Iraq Burning

2007-07-10T00:50:00.000+04:30

Please go to www.noodlesandbakedbeans.com for all new blog posts. I have set up a joint blog their for AfghanWire and other personal blog posts. This blog is no longer active.

2006-09-09T21:57:00.000+04:30

Some Lists:

Favourite Music:

Prodigy, The Shins, Franz Ferdinand, Frou Frou, Placebo, Tracy Chapman, The Streets, David Gray, Keane, Billie Holliday, Nina Simone, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Damien Rice, Mariza, Bach, Wagner, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, Haydn, Mahler, Berlioz, Brahms, Claudio Abbado, Martha Argerich, Aimee Mann, Air, Alan Silvestri, Alison Krauss, Annie Lennox, Bryan Adams, Ben Harper, Bill Withers, Beyonce, Bjork, Boulez, Camille, Cat Stevens, Coldplay, Sarah McLaghlan, Colin Hay, Fairuz, Fiona Apple, Jack Johnson, Jeff Buckley – Grace, Joni Mitchell, Lauryn Hill, Macy Gray, Norah Jones, Iron and Wine, Portishead, Radiohead, Sheryl Crow, The Clash – Spanish Bombs, Sting

Favourite T.V. Shows:

Scrubs, E.R., Nip/Tuck, Six Feet Under, Friends, How I Met Your Mother

Favourite Films:

Pride & Prejudice, Garden State, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 21 Grams, Japanese Story, Sophie Scholl, White Countess, Failure to Launch, The Family Stone, Leon, The Constant Gardener, Magnolia, Closer, Good Night and Good Luck, Love Actually, Sideways, Osama, Gattaca, A Lot Like Love, 9 Songs, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Leaving Las Vegas, Notting Hill, Lost in Translation, The Hours, About a Boy, A Beautiful Mind, House of Sand and Fog, Little Children, Pollock, Requiem for a Dream, Paris je t’aime, V for Vendetta, Free Zone, Cold Mountain, Anywhere But Here, Beautiful Girls, Heat, The Last Kiss, The Squid and the Whale, 25^th Hour, Buffalo Soldiers, Finding Forrester, Almost Famous, Winter Passing, House of Fools, Affliction, Foreign Correspondent, Drunk on Women and Poetry, Young Adam, Edward Scissorhands, American Beauty, The Sweet Hereafter, Serendipity, Meet Joe Black, Boys and Girls, Lilya 4-Ever, The Ascent, La Belle Noiseuse, Possession, Hideous Kinky, Casablanca, No Man’s Land, La Vie Est Une Miracle, Life As A House, Panic Room, Iris, Lord of the Rings, Autumn in New York, Funny Games, The Piano Teacher, Ghost World, Intimacy, The English Patient, Kolya, The Girl in the Café, Syriana, In My Father’s Den, The Leopard, Welcome to Sarajevo, Sometimes in April, A Room With A View, City of Angels, Full Metal Jacket, Great Expectations, The Family Man, Atonement – Ian McEwan, Traffic, Wonder Boys, The Sacrifice (Tarkovsky), Songs from the Second Floor, Vanilla Sky, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Babel, Running With Scissors, Stranger than Fiction, The Last King of Scotland, Little Miss Sunshine, Fight Club

Favourite Books:

White Teeth – Zadie Smith, Pride & Prejudice - Jane Austen, Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver, Ariel – Sylvia Plath, The Secret History – Donna Tartt, An Unexpected Light – Jason Elliot, The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger, The Namesake – Jhumpa Lahiri, The Interpreter of Maladies – Jhumpa Lahiri, Disgrace – J.M. Coetzee, The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen, The Leopard - Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Great War for Civilisation – Robert Fisk, Pity the Nation – Robert Fisk, Civil War is Not a Stupid Thing – Christopher Cramer, Mimesis – Erich Auerbach, A Sunday by the Pool in Kigali – Giles Courtemanche, Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy, Unless – Carol Shields, Points of Departure – James Cameron, Poems – Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces – Anne Michaels, Between Mountains – Maggie Helwig, Straw Dogs – John Gray, A Bed for the Night – David Rieff, The Sweet Hereafter – Russell Banks, Cold Mountain – Charles Frazier, Austerlitz – W.G. Sebald, The Rings of Saturn – W.G. Sebald, Union Street – Pat Barker, Regeneration Trilogy – Pat Barker, Double Vision – Pat Barker, Border Crossing – Pat Barker, The Calligrapher – Edward Docx, Brick Lane – Monica Ali, The Sea House – Esther Freud, Nowhere Man – Aleksander Hemon, Timoleon Vieta Come Home – Dan Rhodes, War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning – Chris Hedges, Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad, Transformations of Love – Frances Harris, After You’d Gone – Maggie O’Farrell, Nicholas & Alexandra – Robert K. Massie, How to Be Alone – Jonathan Franzen, Northanger Abbey – Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen, Words Alone – Denis Donoghue, John Clare – Jonathan Bate, The Song of the Earth – Jonathan Bate, Letters to Felice – Franz Kafka, Everything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer, Bel Canto – Ann Patchett, Rembrandt’s Eyes – Simon Schama, The Human Stain – Philip Roth, The Dying Animal – Philip Roth, The Siege – Helen Dunmore, Poems – Anna Akhmatova, How to Be Good – Nick Hornby, Wives and Daughters – Elizabeth Gaskell, New York Trilogy – Paul Auster, The Good Neighbour – John Burnside, Paris Trance – Geoff Dyer, Anil’s Ghost – Michael Ondaatje, Elegies – Douglas Dunn, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting – Milan Kundera, Solitude – Anthony Storr, Into the Wild – Jon Krakauer

2006-04-08T04:15:00.000+04:30

A Walk in Damascus Amidst the Symbols of Humanity

I went to visit the National Museum in the centre of town this afternoon, perhaps searching for what Burnside has described as:

“The haunting
We contrive by going out
To where
We don’t belong”

The garden outside the museum itself is a garden of calm – all the more notable as it is neighbour to a particularly busy stretch of road – where you can stroll or sit as you please. Sections of pillars nestle awkwardly on raised platforms also displaying statues. Most intriguing is the way over half of the statues are missing their heads. I took some photos of these missing heads; the body decapitated in a Taliban-like frenzy of idol destruction?

I tried to find out from the museum’s staff. Upon reaching a suitable candidate for my question, I realised I had forgotten the Arabic word for statue, and being inside the museum itself I had no visual aids to point at. Settling for a workable alternative, I asked away: “Is there a reason why some of the symbols of humanity outside are missing heads?” Needless to say I was met with incomprehension and left no less the wiser. The incompleteness manifest in the semi-corporeal figures brought me back once more to John Burnside.

In the final section of In Kansas, a poem published in his latest collection The Good Neighbour, he recalls Xenocrates (“that sullen Greek”) and his idea that people die twice, once on Earth, then for a second time on the Moon when the mind separates from the soul and travels to the Sun. His description of these souls, hiding away on the dark side of the moon is comic and at the same time bracing:

“I wonder if he thought
our other souls

were real, half-human
standing in the light,

dusted
with silver

and barely a flicker of wings
at their crippled shoulders,

I wonder
If they seemed to him

Benevolent, or ghostly,
True, or false,

Gathered together
For warmth and conversation,

Twins to the living souls
They would replace,

Remembering
The fragrance of a rose,

The weight of snow,
Or how an apple falls

Forever
On the cusp of afternoon.

Surely he would have
Known enough to guess

That souls live in the dark,
Like fleas, or mice,

And these, our other selves,
Are neither vague nor pale,

But utterly substantial
When they swarm

In hundreds,
On the far side of the moon,

Cunning, feral,
Waiting to be born,

No more or less like us
Than rocks, or sand,

But marked with a slipknot of blood
For the world to come:

Its salt and rain, its feasts,
Its widowhood.”

2006-02-03T19:52:00.000+04:30

Three people were killed and at least 20 wounded in attacks on two churches in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk last Sunday. Two churches in Baghdad, as well as the office of the Vatican mission to Iraq in the capital, were also targeted by bomb blasts.

In a series of carefully coordinated strikes, St Joseph’s Roman Catholic church in east Baghdad was the first to come under attack as worshippers gathered for evening Mass. Minutes later, a car exploded outside a small church in north Kirkuk. Shortly afterwards, bombs detonated outside an Anglican church in Baghdad and the Chaldean Church of the Immaculate Mary in Kirkuk. A bomb also exploded 50 yards away from the offices of the Vatican mission to Iraq in Baghdad.

The police chief of Kirkuk said the bombs were believed to have been booby-trapped cars, and not the work of suicide bombers. Chaldean Patriarch Emmanuel Delly III narrowly avoided being caught up in the bomb attacks when a security delay made him late for Mass at one of the targeted churches in Baghdad. In Baghdad on Monday, some 400 Christian clerics demonstrated in protest against the weekend’s violence.

The UN Special Representative, Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, too, condemned the attacks and called for better protection for worshippers in Iraq. But the Apostolic Nuncio, Fernando Filoni told The Tablet: “The Church will continue as usual; the mission will continue as usual. Everything will continue as usual.” Although nothing was known about the perpetrators’ identity, he said the style of the attacks “bore a resemblance to those of August 2004”, in a reference to bomb attacks on five churches in Baghdad and Mosul that killed 12 and injured 50 (The Tablet, 7 August, 2004).

Speaking after the funeral in Kirkuk Cathedral of Fadi Raad Elias, a 14-year-old victim of last Sunday’s attacks, Archbishop Louis Sako of Kirkuk praised the “astonishing courage” of Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants alike. He told Aid to the Church in Need, the Catholic charity, of the defiance of his faithful, whom he said “would not be pushed out of Iraq” by acts of aggression.

Archbishop Sako said fundamentalist clerics in Iraq had ordered the attacks as revenge for a series of cartoons in a Danish newspaper, Jyllends-Posten, which last September depicted the Prophet Mohammed as a suicide bomber. The images were subsequently broadcast around the Arab world. Any portrayal of Mohammed is blasphemous in Islam, lest it encourages idolatry. The attacks came just hours after Archbishop Sako made a public statement condemning the cartoons, stressing that they reflected the views of a tiny minority of Christians and contradicted Church teaching on inter-faith dialogue.

As The Tablet went to press, no group had yet claimed responsibility for the bombings, although this is not uncommon in a country when there are regularly as many as 20 explosions a day. Co-ordinated attacks of this nature have become the hallmark of the al-Qaida affiliate group led by the Jordanian, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Many Christians have fled the country to neighbouring Jordan, Syria and Turkey since the fall of Saddam, citing poor security as the predominant reason.

Less then 3 per cent of the population – 750,000 – remain Christians, mostly in Baghdad and Kirkuk. Sunday’s violence comes during a time of swiftly rising sectarian tensions as reprisal killings and raids between Sunni and Shia militias threaten to undermine efforts to form a broad-based government after last December’s parliamentary elections.

(Published in The Tablet, 4th Feb 2006)

2006-01-22T14:30:00.000+04:30

On 8th October 2005, an earthquake of 7.6 magnitude devastated towns and villages in the north of Pakistan and Kashmir. In the latest figures, issued by the UN, 80,000 are said to have died as a direct result of the earthquake, 3.5 million were made homeless as their houses fell down, and some 100,000 were injured on that day. Even 4 people died in Afghanistan from the quake, including 3 children in Jalalabad. The most affected towns will no doubt never quite be the same; how can the people of Balakot, for example, where locals speak in hushed tones of the seemingly total devastation (this in a busy medium-sized market town), how can they 'return to their lives as before'?

Even now, some two million still live in tents below the snow line. There are about 250,000 in organised camps, and around 400,000 at higher altitudes, now facing the snow of the approaching winter. The winter, people tell me, has been relatively mild so far, but most agree that it is only beginning and that the main snow-falls are still to come. Indeed today and yesterday in Kashmir heavy snow fell in the mountains.

[As a little background: Pakistan was established in August 1947 as a state independent of British rule. It now has a population of 163m making it the sixth largest in the world. Urdu and English are the two official languages, but Pashtu is also very common (particularly in the west and north). Cricket is followed avidly on the television and in newspapers. 65% of the population live below the $2-per-day poverty line, the UN has estimated. There are around 4m drug abusers (heavily fuelled by produce from Afghanistan, of course). A large population of Afghan refugees live in Pakistan. In 2005, some 449,000 Afghans returned to their country with the assistance of UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees), the second highest annual influx of refugees to Afghanistan since 2002, when 1.6m returned following the fall of the Taliban movement. It's a land full of contrast. In the north and west, mountains dominate, with K2 and a bunch of some of the other highest mountains in the world. In the SE, desert may be found, and in the rest of the country large plains are cultivated. Cotton, wheat and rice are the country's main produce, and they also have reserves of oil, gas, coal and precious minerals. In the relatively short time I spent here, people often told me that Pakistan had all the potential to be a truly great nation, especially with its large workforce.]

