Snap and Scribble

Gavin emailed Green’s Hotel the evening before we left for Peshawar, to try and book a couple of rooms, but we hadn’t had any response. When we arrived there, they didn’t know anything about it and only had one double room, which we decided to take. There were two beds, fortunately.

We paid the driver when we arrived there and Hanif waited while we sorted out the room. Then we grabbed a local taxi to take me and Gavin to the wedding and Hanif to a relative’s place. On the way, though, Gavin got a text message from Wahid saying the wedding was finished and where were we?

We dropped Hanif off at his relative’s place and went back to the hotel to meet up with Wahid. From there, we got another taxi and Wahid took us to Farooq’s house. It had been Farooq’s wedding we’d come for – and missed.

We spent an hour or so there. Sitting outside on the verandah, in the warm Peshawar evening, we were fed fruit, cake, sweets and tea. Then Farooq drove us to Wahid’s house, via John’s place.

John’s an oldish English man who’s been around this region since coming here as a hippy in the 60s or 70s. He speaks several of the regional languages and converted to Islam many years ago. He’s worked in radio for a long time, starting off with the BBC World Service, and is also apparently the imam of the Cambridge university mosque. He’s a pleasant and very interesting person, who i’d met a couple of times before when he was staying in the work guest house, where i used to live.

At Wahid’s place, we met four of his five brothers, but none of his four sisters or his mother – who were all in the house but were in a different part of it, which is normal here. I find the segregation between men and women, in this part of the world, weird and disturbing – and i’m glad i’m not Afghan. I’m also glad that i can hang around with foreign women here, as i’m not particularly fond of the company of men – specially not when it’s only men.

We sat with the men and were fed with food cooked by the women, but brought in by the men. There was a lot of food, but i’d pigged out on the cake and sweets at Farooq’s place and didn’t eat all that much of it.

Not long after eating, me and Gavin went back to the hotel – it had been a long and tiring day.

The next morning we woke up about 7 o’clock and went down for the breakfast that was included in the cost of the room. The restaurant wasn’t open by 7.15 and we sat down outside and waited – as did another of the guests. Fortunately, someone else came along and, not being as patient as us, banged on the door. The restaurant was opened almost immediately, and we went in for breakfast.

There was bread (local style), a bean dish, porridge and toast. I had bread and beans, and some green tea.

Wahid and Hanif turned up at about eight o’clock and we all piled into the Torkham taxi that Wahid had hired before on the way.

The trip back to Torkham was uneventful – despite the lack of an armed guard. At one point, Wahid told me to put on my pakool – a local style of cap – so the guards at one of the checkpoints wouldn’t notice there were foreigners in the car and make us have a guard.

There was a minor bit of drama at Torkham – about me and Gavin not going to customs, or something. It didn’t come to anything though, and we went through passport control in the same way as before.

Walking back across the border, i asked Wahid if i’d get arrested if i took a photo. He said i wouldn’t – although he obviously didn’t really know – and i thought it was worth a try. I thought it probably wouldn’t be allowed, but i’d let them tell me not to, rather than ask first. As it happened, i managed to get one picture before i was told i couldn’t.

On the Afghan side of the border, i decided to have another go. I think either Wahid of Gavin asked a couple of soldiers if it was ok, while i was taking photos. They said it was – probably not entirely surprisingly, as Afghans seem to be much more casual about such things.

Not long after we’d left Torkham, i got a text message from our boss saying our satellite program distribution service was down. Groan… That was the third time we’d had a problem with it in two weeks. And the boss wasn’t very happy as both me and Gavin were out of town and there was nobody there to fix it. Oh well, there was nothing we could do…

We had to go to Mehtarlam on the way back to Kabul, to check out the buildings for the two new radio stations we’re building there, so we turned off the main road about half an hour past Jalalabad and made our way up to the station sites. You can read in an earlier blog post about my last couple of trips to Mehtarlam in relation to these stations.

We met up with the head of the construction company and went over both of the buildings to check on what needed doing and to finalise arrangements for the rest of the work that had to be done.

I was pleased by the way the buildings had turned out – i’d designed them myself and it was good to see the final result was actually really quite good. There were a few things that we’d do differently next time, but the basics were pretty sound, i thought. The dimensions were certainly workable – which was a bit of a relief, as it’s not easy to visualise with any confidence exactly how big a room’s going to be when you’re drawing it on paper. Specially when you’ve never designed a building like that before.

I really needed to do a couple of other things while i was there, but because of the satellite situation – which was a bit of an emergency – we had to get back to Kabul as soon as possible.

Not long before we got back into Kabul, i got a text message telling me the satellite service had just started working again…

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