Slightly Bemused: All In One Basket

 The Khyber Pass in the Hindu Kush range in the area of Afghanistan and Pakistan

Slightly Bemused writes:

In just a few days Little Slightly will land once more here, almost 20 years since she first came to Ireland. She was 6 months old.

Just before she turned 7 months old, as I was upstairs in my parent’s house, her mother called out, and I came down to find the world had changed forever. This year, she will be with me for that anniversary.

These days I watch the news from Afghanistan and I wonder how my former colleagues are doing, are they and their families well? I wonder how the people are doing, and if there was ever any real future pointed out for them as promised two decades ago. The suddenness of the withdrawal and the rhetoric and words of the great world leaders lead me to fear that all that was achieved will be lost once more.

Given my profession and my role, I was recalled on 9/11 back to my team’s base in Nairobi. With all transatlantic flights suspended, Schiphol Airport was packed to the walls with stranded passengers sleeping wherever they could. Those who actually had onward connections, mostly east or south, were politely asked by evidently tired airport staff to please stand, allowing those who could not get home to use the seats or lie in the favoured spots for sleeping.

Little Slightly got to spend more time with her grandmother. This was a bad move on my part. We had a large, beautifully crafted dresser which my mother used to display items on the shelves and behind the glass doors above the main top.

Somewhere in there was my baptismal gift from my aunt, a silver plated side serving basket (above) for holding sweets and candied fruits. Underneath, though, was where she kept other things out of sight. The old green-bordered table cloth and 12 matching napkins which had been a wedding present to her and my Dad was in one of the drawers, and was still trotted out regularly for occasions. While plain, it was functional. Also in there was a set of ten place settings of earthenware dinner and side plates, soup bowls, cups and saucers.Little Slightly’s mother fell in love.

As movers were due in a while to ship my stuff to our home, at very little urging my mother agreed to add these to my shipment. Little’s Mom was ecstatic! During our divorce, she insisted on retaining possession of the crockery set, ultimately as an heirloom to hand to our daughter from her Grandma Slightly.

We never had the heart to tell her these were not wonderful bone china sets (she bought Royal Doulton with the money we were gifted for our wedding. I got a pair of runners). No, they were collected from the local Centra where you got stamps for so many pounds spent, and they came one item at a time. With a large family and a full set you can imagine how much we spent in that shop alone! But they were liked, and my mother was happy to have the space. I got the table cloth and napkins in the divorce.

I was in a funny predicament. I worked for a US based agency, and after a short while a flight ban was issued for all staff. By this time I was already in the air. The ban was lifted for our team pretty much as the plane came in to land. So for the hours in the air I was in breach of the security policy, but not for take-off or landing. I did get a reprimand from headquarters for that. You gotta love unthinking bureaucracy.

We were quickly tasked to head to join our Pakistan country team and prepare for what was known to be a pending crisis. Flights were booked for us, but illogically not for our security advisor. He was later added to our travel team, but such was the demand for seats by various aid agencies and UN personnel he could not get a seat on our final flight. He was with us to Dubai, and then left to see could he possibly get on our flight.

While waiting for our onward, my American colleague wolfed down loads of McDonald’s like someone who thought he would never see another burger again. Side note, the Pakistani food was fantastic, and I never felt the need for a plastic burger. It was here I also learned the joys of a boiled egg in a pot of curry.

When called to board, we met our colleague, who had successfully managed to get a seat on our flight. But here came a wrinkle – the original booked passengers, four of us out of our now five, were bumped up to business class. Our nutritionist colleague, who was married to the advisor, tried to get him bumped up to join us. Very politely she was rebuffed as he was a late arrival, but they would happily ask one of his seat row mates to swap with her so she could sit with her husband. Such was the depth of her love that as she tucked into the business class lunch she never once wondered how his meal was going.

I was in Islamabad at our country director’s home as we briefed him on our preparations when the word came in that the bombings had started in Afghanistan. We ended up with our travel on to Peshawar delayed, in the same hotel that the emergency response team from one of our own Irish agencies was staying. This was fun as we knew each other well, so the delay while we made more plans and preparations went by in good company, easing the pressure of the strictures placed on us while we evaluated the situation.

I remember one of the team, a man I had worked alongside in a previous challenging environment, came in one day quite shaken. While out for a walk to the local shops many people addressed him with a word as they passed. He was convinced they were saying “Osama” to try and freak him out. Actually, they were most likely saying “Asalaam”, but in the rush and the bustle he did not catch this. It did relax him once it was explained.

We were moved to Peshawar to prepare for the response. People were fleeing across the border. While the international news today concentrates on the situation in Kabul, the rush across the borders reflects the situation twenty years ago. Here I learned a few peculiarities of the region.

Outside the town is a famous market where you can apparently buy anything you want, an inspiration for at least one James Bond film scene. My job was setting up our accommodation/office, and for this I needed to change the locks on the house we rented, and get keys cut for the relevant staff.

So off I went with a driver to the locksmiths and hardware stores, mostly located along the fringes of this market. In one of the shops, as I awaited the keys to be cut, I wandered around looking at the wares. There was a beaded curtain between the front of the shop and a room at the back. As I looked at it, the shopkeeper indicated I should go in. I did, into another world.

The beaded curtain separated the world of keys and locks and nails and bolts and saws and hammers from walls covered in guns. Handguns, revolvers and semi-automatics, rifles which looked like copies the British Raj likely used up to AK 47 imitations. Made, as I later learned, by local blacksmiths, they were cheap. An imitation of the Russian Army Makarov handgun cost the equivalent of $1 – it was the bullets that were expensive.

Bemusedly backing out and returning with my keys to our base, I mentioned this to the team over dinner. My McD-guzzling friend looked up sharply, asking where I saw this. He had planned to go and buy a dozen and give them as Christmas stocking presents to his mates back home. I was able to hide behind the excuse that it was our driver brought me, I could not find it again.

From there, I made my one and so far only trip into Afghanistan, to Jalalabad for a single overnight to deliver goods, rations and basic furniture and equipment for our office just opened there.

As a result, I got to go over the famous Khyber Pass and under the fabled arch. A thin and winding road brings you eventually to a wonderful vista as the mountains open out to each side, and the plains of eastern Afghanistan lie spread out before you. Sadly on that whole trip cameras were not allowed, for safety reasons, but the image is etched in my memory, along with the images of the wonderfully painted buses and trucks with their music blaring.

When I arrived back eventually to Peshawar I decided to get a haircut and my beard trimmed. A nearby hotel that served alcohol to foreigners, and from whose roof the many faces of war correspondents were beamed to the world, had the most convenient barber. I had difficulty explaining that I did not want to shave my beard off, merely tidy it up. Apparently with the fall from power of the Taliban, many of those who had been based in the country were returning to smooth cheeks and chins, and that I wanted to keep my whiskers, albeit shorter and neater, was a cause of certain confusion.

Twenty years ago the world changed in a way unimaginable, whose impact still resounds today. Twenty years before that, the world again changed as people tore down a wall, and the face of politics and economics was set awry and the path to tremendous inequality of wealth was firmly established. Twenty years before that, it changed again as a man took a small step, and for many the universe expanded. I listen to the news and think that the world has changed once more, and perhaps it is set to every twenty years, truly a generational shift.

Slightly Bemused‘s column appears here every Wednesday

Pic: AFP/Slightly

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