THE ROAD TO MY FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH AFGHAN CUISINE STARTED, oddly enough, at the bar at the American Club in Peshawar, Pakistan. There’s always a favorite watering hole for journalists covering a war, and for those reporting on the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s it was this two-story house in University Town.
Frankly, there wasn’t much choice. Alcohol was banned in Pakistan, so there were no bars and just a few hotels where you could sign a form to say you were a heathen and a furtive waiter would appear at the door bearing a basket. Inside, under layers of pink napkins and newspaper, would be a bottle of Murree beer brewed by Parsis in Rawalpindi.
The American Club was far more convivial. If only we had realized, Osama bin Laden was living just a few blocks away; but in those days in the 1980s we had never heard of him. The Arab Afghans, as they were known, were mostly people their own countries wanted to get rid of—sinister, shadowy figures who fought like crazy and of whom the Afghan mujahideen were wary at best.
On the menu at the club were cheeseburgers with forbidden bacon and wondrous calorie-laden things that I had never encountered in England, such as sloppy joes and Oreo-cookie ice cream, paid for with tear-off paper coupons bought in five-dollar booklets. To wash them down you could order anything from ice-cold Budweisers to Johnny Walker Black Label.
I was twenty-one when I went to the club for the first time, having set out for the Afghan frontier to be a foreign correspondent. Men were seated in a row at the bar wearing green army jackets, some with old bloodstains or charred bullet holes. As I walked in, a couple of them swiveled around and looked me up and down.
“How many wars have you covered?” asked one in a thick American drawl.
“None, it’s my first,” I replied nervously.
They were Vietnam vets and could tell me how many Americans had been killed there—58,000—and therefore how many Russians must be killed in Afghanistan. It was simple Cold War arithmetic, and the war they were covering seemed black-and-white—the evil commies versus the noble (Western-backed and -equipped) Afghans. I preferred thinking of it in more romantic David versus Goliath terms of the brave man from the mountains with an old Lee-Enfield rifle and rope sandals ranged against the most powerful army on earth.
Neither, of course, was true. Afghanistan is known as the graveyard of empires, having never been conquered from Alexander the Great to the British. However, the real decisive factor was not the Afghans’ tenacious fighting but their CIA-supplied Stinger missiles, which could down Soviet helicopters and thus nullified the advantage of airpower.
Yet when I started questioning the received opinion about the mujahideen, writing about some of their own excesses, I found myself denounced as a commie and eventually banned from the American Club, deprived of beer and pork products. Instead I spent my evenings with Pakistani or Afghan friends or other renegades drinking Russian vodka we called Gorbachev, bought at the local smugglers’ market.
I had gone to the club because I desperately wanted to know what foreign correspondents actually did and how they operated. My only experience was a summer as an intern at the Financial Times, where foreign correspondents known as the Camel Corps wafted in from exotic destinations, speaking in strange languages on the phones and lugging battered leather satchels of foreign newspapers.
I also wanted information about getting into Afghanistan. I had met a diplomat from the British embassy who I guessed was a spook; he advised me, “Make sure you take your own cup; you can catch all sorts of diseases from the mujahideen.” I had never thought about hygiene as part of war reporting and, twenty years on, have never traveled with my own cup.
Like all journalists in Peshawar, I spent all my time trying to get what we called “inside.” The way to do this was through one of the resistance parties. Pakistan’s military intelligence, ISI, which was in charge of distributing weapons, had followed the old British principle of divide and rule to form seven different groups, most headed by former Kabul university professors.
Some were a waste of time trying. The fundamentalists like Yunus Khalis, a fierce seventy-year-old with a sixteen-year-old wife, and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, whose men threw acid in the faces of Afghan women who worked, were never going to take along a female journalist. Hekmatyar had me thrown out of an interview because, his men said, he could see my ankles.
Some were hard to take seriously, such the National Islamic Front of Afghanistan (NIFA), run by Pir Gailani and his sons, who had lived in Knightsbridge. We nicknamed them the Gucci muj because of their fondness for neatly pressed camouflage with pens made from gold-plated AK-47 bullets peeping from their top pockets.
Others were too keen—Jamiat-e Islami, run by Professor Rabbani, was so adroit at taking journalists along that I dubbed their office Mujahideen Resistance Tours Ltd. Their favorite tour was to take journalists to the city of Khost, which was not far across the border. I lost count of the number of times I read stories on the “battle for Khost”—it was how we knew there was a newcomer in town who had fallen for their line.
The best plan, it seemed to me, was to get to know individual commanders. Each day I would spend hours sitting awkwardly cross-legged on the floor drinking green tea and crunching sugared almonds from tiny glass dishes. My favorite was Abdul Haq, the twinkly-eyed Kabul commander who was always jovial despite having lost a foot to a land mine and with whom I shared a fondness for pink ice cream.
Once I’d convinced them I wouldn’t be a liability, commanders would send me into Afghanistan with their men, disguised as a mujahideen clad in men’s baggy pajama trousers secured with a long cord and a woollen cap and dirt rubbed into my fair skin to darken it. The Pashtun honor code would ensure my safety—one fighter would be designated responsible for me and instructed that if anything happened he would be chopped into little pieces.
