A Battlefield Tourist

32 Hours To Kabul

Feb 2 at 5:05am by David Tate

I cannot tell you how absolutely grueling it is to fly halfway around the world, especially when your final destination is Kandahar, Afghanistan and beyond.  

The flight from Roanoke to Dubai itself was more than 17 hours, landing me in the Middle East’s playground around 8pm.  If that wasn’t bad enough, straight off the top I volunteered to give up my seat to keep a traveling family together, which landed me two rows back in between two guys, one of whom took up 25% of my space for half the flight.  Misery is the only thing that comes to mind.

Now in Dubai, with my next flight not scheduled to leave until 0700 (11 hours), I was definitely not looking forward to the wait… but wait I did.  I spent some time looking for a restaurant and then borrowed some Finnish guy’s adaptor so I could charge my computer (Note to self:  Don’t forget your adapters when traveling overseas).  The rest of the night was spent sitting in more misery because I couldn’t fall asleep.  Figures.

No Mistakes

This leg of the trip needed to play out exactly on time, and when you’re dealing with Afghanistan, that is a tall order.  Fact is, though, the plane landed in Kabul at 0930, which meant I needed to get off the plane, go through the passport line, wait for my luggage, go through customs, get out the door and to ISAF by 1100.  Why, you wonder?  Because ISAF only gives credentials out three days a week between 1000 and 1100.  You miss it on Monday and you gotta wait until Wednesday and then you get a flight to Kandahar a day or so later.

Fortunately, other than being so drained that I could barely stand it, everything happened like clockwork.   The only real problem I had was an accelerated heart rate which I can’t decide whether it was the result of being excited or just stressed (maybe it was the coffee? Note to self 2:  Never drink a lot of coffee when your are completely tired and have had no sleep.).

Return to Kabul

Walking out of the airport it was like I had never left.  Seemed like yesterday, in fact.  However, once past the gate and into town, it took a while to recognize where I’d lived for eight months of my life.  New buildings and other changes were all over the place and the traffic was ten times worse.  One thing for sure:  If you only saw Kabul, you’d think everything was just fine here, except for the overwhelming poverty.

As I said, everything was clicking right along.  The taxi driver dropped me right at the front gate and then told me since he was a government tourist taxi, it would be $25.  WHAT!?  No time to argue, my window was shrinking by the minute.  So I pay the guy, grab all my gear and go to the front gate at ISAF… but no one seems to know what I’m talking about when I explain who I was and why I was there.  They won’t let me in to meet my contact on time and I’m starting to get nervous.  So the Italian guards call up their sergeant, who is in the Macedonian Army, and he is no help.  In fact, he was a dick.  So much so that he had no answers and didn’t care an ounce to help me.  Then he started laughing at me.

“What’s so funny?”  No answer, just a smug look and then more laughter.

“What the fuck are you laughing about?”  That pissed him off and we started arguing.”You don’t talk”, he said.  ”Don’t laugh in my face, just give me someone who can speak English!”

About that time an Italian officer came up all of a sudden and took my side, then they started arguing.  Turns out the Captain was the Captain I was looking for.  He showed them his ID and told them I was coming in, like the other journalists that were walking in as I was being singled out.  

Turns out, the guards were tripped out by my camera, even though I told them I literally just got off the plane after some 30 hours, the camera was not on and had a lens cap on.  Whatever.  It worked out and I got my ID after a retinal scan and fingerprints.  Unfortunately as I was walking past the guards, my gear shifted and threw me off balance causing me to fall. They all laughed at me this time.  Touche.  

I think the worst part about this incident is that the place I needed to go was literally 15 yards away.  How in the hell would these guys NOT know what I was talking about?  The time frames are explicit so how could the gate guards be so clueless?

After getting my credentials, I had to figure out what next.  I had a good walk with all my gear to get to where a taxi could pick me up (because the street was closed to traffic), so I enlisted a couple of street kids to help and we made our way for the nearest taxi.  

One of the kids knew pretty good english, so he translated for me.  I decided I needed to look for a couple of my old crewmates who were still working in Kabul.  I’d heard they were both working for Al Jazeera, so that’s where I told the cabbie to go, a place he said he knew.  45 minutes and $10 later, we found it.  I swear we asked two dozen people along the way.  Hell, I even went to my old house expecting the IHA crew to help with directions, but IHA no longer occupied the house, so we kept looking until we found it.

Once there, it took just moments and I found my old friends Nadir and Ahmet.  It was an awesome reunion.  I can’t believe how glad I was to see these guys.  I remember Nadir telling me once that he would never forget me because we’d been through so much together and we were brothers.  Amazing I can find friends in Kabul, but I did and their help will go a long way in making this trip work when I’m in Kabul.  Immediately I was loaned a phone to call the Marines and tell them I was in country.   Later I actually went out and bought one so to erase any communications issues.

Unfortunately, the soonest they can get me out is Wednesday, so that means I get a day in Kabul to take pictures of the people here, while making my way around the streets that I spent so much time on back in ‘04