The situation at the moment in the zone affected by the earthquake is better than I had imagined it. People are surviving. Nevertheless, NGOs here are still implementing their 'emergency' or 'disaster' operations (the first time I've been witness to this type of relief work - very much a case of trying to achieve the impossible): providing shelter, providing medical care, helping to administer the ubiquitous 'tent camps' which are everywhere you go in the area. And again, though, it's just the beginning. The winter - of the bitter Himalayan sort - is just gearing up, and there are many living in the mountains, or in tents who face an unimaginable 3 months of cold and wetness.

Indeed, all this time that I've been here [now writing from the relative comfort of my hotel room in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan] I've been trying to think how I could best convey a sense of the earthquake, and the destruction it wrought, or the conditions that people are forced to live in now as a result. And it is really difficult, even if you're actually standing there in front of buildings that have fallen down (see below for pictures from Muzafferabad) to imagine what it must have been like to be there. Aftershocks still happen, though. I myself felt two up in Mansehra on Monday night, and NGOs talk of some 1500 since the earthquake.

And there doesn't even have to be snow for people to feel cold. A fall of rain (and we're now beginning what people term "the rainy season") can cause a severe drop in temperature. To me it didn't feel as cold as Kabul, but then I didn't have to live in a tent with the other 8 members of my family. People here are very thankful for the international aid which came from all-over. However at the same time one observes that the media have become bored with the story. This happened with last year's tsunami as well - a friend working there says that local people often demonstrate outside the offices of NGOs in dissatisfaction with their work. People are still living in tents there. An ITV and BBC crew are both in the area making reports, but it is still a difficult story to cover.

In fact, I was in Muzafferabad with my friend Laila Khan (International Rescue Committee) as she was interviewed by Ben Brown of the BBC (see photo below). In his report, live on BBC World, he talked of the "bitter Himalayan winter" as well. Talking from inside a refugee camp, he made his report of some 2 minutes. Earlier in the day his crew had been making background shots. To this end, one woman had been asked to wash clothes (as a 'background' person) for some seven hours. Similarly, a child had been asked to repeatedly walk back and forth through snow barefoot (6 times) so that the BBC could get their shot. Of course, it is quite probable that the little boy would have been walking barefoot through the snow regardless of whether there had been an earthquake or not. In the refugee camp, people live in tents with what they were able to salvage from the ruins of their houses. This sometimes included televisions, which they duly connected to a power source and watched in their tents. The BBC had to ask several tent-owners to turn the volume on their sets down while they were making their report.

At any rate, this is very much a continuing story, and I'd like to have been able to stay longer in the area to learn more. Unfortunately, my term in Damascus has already started and I return tomorrow to continue with my degree, with at least some idea of the awful devastation that 8 seconds created here some 3 months ago.

2006-01-15T20:29:00.000+04:30

Picture of Mohammed Saqib, my host for a day around the environs of Mansehra town. Then photo of dung-cakes being dried/prepared - a common source of fuel in rural areas (both in Afghanistan and Pakistan).

2006-01-15T20:09:00.000+04:30

Hills and mountains around Mansehra town (Pakistan)

2006-01-15T19:53:00.000+04:30

2006-01-14T16:49:00.000+04:30

These pictures of Muzafferabad, where I went for a day. I'll write more about the town later in the full context of the earthquake. Suffice to say, though: lots of tents, some places massively damaged. Quite cold. Final picture of this set is Laila, my friend here who works for IRC, in live interview with Ben Brown of the BBC. I'll be writing more about that too.

2006-01-14T16:47:00.000+04:30

2006-01-14T16:25:00.000+04:30

Photos taken in Mansehra today. In the background of both portrait photos you can see the Himalayas. If you carry on going straight eventually you'll get to K2, and then Everest. The weather isn't particularly cold (despite what everyone keeps telling me) - especially when you come from Kabul. Longer text coming soon on the earthquake...

2006-01-14T16:07:00.000+04:30

It's Christmas Day, and I'm on the road from Herat to Kandahar to discover more about the resistance in the south of Afghanistan, and how the situation might be expected to develop through the new year. On the ten-hour blur of dust, discomfort and unfinished roads, we pass through the dasht-e margo (the 'desert of death'), adding to the sense of foreboding that any travel in the south usually inspires; banditry and robberies are common.

My third time in the country, conversant in Dari and Pashto (the two national languages), and a long-term follower of events in Afghanistan, I immediately notice a difference. Informal check-points have sprung up. Formal check-points are manned occasionally by black-masked troops, fearful of reprisal attacks for working with the government. Several times we are asked to get out of the car for a search; they're looking for suicide bombers. A small bribe (around 10 $-cents or so) bypasses this, thus completely negating the logic of the checkpoints. Welcome to Kandahar.

The heart of the original Taliban movement, it is a city almost exclusively dominated by Pashtuns, the tribal peoples of southern Afghanistan and border-land Pakistan, and recently the site of a number of suicide bombings, attacks and political assassinations. The Pashtuns have traditionally ruled the country. In 1747 Afghanistan - meaning 'land of the Afghans', itself an alternative word for Pashtun - was first created with its capital as Kandahar. Only later in the century was it moved north to Kabul, on account of tribal riots.

Pashtuns are a very proud people, unwilling to give control to others without invitation. It's a characteristic that gives rise to their reputation for fierce resistance to invaders. Whole empires have been broken in the south: the British fought three unsuccessful wars against the Afghans around the end of the nineteenth century, finally resorting to air bombing of Kabul and Jalalabad in 1919 which ended the war on their own terms. They left soon after. Over half a century later, the Russians also met their match in a decade-long struggle that eventually resulted in the collapse of the Soviet Union, not to mention millions killed, injured and made refugees.

Nowadays, the south and east are enveloped in an intractable conflict: Al-Qaeda and neo-Taliban forces are fighting a guerrilla war against the government and coalition soldiers (a broad grouping of the US and its allies) stationed here. Suicide bombings, previously unknown in Afghanistan, are increasingly common as a tactic against convoys. Similarly, IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) fashioned from landmines are used to target government and coalition forces. Decapitations are becoming more common. Kidnapping of foreigners happens less only because so few work in the south.

All this points to a migration of tactics from Iraq. Training manuals and videos originating there have been found both in Afghanistan and Pakistan. These detail how to make IEDs or the best way to decapitate prisoners. They're also used as recruitment tools, promising payments of some $2000 to the family of a suicide bomber, for instance, or $1250 to the killer of a coalition soldier. Over the summer, there was a flurry of reports - most notably a Newsweek interview - that Afghans had actually been taken to Iraq (to Ramadi, sometime capital of the insurgency there) for training. These allegations have resurfaced in a widely-syndicated Sunday Times article.

After further enquiry with Afghans, Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and other security sources, I discovered that actually much of the south was 'no-go' territory for government/coalition troops, foreigners and non-locals. Much of this area is, in fact, under the control of Taliban forces. The main road linking Herat in the west to Kabul is relatively safe, barring banditry, suicide bombers and IEDs. Kandahar City itself is relatively stable, despite recent assassinations of moderate religious clerics and school teachers, as well as suicide bombings. Once you leave the city, it's a different story again. Move east into Zabul province or northwards to Uruzgan itself and once more you are confronted with huge swathes under effective Taliban control, where the Afghan National Army and coalition forces venture at their peril.

The security risk in much of the south is so dire that journalists cannot report on the situation there. This means the silent war being conducted in Uruzgan in part by US forces based in Kandahar Airport goes entirely unreported. One senior aid-worker briefed by the military told me on condition of anonymity that "they're having serious problems there. Why are they doing artillery drills at the [airport] base? Why is the flight traffic so busy there?" The wish to keep troop casualties to a minimum means that they must resort - as the British were forced in 1919, and as the US is now being forced in Iraq - to aerial bombing.

In the south, Afghans are afraid to travel and work. Most of my friends were worried about my plans to take the road from Herat to Kandahar, saying that even they wouldn't travel down it. Once you leave the main road, though, the risk increases exponentially. Ahmed Kandahari is the manager of a road reconstruction project in the north of Helmand province, where British troops are destined. He said that much of that area (particularly around the town of Bagran) is under the control of Taliban and Al Qaeda forces. His own security advisors tell him that each time he goes there he risks his life. Indeed, one of his engineers was recently killed travelling back home. Even the larger towns of Lashkar Gah and Qereshk are unsafe to work in. Helmand province is the hub of the country's drug trade.

The single issue that unites all the problems in the south is the drug trade. 90% of the world's heroin comes from Afghanistan, and the profits derived form a massive $2.7bn annually according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). That makes up 52% of the country's entire GDP. A senior veteran of the Interior Ministry told Newsweek reporters that, "if we don't crack down on these guys soon, it won't be long until they're in control of everything".

One of the main problems is the involvement of government officials in the trade. In the second half of 2005 President Karzai faced a spate of resignations over the issue, and over claims of his reluctance to confront the issue. Indeed in a study for the Afghan Research and Evaluation Unit - an independent research organisation headquartered in Afghanistan - the expert Andrew Wilder concluded that at least 17 newly elected MPs are drug traffickers themselves, 24 others are linked to criminal gangs, 40 are commanders of armed groups and 19 others face serious abuse and war-crimes allegations. The elections held last year seem to have merely legitimised the status quo, and are already being referred to as "a lost opportunity" in diplomatic and NGO circles.

Government policy has had mixed success. The UNODC reported a 21% reduction in the total area cultivated in 2005, but still good weather conditions meant that this only reduced the total crop yield by 2%. Prices have also risen this year, meaning more farmers are planting the poppy. I myself stood in a large field outside Kandahar City which had been seeded for precisely this reason.

The government tends to direct its efforts at the farmers, however, and not the traffickers and officials involved higher up the chain. Karzai's reluctance - he is admittedly in an extremely tricky situation - to tackle the problem of warlords and drug lords in positions of power and influence is the single most popular source of complaint for most Afghans I talked to all over the country.

The wealth earned from that same drug trade is clearly in evidence in Kabul city. New houses are rising in the more fancy districts of the capital. One building contractor claimed recently that 70% of the new buildings being built were financed by drug money.

An alternative for farmers delivering anywhere near similar profits is yet to be found. Karzai proposed melons and pomegranates over the summer as a solution. However, poverty and a distance from the effects of their product mean that many farmers will continue cultivating poppies despite government threats of fines and imprisonment. A sensible and well reasoned report by the Senlis Council recently suggested legalising the drug in order to produce medical drugs, as already happens to some extent in Turkey. Talk of legalisation was, needless to say, rejected outright by both US and Afghan governments.

Meanwhile, drug use is rising in Afghanistan - itself notable in a Muslim country. The UNODC estimates that there are currently 170,000 users - about 1.4% of the population - of which around 30,000 are women.

Drugs, therefore, is the issue that a proposed NATO troop expansion will ultimately be forced to deal with. The US signed a long-term security partnership with Afghanistan in May, but will nevertheless press forward with plans to reduce troops from 19,000 to 16,500. They will remain in the east of the country, but only until NATO is ready to take command there too.

Andrew Elmes, the British spokesman for the UK NATO contingent said that their role will be "primarily peacekeeping", unlike the US forces who have been initiating battles with the insurgents. Other British representatives have expressed their "total commitment" to ending the drug trade in Helmand province. This confusion of presentation reflects a general discomfort among NATO allies about the coming deployment.

Ali Jalali, who had resigned from the Cabinet allegedly over the issue of drugs, commented that, "the threat in the south is terrorism, drug trafficking and organised crime; if they don't get involved in fighting these things, what will they be providing for the security of the country?" Numerous comments over the past few days suggest the British and Dutch governments will do almost anything to limit the risk to their troops, even if this means the real issues aren't confronted.

Afghans I talked to in the south seemed tentatively supportive of the NATO expansion. Most experienced on a daily basis the effects of the security situation: ranging from an inability to travel safely after sundown, to the massive inequality in education as mentioned above. Many look back nostalgically to the Taliban as providers of security. This year, everyone acknowledges, the problem is particularly acute.

Normally the winter heralds a lull in fighting, as fighters lose their mobility on account of snow and so they lie low till spring. From all sides, though, I heard that the fighters remained in their positions this winter. A cursory glance at the list of violent incidents in December confirms this.

