A Burqa and a Hard Place

by Sally Cooper

  16

  The Kingdom of Ismail Khan

  Herat is a city in western Afghanistan. In fact, it’s the only city in western Afghanistan. Head west from Herat and the next stop is the Iranian border. Head east and the next big settlement is – eventually – Kabul. Somewhere in between are hundreds of mud-walled villages and tiny towns which is where most of the estimated twenty-eight million Afghans live.

  Mirwais and I were finally off to Herat to run a basic journalism workshop for two of the town’s radio stations: Radio Herat, the government broadcaster, tightly controlled by the governor, Ismail Khan, and Radio Sahar, the women’s radio station set up by IMPACS. Ismail Khan’s intervention in its recent dispute had succeeded, Radio Sahar was back on track and it was business as usual.

  I had never been to Herat before and neither had Mirwais. Afghans had created one of the biggest diasporas of the modern age but they rarely travelled within their own country and Mirwais was no different.

  On our way into town from the airport, Mirwais chatted to the taxi driver as if they were old friends. Winding through Herat’s tree-lined boulevards we eventually pulled up at the large blue gate that announced the entrance to the UN guesthouse, our home for the next week. As our taxi was far from official, it was barred from entering. Mirwais knocked on the metal gate until we could hear rapid footsteps approaching. A dark, inquiring eye stared back at us through the peephole, widening at the sight of a bearded man and a – badly – scarfed foreign woman on its doorstep. Had I been on my own, like at the bank in Kabul, I would have been allowed in without a question being asked, but I was with an Afghan and things were going to be different. Mirwais greeted the eye in Dari, addressing it in the obsequious manner all Afghans adopted when challenged by someone further up the food chain. The eye belonged to a mere guard but he was the gatekeeper of a UN guesthouse and must be deferred to accordingly. After explaining in great detail who we were, the peephole snapped shut and the gate was unlocked. Instantly the guard’s manner changed and he and Mirwais greeted each other with the greatest affection. If Mirwais was going to carry on like this with everyone we met, it was going to be a long week.

  Behind its heavy blue gates, the UN guesthouse was an expanse of well-kept gardens and good order only ever found inside The Bubble. Most UN guesthouses had all the comforts of home, though with a tennis court, gymnasium and swimming pool, it wasn’t like any home I had ever lived in. The contrast must have been even greater for Mirwais, who shared two small rooms in Kabul with his wife and five children. It may have been my overactive imagination, and my increasing suspicions about just who was and wasn’t allowed inside The Bubble, but I was sure Mirwais’s room, in a darkened bungalow by the car park and the front gate, was in a section reserved for Afghan staff. I, on the other hand, was given a large, airy room at the rear of the compound, some distance from both the road and the Afghan public, and overlooking the garden. ‘We are the United Nations,’ proclaimed the guesthouse’s smiling Afghan manager, who I later found watching The Crocodile Hunter on television. But, to borrow from George Orwell, some nations really were more equal than others.

  Radio Sahar was at the end of a narrow dusty lane in a residential part of Herat. Upstairs was the studio, soundproofed with the usual mattress foam and gaudy maroon curtains. There were few desks and even fewer chairs. Afghans sat, slept and, depending on where they were, worked on long thin cushions called toshaks.

  It was late summer and the basement was the coolest room in the building. With the blessing of the station manager, a nineteen-year-old journalism student called Hamida, the next day Mirwais and I unpacked our whiteboard, arranged the toshaks in a circle and began our class.

  I had structured the IRIN workshops so that our trainees would work in class for a week before moving on to the practical in the second week. Classes would cover enough of the basics of radio journalism as could feasibly be taught to a group of beginners: what is news, the ‘who, what, why, where and when’ of news stories, how to plan a program, how to find people to interview, what to ask them, how to organise recorded material and, my personal crusade in Afghan journalism, the use of sound. As my Dari was terminally poor and few of the trainees spoke English, Mirwais acted as translator for the parts of the workshop that were taught by me.

