Farishta (8 page)

A cold drizzle fell on my third and final day of consultations, leaving Kabul awash in a sea of ashen mud. My grim-faced driver steered our armored embassy vehicle through the soggy streets, swerving aggressively around the endless security barricades that had turned the city into a rain-soaked obstacle course.

The weather added to my already gray mood, which was growing darker after every meeting. Each person I spoke with further reinforced my impression that I would be spending the next year in Mazār-i-Sharīf as a powerless and unwelcome bystander, writing reports that no one would read.

My last meeting was with a distraught young electrical engineer, who had been contracted by USAID to work on the design of Afghanistan’s new electric power grid. He was as fiercely critical of the plans for electrification as the Marine colonel had been over efforts to disarm the illegal militias.

“Take a look at this, Miss Morgan,” he said, unrolling a 1980s-era Soviet map of Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan across his battered desk. Plastic overlays with red and yellow dotted lines indicated where the new power grid and transmission towers were to be installed.

“We are about to fund the construction of an obsolete twentieth-century grid that will force the Afghans to purchase electricity from central Asia for decades to come!” Stefan had taken great delight in describing this very plan to me during our dinner in Dubai, calling it another move on the “Great Game” chessboard, which our side would eventually regret.

The engineer removed his glasses and swept them in a wide arc across the map. “Afghanistan has the potential to generate much of its energy requirements with renewable resources. We should be helping these people build a twenty-first-century distributed power system with wind turbines and solar thermal plants. Don’t you agree?” he pleaded, as though I could have some effect on these decisions.

I knew little about energy and nothing about power generation, but his arguments certainly made sense to me. “So why aren’t we doing it? ” I asked.

“Vested interests, the fossil fuel industry, ossified, unimaginative development officials, greed, corruption,” he replied, his voice rising in an angry crescendo.

I was fascinated by this man’s passion for renewable energy, but his angst was making me increasingly uncomfortable. When he grabbed me by the arm and dragged me across the room to look at another wall map, I began to perspire under my sweater.

“It’s criminal that we’re doing this to a country where the sun shines more than three hundred days a year,” he cried, wringing his hands in frustration.

I nodded in agreement and gathered my things to leave his office before he began another tirade.

“We’re funding the construction of uninsulated cinder-block school buildings that are boiling hot in the summer and freezing in the winter. Sub-subcontractors are doing most of the construction work, so when the roofs fall in or their generators and ventilation systems break down, nobody is responsible.”

I was exhausted and really didn’t want to hear any more.

“I’m not sure what you’re supposed to be doing in Mazār, Miss Morgan, but whatever it is, I wish you the best of luck. I’m leaving this place in one month, and I hope to God I never come back.”

Plawner and his security detail picked me up just after sunset in front of the old embassy building. Unsure about appropriate evening attire for a night out in Kabul with the boys, I decided that warm, comfortable, and modest—a long-sleeved sweater, wool slacks, boots, a heavy jacket, and a plain white head scarf tucked into my purse just in case—would have to do.

The city after dark was more alive than I had imagined when gazing up at the night sky from behind the three-meter sand-filled Hesco barriers that surrounded the embassy compound. Taxis and horse-drawn vehicles moved through the city streets, although with much greater caution than during the day. Bearded, turbaned men, wrapped in blankets and walking hand-in-hand along the broken sidewalks, cast flickering Goya-like shadows across the streets as they passed in front of bare lightbulbs and kerosene lanterns hanging in tea shops and markets stalls.

Kabul at night was for men only. Women and children were all safely locked away.

Sealed inside the DCM’s fully armored SUV, I could neither hear the sounds nor smell the odors of the city as we rolled through the darkened streets in our three-vehicle convoy. Unlike the rest of the embassy staff, who traveled around town in solitary armored vehicles, neither the ambassador nor his deputy ever left the compound without a protective security detail.