Suicide bombers moved north and east to Mazar-e Sharif and Herat, where they have previously never been found, another consequence of allowing the conflict in the south and east to spread throughout the country. Kandahar remained subject to increasingly regular suicide bombings, thus also curtailing movement of NGOs in the south. In a message purportedly from Mullah Omar, the former Taliban leader, “stronger” tactics were promised for the new year.

Spring normally brings a new offensive, and everyone in a position to know says that this spring is likely to be even fiercer than in previous years, what with new techniques and hardware, as well as battle-hardened fighters of Pakistani and Chechen nationality crossing over from Pakistan. One source I met in Kandahar City offered me a list of madrassas (Muslim religious seminaries) in Pakistan and Afghanistan where I could find Chechen and Arab fighters waiting out the winter.

So the cost is likely to be high, regardless of whoever in the end draws the short-straw of a mission in south Afghanistan. This was the year, after all, that almost 1600 were killed including 92 US soldiers: the worst year since the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001.

Consequences of a failure to deploy on the part of the Britain are similarly dire, though. The drugs trade will envelop what's left of the country to envelop, with a consequent rise in insecurity and terrorism. There have been reports that Al Qaeda is looking for a new base for its fighters outside Iraq. Welcome to Afghanistan. NGOs are unable to work in a region where aid-workers are specifically targeted for their alleged association with the government.

In October 2001 Tony Blair boldly proclaimed to Afghans that "this time we will not walk away from you", as the Taliban were overthrown; this statement clearly in reference to the departure of US support and aid in the early 1990s following Soviet troop withdrawal from the country. I would so like to be able to imagine a positive end to this tale of hesitancy and half-heartedness. The Afghans - a brave, generous and culturally rich people -, whose traditions expect a verbal promise be honoured, deserve our support, but I fear their hopes for peace and security will remain just that. Hopes.

2006-01-10T14:05:00.000+04:30

Leaving Jalalabad: taking a rickshaw from the hotel to the taxi stop
other photos are taken on Pakistani side of border, Khyber pass etc. All taken from the taxi. Armed guard provided 'for [my] security' in tribal areas.

2006-01-09T21:20:00.000+04:30

I spent an afternoon in Jalalabad, sitting in the tranquil garden of the Spinghar Hotel - truly an oasis of sorts when coming from the noise and grime of the capital. I reflected on the last month in Afghanistan and was overcome by a particularly intense bout of 'soulfulness' on the situation, possibly prompted by feelings of sadness upon leaving the country.

I imagined a different country. Not utopian, to be sure, but still far away. A country where the news of a family forced to watch the beheading of their father - he was a headmaster of a school in the south - isn't considered a small story. A country where children don't consider education a luxury. A country where power runs more often than just every third day. A country where you can travel safely after dark. A country where the presence of mines don't dictate where you can walk. A country where international support and money doesn't decrease as interest wanes. A country where decisions are made on the basis of needs, and not wants.

I spent most of the evening reading in Anne Applebaum's comprehensive Gulag: a history. This helped, too, to put things in perspective. My meal of rice and cauliflower seemed positively luxurious when set against the regimentalised rations of the Soviet camps in the east. To all who have the time and the interest, I'd recommend this book, not the 'duty'-read that its name might suggest.

Tomorrow I'll cross the border into Pakistan, crossing via the Khyber Pass, into a new country and a new issue - the 8th October earthquake that killed some 73,000 and devastated parts of the country. Even in Afghanistan, here in Jalalabad, three children were killed as houses collapsed in the after-shocks.

I'll be visiting Peshawar, Mansehra, Islamabad, Balakot and perhaps Muzafferabad.

2006-01-04T14:09:00.000+04:30

Kabul, at an altitude of 1777m, is the highest of Afghanistan's main cities. You're only likely to get higher when taking a bus to Mazar-e Sharif, and then the Salang Pass takes you to 3363m. Kabul wasn't always the capital city. Originally power was located down south with the Pashtuns in Kandahar, and when the nation of Afghanistan was first created in the mid-eighteenth century that's where its capital was. Surrounded by the peaks of the Hindu Kush mountains, Kabul has drama that other cities lack. It is well known for its precise seasonality, where overnight autumn can become winter - as it did this year when the snow arrived while I was in Khost.

Several things distinguish winter Kabul from summer Kabul. The initial dirt after the first snowfalls (barf-e avval) and the huge puddles that make walking on the street a wet experience. The smell of the city becomes more smoky as people light their gas or wood bukharis, and as the kebab houses fill up with customers. Several days after the first snow, pathways and pavements are filled with compacted ice, treacherously slippy for the wrong sort of shoes.

Traffic is still a serious problem for the city authorities. Huge traffic jams mean that during most of the working day (between 9.30 and 5) you're likely to spend most of your time at a standstill. Indeed almost always it is quicker to walk. And taxi fares have increased on account on the higher petrol prices (since about two months ago). The traffic problems are partly caused by the big barrels and drums that NGOs position outside their offices to deter suicide bombers in cars. This slows traffic down, and President Karzai has resorted to issuing a decree that requires all roads in Kabul to be free of such obstacles by this Sunday. From Monday onwards they'll be removed, the order states. Some NGOs have expressed resistance to this. See BBC News website for a story on this.

It is less and less common to see omen walking in full-blue burqa, the total-body cover ubiquitous during Taliban times, in the streets of downtown Kabul. Mostly, though, veils are still worn, even if liberties are taken as to exactly how much hair is covered on the top of the head. Dress is also more western, with jeans tending to be the norm, especially amongst the young. Women have long been present on television as presenters and music-video DJs.

The dialect of Dari spoken here is quite easy for me to understand. Being a capital city, though, people seem very busy and tend to have less time for tea and chit-chat, particularly amongst shopowners and government offices.

In my hotel, the Mustafa, there are few people. I've met one or two tourists - a man from the UK, as well as a Korean boy who checked in last night - but mostly it's contractors who're still here over the winter period. Power-cuts are frequent and unwelcome. More about this later. The staff of the hotel remain helpful and always good fun, from Wais Abdullah the manager, down to Najiib who took a job here in order to improve his English. Each morning I give thanks for the absolute luxury of a warm shower (absent from my travels elsewhere in the country) and the chance to wash my hair. Small pleasures...

Foreigners may be found all over town. Mostly living in Wazir Akbar Khan area, their large 4x4 vehicles are a common sight. It's quite uncommon for me to see foreigners walking on the streets, largely due to the security restrictions that management imposes upon them. This means that often NGOs are merely confined to living behind huge barbed-wire fences and bomb-resistant walls full of sandbags. The restaurants in Wazir Akbar Khan remain popular in the evenings, from the Lai Thai restaurant and its charming owner Lalita to The Elbow Room, one of the most popular bars in town.

Electricity problems dog the city, though. Four years after the ousting of the Taliban, most residents are without power, except for five hours every second or third night. Although hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid have been spent to fix the problem, conditions have worsened in the past year as improvements have lagged and the population surges. Government officials say things will not noticeably improve until at least 2008, when new power lines are to be completed.

The gulf between the wealthy few and the literally powerless majority is especially striking now, as pockets of opulence sprout across the impoverished capital of 4 million.

Across the city, in a dilapidated district called Dai Mazang, live those on the dark side of Afghanistan's economic fortunes. Although the country's gross domestic product has doubled since 2001, roughly 30 percent of the population is unemployed, and 37 percent need donated food to survive, according to statistics compiled by the Brookings Institution in Washington. In Dai Mazang, 65 families have taken up makeshift residence in the carcasses of former government office buildings that were destroyed by rocket attacks in the civil war of the 1990s. Most were refugees in Pakistan and Iran who returned home after 2001, lured by promises of jobs and land that never materialised.

Energy experts here said the situation would not improve until October 2008, when power lines from Uzbekistan, now being laid across the snow-capped Hindu Kush, are expected to be completed.

People stand outside the embassies of Pakistan and Iran overnight in the sub-zero temperatures, in the hope that they'll be able to travel to their families for Eid celebrations which are due to begin in the next week or so.

Kabul, too, then is all-a-bustle as people prepare to travel back home to north and south. Aside from some new buildings here and there, not a great deal has changed in town since summer.

2006-01-04T13:48:00.000+04:30

It's New Year's Day 2006 in Showay, a little east of Khost and near the Pakistan border. The sun dictates when we sleep and wake, so I missed the turn of the new year. We wake at seven, and by nine I'm talking with the teachers of Nomaan madrassa (or religious seminary).

Gul Rahman, Hashem and Abdulrahman teach religious subjects, history and Pashto language to the 250-odd students that attend. The madrassa is one of only two in the area (around 31,000 families live in this area); each of the two main tribes has a school. Classes are between 8 and 11.30. It isn't unusual for a student to walk at least an hour from home to reach the school. Even once there, as the teachers told me, problems abound. Teachers are unpaid, and the school was constructed by the families themselves. UNICEF books and materials were distributed all over the country, but never reached this area. The classrooms are bitterly cold, and there are no carpets for the students to sit on. When I was there, the classes were being conducted outside, in the bitter morning cold. This apparent lack of interest shown by NGOs and donors (on account of security concerns, I'm assuming) was to be seen wherever I went in the area.

Kuchi are the nomadic tribes of Afghanistan. In Dari (one of the two national languages of Afghanistan, closely related to Farsi/Persian) the word kuchi means nomad, or person-who-moves. Estimates of their numbers are at best estimates, and fiercely disputed. The electoral board - who surveyed the country for the purposes of the elections last year - reckon some 2.5 million are Kuchi, while the tribal leaders themselves claim 6 million in total. The nature of Kuchis makes it difficult to pin down. At any rate, they're all over the country, and mainly of Pashtun descent. In Khost province, most people don't even speak Dari, just a dialect of Pashtu that I could barely understand; quite different from that of Kandahar.

They form a unique group, reflected in the special procedures allocated to them for the elections. Nomadism, though, is on the way out, relatively speaking. Increasingly, kuchi people are settling, usually on the outskirts of cities (as observed in Kabul and Kandahar). Their cattle flocks have been decimated by drought and landmines. Also a desire to educate their families now is a frequent comment: Kuchis wish to remedy their lack of representation in parliament as well as to turn around a tendency towards illiteracy. Thus Kuchis are buying houses near and in the city, in the hope that this will allow their children to attend school.

Kuchis are also famous for their dogs, large fearless cross-breeds for the most part. Other small customs distinguish them. Take tea, for instance. Afghans generally drink green or black tea, depending on which area of the country you're from. In the south it's green tea, in the north black tea. But in the eastern kuchi tribes they even have black tea with milk too. For breakfast, it's normal to drink one cup of milk tea, followed by several cups of black tea. In the evening after dinner, a kuchi might drink green, black and milk tea.

The two schools that I saw serve for around 31,000 families. The second school was better organised than the first, with a printed timetable, as well as longer hours. Still, though, Islamia School - 300 students and 6 teachers - was built with funds collected from the families themselves. Classes are mostly religious, but teaching Farsi and Sa'adi's Golestan for example. When I visited, one class was sitting outside the classroom in the freezing cold (it soon after began to snow) as the floor of their classroom wasn't ready yet.

I heard several complaints wherever I visited: that there weren't health clinics (if someone becomes sick, they must travel 2 hours on a bumpy dirt-track to Khost itself, passing through tribal areas hostile to them); that there was no provision for education outside the non-religious (certainly nothing for girls); that the microfinance investment schemes found in other provinces hadn't arrived in this area; that there was little water (and when there are wells they are far from the people, necessitating long journeys for the women, who traditionally get the water); that NGOs weren't helping or coming to visit the area; that there's no power/electricity (some families have invested in solar power, but of course this is dependent on the weather); that there is high unemployment - people are forced to selling the stones and wood of the hillside to make money; that the teachers at the schools have little experience and that the education children receive is of poor quality; that the promises of help from Khost's governor haven't come to pass; that aid meant for the Kuchi people is often 'retained' in Khost by tribes hostile to them.

I also met with several families (although I heard of many more) who had previously been living in Pakistan but who had all been forced back into Afghanistan; their houses were bulldozed and they were evicted across the border. Is this how Pakistan solves its refugee issues?

Security in the east of Afghanistan is a major problem, though, preventing the intervention of NGOs. Despite promises of security that Kuchi tribes could offer to NGOs working in the area, it is difficult to see how this would work in practice. Generally speaking, international organisations are loath to target specific ethnic groups with aid. Every single person and NGO I talked to before my departure told me not to go, that security was among the worst in the country there, and that it was unwise to travel there, certainly by car, as I planned. At any rate, thankfully nothing happened to me, and I returned in one piece (despite some 'problems' along the way); I felt very exposed and unsafe throughout my travels in the east, however, a feeling that I never had in Kandahar or while travelling down the main roads between Herat and Kabul. Nobody can hear you scream in space, as the slogan for the film Alien goes; by the same token, no one will hear you scream in eastern Afghanistan.