  Because technical skills were best taught without the hindrance of translation and, more importantly, because Mirwais was better at Cool Edit than I was, he would cover how to edit and mix a program on computer, and how to use a minidisc recorder. Most stations had a computer, though computer skills were often rudimentary – particularly among women whose restricted movement outside the home prevented them from hanging around the plethora of internet cafes that were springing up in Kabul and in larger towns like Herat. Mirwais would spend the following week helping trainees make their own radio programs. I had heard enough of his own productions to feel confident he was able to do this. Faheem had stayed behind in Kabul, where he was still brushing up on his production skills before being let loose on the Ghan’s budding Fourth Estate.

  Our group was made up of five trainees, two from Radio Sahar and three from Radio Herat. They arrived each morning, removed their shoes – as Afghans always do when entering a room – then unpacked their notebooks and took their places, pens poised. There were two men and three women, one of whom – heavily veiled in an Iranian chador – looked like she was in her fifties, though it was hard to tell. Her name was Fatima and she had five children, ranging in age from four to twenty-one. With her husband’s permission she was in her third year of studying law at the local university and worked part time at Radio Herat, where she wrote, produced and presented a cooking program. At the end of each day, she threw her burqa over her chador and headed home. I always thought the chador was enough but I wasn’t Afghan. Unlike Fatima, my head scarf was optional. My life was a series of choices, Fatima’s wasn’t.

  Fatima was always the first to put up her hand, always asked questions and, even better for a trainee journalist, always questioned the answers. Afghanistan has almost no history of free media, and concepts of balance, neutrality and relevance were always the hardest to instil. It was a rare trainee who grasped the idea that there was more than one side to a story, and that he or she wasn’t one of them. Afghan culture is extraordinarily respectful of anyone in authority so interviews with government officials or anyone perceived as powerful tended to meander on without a question being raised. A few weeks before we left for Herat, Mirwais had made a ten-minute program about the effectiveness of the National Solidarity Program, a large infrastructure project administered at village level. He interviewed a local official charged with running the project in an area close to Kabul. The village was destitute and, despite already having spoken to villagers who felt the official had done nothing for them but, they alleged, a great deal for himself, Mirwais recorded a twenty-minute interview in which the man in question went into great detail about all the good works he alone had carried out. After listening to the interview, which, aside from the greetings and the thankyous, was almost devoid of Mirwais’s voice, I dispatched him back to the official with a list of clearly worded questions. While editing such interviews was great practice for anyone who may have felt any shyness about hitting the cut button, I was forever sitting through these sessions muttering the words ‘relevance’ and ‘opinion’ like an angry seagull chasing after a long forgotten chip.

  One of the delights in working in the same country for any length of time was that I began to notice changes or, dare I say it, ‘developments’. Our small group seemed to be more aware of the world beyond their borders than trainees had been a year ago. At Radio Bamyan in 2003, the class discussed the negative uses of radio. I had used the example of Rwanda’s Radio Milles Collines, which called the Hutus to arms during the 1994 genocide. The example was met with blank faces: no-one had heard of Rwanda, let alone the genocide. When talking about humanitarian news, everyone in our group cited examples from Darfur, poss
ibly proving that more people listened to the BBC’s Persian service than to Radio Herat. Arman FM’s signal was yet to reach this far west, which must have been a great relief to the mullahs.

  Despite the predictable hitches, our classes went well, and each evening Mirwais and I walked back to our guesthouse satisfied with the day’s events. But as was the case with most fairytales, the carriage turned into a pumpkin.

  One afternoon, late in the week, we returned from the radio station to find our guesthouse surrounded by the Afghan army, armed and very serious. As the guard opened the heavy gate, I noticed that he too was wearing a bulletproof vest.

  ‘What’s happening?’ said Mirwais, his eyes wide.

  ‘I’ll go and find out,’ I said, walking into the main building in search of the manager. He wasn’t in his office so I assumed the television room would be the next likely place. I opened the door and found one of my fellow guests standing by the television, idly watching a Bollywood movie. He was dressed in tennis whites and Nikes.

  ‘Hello … Do you know what’s happening outside? My colleague and I came home and –’

  He spun around. ‘Who are you?’ I seemed to have caught him by surprise.

