A Burqa and a Hard Place

by Sally Cooper

  ‘Yes, Mr Ibrahimi told me you were coming. We have the best room for you.’

  I wondered what that really meant as we climbed up the stone steps to the floor above. The ‘best’ room, as it turned out, was the room closest to the bathroom, though in every other way it was no different to any other room on offer.

  I walked down the main street to the radio station and was stopped by familiar faces inquiring, in a mixture of Dari and English, as to my good health, the good health of my family and the general state of affairs in Australia – polite questions, since they knew little, if anything, of the world outside. Rural Afghans had few windows on life beyond their cloistered world. Apart from what they heard on a radio and the occasional visitor passing through town, they passed their lives within the confines of their valleys. Most of the people of Bamyan had never seen a map of the world, but they remembered me and they remembered where I was from and that was what mattered.

  Radio Bamyan had barely changed. The sewing pins still kept the studio soundproofing in place and the station’s loyal listeners were still entertained by the same music: Afghan love songs, Hindi muzak and the occasional Hazaragi track, local tunes sung to the accompaniment of a traditional long-necked guitar.

  Mr Ibrahimi was so thrilled to have me back that he sat me down and recorded a forty-five-minute interview – with the aid of a translator – about all the things I’d been doing in my time away and played it on high rotation for the duration of my stay.

  While Mr Ibrahimi was still at the helm, some of the original staff, like Hassan, had left. Nadjia, the ‘housewife’, had moved to Kabul where she was working at another radio station, and one of the men had taken a full-time job at a newly opened medical clinic. The departures came as no surprise, as there had been a high turnover at all the radio stations set up the previous year. It wasn’t so much the nature of the work itself, as the nature of Afghan life. Decades of uncertainty had created a culture of constant change. If a better opportunity came up elsewhere, it was grabbed with both hands because no-one could be sure what tomorrow had in store. But one thing was certain in Bamyan – the summer sun would shine tomorrow. The old man in the turban still appeared each afternoon with the weather forecast of unknown provenance.

  Radio Bamyan was one of the more successful radio stations established by Internews over the previous twelve months. The station now played more local interviews, of both men and women, using more sound to add texture to their programs. Technical problems, from loose wires to fuel supplies, had been resolved and, best of all, there was no more dead air, no more of the silence that marred so many of the Ghan’s new radio stations while someone interrupted a song in favour of a track they liked better. I’d like to have taken credit for Radio Bamyan’s success but that would be far from accurate. Mr Ibrahimi maintained a firm grip on the station, supported by an eager team of beginner journalists who volunteered their time and made sure their station informed the people of Bamyan of the events in their district and, where possible, beyond.

  Various trainers had worked at Radio Bamyan in the nine months I’d been away, and a short workshop had been conducted by Mirwais and Aziz. With many other stations requiring assistance, I had to decline Mr Ibrahimi’s request for a second workshop but suggested, instead, sending Mirwais for a week of mentoring with the Radio Bamyan journalists. Mirwais would work with station staff while they did their regular programming, helping them consolidate their skills and assisting with any problems – often technical – that might occur during the course of a normal working day. This would be IRIN’s first attempt at mentoring and it would be our test case.

  Despite having worked in the Ghan for the better part of a year, on and off, I had never been able to define what ‘development’ really meant or how it could truly be measured. Project statisticians, the Monitoring and Evaluation Officers, said it always came down to numbers: how many schools were built or the number of cows vaccinated. In view of my recent excursions, for my own purposes I could now confidently define development as a functioning radio station and a class full of Western-trained hairdressers.

  15

  Bank it Like Bilal

  After the pleasant cool of Bamyan, I returned to the sweltering heat of high summer in Kabul. Every day the temperature climbed into the high thirties and beyond. The days were hot and dusty, and windows remained firmly shut. For those fortunate enough, generators buzzed and fans whirred. Everyone stayed indoors or took shelter in the shade of Kabul’s few dust-covered trees.

