the path is the destination

I have been in Kabul for over a week but I need to rewind and catch up on the days before I left the states.  My feet have not landed yet and I am still wondering what happened.  Welcome to Afghanistan!

My friend Suzie Q gave me a Saint Christopher medal.  Miss Suz presented it to me with these words, “Louis - it makes me no never mind if you don’t wear this.  It’s not exactly 24kt Cuban gold (like YOU are).  Bit it’ll still do the trick!  You could even put it on your key chain or hang from the rear view mirror.  Amulets from friends are a good thing! And St. Chris’ is a good guy.” (she knows I am a recovering Catholic)

The extended Mattern family took the amulet and held it in their hands.  Some pressed it to their forehead like Mary did, some pressed it to their breasts like Karen, April, Claudia and Trice (the thought makes me reel, no breast pressing around here)   Others smiled, some murmured things.  As we posed for the necessary group pictures, Miss Suz slid the chain over my head...there is no clasp on this chain, it just wiggled past my well endowed proboscis.  So now it resides along with my fathers gold chain...two objects imbued with unfathomable spirits.  The love I feel upon this “leaving” is both heartrending and humbling. Thank you Suzie!

Many friends scheduled several dinners, teas, the hysterical bowling night, a day of skiing, an awesome “Church of the Bloody Mary” Sunday at John's before I left town.  I already miss all of you more than I can say...

The first leg of the trip was uneventful although waving goodbye to Trice Natalie and Miguel at DIA was touching and tough.  What is there to say about a 16 hour flight?  Anybody?  I prepped myself with 3 vodkas at 4 pm after I landed in LA, took some fashionable sleeping aids once I was settled on the Emirates flight to Dubai, and totally passed out until 2 am.  Woke up in a severe smear so I switched to coffee and coke for the rest of the flight and watched “Hurt Locker”, tough but no Avatar, “Up In the Air”, sad, and some other flik...the time passed and I walked the plane, talked to the flight attendants about inane things and went to the john too many times.  It was something to do I guess.

Fast forward...

I turn around and find myself standing on the balcony of some fancy hotel in Dubai.  I lay down on the square acre bed and try to act cool like this is just another day in the life...I am vainly trying to read “Caravans” the Michener book about Afghanistan Mary gave me, when the phone rings.  Wait a second...  Who would be calling me?  In Dubai?  “Hello?” I say timidly.  “Hey Lou, this is Walt, I am here from Ti to grab you and bag you into Kabul.  Meet me for breakfast at 7:30.”  His slithering Texas drawl clashed mightily with my surroundings.  I stammered something about looking forward to meeting him and walked out on my balcony to take in the sights and a few liters of fresh air.  Off in the distance I spy the tallest building in the world.  A Disneyland needle poking up into the smog filled sky.  So much for the fresh air thing.  I wonder where the "Palm Islands" are and if I will see them when I take off.

The Dubai airport is radiant in its shininess.  Half the people are in their whiter than white flowing outfits complete with turbans, the other half are speaking languages my ears have never been exposed to.  There are Tajiks and Kazastanians and some kind of mumbley-mouthed Chinese. 

The biggest issue was to get to the duty free store and score some sweet potato vodka.  Walt (my new friend from Ti) said good alcohol is rudely expensive in Kabul because it is basically illegal in Afghanistan.  Holy pumpkins Batman, and Dubai has no potato vodka!  The Duty Free store in Dubai International has no potato vodka?  What is up with that?  In a place where you can go skiing inside and check into a 7-star hotel (I believe that includes the frequent foot massages), go to a casino 24/7 and buy your own frickin island...I am stunned and perplexed at this revelation.

So here is my future.  Women in bags, men in skirts and no potato vodka.  I am mixed up with a Texan offering me tick tacks that have ping-ponged off the gleaming marble floor and sitting in the waiting room for "Expat Airways to Kabul", you want it, we got it.  Yeah baby, it just doesn't get any better than this.

The sitting room for the flight to Kabul is occupied by people with that faraway look.  That certain look you might see in the courthouse.  The look that says I am not sure where I have come from and I really don’t know where I am going, kind of look.  We all stare off into space with unfocused eyeballs trying to assess the other people waiting here.  Trying to fathom why all these other people are flying into Kabul.  I think I picked out a reporter and her photographer. 

Why am I flying into Kabul?  Some faces talk casually, as if the reality of flying into a known war zone doesn’t bother them.  But I think we all know better.  The two groups of military Blackwater guys stand with their arms crossed or hands in their pockets looking stern and preoccupied while discussing bullets and things.  One kaki encrusted “Arnold wanna be” with huge pecks, I mean wrong huge, had the look of unconcerned un-concern-ment down.  The two mercenary groups do not look at each other or acknowledge the others presence.  No "what up" or "dude", nothing.  We all get on the flying tube and watch the endless brown mountains rise up under us as we descend into Kabul.  We are the pirates chasing after the gold indicated on treasure maps we have yet to find.  Greg Mortensens we are probably not (FYI he wrote Three Cups of Tea a true story, a wonderful read). 

I finally look up the word “adventure” in the online dictionary and found that it actually includes “danger” right there with "excitement" in the definition.  To all of you who so correctly wished me well on my “adventure”...I bow in your general direction, cuz this is totally a fucking adventure.  By definition.