  ‘I’m Sally Cooper, from IRIN Radio.’

  ‘You’re not UN?’ he said accusingly.

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘Then why haven’t you got a radio? Didn’t you check in?’ he snapped, launching into a lecture about my failure to comply with UN security.

  This didn’t really answer my question, and I wondered who this man was. I’d seen him around the guesthouse but I wasn’t sure who he worked for as he seemed to spend a great deal of his time playing tennis. I later found out he was a UN security officer.

  When in doubt, always find some real security guys. Not only would they be able to give you a reasonably accurate assessment of what was happening but they always knew where to find the beer. Global Risk Strategies was a British-based security and logistics company contracted to ensure the presidential election later that year would be carried off as smoothly as possible. Much of their western Afghanistan contingent was staying at the UN guesthouse, having been evacuated from the surrounding provinces in the last few days. Reassuringly, none of them had goatees and none of them owned a tennis racquet.

  I found one of the Global boys sitting at a table under a tree in the garden reading a dog-eared copy of the Guardian Weekly, a freshly opened Corona in front of him. He was a fair-haired, bearded man dressed in a pale brown shirt, khaki trousers and a pair of well-worn desert boots.

  ‘Hello,’ I said tentatively.

  ‘Oh, hello there,’ he said in very proper English, folding his newspaper and standing up to shake my hand. ‘Simon … Simon Grant.’

  ‘I’m Sally Cooper.’

  ‘Australian?’

  ‘Yes. You?’

  ‘Keenya.’ Like all good white Kenyans, Simon gave his country the extra ‘e’ that independence had so comprehensively removed.

  Simon told me that the kingdom of Ismail Khan had come under threat from no less than three minor warlords who had launched an attack on the governor’s troops in the districts surrounding Herat. Ismail Khan, in addition to being a provincial governor, was one of the Ghan’s most revered and powerful mujahideen leaders, so the mounting offensive was not being taken lightly.

  As each day passed, the gossip pendulum swung: we were witnessing the last days of Ismail Khan, or, according to Radio Herat, the esteemed governor was victorious on all fronts. Only two sources gave a reasonably accurate account of what was really happening – the BBC’s Persian service, which necessitated the presence of an Afghan to translate, and, via the Global boys, a contact at the US State Department. One had a sole Afghan stringer on the ground and the other a sophisticated network of satellites. In the absence of a UN evacuation plan should the fighting get too close, over a crate of Corona, Simon and the Global boys hatched a plan of their own. It involved a 3 am knock on my door, a couple of Chinook helicopters and a photo opportunity with a gaggle of burly marines when we got to Bagram Air Base, just outside Kabul.

  Despite the small war taking place in the surrounding province, life in the busy streets beyond the guesthouse walls continued and it was business as usual for Heratis. I couldn’t hear any sounds nor see any evidence of fighting so, once again, the information was filed away in a part of my brain marked ‘maybe’ and Mirwais and I returned to Radio Sahar to finish our training.

  I never got the 3 am knock. Three days later, my contribution to the workshop was over and, leaving our trainees in Mirwais’s hands, I flew back to Kabul on the regular UN flight. Ismail Khan, the wily and indestructible old mujahideen, had lived to fight another day. It was strangely dull to be back in Kabul where the best we could hope for was a rocket or two. Meanwhile, back in Herat, the Global boys had no doubt cracked open another case of Corona and were busy hatching Plan B, to the tune of a Bollywood soundtrack and a volley of tennis balls.

  17

  Reality Bites

  I opened my small refrigerator in search of the kind of refreshment only a long summer’s day in Kabul can necessitate. The August heat was oppressive and sat heavily on a city struggling to breathe. My hair was full of dust and no matter how much moisturiser I used, my skin was starting to bear an alarming resemblance to sandpaper. As I bent down to check what my refrigerator had to offer, a loud bang penetrated my room. The windows rattled. I stood up. Frozen. Silence.