  Ever since the suicide-bomber-that-wouldn’t, the BBIED (Body Borne Improvised Explosive Device) warnings had come thick and fast, often accompanied by VBIED warnings (Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Device). Development Inc. battened down the hatches. Afghans, on the other hand, went about their business as usual. In the context of their recent history, they weren’t going to let a single suicide bomb, alleged or otherwise, ruin their whole week.

  After a fortnight of warnings, UN security began to relax and the tension subsided. I had spent the time holed up at the Karwan Sara or the IRIN office, ferried between the two by Qasim. The warnings had come with such frequency, they were starting to become white noise to my ears. I was beginning to yearn for the simple pleasure of walking down the street, so finally I packed any thoughts of suicide bombers into a box in a rarely used part of my brain, and did just that.

  My destination was a newly opened bank about six blocks from the IRIN office – though Kabul blocks were highly irregular in their size and shape, often divided by a bombed-out building, a large rubbish heap or concrete security barriers. For much of the last twenty-five years, there had been almost no banks in Kabul. Most people kept what money they had stuffed inside mattresses or buried in the garden – along with faded family photographs and anything else of value. In the absence of banking services, last summer, when the NGO I was working for needed cash, they sent one of the international staff to Islamabad with a withdrawal slip and a large backpack.

  In a sign of Kabul’s post-war growth, a number of banks had opened in the city in recent months. I received part of my pay in cash at the end of each month. After I paid the Karwan Sara, more for the entertainment it provided than the service, I was always left with a small stash that I had been accumulating in the locked trunk under my bed. As a good Westerner, and a bank manager’s daughter, I viewed a bank as a viable and more secure alternative.

  ‘I’m going to the bank,’ I told Ismail early one morning.

  ‘Okay,’ he replied with a hint of unease. ‘Which bank?’

  ‘The First Standard Bank, the one that opened a few weeks ago.’

  ‘Ohhh … You don’t want me to go with you?’ Ismail had, by now, become indispensable to my filling in of forms.

  ‘I think this one should be straightforward,’ I said, confidently.

  ‘Will Qasim take you?’

  ‘No, I think I will walk today.’

  ‘Really?’

  By now, Ismail’s eyes were on the verge of popping out. He was not a morning person and I’d already learned not to throw too much at him before he’d had at least two cups of sugary tea. ‘Is that okay?’ he asked.

  Walking down the street wasn’t a pastime of the important or the well-to-do. In Afghan eyes, I was both. But Ismail hadn’t had his second cup of tea so his ability to process what I was about to do was momentarily stymied.

  ‘I’ll go now before it gets too busy – and too hot. I won’t be long,’ I said, adjusting my headscarf and walking out the door.

  Despite having been back in the Ghan for several months, I still struggled with the headscarf. I never wore one in the office or at home. I’d occasionally wear it in the car but only on those rare occasions when I was beyond the confines of Development Inc. Practice might have helped. Today, five metres beyond the office gate, I was already struggling with an errant fold.

  No respectable Afghan will walk when they can drive or, better, be driven, so there were few pedestrians when
I set off down the street. It was 9 am and the summer air was thick with smog and dust, a legacy of Kabul’s location at the ankles of the Hindu Kush. I walked down the laneway and out to the main road where the din was oppressive: horns screamed, exhausts sputtered, radios blared and engines revved. I’d have plugged my ears with my iPod but as my headscarf already blocked my peripheral vision, I thought it unwise to risk further impairment. A walk in Kabul was an obstacle course of gaping potholes, yawning sewers, one-legged beggars, prodding burqas and the occasional motorcyclist defiantly mistaking the footpath for a road.

  Turning left once I reached the main road, I soon came to a busy T intersection. To my right the road continued to the gates of the ISAF base and, just beyond that, to the US embassy. That direction was now officially closed to everything except American cars and ISAF patrols. Even the IRIN car was no longer allowed to pass.

