Sacred Cows

Banana Republic

~By Tarquin. I finally reached Kabul after Christmas by Airbus magic carpet. We glided in over Pakistan and the brown, rugged hills of the North-West Frontier, which gave way to the snow-clad fortress of the Hindu Kush.
    It’s little wonder that the Americans haven't been able to find Osama bin Laden & Co. down there. Both geographically and politically, this is extraordinarily wild territory.
    The Faqir of Ipi, the Waziri leader who led an insurrection against the British and later the Pakistanis, evaded his enemies in the same terrain for decades. Some 40,000 British and Indian troops spent the 1930s and 40s trying to locate him and his tribesmen and failed.

Kabul in the snow

Happy 2007!

The cooks at the Lebanese restaurant built a snowman with carrots for eyes and aubergine slices for eyebrows, ears and buttons!

Lots more photos if you keep reading!

Beautiful Kabul

~By Anu. My friend Rafiq Maqbool took this lovely photo at a place called Mini-Mobile Circus for Children here in Kabul.

    MMCC, as it's called, is an after-school program. Children, many of them refugees, get to sing, dance, act, juggle, walk on stilts, even make professional radio programs! I'd watched the film, Osama, the night before. I couldn't agree more with David Denby, who wrote in the New Yorker:

   "This lovely movie, the first  to come out of Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban, is about a twelve-year-old girl (Marina Golbahari) who dresses as a boy in order to get work and winds up with dozens of prepubescent boys in a madrassa, where she is subjected to nonstop Koranic recitation and bizarre lectures about sex. The movie is deeply shocking and understated, with an iconic use of such repeated imagery as the shots of men slowly keying elaborate locks that pen the women up. The groups of faceless women in their burkas are like fields of lavender swaying in the wind; the boys in their white turbans bobbing over the Koran are both beautiful and foreboding. Made for less than fifty thousand dollars (plus free use of camera and crew), the movie is an outright miracle."

 

Bright blue Boxing Day!

-Anu here. Wow, first video post and it works! Though the quality is not great on the web. I shot this as we passed Timur Shahi market (in the shadow of the Timur Shah's mausoleum). Kabul is icy and frozen at the moment. The airport is shut due to a power cut. Cars slide along on icy ruts and everywhere, people are getting ready for Eid, which starts Saturday!

Sridevi disco puja

It's Christmas Eve, and we're watching Khuda Gawah. It was made in 1992 in Afghanistan...and it was Mahfouz, my Afghan friend's, pick! He's mightily proud of all the scenes shot in and around Kabul. The pirated CD version we're watching is slightly truncated, with the first sequence (and basis for the entire film) cut out! Not that it takes anything away from the disjointed, over-wrought, embarassing Sridevi disco puja Bollywood schmaltz! Nonetheless, Mahfouz and I are enjoying it immensely on this frozen, snowy Kabul evening.

Some Kabul images

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Some images from Kabul for you to enjoy.

Kabul police travel in style!

Anu in Kabul

I woke up, reluctant to leave the warmth built-up beneath my crisp white duvet. But the sight of snow, anywhere, no matter how cold, always gets me up! It started coming down as rain and must have turned to snow overnight. The time is only 8a.m. and already, the strong Afghan sun is melting it into cold slush.
    I got up and went to the bathroom, expecting to freeze to death. But when I opened the door, the blast from the wood furnace nearly burnt my cheek-hairs off! There is no electricity though, hence no hot water. I will have to ask someone to turn on the small generator to power all the computers & sockets.