After all the hassle and anxiety of getting in, the first day in Afghanistan was always wonderful. There was no sign of a border, because there wasn’t really one—just a random line, drawn up by the British, which split tribes and villages in half. But the mujahideen always claimed even the air was different, and when I was traveling with them so it seemed.
Even so, once I’d been inside Afghanistan a few days I would dream of getting out. This was less because of the hazards of war, such as being bombed by Soviet helicopters or driving over a mine, but more because there was nothing to eat. My first morning waking up in Afghanistan after a long trek by foot and mule, sitting uncomfortably astride a consignment of RPGs, was high up on a mountain in Paktika. Breakfast, served to me sitting on a roof in the cool, crisp air, was delicious thick cream and warm, floppy, freshly cooked naan. But it was a misleading introduction. Never again did I have such a breakfast. Afghans could survive weeks on nothing but dried naan.
Later a correspondent friend, Marie Colvin, and I made up what we called the War Correspondents Diet. Basically you would eat what you liked for weeks at home, then spend weeks of near-starvation trekking up and down mountains in Afghanistan or some other godforsaken conflict zone.
After I had lived in Peshawar for a while, I met a man called Hamid Karzai, who was spokesman for the Afghan National Liberation Front headed by Professor Mojadiddi. The ANLF was a standing joke among Afghans because it had so few forces inside the country, so hardly any journalists came to speak to Karzai. This I discovered was a shame, as he was eloquent and passionate about his country’s history—in fact, I had never met anyone so fiercely proud of his country. He was also a gracious host. His house was always full of tribal elders from southern Afghanistan whom he had to feed and shelter. His was an important family—his father was leader of the Popolzai, one of the royal Durrani tribes—but his brothers had all moved to America, where they ran Afghan restaurants. Hamid probably served up more food than they did—being the only representative of the family in Peshawar, he was expected to provide huge platters of stewed mutton and colorful pilau rice topped with grated carrots and raisins. For me he always had some English chocolate.
Karzai’s hometown was Kandahar, which he pronounced with a long a in the first syllable that somehow captured his yearning for the place and its summer winds, which swept across the desert with such a blast of heat it was said that they could fry a fish. “That’s the real Afghanistan,” he would say as told me of its orchards, which grew forty types of grapes and pomegranates that shone like rubies and had a taste so exquisite they would bring tears to the eyes.
Early on in our friendship, he decided he was going to take me there. Eventually in the summer of 1989 we set off, stopping first in Quetta, a small earthquake-prone town in western Pakistan surrounded by mountains that looked like swirled toffee and seemed to be on the very edge of the earth. Our first stop was a bazaar full of men with dark eyeliner and jeweled sandals with high heels, many of whom were holding hands. In a small shack away from prying eyes, I was kitted out in shalwar kameez and a long length of black silky cotton with fine white stripes that both the shopkeeper and Karzai could whisk into a turban with a twist of the fingers but I found impossible to tie.
As always with trips to Afghanistan, the journey was delayed for days before starting in a great hurry in the dawn hours, followed by endless waiting. Before leaving town we changed vehicles five times, which as far as I could see just drew more attention to ourselves.
The sun was setting by the time we ended up in a Mitsubishi Pajero heading out of town, climbing the Khojak Pass. All around us desert mountains rose smudged and Sphinxlike and the road passed back-and-forth tunnels for an astonishing switchback train track that British engineers had built. Apart from us the only traffic was a procession of jingle trucks with gaudily painted scenes of luscious Pashtun beauties and Swiss mountain views on their panels, which hid secret compartments for smuggling, the main local industry in this frontier region.
Our companions were Abdul Razzak, one of Kandahar’s leading commanders, known as the Airport Killer for his daring raid on the air base used by the Soviets, and Ratmullah, a chubby junior commander with a bushy black beard and eyes as dark as coal yet twinkling with mischief.
It was almost midnight by the time we reached the border, to be greeted by the red flares of heavy guns from nearby Spin Boldak, which the mujahideen were trying to capture. We drove into a compound, and to my surprise the first thing I saw was a calendar on the wall from which stared out the unmistakable face of Yunus Khalis with his henna-orange beard. I couldn’t imagine Karzai and Khalis having much in common. “Parties don’t matter here,” explained Karzai.
Several men emerged swathed in shawls and there was the usual long, guttural exchange of Pashto greetings—how are you, how is your father, what about your father’s father, and so on. Then a rose-patterned vinyl tablecloth was spread on the dirt floor and the men sat around it, laying down their Kalashnikovs as a young boy brought an enamel bowl of water, a pink Lux soap, and a grubby pink hand towel for us each to wash our hands. As the only woman, I was served last.
The boy then returned with a large aluminum dish of greasy goat stew swimming in globules of yellow fat and long slabs of stretchy Afghan bread to dip into it. All of it was washed down with curd in iced water, passed around in a shared cup. Wryly I remembered the British diplomat. As we ate the only sound was the appreciative smacking of lips. Silhouettes flickered on the mud walls in the light of the oil lamp.