After landing gracefully in Kabul we were stopped on the tarmac, quite a ways from the terminal and immediately surrounded by many men with automatic weapons.  The ground crew slammed the external ladder up against the plane and we walked down and were directed immediately into a bus.  There were at least a dozen soldiers with automatic weapons staring at us with intense Afghani eyes.  One armed soldier sat in front of the bus with the driver.  The bus drove over to the terminal between huge concrete blocks and dropped us off by the “customs” area to have our passports/visa’s checked. 

Inside the “terminal” the scene became totally surreal.  The lighting was dim and bleak, the interior floor was a deep green tile which supported a series of dark wood and glass booths where the Afghan customs officials looked over your papers.  There were no “customary” questions about why we were in the country.  I guess it would be kind of a moot point when you think about it.  A cursory glance by the customs official to make sure I had a valid visa and I was now officially in Afghanistan.  But not so fast...The mayhem started in the baggage claim area.  A billion Afghan porters scrambling to get your bags for you or shilling you in Pashtu or Dari to take their taxi.  Walt directed me with uplifted eyebrows and slight head nods.  Too cool for school.

The weirdest thing was the “desk”.  I had been informed of the “desk” via email.  “Don’t miss checking in at the "desk" or you will have a hell of time leaving the country.”  The desk is the place that you must fill out a form with your Afghan address, present two photo ID’s to a non-descript man (no official looking uniform, no epaulets, no stinking badge, nothing) standing behind what looks like a small basement bar you would find in any suburban tri-level.  I was told to find this counter and make sure I submitted the paperwork, but I walked right past it due to the confusion of the porters demanding my baggage claim checks.  Walt gave me a slight nod and I spun back around and saw the "desk” occupied by a few people that had just stepped off my plane including “Arnold”.  I felt safer somehow.  The chaos would have been comical if not for the overriding scent of nervous sweat and feeling of foreboding that hung in the air like suffocating cloud.  Breathe Lou breathe.  No problem, you don’t do this right you may be detained and imprisoned...breathe Lou breathe...

I managed to get the form filled out and present it with my two photos to the ‘dude’ who promptly stapled one of my photos on the form I had just completed and immediately stapled my other photo to another form which he handed back to me and indicated by some sign language that I needed to fill this card out as well.  As I filled the blanks it became obvious that the information I was scribing down on this card was exactly the same as the form I had just filled out.  WTF, government redundancy is everywhere.  Curiouser and curiouser.  I completed this task in the middle of a growing srum of people pressing forward to achieve the same goal.  My co-worker Walt looked keenly perturbed at the whole mosh pit of seething bodies slinging backpacks around like battering rams.  The ‘dude’ stamped my card and handed it back to me and Walt looked at me sternly and told me not to lose it or I may not be able to leave the country...I thought about the strange pressure I was feeling on my chest and quickly decided that it was not a heart attack in the making...although I had plenty of reason to have one at that moment.  In hindsight, if I had indeed crumpled to the ground gripping my chest, I am convinced that I would have been stepped over and pushed aside as yet another cumbersome obstacle to be vaulted as quickly as possible.  Piece of cake.

The air became more fetid as my newly designated porters bickered about who was going to push the cart laden with my suitcases.  I don’t really know how or when the second porter became part of my entourage but now I had two dudes and an airport cart bashing its way through the throng of people who were funneled into a cordoned off aisle that led directly to their bag screener x-ray machine.  Ah, something familiar.  The flurry of pulling metal objects out from every pocket along with your belts proved to be too much for one lady who howled in protest at the customs agents that pulled her shoulder bag away from her to run it through the machine.  Something about her papers she shrieked belatedly…I had my passport and the all important “paper” in my pocket where it resides everyday.  Don't leave to go to the bathroom without it.

After retrieving my bags, the dueling porters continued to bicker at each other in some kind of Farsi dialect.  At this point I figured we had escaped the labyrinth of doom and disorientation since we were headed outside.  I was wrong.  After a hard left we had to walk down the side of the building toward a guard house even though the parking lot was directly ahead.  Observing us with dark piercing eyes was another set of Afghan army dudes (auto rifles slung over their shoulders) who looked like they were getting ready to pounce on someone in this luggage parade.

Their keen eyes studied our bags as intently as they studied our faces.  No flinching allowed and no room to flash a brilliant smile and greeting...forget about whipping out the camera and asking for cheesecake smiles.  Somehow we had not yet officially arrived in Kabul.  Once we cleared the guard house after driving the luggage right through it, I thought we were out...except not.  The next scene was right out of apocolyptica ‘the series’.  Lined up on either side of the “you must walk here” sidewalk, were chattering money changers with plexiglass boxes filled with bank notes and chewing gum sellers who sent their young boys out to hawk beaded wristbands and what not.  Squatting nearby were families waiting in the dirt for something to happen or something to fall...they too stared at us as if we were aliens.

The final push came when we had to maneuver through 3 parking lots that were crammed with honking taxis and gesticulating men trying to push me into their man’s ride.  My partner Walt reminded me that we had a car and a driver waiting for us.  He was nowhere in sight.

Welcome to Afghanistan