As far as a vision of this Kuchi area in the future goes, I'd like to be positive, but fear that conditions will stay largely the same: the people will continue their desperate struggle to better their situation; international NGOs will largely stay away from the area out of fear; perhaps a few more schools will be built, as well as hopefully a few more wells and water pumps. In Showay hopes looks set to remain just that. Hopes.

2006-01-02T21:27:00.000+04:30

Sorry the order of these photos is a bit out of sync, nothing I can do to change that. Working against the elements here with a super-slow internet connection. Back in Kabul now. Will post more soon, regarding Kuchis, eastern Afghanistan etc.

One Kuchi tribal elder I visited had a horse (originally a Kuchi tradition; now he's the only one left who has a horse) which he was very proud of. Everyone said he was an excellent rider. Here he poses with his horse for the camera.
The second set of mountains is Pakistan. I'm standing in Afghanistan taking the photo. Couldn't get any closer because ISI/Pakistani secret service operate on the border region and also discreet digital imaging takes place so I might have had problems crossing the border next week. Nevertheless, shows how close the border was, and how 'foreigners' might enter the country.
'The gang' - various Kuchi friends who took me round to see the tribes in the east. Second from right is Toor Gul, my host. Second from left is Mohammed Amin, our driver (really nice guy).
Nomaan School, in Char Ghotay: all the pupils of this religious madrassa (recall the film Osama) watch as I interview the teachers. More on this in my longer piece.
Just open land near sunset
River-bed which serves as a tribal boundary
same
Kabul, view from the hotel this morning. Snow came last night (1st Jan).
Khost itself, view from hotel 'bathroom' window.
3 Kuchi tribal elders on sunday morning after we'd compiled a list of the tribes and their leaders (more soon)

2005-12-29T20:36:00.000+04:30

As it turns out, Kabul does things differently ("they do things differently there") and it turns out I missed zikr which normally takes place on Wednesday evening. And I ripped my only pair of jeans and gashed my knee open on the taxi door on the way in. It's not that bad actually, as I'll be in shalwaar qamiis for the rest of my trip in Afghanistan, and I'll get a new pair sometime before I leave for Pakistan. Dampened the mood of the evening somewhat...

Going to try to get some warm food now.

2005-12-29T17:57:00.000+04:30

Three photos from down in Kandahar. Firstly, from the archives, a picture of a pot taken from Kandahar and now on display in the British Museum, London. Secondly Ismaray Khan (his first name means 'lion' in Pashtu) who cooked for me and stayed with me most of the time while my host was out working. Really kind and genuine guy. I'll miss his company and jokes. On my last night in Kandahar we watched a favourite film of mine together, The Family Man, as I explained in half-Farsi half-Pashtu what was going on. Good times. Third photo is a usual evening meal. Big slabs of traditional Afghan bread, always a pleasure, as well as a plate of cucumber/tomatoes and mint leaves. Then some cooked vegetables in a sauce. Not super typical as an Afghan meal, but it's what I normally have down south.

2005-12-29T10:18:00.000+04:30

Letters from Martha

I rip the envelope and I'm in Bangkok.
I rip the envelope and I'm in Varansi
Allahabad Agra Delhi.
Christmas Greetings from the Kathmandu Hotel.
I rip the envelope:
My kitchen reeks with saffron,
I'm in a smelly passage crowded with sari'd throngs,
Rickshaws, market stalls.
You're at my table, eyes alive with wild boars,
"skinny tea wallahs" carrying clay cups,
Streets parting in the wake of a cow,
Its cud a cardboard box soggy from vegetables.
I'm sorting your letters,
Trying to keep the chronology,
The terrain of your marriage - in one letter
"better than ever, I'm in love all over again"
In another, "torn between distance and desire."
In Rajasthan you're reading a letter from your mother,
A childhood friend getting married, a sister leaving home.
And you, in love with a place.
You hate to leave Nagaur
Where they came from all corners of India,
Exodus of camels to a cattle fair.
You describe slums decaying
In twilight the colours of silks.
Hating to leave Nagaur, torn between distance and desire.
I rip the blue envelope and hear the jangle of bracelets,
I'm trying to find whose wrist they belong to in the gaudy market,
The flashy sunlight,
And there, your Western face and red hair
Above that Indian river.
You pour from these squares, these blue envoys.
And just when I feel I've lost you in the world,
I can't keep up,
Your postcard comes with the words"wait for me."

(Anne Michaels)

2005-12-29T10:12:00.000+04:30

"The conflicts that wrack the world today would not have surprised the pagans of classical antiquity. For them, no 'indissoluble chain' bound knowledge, virtue and happiness together. In the plays of Euripides, knowledge cannot undo the workings of fate; virtue gives no protection against disaster. The most that humans can do is to be brave and resourceful, and expect to achieve little. Very likely we cannot revive this pagan view of things; but perhaps we can learn from it how to limit our hopes."

(John Gray, Al Qaeda and what it means to be modern)

I write from Kandahar: the heart of the original Taliban movement, and a city almost exclusively dominated by Pashtuns, the tribal peoples of southern Afghanistan and border-land Pakistan. I've little historical information or cultural stories to offer this time round, as during my stay here have observed how neo-Taliban/Al Qaeda groups/loyalists have regained control of huge swathes of the south and east of the country. An extremely worrying development. UK and Dutch governments should take note as they prepare to deploy troops to replace a 3000-troop reduction announced by Rumsfeld recently. For me extremely worrying as it's increasingly difficult to travel safely down south. In the past I've been able to confidently travel down here on the roads; if you make sure to travel only during daylight, I reasoned, you'll be fine. It isn't enough these days.

On the road from Herat to Kandahar, a ten-hour blur of dust and shitty roads, informal checkpoints have sprung up. Government check-points are manned occasionally by black-masked troops [see Robert Fisk's reports for The Independent on similar trends in Baghdad]. Several times we were asked to get out of the car for a search. A small bribe (around 10p or so) bypassed this, thus completely negating the point of the checkpoints. Welcome to Kandahar.

In terms of general security in the south, I've been advised by various sources that large sections are no-go zones for foreigners and Afghans alike. Helmand province, where I stopped for lunch on the way here, is split in two by the Herat-Kandahar highway. North of the road, Taliban are in control, and government and US forces cannot go there. Uruzgan is also tremendously risky: just watch the faces of my Afghan friends ripple into concern when I mention that I want to go there. Similarly parts of Paktia, where I'll be next week. I could go on with more names etc, but little use for the non-specialist. Suffice to say that the south is a much more dangerous place than it was 5 months ago.

Normally the winter heralds a lull in fighting, as fighters lose their mobility on account of snow and resultant conditions. From all sides, though, I'm hearing that the fighters have remained in their positions over the winter. A brief selection of activities down south should suffice as proof:

3rd December - US helicopter downed in southern Afghanistan
14th December - suicide bomber in courtyard of shrine/mosque in Mazar-e Sharif (first time); suicide (donkey) bomb in Faizabad (Badakhshan).
15th December - Another member of Ulema Council killed (6th in 5 months) in Kandahar city; US soldier killed Kandahar City; Taliban execution of teacher in Helmand
16th December - suicide bomb next to Parliament building in Kabul; riot in Lowgar
17th December - riot south of Kabul; attack on school in main city of Helmand province
18th December - 30 Taliban attack checkpoint just outside Kandahar city
20th December - Herat's first/second suicide bomb
22nd December - attack on vehicle convoy in Nangarhar province
24th December - explosion in Maiwand; rocket attack on Kabul
25th December - 3 kidnapped in Farah (normally relatively calm province); Zawahiri broadcasts tape claiming [largely correctly, I might add] Taliban have regained control over large parts of Afghanistan

Anyway, this doesn't cover a whole bunch of smaller attacks on teachers/students, burnings of schools, or banditry on the road (quite common). Indeed, I learned that a landmine IED (like those used in Iraq) was placed (and duly detonated) on the roadside of the Herat-Kandahar highway only the day after I travelled down it.

There is also a 'silent war' being fought in Uruzgan province. This is silent only because it is suicidal to go there to report. Even Afghans cannot safely do so. US forces are resorting to a combination of artillery bombardment and air bombing - again just as they are resorting to in Iraq [see recent article for New Yorker by Seymour Hersh on this strategy]. The extent of the loss of control is not being reported. Woe betide the British and Dutch forces when they come here all "committed" (as one NATO commander commented recently) to "ending" the insurgency and ending the opium business. Hubris on a grand scale if ever I saw it...

I've been extremely busy down here. I don't have the energy or time to write it all up here, and in any case a large portion of it will be worked into my book. On that count, it's extremely interesting. Tonight, the head of the Qadiri Sufi order (the subject of my book) has invited me to his house for zikr. I visited the Canadian military PRT, soldiers of which have been redeployed from "somewhere in the south" [i.e. searching for Bin Laden and Mullah Omar]. I met with the two main organisations working with women's issues within Kandahar city. I met the minister of education here in south. I visited Kandahar university and talked with the chancellor. (Incidentally, I will write a longer piece solely on the University facilities throughout Afghanistan, which troubles me the more I learn). I visited more orthopaedic centres for landmine victims.

As regards universities in Kandahar, the campus has moved to next to the Mullah Omar's Id-Gah mosque. It's really so far out of the way, that students have difficulty getting in. 1100 students in total, most of whom are medicine students. Out of this 1100 there are 30 women registered, but I've been informed by others that there are actually only 8 women actually studying there. There is a whole dormitory (out of seven) for girls, but obviously few takers. Security for the students is a problem, as a wall around the campus hasn't yet been built. A lack of professors and/or the professors' lack of training is similarly an issue. The library is in a similarly shoddy condition to that of Herat [see last email].

There are two organisations that seem to be doing the most for women's issues: the Afghan Women's Centre (part of the government Ministry for Women's Affairs) (AWC) and a US-born NGO called Afghans for Civil Society (ACS). Both have a different approach to the situation of women's rights. AWC is a small operation at the moment, offering some computer and English classes (for free) to women, as well as operating a handicraft workshop. They hope to offer a library in the near future, as well as expand their programmes. ACS, on the other hand, seems actively engaging with the society in a pragmatic step-by-step approach which seems eminently suited to the conservative society. I'll write more about these two organisations in a different email about women in Afghanistan.

In terms of elections and local politics, different things have emerged. In the recent elections, the Karzai family did well, as well as the communists, as well as the 'usual suspects' of drug- and warlords. To a large extent this has politically legitimised the people America is at the same time fighting against in the south.

As far as my book goes, I met the effective head of the Qadiri order in Kandahar on Tuesday night, and am due to meet with the real leader in a week sometime. Every Thursday night I witness zikr (subject of my book, a kind of religious ceremony with dance) in a different part of the country. Tomorrow it'll be Kabul, and next week with Kuchi nomads in Khost. Then finally in Mazar-e Sharif a few days before I leave the country for Pakistan. Many people wish to help me with my book, and the people I talk to are saying much of interest. Watch this space...

I arrived in Kabul a few hours ago from Kandahar. Amazing that there isn't any snow on the way. A journey that took my 23 hours last December now only took 5. And the weather throughout the journey was really pleasant. Only here in Kabul the combination of the bone-penetrating cold (-13 celcius forecast tonight) and the altitude (approx. 1800 metres above sea-level) has given me a migraine. I'm staying in Kabul for zikr and leaving for Khost in the east of the country early on Friday morning. Happy new year to all in anticipation...

In war, you experience all sorts of horrible things, and, to be strictly honest, some marvellous things as well, above all in the personal generosity of strangers that comes as close to fulfilling the Christian notion of grace as anything this vertebral nonbeliever has ever encountered. But learn anything worth communicating? Only if seeing people die, in your arms, at your feet, by your side, within your sight, while all the while there is absolutely nothing you can do to save them or rescue them, constitutes learning. And it does not. It's just death and suffering in all their infinite variety, clogging one's nostrils and taking over one's brain until one doesn't know whether to dream of justice or flight, or simply of being somewhere else, where there is silence when you crave it, noise only when you need it, light, heat, comfortable beds, and cold glasses of good white wine.

