The Afghan Queen: A True Story of an American Woman in Afghanistan (15 page)

As we traveled east, haggling in small town markets became more acceptable. Multi language information exchange was welcomed by local and caravan people. Mostly, I talked about local handcrafts with art and antique dealers.

Turkey was an especially rich trading center. This made sense as Turkey, and the Bosporus in particular, was the main link in Silk Road trade between the east and west. Handcrafts and tribal art from all parts of the world were displayed in abundance in many local bazaars, shops and stalls.

As I surveyed the markets between Milano and Kabul, my faculty for picking up and understanding local phrases and sign language became invaluable. I got tired of pointing, pantomiming, and grunting.

Most market people have some English. My ear for marketplace talk prompted me to feed back various phrases that worked. As I clumsily stumbled over their language, some of the locals tried some of their English. Actually, they were trying to speak TV American. Often market people had spent some time in America, England, or Germany.

If trade negotiations hit a snag, I would ask, “Auf Deutsch? Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” and the conversation would often proceed nicely. The more I tried the local language, the more they struggled with mine. The best known American market phrase was, “Got jeans to sell?” and, of course, I always had brand name jeans with me, even if they were made in Afghanistan.

TRIP REVERIE, ABOUT PAUL:

One night on the road, I was thinking about Paul again, and a curious feeling came over me. A deep and painful longing enveloped me that was much more than just being horny. As I reached across the sleeping bag, I could feel his coarse wiry hair and hear his deep breath, like a southern breeze in midsummer.

It was funny about my sensing Paul so close as to be next to my sleeping bag. Was I dreaming or not? He will often try to spook me in his aerograms by writing, “When I’m about to fall asleep, I send my doppelganger (ghostly counterpart of a living person) searching for you.”

At times Paul wrote about this with such intensity that I could almost believe him, and why not? After all he is a great put-on artist. He will start a story with a smirk on his face, and in a joyful voice, talk as if one of the great revelations of heaven is about to descend.

Once he has your attention, he shifts his mode of speaking. He becomes increasingly earnest and intense. Finally, he becomes deadly serious, to the point where you dare not doubt the importance of what he is about to say.

When he has you firmly in his grasp, and at times he can be mesmerizing, he will launch into an impassioned tirade, with evangelical zeal to convert you to some ludicrous belief.

Among Paul’s favorites are:

Most people will enjoy the put on and laugh right along with Paul. Even though we all know we’ve been had, there remains a part of us that is still bothered by reason that the joke succeeded so well. Was there a nagging truth behind the sham? That’s what he calls the Cosmic Joke. Then he will say, “If you want to see the Cosmic Joke, look in the mirror. We are the Cosmic Joke.”

I want to believe that Paul can transmit his dream double like radio waves or the natural electromagnetic realities he mentions that are not yet fully understood. While it sounds like some sort of magic or miracle, perhaps our miraculous magic is merely technology that we do not yet understand.

When I got back to the States, between trips, Paul and I would talk about this. He would insist that he would never do anything to harm me, and I believed him. He would say, “Our love is so intense that the electromagnetic energy that radiates may sometimes go astray and manifest as the events you experience halfway around the world.” He’s an incurable romantic, and I love it.

I sometimes think that Paul’s energy projections, intentional or not, caused all the little mishaps on our travels: endless flats, cracked windshields, muffler faults and other annoying non-injurious road events. Can we create traveling poltergeists?

Paul insists that he is my protector and is with me all the time. Sometimes he is the coyote trickster of Native American folklore, but only to provide challenges to what might become a tiresome trip. In fact, throughout the five years of travel, to and from Afghanistan, none of us suffered any serious injury.

He does not know how it happens. “I think of you all the time, especially when I go to sleep. At least on a conscious level, I wish you all the best. I have no conscious control in the matter of radio wave projection. Certainly, I wish you no harm and sure don’t want to cause you any problems. I want only happiness and success for you, and it seems you are getting these.”

Paul thinks of all the minor travel mishaps as “bleed-off negative energy that would ordinarily build up to a serious accident.”

Then his eyes twinkle, and he bursts out laughing and I could kill him for his pranks, real or imagined. If he is a brujo (sorcerer), he’s MY brujo. He’s there for me. I don’t think he really believes in it. He just pretends to believe, to tease me. I love-hate it and love-hate him for it.

BACK ON THE ROAD:

The mountain roads of Yugoslavia are so bad that a person dare not spend more than a two-hour shift at the wheel. It became necessary for the licensed drivers among us to take turns driving as we continued on.

Dalmatian Coast, the new Riviera
*

When I drove, my attention was divided between negotiating the grueling terrain and taking in the breathtaking beauty of the drive south along the treacherous Dalmatian coast. Dalmatia was a Roman province. On the left were towering black mountain forests. To the right was the blinding glare of the Adriatic sun.

Most days we drove all day and on through the night for as long as possible. When we started to have too many close calls with other vehicles, we would stop and sleep. The mountain roads had been doing as much damage to us as to the vehicles. After a few days of this torture, we decided to make camp at Split, a beautiful Croatian beach resort on the Adriatic.

Our first night at the campgrounds, we arrived very late, and it was after three in the morning before we finally got to sleep. It was a cold, foggy night and we all crowded in the front of the bus, devouring the food so we could ‘crash’ as soon as possible into our sleeping bags.