  I turned left, following the shady line of trees past the Italian embassy and towards the Arg, the presidential palace whose entrance was even more fortified than those of the US embassy and UNOCA combined. The palace itself was a long way from the road so all I ever saw was a series of concrete barriers, boom gates and a hand-painted sign – another – of a skull and crossbones. In the absence of literate drivers, the skull and crossbones was there to warn anyone against taking a shortcut.

  The entrance to the Arg blocked the entire street so I turned right, along with the traffic, under the watchful gaze of the heavily armed palace guards, who eyed me with suspicion – a foreign woman walking alone. Looming ahead of me now was the equally fortified entrance to Kabul Compound, the US military base whose gates provided one of the city’s most awkward people jams. Street kids, burqas, beggars and US soldiers gathered at the entrance. Heavily armed American soldiers stood sentry. I didn’t like this intersection, on foot or by car. There were too many people, too many guns and too many fingers close to too many triggers.

  I turned right again, leaving the bollards and the roadblocks behind me. I was now in a quiet tree-lined suburban street, closer to Afghanistan than the obstacle course I’d just left behind. The solid concrete footpaths of the previous blocks now yielded to potholes and moat-like ditches. I also knew I was back in the Ghan when I passed a group of young men, none of them older than twenty, who seemed to have nothing much to do on this warm summer’s morning.

  In many ways, Afghan life is survival of the fittest. While being a foreigner afforded me many privileges, when I walked down the street unaccompanied, I was regarded as fair game. A woman, by Afghan definition, is weak and vulnerable, and I was therefore an easy target.

  I turned around a few minutes later and found one of the young men on my tail. In fact, he was so close to my tail I was practically in his lap, much to the amusement of his friends, who shouted an appreciative ‘Belly good, belly goooooood’, not so much to him as to me.

  We reached a busy intersection, the last between me and the bank. A woman in a burqa scurried across my path. I watched her pass, for once envious of the anonymity her blue curtain provided. My new friends had gathered courage and were now buzzing around me like the city’s incessant summer flies and I had tired of their unwanted company. ‘Belly good’ wasn’t quite the soundtrack I was after and having it shouted in my ears was just as annoying as the flies. To openly address the problem would have been unwise so I kept a straight face and continued walking. As I came to the corner, I spotted a traffic policeman. Peak hour had finished and he was enjoying a brief respite. I walked over to him.

  ‘Salaam aleikum,’ I said.

  ‘Waleikum a-salaam,’ he replied.

  I pointed to my friends, now standing a few feet away. ‘Problem,’ I said, shaking my head for effect.

  He nodded his understanding and marched valiantly towards the gaggle.

  I continued across the street, pausing long enough to turn around and see one of my erstwhile paramours being smacked around the head. His friends were no longer quite so amused.

  The entrance to the First Standard Bank was unlike the entrance to any bank I had been to anywhere else. Like the Arman FM office, the bank was housed in a large, tree-lined compound that had once been someone’s home. Its entrance was a narrow blue gate made of heavy metal with a peephole, now closed, at eye level. A small blue and white striped guard box, the size of a telephone booth, stood to the left. I knocked on the gate. The peephole remained shut so I knocked again. The door of the guard box swung open. Although they are small in size, Afghan guard boxes have an apparently unlimited capacity and three pairs of eyes stared out at me. One belonged to a man in uniform whom I presumed to be the guard. He pointed his finger at a place above my head. I looked at him. He did it again, this time using his whole arm, flicking the elbow for extra whip-like effect. Afghans are very dramatic and even the smallest gesture can take on pantomime proportions. By now, I was wondering if it might have been a good idea to bring Ismail with me when the guard emerged from his box, took three steps in my direction and pressed a small buzzer above my head. He nodded, keeping his finger on the buzzer for good measure. He was probably wondering how foreigners thought they could ever rebuild his country if they couldn’t even find a simple buzzer. In my defence, although I was familiar with the Afghan buzzer, I’d never seen one so high up; it seemed First Standard’s clientele must be very tall.