  There was a flurry of activity outside my window, the running of feet, the gathering of people. I shut the refrigerator, grabbed my two-way radio and ran out the door. Mohammed and the rest of the Karwan Sara staff were standing in a small huddle in the middle of the lawn. Their attention was focused on something in the distance. Following their gaze, I saw a spire of grey smoke beginning to trail upwards a few blocks away. In the distance, the whine of sirens became louder and my radio sputtered to life.

  I had never heard a bomb explode but even before Mohammed told me what it was, I knew instinctively what the sound had been. Contrary to Hollywood movies, bombs don’t make an ‘exploding’ noise; it was more like a large firecracker or the sound of a blown tyre. While a tiny voice in my head reminded me this is not what I should be doing, that I would be better off back on Hamish’s sofa and that I may be out of my depth, the adrenaline kicked in. My first duty was to do a head count of the office staff. As usual, my first action was to call Ismail.

  Ismail, who lived on the other side of the city, beyond Asamayi, or ‘TV Mountain’, so called for the amount of hardware – television antennas and enough military wiring to eavesdrop on the space shuttle – crowding its peak, had only just arrived home and the news had yet to reach him.

  ‘Ismail, there’s been a bomb. I don’t know exactly where but I think it’s a few blocks from my guesthouse,’ I said.

  ‘Oooooh.’ I could almost hear him shaking his head. One of Ismail’s many talents was his ability to anticipate my requests. ‘I will call Qasim and Farhad, and call you back after I talk to them. You know, the people do not do these things,’ he added with more than a hint of anger. At times of trouble, the default position for Afghans was to blame outsiders, usually ‘from Pakistan’. In many cases, they were right.

  ‘Okay. I’ll call Mirwais and Faheem.’

  Ismail, who had lived through the Soviets, the mujahideen and the Taliban, desperately wanted the new Afghanistan to succeed. Today would be a bad day for him.

  I dialled Mirwais’s number. Mirwais lived behind Macro-rayon, an expansive Soviet-built suburb of mid-rise concrete apartment blocks between the centre of town and Jalalabad Road, and in the opposite direction to the rising smoke. I found him safe at home, oblivious, with his wife and family.

  He sighed in resignation. ‘This is … this is not good.’ The call was short. Mirwais was a reserved man and our conversations, even when we’d been in Herat, never went beyond polite chat.

  The other person on my list was Faheem, who
se phone rang out several times before he finally answered. We had dropped him off not far from my guesthouse half an hour earlier. I could barely hear him over the background noise.

  ‘Where are you?’ I shouted.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘WHERE ARE YOU?’

  ‘Excuse me, Sally, but I can’t hear you,’ he answered politely. I could tell he was distracted though trying desperately to give me as much attention as his circumstances would allow. Even in times of uncertainty, Faheem, a good Pashtun son, never forgot his manners. ‘Can I call you back?’

  ‘Whenever you can,’ I said. At least I knew he was okay.

  By now the smoke that began as a spiral was billowing, rising against the orange sunset. My two-way radio was buzzing with speculation about the location of the bomb.

  ‘It’s the IOM (International Organization for Migration) office.’

  ‘No, it’s near the UNICA guesthouse.’

  ‘Is it UNICA guesthouse?’

  ‘Will there be another?’

  ‘Uniform November X-ray, what’s going on?’ pleaded a voice that, wisely, failed to identify itself.

  The clamour was silenced by Bing.

  ‘Attention, attention, attention. To all Uniform November call signs. This is Uniform November X-ray. Stand by for a security announcement.’

  As Bing announced that a truck bomb had detonated outside the office of Dyncorps, one of the plethora of American private security companies, and that there would be a radio check in thirty minutes, my phone rang. It was Faheem. The line was better and the background noise had abated.

  ‘Sorry, Sally, but I couldn’t hear you before.’

  ‘Are you okay? Where are you?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Are you okay? Where are you?’

  ‘Excuse me, Sally, but I can’t hear very well. I was crossing the street near my house when a truck came around the corner and blew up.’ His voice was matter-of-fact and a summer of carefully built barriers between me and three months of bomb threats disintegrated. I was stunned. Faheem lived with his parents and his brother a few streets beyond the Dyncorps office.