A Battlefield Tourist

Moving On

Feb 5 at 12:12am by David Tate

I finally got the call I’ve been waiting for:  Be at ISAF at xx:xx for a plane south to Kandahar.  Great news!  Kabul is Kabul and I’m ready to head south.  Not that I wasted time here, because I didn’t, for just about everything I do here has a Plan B.  In the event I got stuck in Kabul, the silver lining was that I would get some time to pick up clips of the city, the people and the feel of the city itself.  After all, wouldn’t pictures of the city be important to the video history of this conflict?  Easy choice.

Tuesday, February 3rd

I woke up to the sounds of traffic outside.  Not your typical traffic, but a certain sound that I’d grown used to years before.  It struck my mind and it felt as if I had been gone just a few months.  Of course much has changed since 2004, but the sounds and smells are certainly the same.

The previous afternoon, I got hooked up with Nadir’s assistant who took me downtown to get a cell phone.  That, plus a SIM card are pretty much mandatory here.  Life may not be great here, but just about everyone still has a cell phone.  Besides, I needed a way for the ISAF Public Affairs people to reach me, and because the information is secret, email is not an option.

Ahmet was trying to get me in a guest house for accomidations while I waited, but the cheapest was $80, so I resorted to my original plan, Mustafa Hotel.

I’d heard about this place many times *BOOM* – just heard a large explosion – 12:20 am – but had never visited.  Back in 2004, it was one of those places; the ones where many people from NGOs to journalists hung out to get the mudane out of their lives.  Now, it is relatively quiet.  Very few journalists come and go (I’m the only one at this time) and a handful of western contractors who have decided city life is better than base life.  One guy has been here (in Afghanistan) seven YEARS!!

There is hot water, electricity, a pool table and a functioning kitchen –  just no central heat, something that is normal here.  So I wear the same sleeping gear I would in the field.  In fact, as I write from bed I can see my breath and I have a full face mask on to keep my  warm.  Other than that, it’s  a pretty good place.

The young guys that run it are very nice, it’s right next to Chicken Street where you can buy things from rugs to British muskets supposedly from their 19th century occupation.  Of course that also means hordes of street kids and widows that attack you once you leave the door.  It’s funny because the kids will sit right at the door boundry, staying very careful not to step in and suffer the wraith of the door man.  There must be a history here?

In any event, I spent about four hours out in the market area taking video of various things:  People, vendors, mosques… whatever looked interesting.  The biggest problem I had was all the kids that are trying to get in your shot.  One kid wanted in every shot and followed me for a while before I had to chase him off.  I’ll tell you, walking around the old city you really have to be careful.  Everyone is looking at you, most with hard stares that are impossible to tell if they are angry or just being themselves.

One of my goals was to get up into the homes on the mountain for some good “people” shots, but on my way up, some young men advised me it wouldn’t be a good idea… so I didn’t. Which is fine.  Brings reality into focus for a moment.  as I walked out of that area, I passed a bakery where an old man and a bunch of young men were busy making “foot bread”… which is what the Americans used to call it.  Basically it’s a flat bread that is stuck to the side of a large, underground oven of sorts.  I think the “foot” part came about because of a belief the bread is worked out with the baker’s feet.  I didn’t see any of that.

Anyway, I stopped in for some tea and company.  They were all very nice, but didn’t speak a lick of English, so it was weird as usual when it came to communicating… but hey, that’s part of the fun.

Wednesday February, 4th

I ended up going to bed shortly after I got home.  I’m guessing the time change is to blame.  That made it so I woke up at 0100 with no chance of going back to bed, so I got up and got to work editing.  

By morning, of course, I was really feeling rough so I went back to bed until about noon before getting up and heading out again.  This time it was snowing and raining, but I knew this was likely my last chance to shoot some video for one of my projects.  After hearing the barrage of warnings from “Billy” (the guy whose been here seven years!), I wrapped up good, put the camera in rain gear and headed out.  My destination:  A restaurant that sold fish.

To be honest, I never thought for a second that I would get the urge to eat one of these fish.  In fact, there’s so much filth, mud and dust around that anything with eyeballs just didn’t help the appetite (In fact there’s a lot of strange food for sale here including boiled sheep’s head).  Regardless, I got this urge to shoot a sequence for my project that involved me trying to get these guys to cook me a fish so I could eat it.  They finally understood and let me shot the whole thing.

First you pick the fish, then they gut it, scrub it, then throw it in a big vat of boiling grease.  After cooking, it is sprinkled with spices and a hot, spicy relish added.  Of course it is then eaten with nan.  Believe it or not, the shoot went well and the fish was pretty good.  All in all, very successful and an enlightening experience.

Once back at the hotel, it was time to wind down and finally get a shower, which felt sooo good.  I spent the rest of the night enjoying a few beers, chatting with the others and waiting for the phone call with information on my flight that would put me at Kabul International at 0730 on Thursday.  

***NOTE – Internet access is getting spotty, so please forgive my errors as I cannot spend a lot of time reworking these articles until later.  I hope you understand.  Second, I cannot find my camera cable, so no pics will be posted until next month.  Also… If you are enjoying this blog, or find it informative, please consider a donation, via PayPal, to dtate38@cox.net.  Thanks.