We pulled up in front of an unmarked mud-brick wall with a single wooden door set in a metal frame.
What kind of restaurant,
I wondered,
would be hidden behind such an uninviting exterior?
One of the security guards jumped out of the first vehicle with his weapon drawn. He knocked on the door, was admitted by another armed guard, and emerged after a few minutes motioning for us to follow him down a dimly lit corridor, which opened onto a warm, candlelit dining room, its walls and floors covered with Afghan carpets—a surprising hidden jewel in this post-apocalyptic urban landscape. Wide couches, set around low tables, were crowded with foreigners and a few Afghans in western dress. The room smelled of lemons and coriander. A Miles Davis album played softly in the background. The four men who were joining us had arrived early. They stood as we approached.

Plawner made the introductions and suggested that I sit next to the archaeologist, Professor Jean-François Mongibeaux of the Sorbonne’s Department of Art History and Archaeology in Paris.

Mongibeaux was a tall, lean man with hooded brown eyes, thick white eyebrows, rosy cheeks, and a shock of white hair, pulled back in a short ponytail. He interrupted Plawner’s lengthy introduction with a broad smile and a request to everyone at the table, “Please call me Jeef. It is so much easier than my excessively long name, and it’s what everyone has called me for the past forty years.”

A waiter appeared and handed out menus, wineglasses, and a corkscrew. Most restaurants catering to foreigners in Kabul did not serve wine, but some did allow customers to bring as much as they could discreetly carry. When Jeef pulled three bottles of a 2004 Beaujolais Nouveau from his backpack, I offered a silent prayer of thanks that Plawner’s archaeologist friend was a Frenchman. The evening began with a round of toasts in honor of Jeef’s Afghan counterpart, Dr. Fazli, who had studied in Paris many years ago. Jeef explained to us that Fazli had been appointed to oversee preparation of the Afghan Museum’s traveling exhibit of the Bactrian gold.

Fazli spoke fluent French, but his English was limited. As we raised our glasses in his honor and began to pepper him with questions, he gratefully deferred to his friend Jeef, who offered to recount in English the story of this remarkable find.

“The Kabul Museum has recovered almost twenty-one thousand pieces of this priceless Afghan treasure. For the past two decades, it was the object of a hunt worthy of the legendary Indiana Jones,” Jeef began, with all eyes focused on his craggy, candlelit face.

“In 1978, Afghan and Russian archaeologists discovered a two-thousand-year-old Bactrian burial mound inside the ruins of a four-thousand-year-old temple in Jowzjan Province.”

Jeef turned to face me. “Angela, that’s only about two hours from Mazār-i-Sharīf, but it’s too dangerous to visit the site now with all the land mines. I’ll be working with an Afghan team much closer to you on a dig near Balkh just ten miles from your PRT. We started it several years ago and are slowly uncovering a Hellenistic-era settlement. I hope you’ll be able to come over to meet my team.”

He turned back to face the others. “Sorry for the diversion, gentlemen. Now on with my story.

“As you know, Balkh and the surrounding region was for thousands of years a major trading center for caravans on the ancient silk routes across Asia. The Bactrian find that Fazli is cataloguing is unique because it was untouched for millennia.” Jeef paused to refill our wineglasses.

“When the Russians invaded and the resistance fighting began, curators at the museum in Kabul became concerned about their ability to safeguard this and other priceless treasures in the museum’s collection. They carefully wrapped every single piece—golden diadems, jewel-encrusted daggers, pendants, combs, sculptures, coins, and necklaces in squares of tissue paper—and locked it all away in trunks that were hidden in the presidential palace vault.”

Fazli understood most of what had been said. He smiled proudly while Jeef continued to describe the vast treasure trove under his care.

“The vault was uncovered less than a year and a half ago when President Karzai authorized the locks to be broken, but the trunks were not unlocked until last spring.”

A waiter arrived and set out steaming plates of tandoori chicken, grilled lamb, Afghan flat bread, yogurt, and bowls of scented rice. Jeef apologized for having monopolized the conversation, while Plawner, his British counterpart, and the political counselor immediately shifted the conversation back to the endlessly frustrating business of reconstructing Afghanistan.