David Rieff, A Bed for the Night

2005-12-29T10:06:00.000+04:30

The Weight of Oranges

"Now I lodge in the cabbage patches
Of the important...
Not much sleep under strange roofs
With my life far away..."
(Osip Mandelstam)

My cup's the same sand colour as bread.
Rain's the colour of a building across the street,
It's torn red dahlias
And ruined a book propped on the sill.

Rain articulates the skins of everything,
Pink of bricks from the fire they baked in,
Lizard green leaves,
The wrinkled tongues of pine cones.
It's accurate the way we never are,
Bringing out what's best
Without changing a thing.
Rain that makes beds damp,
Our room a cave in the morning,
A tent in late afternoon,
Ignites the sound of leaves we miss all winter.
The sound that pulled us to bed...
Caught in the undertow of wind in wet leaves.

I'm writing in the sound we woke to,
Curtains breathing into a half-dark room.

I'm up early now, walking.
Remember our walks, horizons like lips
Barely red at dawn,
How kind the distance seemed?

Letters should be written to send news, to say
Send me new, to say
Meet me at the train station.
Not these dry tears, to honour us like a tomb.
I'm ashamed of our separation.
I wake in the middle of night and see "shame"
Written in the air like in a Bible story.
I dreamed my skin was tattooed,
Covered with the words that put me here,
Covered in sores, in quarantine - and you know what?
I was afraid to light the lamp and look.

Your husband's a good builder - I burned
Every house we had, with a few words to start the flames.
Words of wood,
They had no power of their own.
"The important" gave them meaning
And humble with gratitude
They exploded in my face.

Now we're like planets, holding to each other
From a great distance. When the lay down
Oceans flexed their green muscles,
Life got busy in the other hemisphere,
The globe tilted, bowing to our power!

Now we're hundreds of miles apart,
Our short arms keep us lonely,
No one hears what's in my head.
I look old. I'm losing my hair.
Where does lost hair go in this world,
Lost eyesight, lost teeth?
We grow old like rivers, get shrunk and doubled over
Until we can't find the mouth of anything.

It's March, even the birds
Don't know what to do with themselves.

Sometimes I'm certain those who are happy
Know one thing more than us...or one thing less.
The only book I'd write again
Is our bodies closing together.
That's the language that stuns,
Scars, breathes into you.
Naked, we had voices!

I want you to promise
We'll see each other again,
You'll send a letter.
Promise we'll be lost together
In our forest, pale birches of our legs.

I hear your voice now - I know,
Everyone knows promises come from fear.
People don't live past each other,
You're always here with me. Sometimes
I pretend you're in the other room
Until it rains...and then
This is the letter I always write:
The letter I write
When they're keeping me from home.
I smell your supper steaming in the kitchen.
There are paper bags on the table
With their bottoms melted out
By rain and the weight of oranges.

(Anne Michaels)

2005-12-26T17:03:00.000+04:30

Still in Kandahar. The south is super-fascinating, and will send you a long email when I get a bit of energy. Having a bit of a lull at the moment, although quite active around Kandahar. Discovering much about the massive loss of government/US control of the south and east. Quite worrying. Big problems for the future. Also learning about the really awful state of the country's education system. Some positive things though, esp in terms of a good NGO in Kandahar which has an interesting approach to women's issues in the south.

2005-12-22T12:07:00.000+04:30

When introducing Herat writers traditionally quote Robert Byron's famous pronouncement: "Herat is Asia without an inferiority complex". Not without reason, too. The people of Herat are proud of their independence, fiercely coveted during the 'reign' of Ismael Khan as governor here (more about him later). The culture here is also strongly influenced by Iran, whose border is relatively close; an eight-hour bus journey takes to you to Mashhad, the closest city of significant size. Herat always was referred to in agricultural terms. Herodotus himself wrote of Herat as the “breadbasket of Central Asia” on account of its rich soil. Communities first settled here some 5000 years ago, and the city has since become a fertile crossing-ground fusing Persian and Turkic influences.

Notably, Herat had its first 'successful' suicide bomber on Tuesday morning, which wounded 3 Italian ISAF 'soldiers'. I say first successful because apparently (I haven't been able to check/confirm this yet in my archives) there was also a suicide bomber about 4 months ago (near the hotel where I'm staying) against one of the local military leaders (or 'commanders' as they're called here). That attack was related to the election, and rumour has it that the attack was planned by Ismael Khan's men. Also the ISAF forces targeted were part of the so-called PRTs (Provincial Reconstruction Team), whereby the army gets to put a good face on its actions by engaging in the work of NGOs, thus blurring the boundary between NGO and military; this confusion of roles has been much discussed within the NGO community.

At any rate, the suicide bomber is rumoured to be the first of several 'lying in waiting' in Herat. This is bad news for the city, which until now had a reputation (even in those who cared to know in the West) for safety and security. As we've seen also in Mazar-e Sharif, the instability which has nestled deep into the south of the country has spread upwards to previously calm provinces; N.B. on 14th December there was also a suicide bomber near the shrine in Mazar-e Sharif, calculated to injure the larger number of pilgrims that come on Wednesdays.

Change is rippling through Herat too. Of course it's part of returning to Afghanistan (and other 'developing' countries) to see new things. Young people are increasingly wearing 'western' clothes such as trousers and leather jackets. I'm increasingly asked by young people why I'm wearing shalwaar-qamiis [the traditional Afghan clothing, a sort of linen all-day pyjama outfit] when I could wear jeans or trousers. Again, however, S&C is still the norm.

The music people listen to (on the radio, television, or download as ring-tones or as MP3s onto their mobile phones) is moving from traditional styles towards the more popular western-drum-bass standard. This isn't a positive development for Afghan culture. Of course, there are still centres of 'classical' Afghan music, to which Veronica Doubleday and John Bailey both have made testimony.

Mobile phones, as in much of the Middle East, are all the rage. Everywhere I go, people ask me where I bought my phone [an ordinary Samsung] and how much it cost. As I saw in Iran, Afghans who can afford it go through a large number of mobile phones each year just to be 'in'. Needless to say, the large majority of Afghans don't have mobile phones.

Skills Training Centre, the school for English tuition and now I.T. (computer lessons) that I wrote about when I was in Herat last winter, seems to be going from strength to strength. My good friend Haroon continues to man the helm alone. Many of the teachers that I met a year ago are still there. It is generally acknowledged to be the best outside-school school for learning English in Herat, largely on account of the excellent and devoted teachers.

Most of these are former pupils at the school, who now are studying at university and use their teaching job as a way of earning money on the side. Many also have occasional work as interpreters; most, for example, worked as interpreters or assistants to the international monitoring groups that arrived (and duly left) for the various elections here. Roughly speaking, a teacher might earn $100 for three months of work (6 days per week).

New buildings are rising skywards all over town too. Next to my hotel in the centre of town, a merkez-e tejarat, a shiny glass building, has been finished. Also a 5-star hotel a few kilometres outside town was opened to moderate ceremony last week (mirroring the opening of Kabul's 5-star Serena Hotel) recently. My driver and I went past this morning to see the rooms and were refused entry half-way up the driveway. American troops, we were told, were staying there and had instructed no other guests to be admitted...

Also, interestingly, there's are a few new 'malls' in town. Melly Mall ('National mall' in Farsi) is near my hotel too, and is dominated by mobile phone shops (which are all over the rest of town as well). Bemused elder Afghans wander the polished tiles, and a 'bouncer' of sorts mans the doors, much as I've heard happens in Kabul (but hopefully more on that once I go there later in the month). I fear, too, that this isn't necessarily the best step forward for Afghanistan at this time. Instead, I'd suggest it's yet another indicator of the widening gap between rich and poor in the country.

As far as Herat's history is concerned, a few events are worth pointing out:
- Alexander the Great, upon entering Herat in 330BC first adopted Persian dress and customs in order to persuade the peoples of Afghanistan (and Central Asia) that he was a legitimate ruler.
- The initial Muslim conquest of Herat in 652AD was led by the governor of Basra, Abdullah bin Amir [Iraq didn't exist as a state back then]
- This attests to the influence of poetry - during the Samanid dynasty, based in Bukhara, one ruler (Nasr ibn Ahmad) found he liked Herat so much that he didn't want to leave. Each time an opportunity arose, he found some excuse to stay. His army and court, yearning for their own country, paid a poet to write a poem which would 'cure' their leader [the poem still exists]. Indeed, after hearing it, he jumped on a horse immediately, not adjusting his stirrups until he reached Mazar-e Sharif.
- Genghis Khan's nominal ruler in Herat lost the loyalty of the people, and in 1222 Genghis accordingly decided to kill every single member of the large 160,000-strong population. He was apparently quite successful, as only 26 [I think, can't check at the moment] people survived in town, as well as 14 from the outlying villages. These 40 people lived for several months/years [not sure again] in the courtyard of the Friday Mosque, surviving on the food the ghost-town that the massacre had left behind. They stayed that way until Ogodai Qa'an, Genghis' son, decided to rebuild Herat several years later.

The Timurid renaissance, a glorious period of artistic and cultural rebirth at the end of the 14th century, was focused on Herat. Shah Rukh, who moved his throne and capital to Herat in 1404, was the engineer (along with his wife, Gowhar Shad, who played no small role) of the flowering of arts, architecture, painting, learning and literature.

The Friday Mosque itself isn't a product of this period (dating from Ghorid times around 1200) but the intricate tilework that covers it is a direct Timurid addition. It really is something that can't adequately be conveyed in photos (certainly not my mobile-phone shots). Yesterday I sat there for two hours in a state of wonder. It isn't just the variety of colour, the fecundity of invention, the beauty of the patterns. I only left when I lost the feeling in my rear (as the stones of the mosque are ice-cold this time of year).

Similarly, the mausoleum of Gowhar Shad is (or at least was) earth-shatteringly rich in its decoration. Originally a madrassa or religious school, there was later the tomb-building, as well as 30 individually decorated minarets. [See Jason Elliot for a more detailed description]. Robert Byron described it in 1937 as “the most beautiful example of colour in architecture ever devised to the glory of God and himself.” As things happened, though, the musalla complex (as it is otherwise known) was blown up by a British officer [his name was C.E. Yate] during the Pandjeh crisis where, under threat of Russian southward invasion, it was decided that the minarets needed to be demolished in order to give Herat a better chance of defence. The invasion, of course, never took place.

Herat was also home to a large number of poets and Sufi 'mystics'. The poet Jami, the Sufi Ansari, the scholar Mahmud Arifi etc etc. [the list goes on and on]. The saying goes that you couldn't stretch your leg out in Herat without kicking a poet during those Timurid times.

As concerns today, though, education is on the up. Central government statistics confirm that 6.5 million more children are being schooled than during Taliban times. English tuition is, generally speaking, the focus of this education. At the university, the number of enrolments in courses increases year by year, but the number of graduates has stayed stable. I suppose this is similar to the trend in the UK at the moment. Some who were active in Taliban times and who previously resisted education are showing an interest. An uncle of a friend of mine, too, at 70 years old is beginning courses in computing and English (taking his classes alongside 5 and 7 year olds). The government policy seems to be gearing towards private education (i.e. privately financed) - note the new American-sponsored university in Kabul; annual fees of $3000 mean that few can apply. The effectiveness of a policy of private education remains to be seen. My friends have no problem with it per se (as tuition will be better) just so long as fees aren't prohibitively expensive.

I visited the university, bare and unwelcoming even by the standards of my own university in London. There weren't any students as end-of-year exams are about to begin. Each faculty is in a different place. The university administration (whom my good friend Mirwais and I approached to get some figures – to follow as person wasn’t around today) is also in a different location.

Tuition has only recently become mixed-sex, in conformity with the rest of the country. The medical faculty – with a conservative mullah as president – is the last to change. The final year of medicine students are mixed, though, as they said unless they were allowed to study together they would refuse to show up for study. The rest are expected to become mixed at the beginning of next academic year. Ismael Khan’s daughter is studying medicine (two or three years below my friend in the faculty) and rumour has it that the separation is a direct result of his wish to protect his daughter. Rumours, though.

As far as libraries are concerned, my chief point of interest in the university, they are in really poor condition. My friend didn’t even know where his library was. There are a few Farsi books (necessary as most don’t speak English, despite the current drive in the education policy) and a haphazard selection of English books. These are parting ‘gifts’ from NGOs who donate their library (a random assortment of pulp novels and history books) to the university library. Accordingly students must buy their own books for study. Most of these come for Iran, as Afghan translations of medical textbooks, for example, are scarce.

Tuition in the universities is also reportedly poor, with teachers just reading from notes without any knowledge of the subject. My friends (also English teachers) talk of coming back to teach properly at the university once they have graduated and are doctors. Exams are tough, and heavily reliant on rote-learning of detailed descriptions of diseases etc. But as far as I can tell, it’s similar in the UK too, no?