“Eat well, as I don’t know when we will get meat again,” urged Karzai. He was right and I should have listened, but that night I was intent on avoiding the fat.
Over the next few weeks as we traveled to Kandahar, I got used to the fear of mines and helicopters, though everywhere we went we seemed to get bombed—perhaps connected to Karzai’s habit of radioing everyone to say he’d arrived despite being on the Soviet hit list. Only when we had a narrow escape in the orchards of the Arghandab Valley did I get him to stop.
But I never got used to the lack of food. Occasionally we would be given shelter in a home in one of the mud-walled villages, which looked like something from biblical times, and villagers would share their meager supplies.
Our destination was a place called Malajat on the outskirts of Kandahar, run by a commander called Borjan. There we switched to Yamaha motorbikes, on which we could travel through the tall green cornfields without being detected. For about ten days we stayed in a small shack with a walled garden. At night I had my own room—actually, it was the ammo store with a curtain separating it from the main room, guarded by a young man called Abdul Wasei, who took his duties very seriously. Occasionally we even got a bucket of water to wash in. But there was nothing to eat except okra fried in kerosene and rock-hard naan and the ubiquitous green tea drunk with boiled sweets as there was no sugar.
Later, when I compared notes with other journalists, I realized how lucky I was I never got sick. I guess years of late-night meals from the Death Kebab van at university had given me a cast-iron stomach. But how I fantasized about the cheeseburgers and cold beer in the American Club!
There was not much to do. Once we went on a crazy late-night raid into the city to try to take out a Soviet guard post; our sortie failed dismally and ended with us running like crazy to try to get back. Mostly we just sat around. Sometimes the mujahideen picked flowers to put in their hair or tie to their guns. One day Ratmullah found a little sparrow, which he tied by a string to a multibarrel rocket launcher. Some of the fighters amused themselves by firing Kalashnikovs near it to make it jump.
Then one night Borjan told us we were going to attack the Kandahar air base where the Russians were stationed. Today it’s the base of NATO operations for the south, referred to as K Town and complete with a boardwalk where you can find Pizza Hut, Tim Hortons coffee, and a TGI Friday’s featuring surf-and-turf suppers and Elvis posters.
The plan was to depart at dawn, but we ended up leaving late morning. There were about twenty of us, all on motorbikes. I sat behind Ratmullah, trying to balance without touching his body so as not to offend him, and consequently almost falling off. My turban kept slipping down over my eyes and threatening to unravel.
But it felt good to be outside the shed—until we passed a tractor with the driver’s body hanging off the side. His brains had been blown out.
We motored into a mulberry wood, where we stopped and hid the bikes in a branch-covered hole. Then we all passed under a Koran held by Ratmullah. Through the trees we ran and eventually down into one of trenches the mujahideen had built in rings around the city.
In the distance were some hills, and beyond that was the airport. Some men took up positions in the trench while others climbed into a tower, one of many used for drying grapes that are scattered around the south. From there they began firing rockets toward the airport, hoping to blow up a tank or fighter jet.
A shout went up and I saw Ratmullah’s face crease with panic, then he pulled me down to the bottom of the trench. Two Soviet tanks had appeared on the crest of the hill and were rolling down toward us. It was an agony of waiting before they began firing, then there was a dull thud as the raisin tower behind us was hit, sending hot dust and rubble down on us.
Abdul Wasei dragged me into a foxhole in the side of the trench. We could hear the cries of the wounded, but there was nothing we could do. After a while the silence was almost worse.
And the tanks did not go away. All day they stayed there, leaving us stuck in our trenches, not daring to emerge.
We had nothing to eat or drink, and my tongue felt thick in my mouth. There were odd pools of muddy water in the trench, which the mujahideen scooped up in their hands and drank. The water was brown with mosquitoes feasting on top, and I couldn’t imagine what diseases it might carry. But soon I was too thirsty to care. I too began scooping it into my hands and mouth. Mostly it tasted dusty.
Ratmullah suddenly jabbered excitedly in Pashto and held something up in his large hands. It was a mud crab. He bit into it, making noises of delight. Soon all the others were scratching the ground for mud crabs. Ratmullah offered one to me, but I shook my head. I wasn’t sure how starved I would need to be to eat that.
Finally, on the second day, the tanks went away, presumably deciding we were all dead or gone. We ran along the trenches and eventually back out into the mulberry woods. As we emerged into the trees, the first thing I saw was a small boy eating watermelon, juice dripping from his mouth. I had never wanted anything so badly in my life. “Ratmullah, I want that watermelon,” I said shamelessly.
Without hesitation Ratmullah grabbed it from the bewildered child. Nothing had ever tasted so good in my life.
When we got back to the hut, it felt like home. Everyone was talking excitedly. I turned the dial of my shortwave radio to BBC World Service, all static and crackle. Suddenly Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” came across the airwaves. It was a magical moment that afterward I thought I must have imagined. How would I have got that on the air in remote Afghanistan?
That night, our last in Kandahar, we had rice with a thin gruel crunchy with tiny bits of meat and bone. The next day as we left to head back to Pakistan, I realized that the sparrow had disappeared.