The Afghan Queen: A True Story of an American Woman in Afghanistan (5 page)

All the purchased items were stored in trunks at Mike’s shop, and I paid for all my purchases with American dollars. This would make me a welcome guest wherever I went.

The next day, we started the trip through the countryside in Mike’s all-terrain Lynx vehicle. Mike explained, “This is a resilient vehicle, supplied by the Russian Army for the terrible roads we will travel. The Lynx is built for terrain without roads.

The underside is one-half-inch carbon steel coated with latex and tar. The axles are laminated double sized spring steel, and the tires are wide and steel-belted, filled with soft latex, rather than air. The motor is air cooled rather than water cooled. It’s a reliable vehicle for the terrain through which we will be traveling.

For that first trip, we would spend three months visiting Mike’s various clans. Each clan treated me as an honored guest, insisting that I remain with them for days at a time before accompanying me to the next clan.

Sometimes I helped Mike sight new roads, suggesting scenic road stops with privies. Most Afghan privies were two flat stones over a pit. For privacy, woven reed enclosures might be included.

At each clan stop, I acquired traditional jewelry, kilems, antique bronzes and a great assortment of artifacts. I noted the price and origin of each piece, numbering and dating each in a note book. Each piece was tagged with a corresponding sticker.

The only dilemma I encountered was my role as a guest and trader. My hosts called me sister and daughter, but insisted that I have my meals with the men. I wanted to keep with their tradition, and as a mother and woman, eat with the women and children.

The men told me that business traders and guests traditionally had their meals with the men. Only women kinfolk had meals with women and children. I tried to reason that, since they called me sister and daughter, I should have my meals with the women and children, but they just laughed.

I finally suggested the following: “Since I am a business trader, please permit me to have the business meal with the business men, but as a mother and sister other meals with the women and children.” To this compromise they all agreed, while continuing to laugh uproariously.

The head of the clan told me I had the wisdom of a Sufi, and I told him that some of my kin were Sufi Dervishes, forced out of Turkey by the Ataturk government in 1910. A great “Ahhhh!” arose from all in attendance. They now understood what they had perceived as my sagacity.

Sufi is a Muslim sect that is often rejected by other Muslims since the Sufis reject blind orthodoxy. Sufis are an easy-going sect. They are soft like wool, and, as a matter of fact suuf is the Arabic word for wool. Sufis are poets, philosophers, and mystics and work easily and well with all other people and religions.

Some describe Sufis as the Unitarians of Islam. Famous Sufis include the poet Rumi, as well as the philosophers Averroes, Avicenna and Moses Maimonides. Yes, there continue to be Jewish Sufis.

AUTHOR COMMENTARY:

Thus, was an interesting trio of interests combined and merged. While in Afghanistan, Lela was hunting for tribal art, Kit was ostensibly seeking public health clinics, and Mike, the civil engineer, was working on creating a new system of roads.

In reality, as would come to light at a later time, Kit and Mike had a higher priority than clinics and roads. Both were KGB agents, and their primary job was to hunt for new energy sources. As far as Lela was concerned, tribal art was and would continue to be the objective. The KGB was the Soviet equivalent of the American CIA.

Mike, Kit, and Lela became close friends as well as business and political associates. The three traveled together much of the time. Each kept notes wherever they went. At most towns on their itinerary, the first stop would be with Mike’s relations, many of whom were tribal leaders.

Lela and Mike would continue to travel the same 100-mile radius around Kabul as did Kit. Their paths crossed a number of times. When they met, they often had meals together. Mike would explain that new health clinics worked best on new roads. He, Lela, and Kit were all fellow travelers on the way to a new progressive world, as Kit repeatedly suggested.

An established routine would be created with the visits to Mike’s tribal relations. First, introductions would be made to all family members. Then, the inevitable tea talk would commence and continue for a couple of hours before any business was transacted. Most towns had permanent bazaars and artisans specializing in various market crafts.

The women and children were quite affectionate with Lela and Kit. After a short time with Mike’s relatives, the two women were easily adopted as
Auntie Lela and Auntie Kit
. Continual hugs and kisses among all the women and children were almost a ritual. Adult men were excluded from this circle of affection, at least in public.

Lela and Kit spent much of the early mornings and evenings with the women and children of the household. Most of Mike’s relations knew some English or were learning. The public schools now taught English and Russian. The children especially were keen to practice their school lessons with Lela and Kit.

The kids sang some riddle songs in Pashtu, gesturing and dancing like in the Bollywood films they viewed on TV. The aunties, recognizing some of the tunes, sang them in English, to the great amusement of the women and children.

The aunties were pulled into an Afghan version of “Ring-Around-the-Rosie”. When the ‘all fall down’ was sung, the entire ring collapsed into giggles and hugging. The aunties next did an English version of “Peas Porridge Hot” with the palm slapping included, and the women and children went wild with their rhythmic palm slapping version.

These lessons were accompanied with much laughter and affection. The women and children loved to do cat’s cradle, a game in which a string looped in a pattern like a cradle on the fingers of one person’s hands is transferred to the hands of another so as to form a different figure, in amazingly complex string patterns.