Tourism has yet to take off in Herat in the same way as it has in Kabul (to a certain extent). A fearless few will pop over from Iran, but generally there isn’t a big market; something that the new 5* hotel might hope to counter? In my hotel at the moment, there is an English tourist who has a certain interest in the country. Also a Japanese tour-group (without cameras, but complete with fluent-farsi-speaking guide) who liven up the hotel’s restaurant every evening.

Otherwise, Herat is truly bustling at the moment. Much as I might be tempted to talk of the destruction and poverty of the country, the centre of town really doesn’t feel like that at all.

I’m traveling onwards to Kandahar tomorrow morning. Sufi zikr rite/ceremony tonight at Gazar Gah. Still plan three more articles on Herat: one on Sufism/zikr, one as more ‘free’ intro to Afghanistan, and a piece on bus/taxi travel in Afghanistan.

2005-12-21T12:52:00.000+04:30

Further images from Herat that I took on my drive around this morning.

Gazar-Gah, shrine of Khoja Abullahi Ansari, Sufi mystic saint from medieval times, home to many cats (of whom he was fond), and visited by women who hope contact with his tomb will make them pregnant. Popular place for picnics as well. This is also where Sufis meet for zikr on thursday evenings.
Ismael Khan's son's grave with two friends who were killed alongside him. Ismael Khan was once effective 'king' of Herat, and the people still talk about him with fond memories. For sure, he wasn't all good, but Herat's prosperity and good condition (excellent roads, street lighting etc) are to no small extent due to him.
same as 2
Grave of the son of my driver. Farvar, age 5. Killed 7 months ago.
New 5* hotel just opened in Herat last week. Driver and I were refused entry because apparently American special forces soldiers had taken up residence there and "absolutely nobody" is to be allowed in. Great for business I'm sure...
View of Herat city from Gazar-Gah
Ghar Darwisham: old sufi meeting room, no longer used. (all subsequent photos also of this place). To get there you have to walk a couple of kilometres up a hill. Relatively isolated. Really dark inside. Atmospheric place.

2005-12-21T09:52:00.000+04:30

Taking advantage of the good internet connection here to post some pictures of Herat. Text to follow soon hopefully.

View of minarets of Gowhar Shad (will write more in email about her...)
Fragments of the minarets that fell down during the annual 'wind-of-40-days-and-nights' that Herat experiences. No sign of reconstruction any time soon...
Inside of Herat's famous Friday mosque. Stunningly beautiful. Colours don't come out very well. Think a deep turquoise blue instead.
Same, also from inner courtyard.
View onto city-centre, one of the roundabouts. View from hotel balcony.

2005-12-21T09:24:00.000+04:30

As the first significant stop on my way to Afghanistan, Iran was once-again captivating and a reminder that difference in form doesn't necessarily mean difference in quality. As the Chechen proverb goes: "the dog gave meat to the donkey, and the donkey gave hay to the dog - both went hungry. Every people likes its own customs."

This isn't to say that Iran and her people seek isolation. Quite the opposite. Young Iranians seek out western 'pop culture' in a number of shapes and forms, be it "the disco" in Dubai, trendy western-sounding Iranian pop-stars, the latest mobile phone, or even in dress-sense. Leather jackets, jeans and an 'in' hairstyle all are facets of the well-turned-out youth.

Iran is three times as big as France, and over 70 million people live within her borders. Tehran has about 16m (including outskirts). As of mid-2005 approximately two-thirds live in cities, two-thirds are under 35 years of age, and there are 8m internet users in Iran.

As regards politics, Iran is essentially a theocracy. The secular half of the government consists of an elected president and an elected parliament. It has big responsibilities but little power. The religious half of the government consists of an unelected supreme leader and an unelected guardian council. It has little responsibility but lots of power.

Recent events have kept Iran in the news. Ahmadinejad, the president, claimed that the Jewish holocaust may not have happened; it was, instead, a "myth"; he suggested that Europe should host the Jewish nation. Also smog in Tehran put over 1,600 people into hospital a week before I arrived. Tehran's location is such that the city isn't well ventilated and the systems of surrounding mountains prevent the passage of fresh air. A military plane destined for Bandar Abbas crashed into an apartment block, killing 150+ people. Needless to say, conflict continues to bubble over regarding Iran's nuclear capacities.

I stayed with some Uzbek friends of mine (originally from Afghanistan) in town, and was given a true Afghan welcome there. I stayed for a few days so as to acclimatise myself to the language, culture and temperature - much colder than a balmy twenty-degree Damascus.

First port of call, the Reza Abbasi museum. A special exhibition of 'Microcalligraphy' was on display downstairs. This consisted of trinkets containing pieces of rice with words written on them; here a Hafez poem, there a surah from the Quran. This wasn't so interesting.

Upstairs, some visible glories of old Persian culture were on display: miniatures of the 13th and 14th centuries (pictured). The manuscript illustrations range from the separate leaves from early shah-names to the album studies of the late Savafid period. I had come looking for some pictures of dancing dervishes, such as described by Sa'adi (more about him later). The pictures leap off the page, some even literally cross over the pages frame, possessing a deeply endearing larger-than-life quality. The colours of the illustrations were vividly portrayed in colour too. Many of these miniatures are housed in the US nowadays, and the collection in the museum was relatively small. Also in the museum were historical calligraphy excerpts (from the Quran etc) as well as artistic metalwork.

It was interesting to move then to the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (even though most of the collection on display was from the period 1977-79). Lots of paintings, along with a few sculptures. Oddly, there wasn't that much figurative art, and lots of abstract art. This I found especially noteworthy, even though the Iranian friends who accompanied me around the museum were less than excited about art that "anyone [can] do". I found myself hovering around the abstract works, almost to prove a point, even if I didn't particularly care for it.

Outside the museum, we went for a walk in a park. Parks, as far as I'm concerned, are one of the best things about Tehran. You're never far from one, and once inside you can pleasantly forget you're in the middle of a bustling capital city with heavy pollution problems. During my stay I went to three different parks (Lale, Sa'ii, and Jamshidii). Iranians like to walk in the parks at all times of day and night. Last year, after heavy snowfall, I was wandering around Jamshidii park (in a quest for a well-known Kurdish restaurant) at around 10pm only to find many families (and this includes the 4 or 5-year-olds) taking a stroll. Sa'ii park - to make a connection with my last post - even has a skating-rink, which reminded me of that in Central Park, New York. The not-so-sky-scrapers of Tehran cast a bright background. Lots of young people running around etc despite the (relatively) cold weather.

The next morning I took the metro to go see Khomeini. A strange experience partly due to segregation of sexes (not compulsory, as far as I could tell; but there were several special carriages reserved for women). However it was also jarring to travel in an underground rail carriage without any advertisements or posters whatsoever. White from tip-to-toe.

The huge site of Khomeini's grave is located in the south-west of Tehran, adjacent to the behest-e zahra cemetery, named after an epithet of Fatima, the Prophet's daughter and wife to Ali, the first Imam. Inside the mausoleum, there were forty-odd girls "praying" (as one man told me) or otherwise undergoing religious study. Khomeini's green-glass tomb-house was filled with money from well-wishers (or just simply wishers). The massive complex is still under construction, and has several domes and minarets. A shopping mall of sorts also surrounds the mosque.

The large cemetery near-by (Behest-e Zahra) is famous for two things: as a place of interment for soldiers who fought in the Iran-Iraq war, and as a cemetery for the revolutionary movement against the Pahlevi regime; many of those killed in the 1978 demonstrations were buried here (after the September 8th 1978 demonstration, over 4290 burial certificates were issued for this site). No wonder then, that this was the place Khomeini chose for his first public speech six months later. The central fountain once ran with blood-red coloured water to symbolise the loss of Iran during the Iran-Iraq war. Wandering around the cramped burial quarters, the faces of many young men stared out, as if to challenge me.

I spent an enjoyable couple of hours then wandering in the old bazaar of Tehran, and eating 'traditional' Persian food in an old restaurant with Behrouz and Miilat, my Iranian-Afghan-Uzbek friends and hosts. All that was left was for me to find a farsi-language copy of Sa'adi's Golestan, a collection of poems and stories and a classic of Persian literature. This would accompany me on my travels in Afghanistan, I hoped. As a little taster for his humour and wisdom side by side, here are two stories:

[1st story]: A padshah [kind of king] was in the same boat with a Persian slave who had never before been at sea and experienced the inconvenience of a vessel. He began to cry and to tremble to such a degree that he could not be pacified by kindness, so that at last the king became displeased as the matter could not be remedied. In that boat there happened to be a philosopher, who said: 'With thy permission I shall quiet him.' The padshah replied: 'It will be a great favour.' The philosopher ordered the slave to be thrown into the water so that he swallowed some of it, whereon he was caught and pulled by his hair to the boat, to the stern of which he clung with both his hands. Then he sat down in a corner and became quiet. This appeared strange to the king who knew not what wisdom there was in the proceeding and asked for it. The philosopher replied: 'Before he had tasted the calamity of being drowned, he knew not the safety of the boat; thus also a man does not appreciate the value of immunity from a misfortune until it has befallen him.'

[Second story, illustrating the maxim that love means continuing to care after hope has gone]: "Once upon a time there was a woman who had three suitors. Before she could choose between them, she fell ill and died. One of the young men wandered the world, vowing to find a way to bring her back to life. The second spent his time comforting her aged father. The last threw himself on her grave and refused to budge.

It so happened that the wandering suitor rescued a wise man who had fallen down a well. The sage knew how to make an ointment that could bring the dead to life. However, he required the root of a particular tree, which was guarded by a ferocious monster. The young man vanquished the monster and got hold of the root; the ointment was prepared. When it was rubbed on to the woman's corpse, she was restored to life.

All the suitors began to pester the lady for her hand. 'I was a comfort to your father in his sorrow,' said the first young man. 'I lay by your grave, pining away with love,' said the second. 'But it was I who found the ointment that saved you,' said the third.

The woman said: 'The suitor who looked after my father was a son for him. The one who found the ointment is a humanitarian. But the man who lay weeping upon my grave after all hope had died, he is the one who behaved like a lover and I shall marry none but him.'"

Mashhad (in the east) is one of the next cities (after Tehran) of comparable size, at 2m inhabitants. I took the bus from Tehran to Mashhad and jumped straight on a bus to Herat. This journey of 23-hours and over 800 miles cost me around $5 or £2.50. I finished Karen Armstrong's A Short History of Myth as well as Tolstoy's Hadji Murat [less impressive than I'd expected...]. I'm rereading Karen Armstrong's biography of Muhammad at the moment, as well as dipping into Sa'adi's Golestan here and there. Will travel to Kandahar (south Afghanistan) on Thursday morning probably.

2005-12-20T18:44:00.000+04:30

Herat had its first ever suicide bomber today. It was interesting to be in the town for that, as it is a measure of the changes taking place in the country. There are wide-spread rumours that there are other suicide bombers in Herat waiting to act as well. Luckily nobody was killed today, but 3 Italian PRT (Provincial Reconstruction Team) members were injured, and around 5 or 6 local 'civilians' also injured.

2005-12-15T00:06:00.000+04:30

"Some starry night, when her kisses make you tingle, she'll hold you tight, and you'll hate yourself for being single." (The Tender Trap)

"And all at once it seems so nice..." (The Tender Trap)

"These little town blues are melting away; I'm gonna make a brand new start of it - in old New York..." (New York, New York)

"Shimmering clouds - glimmering clouds, in canyons of steel; they're making me feel I'm home. It's autumn in New York that brings the promise of new love..." (Autumn in New York)

A friend living in the U.S. wrote to me recently that the things I write about are removed from the "real world", as he put it. Apparently I need to "reconnect", in reference to Forster I presume. So to idle away time on the bus this afternoon I put together some ideas about New York/Christmas movies. I also consider it my tuppence-worth contribution to the festive season. Sorry it's a little disorganised, I didn't research it that much.

A Very Saccharine Modern Myth

"All cultures have developed a mythology about the heroic quest. The hero feels that there is something missing in his own life or in his society. The old ideas that have nourished his community for generations no longer speak to him. So he leaves home and endures death-defying adventures. He fights monsters, climbs inaccessible mountains, traverses dark forests and, in the process, dies to his old self, and gains a new insight or skill, which he brings back to his people." (Karen Armstrong A Short History of Myth, 2005)

So what do New York films (where the city takes a role akin to a character in the film itself) and Christmas films (at least partly set during Christmas) have in common? Well firstly a certain type of music is a good indication - generally Frank Sinatra or Louis Armstrong. When Harry Met Sally begins with Louis, as does Serendipity; What Women Want is saturated with Frank Sinatra, as is Surviving Christmas.