The town of Split, on the coast of Croatia was the last place on our trip east where a decent shower was available. This was really ironic since all the European campsites had had excellent showers, but it had been so cold and damp in the west that we had not relished this luxury at the time. As we drove into Eastern Europe and crossed the Bosporus into Turkey, the weather became warmer and the camp showers fewer.

The next morning, our first at this excellent campsite, some young Croats came to talk with us. They remembered our caravan from a trip the year before. That was not as farfetched as it sounds since our caravan was quite distinctive. The Unimark camper van, sort of a two-decker modified VW microbus, was painted with tiger stripes, and the decrepit Mercedes bus was also unusual.

Our visitors were cheerful and pleasant companions. For a change, English was the common language. Their enthusiasm was contagious. This, they explained, was their favorite pastime, practicing their English and angering the campground officials. The officials took a dim view of such unofficial contacts with foreigners, especially since we looked like hippie Gypsies.

Later in the day, we walked to a local grocery store for our daily provisions. The little shop was loads of fun. While the store was small compared to those in the West, it had an amazing variety of items, including an international selection of wines, beer, and liquor. The only problem was that no bags were provided, except for our own.

On the way back to the camp grounds, I slipped down a sandy dune and broke some of my eggs. Fortunately, the broken eggs were in a small plastic sack with some crumpled loaves of bread. When we got back to camp, I squashed the eggs and bread together, removing most of the shell beforehand.

The camp-fire was burning nicely when we got back to camp. I jerked out the communal fry pans, poured plenty of olive oil in the hot pans, shaped the egg and bread mess into burgers, and pan-fried some lovely “bregg” burgers, mixing in some local finely cut sausage.

The campers gobbled these up so fast that they didn’t realize what they were eating until after I told them. As a result of this and many little nurturing tricks, people started referring to me as the Earth Mother.

A few days later, after crossing into Greece, we reached a campground outside of Thessalonica. The nicest part of those days was in the evening at the campgrounds, especially sitting around the campfire after supper.

One soon discovers how much alike the middle class is in all countries. This became especially clear during the lengthy fireside bull sessions. We all seemed to be thinking along similar lines. Naturally enough, our main interests were: love, experiencing life, people with ‘good heads,’ drugs, the freaky ways of caravan life, and, of course, rock music and our various business ventures.

The first evening in Thessalonica, we talked about organic food, the idea of eating whole food, solar energy, and what some perceived as the coming Aquarian Age of Peace.

We tend to place an incredible faith in the long shot salvation aspect of technology. Our faith in the future seems based on quick-and-dirty cures, magic-bullets, or some form of amazing grace. I can’t help but feel that this attitude reflects a lazy intellect.

With the Swiss campers, fireside chats also included ethnic jokes, mostly about the Turks. I guess this is the result of the thousands of guest workers or, immigrating groups, such as the Turks, who wound up doing the drudgery and dirty work that the Swiss seemingly ignored.

One popular Turkish joke making the rounds was about two poor Turkish farm workers who saved some money and went to town to buy a car. The used car salesman told them that they didn’t have enough money for a car, but that he had a camel he could let them have.

In fact, he would do them a big favor since the camel was special. The camel had two ass-holes, but the salesman would only charge them for one camel. The two farmers buy the camel. As they ride down the road on the camel, some kids shout, “Look at those two ass-holes on the camel.” One farmer turns to the other and says, “By golly, that salesman was telling the truth.”

On one of my trips to Kabul I brought a copy of the original
Arabian Nights
in English. Somewhere in the book, there is a story, nested within two or three other stories, about two brothers on a dying donkey, etc. So this story is at least one-thousand years old.

In northern Italy, the jokes are about Sicilians. In Yugoslavia, the jokes are about Albanians. The caravan people especially loved jokes about Californians. “Why does it take five Californians to change one light bulb? The answer is, one to change the bulb and four to share the experience.”

That was the first time I heard Californians treated like a separate ethnic group. Anyone who has spent time in California will recognize the germ of truth in that particular joke. It was hard to explain to Europeans the peculiar character of the American West, especially California.

And what is the special character of Californians that make them the object of our jokes? I suggest that it is the pretense of New Age openness. I’ve spoken with young Europeans who have asked me if California is a separate nation. My stock response is, “Yes, but only on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The rest of the week they’re Americans.”

At one campfire supper, some California jokes led to a discussion of Ernest Callenbach’s book,
Ecotopia
. The book is considered an underground classic, a future documentary that takes place after the secession of the Western states from the USA.

The narrative is done by the first U.S. reporter admitted into a place called Ecotopia following the great Helicopter War. In an attempt to suppress the world’s first ecological utopia, the U.S. stages a surprise invasion with 8,000 helicopters.

The Ecotopians crush the U.S. invasion by electronically downing all the helicopters and planting briefcase-sized nuclear mines throughout the urban Eastern seaboard. These mines are electronically controlled on the West Coast.

My caravan companions considered this a ridiculous scenario, but I tried to explain that the American West, especially the Pacific Coast, is independent minded to an extreme. This was the only part of my trip that was a total failure; trying to explain California.

We spent more time at the lovely beach camp at Thessalonica than we had planned. The bus had a flat the night before, and some rubber cushioning around the axle came off. While we repaired the mishap at a nearby garage, the other campers did the dishes and cleaned up the caravan. We were trying to raise the consciousness level of the caravan, especially of the men.