They tried teaching these string games to Lela and Kit. Kit picked it up easily, but Lela’s hilarious efforts had everyone in tears of laughter. The kids laughed until they cried. They rolled on top of each other hugging the aunties and each other.

The new aunties also played games with the women and children, and a gentle form of football (soccer) was popular. But rope-jumping was even more popular. Women and children jumped in complex patterns while singing riddle-songs.

They showed the aunties how they used thin colored silk and split bamboo to fashion elaborate kites. Making and flying kites is more a passion than sport throughout Afghanistan. Especially, they loved to make cylinder kites. Lela was fascinated with their homespun kite craft.

After laying out the bamboo frames, knotted together with black nylon thread, they cut the silk to fit the frame. They pressed plastic eye holes to lock on both sides of the silk, like shirt snaps. The point of a scissor provided a neat opening through the eye holes. Lela wrote that no glue or fiber string was ever used.

In kite competitions, fighting kites with razor blades tied to the upper portion of the string battle each other, attempting to cut an opponent’s kite string. The youngest children fly kites competitively, gaining local accolades and many captive kites.

Lela wrote about nimble little fingers rapidly knotting rubber bands through the silk eye holes and around the bamboo frames. The finished kites were attached to spools of black nylon that revolved on beautifully hand-carved kite reels. Many of these kites decorated household walls and ceilings.

Beautiful kites were sold in the bazaars. Some merchants only sold kites made by kite artists with reputations for their kite artistry. These artistic kites were stamped with the artist’s symbolic prayers, intending to send a message on the wind straight to heaven.

Artistic kite calligraphy included variations of
Great is the Father,
(Allah Akbar). Kit could read some Arabic and told Lela that a few were engraved on the bamboo with
Al-Lat Akbar,
meaning
Great is the Mother
. There appeared to be a revival of the Great Mother—probably from India.

Kit explained to Lela that in the original version of the
Arabian Nights
, some of the tales are set at the time when Islam was replacing
Great Mother Lat—blessed be Her name
with
the Great Father Allah—blessed be His name.
She went on to explain that The Afghans consisted of many migrating tribes among the majority of settled people.

Some tribes and clans were still animist or believers in the Great Mother, Lat, or Mother Nature, but these were a minority in a nation with a Muslim majority. Prior to Islam, Afghanistan had been a global center of Buddhism, but that was at least two thousand years-ago.

Other visits would combine similar opportunities for play and learning, along with the main objective for Lela of finding and buying tribal art and artifacts to import to the U.S. and her European customers.

The traveling threesome: Kit, Mike, and Lela typically spent at least three days at the various crafters, bazaars, and homes that had a relationship with each of Mike’s kin groups. Most of the homes were provided with modern furnishings from Delhi or Afghan handmade furniture. All the rugs, kilems, decorations, jewelry, clothing, leather and metal ware were Afghan, although much of the cloth was from Russia, India, and China.

Usually the three visited the crafters and bazaars together, but sometimes a family member took Lela to various craft people, usually relatives, for jewelry, tribal crafts and art objects. Each time they met a new business prospect, the tea ritual was repeated.

When they returned for the mandatory evening family meal, the host would greet them, showing them around the gardens, plantings, livestock, and buildings. Mike and Kit were most interested in the tar used to fill chinks in walls and roofing, and they took note of fresh applications of tar.

In her aerograms to Paul, Lela mentioned that at many of these meals the conversation turned to complements about the food, family, and, especially the host home. Kit admired the decor—the warmth and comfort of the home; making a point of admiring the use of tar to seal openings against the wet and cold.

Mike translated these comments, asking if the tar was obtained nearby. On more than one occasion, the host proudly mentioned that they had their own tar and petroleum source or that there was an open pit in the area available to all, just like the water.

Some used the crude petroleum in household lamps. Mike mentioned that the crude was widely used as a dressing for wounds. On livestock, the sticky tar works best, as animals will not tear it off as they do with bandages; the putrid taste and smell discourages them.

Many merchants with access to crude sold it at bazaars. Lela noted that she often noticed large quantities of plastic jugs filled with the foul stuff sold at most bazaars. The crude merchants needed no advertising as the stink was advertising enough. Buyers had only to follow their nose to the crude seller. There were a number of gasoline filling stations throughout Kabul with at least one in most towns. But these only serviced gasoline and kerosene engines.

Kit said the crude had been used for thousands of years for medication, lighting, heating, and even as an effective sun screen. She was quite knowledgeable and did not hesitate to share her knowledge with Lela and Mike.
^vii

For global trade, tar sealed the planks of ships for Sumerians, Egyptians, Greeks, Vikings, and even the British navy. That’s why British sailors were called
tars
.

Kit explained that this knowledge was all acquired as part of her university education. She went on to say that for external injuries and skin ailments, crude serves as a useful anti-infective. Until 1970, pharmacies sold it as carbolated petroleum jelly. The carbolic acid or phenol naturally occurs in crude and coal tar. The toxicity of phenol forced it out of petrolatum products.

Later Kit mentioned that Australian interests were keen to help Afghanistan develop its petroleum industry. She and Mike were motivated by these economic interests as well as their professional objectives, that is, coordinating road building with health clinics.