  Somewhere on the other side of the fence, a pair of footsteps shuffled towards the gate, hastened by the unrelenting buzz. The peephole snapped open, a pair of dark eyes peered at me briefly before it once again snapped shut. I was a woman and I was a foreigner – belonging to the ‘third-gender’ granted me instant access. With a large clunk, the gate opened, and the guard returned to his friends.

  The dark eyes belonged to a smiling Hazara man, dressed in a pale brown shalwar kameez, a First Standard baseball cap on his head.

  ‘Salaam aleikum,’ he said.

  ‘Hello, how are you?’

  ‘Name here,’ he replied, proffering a blue clipboard. Once I had written my name on the register, he handed me a visitor tag and I was free to go about my business.

  The bank was small and cool. Despite its exterior, inside it really did look like a bank. Its floor was covered with pristine white linoleum, potted green plants lined the entrance and a noticeboard, adorned with the happy smiles of those who seem to grace the covers of bank advertising pamphlets elsewhere in the world, stared back at me. A sign above the stairs said Information.

  I followed a series of arrows up the stairs and into a small room with two desks placed side by side. Behind the desks were two young Afghan men. They were clean-shaven, dark-haired and dressed in matching white shirts and navy blue ties.

  ‘Hello … welcome!’ shouted the one on the left. His cohort looked up at me and smiled. They sat with their hands on their desks as if they had been waiting for me to arrive.

  Following the usual greetings, in any social or business setting the first thing an Afghan is likely to say to you is ‘bish, bish’, the universal command that asks you to take a seat.

  The young man on the left rose to greet me as I walked across the room and bished on the chair on the other side of his desk.

  ‘How are you this morning?’ he asked politely.

  ‘I am extremely well.’ I doubted he wanted to hear about my walk to the bank so I proceeded with the script as usual. ‘How are you?’

  ‘I am well. We are all here well.’

  His colleague nodded in agreement.

  ‘I am Bilal.’

  ‘I am Sally Cooper.’

  Bilal didn’t recognise my name. My notoriety at the UN apparently only stretched so far.

  ‘How can I help you, Miss Sally?’

  ‘Bilal, I would like some information about opening a bank account.’

  I wondered how many customer service movies Bilal had been subjected to, the kind with John Cleese in the starring role. I watched while he opened his drawer and, with a flourish, produced a glossy pamphlet telling me everyth
ing the bank thought I needed to know about savings accounts. It was printed in English and Dari with pictures of smiling Afghan men. Evidently no Afghan woman needed a bank account.

  ‘This looks very good. Would I be able to access my account outside Afghanistan?’

  ‘No, you wouldn’t be able to do that.’ He shook his head and smiled regretfully.

  ‘Is there internet banking?’

  ‘No.’ More smiling.

  ‘What if something happened and I got evacuated, how would I get my money then?’

  This question mustn’t have come up in the video. Bilal thought for a moment. ‘I think you will have to ask one of your friends to help you,’ he said.

  ‘Well, what’s the point in having an account?’ I asked in frustration.

  ‘Because it’s a safe place to keep your money,’ said the customer service manual.

  I smiled. There seemed little else to say. ‘Okay, thank you for your help.’

  ‘You can complete the form and return it to me. I am Bilal Khas. Ask for Bilal. Here is my card.’ You weren’t anyone in the Ghan unless you had the business card to prove it. Bilal whipped his off the top of a freshly printed pile and handed it to me.

  ‘Thank you, Bilal.’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Sally.’

  ‘Goodbye,’ said Bilal, his hands returning to the top of his desk as he waited for the next customer to walk through the door. I walked down the stairs as confused as I had been when I walked in. Where most banks trumpet the flexibility of their accounts, it seems First Standard Kabul specialised in inflexible accounts. I was starting to see why Afghans were so fond of hiding their money in their mattresses. At the bottom of the stairs I called Qasim and asked him to come and pick me up. I’d had enough of the Ghan for one day.