Jeef sensed that I wanted to hear more about the Bactrian gold and the excavation near Mazār-i-Sharīf. He tilted his head toward the three men who were already deep into a discussion about the poppy eradication program and added so that only I could hear, “Angela, I promise you that Fazli and I will invite you to the museum for a private showing the next time you are in Kabul. And, of course, you are most welcome to visit my dig near Balkh this spring.”

Fazli nodded in agreement, and the three of us turned our attention to the meal spread before us.

“Miss Morgan, when will you be going up to Mazār? ” asked the British DCM as he poured himself another glass of wine.

“I’m leaving tomorrow morning, weather permitting. I’ve reserved a seat on your C-130,” I replied.

“What good fortune. You’ll be there for the New Year’s Eve celebration,” he said. “That should cheer the lads up a bit.

“Were you able to meet Richard Carrington while you were in London?” he asked. “I know he was looking forward to meeting you.”

I shook my head. “I met your desk officer, Mr. Smythe, but Richard was on holiday.” I didn’t mention my encounter with Major Davies.

Although I was only passing through Kabul, I had received a relatively warm welcome from my peers at the embassy. At the PRT in Mazār, as an American and a woman, I would be doubly the outsider. If the other British soldiers there were anything like Davies, I wasn’t going to have an easy go of it.

As unhappy as I was about leaving Kabul for Mazār, I had mentally steeled myself for the morning flight, and was sitting with my two suitcases, my helmet, my sleeping bag, and my Kevlar vest in front of the admin trailer an hour before our convoy was scheduled to depart for the airport.

When my driver didn’t arrive at the appointed time, I called the motor pool and was informed by an apologetic Afghan dispatcher that no one was going to the airport since Jalalabad Road had been declared off-limits due to an IED threat. The following morning, my driver and I sat for two hours in a line of vehicles waiting to exit the compound, but the embassy’s security gate could not be opened due to a short circuit in the wiring. By the time the gate was repaired, I had missed that flight as well and had resigned myself to spending New Year’s Eve alone in Kabul. My anxiety had reduced itself to a quiet despair as I returned again to the hooch, which I’d had to myself since my arrival.

A tall, wiry redhead wearing tight-fitting black body armor and baggy cargo pants was unlocking my door. She had a black pistol strapped to her hip and an enormous black assault rifle slung over her shoulder.

“Hi, hon, are we sharing? ” she asked with a smile. She identified herself as Sally Dietrich, a DEA agent, who was in-country to train the Afghan police drug interdiction forces. “We’re not deploying until January the second, so I’m planning to ring in the New Year at the embassy bar tonight. Want to join me and my team? I’m the only girl in the group, so I’m sure the boys would love your company.”

Sally was an old-timer. This was her fifth short-term deployment to Afghanistan, and she knew her way around the compound. She tossed her weapons and duffel bag onto one of the cots and headed off to eat lunch. The last thing I wanted to do was spend New Year’s Eve in a room of complete strangers whom I would most likely never see again. I could do that just as well in D.C.

I declined her invitation and spent the evening alone in my hooch recalling the four New Year’s Eve celebrations Tom and I had shared as husband and wife. Even in Sana’a and in war-torn Beirut, he would put on his tux and I would slither into the long, black-sequined dress I’d picked up at a thrift shop in D.C. We usually went out with friends, but that last year in Beirut, embassy personnel were under curfew after a car bomb had exploded near our neighborhood. It was the best New Year’s Eve ever. We downed our last bottle of champagne, danced for hours to Sinatra, eventually disposed of the tux and the dress, and made mad passionate love until dawn.

I was disappointed that I couldn’t start the New Year in Mazār-i-Sharīf, but was also so totally exhausted that I didn’t hear Sally come in after her evening of revelry with the DEA boys.

January 3, 2005
✦ MAZĀR-I-SHARĪF AIRFIELD

I finally made it to Mazār on a chartered flight with one of the embassy’s two-engine, eight-seat contract planes piloted by a pair of young South Africans, who chatted amiably while looping around the jagged white peaks of the Hindu Kush. After a quick stop in Bamiyan and another in Herāt to drop off a Department of Agriculture veterinarian, we touched down in Mazār just after one P.M. following a stomach-churning, corkscrew landing.