Kabul Diary - Life In The War Zone

Kanda-batata
Friday. It’s a holiday in Kabul. The day of prayer and rest. I set out for Panjshir in Mohammad’s Corolla. The air is crisp and cool and the sky is…well, sky blue. The city is empty but traffic gathers as we near the outskirts of Kabul. People are out with their families, headed towards the mountains that appear in the distance, the taller ones dusted snow.  

We pass a big, chaotic vegetable market. The vegetables are all king size. Cauliflower the size of flower bouquets. Potatoes and onions weighing about half a kilo apiece. 120 Afghanis for a kilo of potatoes or onions. Afghanis exchange at par with the Indian rupee. I wonder how people make ends meet. The average salary of an Afghan government official is about 4000-5000 Afghanis. In fact, that seems to be a benchmark. A soldier I met earns 4000 Afghanis. The housekeeping staff in the hotel I stay also make the same; though they earn in US dollars ($140 a month). How do the people survive, I wonder. A normal workday in Kabul starts at 8 in the morning and ends at 3 in the afternoon. Many officials also have some side business. That is how they make ends meet.  

There are many hills in Kabul. Most of the middle class and lower class people in Kabul live in houses built into the sides of hills. To go from one place to another, you have to drive around them.

Life in time of war  
The road to Panjshir is quite good. We pass American army convoys coming perhaps from their Bagram base which is on the way. We also pass many flower bedecked cars. Wedding parties. Friday is the preferred day for weddings because it is a holiday and everybody can attend, Mohammad tells me. Life goes on. War is part of it.
 
A lot of life here is also conducted from containers. Small grocery shops are set up in containers. Police posts along the highway operate out of metal boxes. The Afghan National Police, which wears a bluish gray uniform, has been equipped by various countries. America gifted the green Ford Ranger pickups, the ubiquitous vehicle of the force. It also gave them 9mm Smith and Wesson handguns. They also carry Kalashnikovs, sometimes even machine guns.  

Sometimes we are waved down. The password is 'Indian'. The smile is instant, spontaneous and welcoming. It is amazing how much goodwill India has here. The southern and most troubled part of the country, however, is very different. It is dangerous to announce your nationality there, a member of parliament from the Kandahar province had told me. 'Indian can get into serious trouble there,' he says.