Generally speaking, the film will show extravagant lifestyles with lots of money being spent. This is often bound into the idea of America as a 'land of opportunity'. Take The Terminal, where Tom Hanks (as Victor Novorski from Krakozia) proves himself with his skills and takes a job as a contractor.

It also helps if there's a love interest of some sort running throughout. Home Alone I and II are the only films that I can recall that defy the pattern. Different kind of love at stake there...

Snow is a good sign, and features prominently - often in conjunction with pictures of ice-skating - in most of the films. A certain type of man may be found, perhaps best embodied in the example of Frank Sinatra. Often, though by no means always, the female lead is an embodiment of this Anne Michaels passage:

"But sometimes the world disrobes, slips its dress off a shoulder,stops time for a beat. If we look up at that moment, it's not due toany ability of ours to pierce the darkness, it's the world's briefbestowal. The catastrophe of grace." (Fugitive Pieces)

I guess that applies to Claire Forlani alone (in Meet Joe Black). Night is also a big player in NY films. Note how Frank's Strangers in the Night is a constant feature in New York films. It even turns up in Kubrick's sort-of-New-York film Eyes Wide Shut.

The following list of films is in chronological order, with comments here and there:

It's a Wonderful Life (1946) is probably the ur-Christmas film,and went on to be remade as The Family Man with Nicholas Cage, surely a contender for the ultimate Xmas/NY film. When Harry Met Sally(1989) ends during the Christmas 'season', with Meg finally getting together with Mr Sadness in the first seconds of the new year. Home Alone I (1990), as I said, is slightly out of place, but Christmas plays a central role. The fact that 'everything turns out well' is another generally vital feature of Xmas films. But, remember Emma Thompson's sadness in Love Actually, Britain's answer to the NY/Xmasfilm...

Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) is set in New York, and even has the Gremlins sing a memorable rendition of Frank's New York, New York half-way through. Home Alone II (1992) builds on the success of the original, set in the splendour of a hotel. Sleepless in Seattle (1993) pairs Tom and Meg during the Christmas period. Leon: the Professional (1993) is set in New York, but without the Christmas. Miracle on 34th Street (1997) is a remake of an earlier film. The idea of the 'Christmas miracle' is one particularly cherished by thegenre...

You've Got Mail (1998) returns to the classic combination of Tom and Meg in an update of the usual romance. Great Expectations (1999) once again doesn't feature christmas. Similarly with Meet Joe Black (1999), but the final birthday party for Anthony Hopkins is a Christmas of sorts. Shares many of the main characteristics. Eyes Wide Shut (1999) an oddity within the genre. Bringing Out the Dead (1999) set in NY. Likewise Finding Forrester (2000) with Sean Conneryand Anna Paquin.

The Family Man (2000) with Nicholas Cage is a classic example of the NY/Xmas film. No Sinatra or Armstrong, but a story of a man who needsto 'rediscover' the meaning of Christmas in order to restore some meaning in his life. Modern heroes...

Mel Gibson stars in What Women Want (2000), replete with innuendo and whose soundtrack bursts with Frank et al. A portrait of a "man's man". Kate & Leopold (2001) returns to New York with a time shift. Vanilla Sky (2001) is set in NY. Serendipity (2001) shares the topspot with Family Man, an classic tale of lost loves. Beginning and ending with Louis Armstrong, snow is all around along with the required images of Central Park etc. Use of coldness as a catalyst for romance - often why snow is used in such films.

A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001) set in a 'fallen' NY. Autumn inNew York (2001) sees Richard Gere cast in his Pretty Woman guise andwith the fragile Winona Ryder as his love interest. Another good example of a good synthesis of all the key elements. Slight twist to the tale at end.

Coyote Ugly (2001) is just an NY film, slightly out of character. The 25th Hour (2002) as the first 'post 9-11' film is a brooding portrait of the city, and certainly outside the usual type. Anna Paquin proves herself again in this film. Catch Me If You Can (2002) has a NY feel throughout, though doesn't play that long in town. Maid in Manhattan (2002) has the love and the location. Lacking snow and christmas. Panic Room (2002); Phone Booth (2002); Spider-Man (2002); Mr. Deeds(2002); Uptown Girls (2003); Down with Love (2003).

How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days (2003) isn't strictly speaking a Christmas film, but the idea of "frost yourself" lends itself well to the idea. Spider-Man 2 (2004). The Terminal (2004) portrays the 'nice' America: that of Starbucks, Borders, as well as the suggestion that there's a Catherine Zeta Jones around every New York corner. The final release, when Victor gets to "go New York City", is set up almost as a return to the promised land; this is tactfully played against Victor's deep loyalty to the fictional 'Krakozia'.

Melinda and Melinda (2004); 13 Going on 30 (2004); Surviving Christmas(2004) with Ben Affleck as the bored executive trying to find meaning in his life by hiring a family to resurrect feelings of Christmas spirit. Happily-ever-after of course. Hitch (2005) is the most recent example of the New York movie, though without the Christmas.

I want to suggest that many of these presentations of "moonlight and music and love and romance" (Let's Face the Music and Dance) form a mythology of sorts. That of the search for meaning. That of the hero.

2005-12-13T16:35:00.001+04:30

In what is manifestly the wrong time to be leaving Syria, I depart for Tehran tomorrow evening. For those out of the loop, a little background.

Lebanon: Explosion on February 14th 2005 killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri as well as 22 others. UN sets up team to investigate. One report published soon after ("the Fitzgerald Report"), followed by another ("the Mehlis report [pt.1]") on 19th October, soon to be followed by the final installment on December 15th. In the interim period, Syrian troops were essentially forced out of the country on account of a popular movement (peaceful in nature) as well as strong international pressure in the wake of the Hariri bombing. There have been assassinations and killings of anti-Syrian journalists (most notably yesterday morning Gibran Tueni, MP and editor of Al-Nahar newspaper, died in a car-bomb) as well as sporadic bombs in Christian quarters of Beirut. There is a strong anti-Syrian feeling within Lebanon.

Syria: As part of the 'axis of evil', Syria faces strong pressure to issue wide-ranging reforms in order to 'give democracy and freedom' to her people. Resisting such designs on Syria and alleged US plans of regime change by force, Bashar al-Assad has decided to take a stand in the face of mounting international pressure. A senior intelligence officer who was stationed in Lebanon during the civil war, Ghazi Kenaan, allegedly committed suicide recently too. Syria remains accused of playing a significant role in the Hariri bombing, and it is expected that the upcoming report on Thursday will come down heavily upon Syria.

[from a report by Al-Nahar: "They said the report will include three main elements: Strong evidence that Syria has been uncooperative, thus violating its commitments and pledges; a recommendation for the questioning of Syrian and Lebanese officers and politicians; and the creation of an international court to try suspects in the Hariri murder.

Quoting a diplomatic document, senior U.S. diplomats, said that as a consequence to the Syrian stance, the Security Council might impose sanctions on Syrian officials: the president, members of the Syrian Parliament, the prime minister, the defense minister and the foreign minister. Under the sanctions, Security Council member states will be prohibited from hosting these officials and their assets will be frozen."]

On November 10th, Bashar al-Assad made a speech at the University of Damascus, in which he laid out a systematic answer to many of the international "grievances". As a rallying cry to the country, it was a strange speech to listen to. Designed to appeal to the young, and with many odd academic and scientific metaphors (including one referring to cell metabolism), the speech covered the whole gamut of issues facing Syria, even taking time out to allege that Arafat was poisoned in Palestine by Israeli agents. The speech similarly set up Syria as victims, a sentiment that is much present within ordinary Syrians. "It is only natural that they should blame Syria," he said. On Iraq and the issues facing the neighbor country: "Ultimately, no one will stand by Iraq except its Arab sister states". The speech made much of traditional pan-Arab links, to which I guess he sought to appeal. There were expressions of friendship to "sister Lebanon". A story of the rape of a family is told. Shall we let this happen to Syria, he asked? "If there are mistakes in the state, we all discuss them at home, but we will not allow anybody to talk about them from the outside." After all, as he stated, "social cohesion is increasing". He listed a series of reforming measures that he had initiated.

At any rate, since then we've had the allegations that Hariri's son (Sa'ad, in Beirut) had offered money to a Syrian to falsely testify to the UN Mehlis comission. This was revealed in a press conference and TV interview held in Damascus two weeks ago. Also notable was that this claim was immediately taken as fact by many Syrians, thus "discrediting the sham of the Mehlis investigation" as one friend put it. Also you may have read of the deaths of several "terrorists" north of Damascus near Aleppo. These reports of SANA [The Syrian Arab News Network], which make their way onto BBC News seemingly without confirmation, are obviously useful for the Syrian regime, allowing it to boast that it too has a problem with 'terrorists' within Syria. It has since been claimed that the attacks in the north were by Syrian forces on offices of a political opposition movement. Al Seyassah, Kuwait, claimed in the same report via a source in Paris that Aleppo is due to become 'the new Hama', and that often these attacks on 'terrorists' were simply operations against political or religious bases of opposition (such as the Ikhwaan el-muslimiin, the Muslim Brotherhood, who offer the most serious opposition to the current regime).

Journalists covering Damascus do so from the comfy vantage-point of Beirut to the obvious detriment of that same coverage. There have been several confirmed reports of US nationals (uni students reading Arabic at AUB, the American University of Beirut) being refused entry on the border between Lebanon and Syria. I myself, to clarify in Syria's defence, have seen Americans obtaining visas without problem at the border on each of the 3 times I returned from Lebanon in the last month.

As you can see from the photos, banners and flags have been draped over many parts of Damascus. Slogans are printed across them: "God will protect you, Syria!", and "Resistance and Islam", as well as "We condemn trading in Al-Hariri blood!" (pictured). A small graffiti has had the good fortune to remain on the stairs of a Syrian national monument up in Muhajerine: "Fuck You U.S.A.".

Demonstrations happen often, either of the official kind or the spontaneous lets-get-together-after-work-and-walk-in-the-streets-of-damascus-and-show-our-conviction kind. One of the mobile networks, with connections to the regime's leadership, sends out txt messages (in Arabic) letting people know when and where the big demonstrations will be. University students, as well as the large masse of state employees are 'encouraged' to attend these rallies.

The reaction 'on the street' varies quite a lot. Iraqi refugees living in Damascus are understandably more concerned with the elections taking place in their country on the same day as the release of the Mehlis report to the public (it has already been submitted in secret to the UN). However, they realise the singular importance of the upcoming Mehlis report (pursuant to UN Security Council resolution 1595 (2005)). Taxi drivers don't seem to give a shit really, no matter what you ask them. They're too busy working two or three jobs just to make ends meet. I can't bear to imagine the damage that a serious round of newly-imposed sanctions would inflict on ordinary Syrians.

At any rate, I'll be in smog-paradise, or Tehran, from Wednesday. I finished rereading John Gray's Al Qaeda and what it means to be modern and started, with much glee, Karen Armstrong's A Short History of Myth. For those of you looking for a good book on recent-ish Syrian politics etc, check out Neither Bread Nor Freedom by Alan George, an excellent primer on the post-Hafez al-Assad period...

2005-12-03T20:02:00.000+04:30

Books read Oct 1st-Dec 1st:

The Ministry of Pain - Dubravka Ugresic
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men - David Foster Wallace
Frontline - David Loyn
A Bed of Red Flowers - Nelofer Pazira
The Great War for Civilisation - Robert Fisk
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
On Identity - Amin Maalouf
Thank You For Not Reading - Dubravka Ugresic
Anil's Ghost - Michael Ondaatje (reread)
A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali - Giles Courtemanche (reread)
Chechnya: To the Heart of the Conflict - Andrew Meier
Baghdad Bulletin - David Enders
A Hundred And One Days - Asne Seierstad
The Wars against Saddam - John Simpson
Iraq in a Nutshell - Amy Roraback
War Junkie - Jon Steele
HP Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life - Michel Houellebecq
The Storyteller's Daughter - Saira Shah
The Swallows of Kabul - Yasmina Khadra
Taliban - Ahmed Rashid (reread)
Al-Qaeda - Jason Burke (reread)
The Carpet Wars - Christopher Kremmer
Platform - Michel Houellebecq

Books going with me to Afghanistan/Iran:

Shadows of the Sun - Ryszard Kapuscinski
The Death of Ivan Illych - Leo Tolstoy
Hadji Murat - Leo Tolstoy
Gulag: a history - Anne Applebaum
A Writer at War - Vasily Grossman
Taliban - Ahmed Rashid
Arabic short stories - compilation (in Arabic)
Sa'adi - Gulistan (in Farsi)

2005-11-14T21:18:00.000+04:30

Further Assad speech photos...

