dangers — stretches of roadway often collapsed or washed away — but speed was not among them. That changed in 2006, when a European Union-backed project finally smoothed the road all the way through. Now Afghans could finally drive as fast as they wanted.

The cars zoom at astonishing speeds and most of the time they make it. But perhaps the gravest threat, apart from speed of the cars, is the slowness of the trucks. The massive tractor-trailers that move cargo in and out of Pakistan are often overloaded by thousands of pounds. They cannot move fast; if they are climbing one of the gorge’s thousand-foot hills, they cannot move at all. They get stuck. They fall back. They fall over.

“The fighting with the Taliban lasts only for a day or two, but the crashes are every day,” said Juma Gul, who owns a fabric shop in Sarobi that looks directly out onto the highway. “It’s a kind of theatre. Sometimes, a car will fly by in the air.”

Edited from this article from the New York Times.

Road to Jalalabad I

We are all on a journey of some description and since arriving in Afghanistan, it has been a series of conversations; sitting in on meetings, chairing meetings, having social discussions, writing reports and working on the project that I am here to support. It continues to be an incredible experience and one that has allowed me to learn as much as has allowed me to share.

This is Afghanistan. Security is on everyone's agenda and means that it is wise to be low key. When the reasons for being here were discussed with the British Ambassador, William Patey, the message was about stark warnings regarding travel and the millions being poured into education in the country. Said with a confidence that I respect, but one that generates other sets of questions about how and why - which incidentally, I did put to him. I got some slightly  vague answer that I'm still not sure of.

The education statistics paint a picture that shows ongoing needs and even here in Kabul, children begging, selling bits of bread on the street and picking through rubbish heaps shows how very far from the ideal that we are.

I took the road to Jalalabad the day before yesterday and stayed overnight at a very fine guest house. The reason for the journey was not about comforting day trips, but a chance to explore what will be the setting up of a school. The road to Jalalabad is precarious because of the driving and the insurgency and the trip was not announced early, as per local sensibility regarding security. Scenery along the mountain passes is breathtaking. The map at the head of this posting and this slide-show are from the New York Times. I share below a snapshot or two of the journey.

More on the school project in another posting.

Tor_Khan تور خان

Kabul Jan - کابل جان

Ah! How beautiful is Kabul encircled by her arid mountains
And Rose, of the trails of thorns she envies
Her gusts of powdered soil, slightly sting my eyes
But I love her, for knowing and loving are born of this same dust

My song exhalts her dazzling tulips
And at the beauty of her trees, I blush
How sparkling the water flows from Pul-e-Mastaan!
May Allah protect such beauty from the evil eye of man!

Khizr chose the path to Kabul in order to reach Paradise
For her mountains brought him close to the delights of heaven
From the fort with sprawling walls, a dragon of protection
Each stone is there more precious than the treasure of Shayagan

Every street of Kabul is enthralling to the eye
Through the bazaars, caravans of Egypt pass
One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs
And the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls

Her laughter of mornings has the joy of flowers
Her nights of darkness, the reflections of lustrous hair
Her melodious nightingales, with passion sing their songs
Ardent tunes, as leaves enflamed, cascading from their throats

And I, I sing in the gardens of Jahanara, of Sharbara
And even the trumpets of heaven envy their green pastures.

Mirza Mohammed Ali Saib

I am in Kabul, Afghanistan - both in the historic and the personal sense - I am at home.

Fuzzy Sense of Something

Finding the strength and the energy to deal with the many changes surrounding a person is never easy. I am, by all accounts, not exactly the most flexible person that I know (I think), but here I am several weeks after recognising and accepting fate, bidding farewell to the part of the world that has been home for several years.

Take this week. Being a primary teacher is about relationships - with the children and with colleagues - and I really do care. To that end, I am sad, however, my last days of work brought a sense of release. I have found it incredibly cathartic letting go of material possessions and looking forwards. Not sure to what I've been looking, however. I just know that I wanted to pass over the job that I was doing, take a fresh look at myself and press on with whatever Allah has scribed for me. As I write this, I'm still figuring things out that all my life have eluded my sometimes fuzzy sense of focus. I do not guarantee that I will be any closer to knowing.

Confused? Sure. Here are some select lines that "speak" to me from a poem by Rumi. It fits a common theme of questions I ask and finishes with a line I often contemplate myself.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field.  I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn't make any sense.

Rumi

Oh, and I posted my tutor the first draft of the dissertation that I am writing. I'm not completed, but really want to be. More on that another time.

Alone

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then - in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life - was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view. 

Edgar Allen Poe.

Credits here.

My Name Is Red

Mainly for the reason that I have been slightly less disciplined in my leisure reading this past twelve months (though I have picked up other reads in between), it took me a year to read My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk (translated by Erdağ Gökna).  The book itself is one where you must concentrate because each chapter of the story is told by one of the characters - a technique that those who have read Bram Stoker will be familiar with. 

I have to say that despite my lack of continuity, I never did lose the thread with the book, so it is, on the whole very well written. It couldn't get better for me - the central character in this book is someone called Black (wink).

The story takes place in Istanbul during 16th Century Ottoman reign over nine winter days and is a murder mystery set amid the world of the miniaturists. There's a romance that forms part of the backdrop, as well as stories from the Shahnameh and through the characters we enter the world of mysticism, religion and the cultural impact of the Turks looking two ways - East and West. We can draw many parallels between the commentary of the book and the direction that Atatürk took Turkey in today.

No spoilers here, one has to go and read the book themselves. I will say however, that I love Turkey and Istanbul as a city - I was there a couple of years back and I really felt the sense of being on the edge of two worlds. Our hotel looked over the Sultan Ahmed Mosque to the West and the Bosphorus to the East. An irony of positioning, no less.

Istanbul? I would easily return in a heartbeat.