2005-11-14T21:06:00.000+04:30

This was the day when President Assad gave a speech and several thousand of his supporters came bearing flags. Of course it was a heavily organised march. Those employed by the government (many people in this deeply beaurocratised country, where you can't so much as sneeze without getting a set of stamps and a form "to be filled out in triplicate") were out in force, as we’ll as schoolchildren, who had needless to say been bussed in from their schools by teachers.

Much as crowds might hustle and bustle in Leicester Square on the night of a film premiere, hoping to catch a glimpse of the latest film-star, it was clear that a view of President Bashar was the sole aim of many. Indeed, after his speech began, at one of the buildings of the University of Damascus, many people began to leave. I caught a glimpse of him, waving as he walked up the steps into the building. His speech, long but relatively simple to understand if you were in a place with decent sound (I was listening to it on my portable radio), went through the main issues currently facing Syria. I won't bore you with the details; you can easily find the full text in Arabic and English online (try the Syrian News Agency website).

Part of what was interesting, though, was the fact that so many people were there out of conviction, at the same time. I was reading Amin Maalouf's book On Identity at the time (started well, but eventual disappointment) so partly my thoughts reflect that stimulus. Those demonstrating out of personal conviction weren't (at least this is what I drew from my own conversations with demonstrators) doing so out of deep love for their President (we needn't go into why there might be antipathy here...) but merely as a reaction to a perceived (and it's not just perceived for sure) western aggression against their country. People who wouldn't normally spare it a second thought - such essentially nationalist beliefs - are now being forced into this view.

And it's their right to it, certainly. However the same ugly thoughts reared their heads in class a couple of days after the demonstration. One of our teachers, in an effort to get us to speak I tell myself, got very defensive (the image of a goat or ram backed against a corner is appropriate) about Syria: "take your freedom and democracy"; "we don't want it here"; "we're happy as we are" etc. Anyway, we eventually got talking about Hama (and the 1982 massacre by Syrian forces of some 10-20000 inhabitants of the city) and the teacher said in response to some comment or other: "I give thanks for those that died in Hama so that we don't now suffer their actions" (this in the context of the conversation that the teacher had previously alleged that many terrorists and bad people were living there). I don't really have any constructive comment in reaction to that, save to say that I think the teacher's previous comments must be viewed in the context of an imposed defence of ones country. People who wouldn't normally need or want to express such opinions...you know the rest.

2005-11-14T21:01:00.000+04:30

A little background on the Armenian genocide of 1915. Approximately 1.5 million are said to have died, either as a direct result of action (shootings etc) or indirectly from the long marches that Armenians were forced to embark upon (pictured, and more on this later).

As evidence of Turkish knowledge/planning we have the Turkish Interior Minister writing on 15th September 1915: "You have already been informed that the Government...has decided to destroy completely all the indicated persons living in Turkey...their existence must be terminated, however tragic the measures taken may be, and no regard must be paid to either age or sex, or to any scruples of conscience."

Why, you might well ask? Well it's inevitably part to do with the fact that some Armenians (a sizeable number, not just a few) were supporting and fighting with their Christian enemies against Ottoman Turkey in the First World War. But also because nationalists with racist creed came into control of the power behind the government around 1915.

There had also been a relentless (well-documented) anti-Turkish campaign by Armenian terrorists since the late 1880s, perhaps 1890s, i.e. a long time. This included the murder of any senior Turks they could find; politicians, ambassadors, family of the emperor, you name it. That caused a lot of resentment, as so many prominent Turks did get killed by it. At the same time, the Armenians did have a serious plan to set up a Greater Armenia,which would have meant carving out a big big part of Eastern Anatolia. They also had got external support for this, from powers such as Russia, who simply wanted to undermine the Ottomans to themaximum extent possible. The Armenians had also been collaborating in the WWI operations with the powers fighting against Turkey, and had organized a number of units fighting with the Allies in the war. So they were widely seen by the population as traitors.

On 24th April 1915 (henceforth the Day of Armenian Genocide) arrests were made of 600 of the leading Armenian intelligentsia and businessmen, as well as 5000 others living in the Armenian quarters. Kurds, it should be noted, took a notable role in the perpetration of crimes against the Armenians, particularly in the north of Iraq and Syria. Killings, hangings, rape, mass population movements. It was all there. Robert Fisk notes in his book that the huge number of bodies in the Marqadeh killing-ground may have been the cause for the diversion of the course of the river Khabur.

In a cave at Shedadiyye (Syria), thousands were gassed (by rudimentary means; a smoky fire positioned in front of the cave's entrance. Thousands died in that cave to save bullets. Some convoys of Armenians were driven across huge distances. For example Marash (Turkey) to Aleppo (Syria) which was 150km, then 300km eastwards to Deir ez-Zor, then back north only to die in Marqadeh, another 150km away.

Here, copied from Philip Marsden's The Crossing Place, is an account of one of these "dismal convoys":

Day 1 - 3000 Armenians leave Kharput. Escort of seventy zapatieh under command of Faiki Bey.
Day 2 - Faiki Bey levies 400 lira from convoy for its safety. Faiki Bey disappears.
Day 3 - First women and girls taken by Kurds. Open violation by zapatieh.
Day 9 - All horses sent back to Kharput.
Day 13 - 200 lira levied by zapatieh. zapatieh disappear.
Day 15 - Kurdish 'guard' take 150 men and butcher them, then rob convoy. Joined by another convoy from Sivas. Numbers swell to 18000.
Days 25-34 - Harassed by villagers. Many women taken.
Day 40 - Eastern Euphrates. Blood-stained clothes on riverbank; 200 bodies in water. Armenians forced to avoid being thrown in water.
Day 52 - Kurds take everything, including clothes.
Day 52-9 - Naked, without food or water. Women bent double from shame. Hundreds die beneath hot sun. Forced to pay for water. Money hidden in hair, mouth, genitals. Many throw themselves into the wells. Arab villagers give them pieces of cloth out of pity.
Day 60 - 300 remain from 18000.
Day 64 - Men and the sick burned to death.
Day 70 - 150 arrive in Aleppo.

Part of the distinction of the 1915 massacres is their systematic nature, as opposed to those of the 1890s. It was widely described in the west. Arnold Toynbee himself wrote a report for the British government in 1915 entitled, The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire 1915-6. US and UK diplomats (including Gertrude Bell) bore witness to what they saw - incidentally some of the most referred-to witness testimony that emerged. Germans (building Turkey's railway network) witnessed the use of trains as human cattle-trucks. The New York Times, now a staunch holocaust-denier, had front-page coverage of the Armenian genocide every day.

In the aftermath of WW1, there was a lack of interest, though, in pressing for trials or justice of any other sort. The Armenians were similarly betrayed by the Treaty of Sevres (10 August 1920). There was a fear that an admission of culpability would give rise to claims for compensation; indeed insurance firms in the US have had a steady flow of such requests.

Bush Mk, at a meeting with Armenian communities during his first election campaign, said on 19th February 2000 that, "the Armenians were subjected to a genocidal campaign...an awful crime in a century of bloody crimes against humanity. If elected president, I would ensure that our nation properly recognises the tragic suffering of the Armenian people." This was, needless to say, forgotten later down the line. Later speeches referred only to "infamous killings", and their "bitter fate", no longer to genocide.

2005-11-14T20:51:00.000+04:30

Further Ain Diwar photos...

2005-11-14T20:10:00.000+04:30

The consensus was that Iraq wasn't going to be a reasonable possibility so we opted to go to Ain Diwar, the site of a Roman bridge where the borders of Iraq, Turkey and Syria meet in the north-eastern corner of Syria. We hired a driver for the afternoon and headed east.

The bridge itself is only the remaining arch of a bridge built by the Romans (or the Romanians, as the signs inform the meagre handful of tourists who make it out here), a remote and heavily militarised site. We had to leave our passports with one of the checkpoints along the way, presumably to ensure that we didn't try to skip the border into Turkey...

There were sandstone panels depicting the signs of the zodiac on one side (pictured), as well as a black-and-white mosaic round the back (also pictured). The Roman camp of Bezabda once stood on this side of the river, and the bridge was, historians tell us, built to give access to Roman-occupied Anatolia.

2005-11-14T19:47:00.000+04:30

We arrived in Qamishli on the eve of Eid's beginning (for Sunnis at least; Shia Muslims begin their fast a day later) and the city was bustling in a way that reminded me of Christmas festivities in provincial country towns in southern Germany. The same dark cheer, tables of wares displayed, twinkling lights. All that was missing was gluhwein.

Border towns - the centre of town is 1000m away from the border crossing into Turkey - have an allure all unto themselves. Perhaps the fact that most of the people are strangers, all on their way to somewhere else, nobody quite achieving that lived-in familiarity that residents of capital cities, for instance, often display. I prefer the border atmosphere, and could easily imagine living in a town such as Qamishli, surely a centre for blossoming intrigues and the like...

We weren't quite sure what we planned to do in Qamishli. It had something to do with borders, and something to do with Kurds we hoped, and perhaps had something to do with Iraq. A teacher back in Damascus had talked wistfully of kaliiche, a Qamishli cookie speciality, and first we went in search of that. It turned out they tasted like the Austro-German lebkuchen, or I guess like the special ingredient that goes into lebkuchen as the texture was quite different. We ended up with 3.5 kilos of cookies to take back with us to Damascus (thanks to our kind driver).

Qamishli, at any rate, boasts two, perhaps three, restaurants that one might distinguish from the usual kebab-joints and hunger-mahalls. Sahara, which seemed permanently closed during our stay, probably due to Eid, and Gabriel's, where we ate on our first evening in town. With a fully-stocked bar, we tucked into a full half-Syrian half-European meal. Hummous, Fattoush, Tabbouleh, Kibbe ma'liiyeh, Mutabbal, Chips, Beef with mushrooms etc. All rounded off with the misnomer of the Jordanian-brewed Pennsylvania beer.

Later that evening, meandering back to our hotel we stopped off at yet another sweet-shop (this, I might add, after a session on the world's slowest internet connection in an internet cafe) in search of our mystery sweet (we didn't know the name at this point). At any rate, we ended up discussing with the owner about hiring a driver to drive us to Iraq, and then, after various twists and turns, discussing the matter further with a Kurdish 'fixer' of sorts. It turned out to be a dead-end, not least because of our poor timing bang at the beginning of Eid, but also because he only began to grasp what we wanted to do in Iraq after several attempts at an explanation. The shop-owner and fixer talked between themselves in Kermanchi Kurdish (the Turkish variant/dialect, as distinguished from Sorani Kurdish, which is much closer to Arabic) and I enjoyed recognising the odd Turkish word. It was a jolt into the kingdom of the new, that which waits to be discovered. Always one for a headlong dive into mystery, it made me very happy to be in Qamishli.

Next morning, having to send a file via email to London urgently, I searched and asked around for an open internet café. In the end, it was a middle-aged Armenian man who opened his shop for me so I could use his computer to connect to the internet - imagine that happening in London on New Year's Day...

2005-11-14T19:34:00.000+04:30

Marqadeh is a dusty roadside settlement on the banks of the river Khabur. We hopped off the bus in the middle of nowhere, not really knowing what we were looking for. Well, mass graves, actually, but we didn't know where. Wandering up the hill in the direction of what turned out to be a shrine to those Armenians killed in Marqadeh. Around 50,000 are reported to have been killed on what once were the banks of the river. As it turns out, the river has changed course since 1915 so when we went down to the river we were met by a bemused village chief of police (Nader) who was curious to know why we were there - what with the dearth of tourists 'n all…

Anyway, he rang people in Damascus over a cup of tea in his wooden hut to check that we were "clean" and then drove us on the back of his motorcycle back to the shrine, behind which we might be able to find bones. Splashing through the courtyard of the shrine - being washed in the sun by the old Armenian custodian - we looked in the church with glass cabinets (again) of Armenians' bones (pictured). Then I signed the register, mostly in Armenian barring "Jenny and Tom"'s best wishes on behalf of the American people.

It was possible, behind the church, and on the banks of where the river must have once been, to find the odd bone fragment or two (pictured) but seeing as the hill also acted as a slipstream for spring floods (I'm guessing) the surface was just made up of slick. Nader wasn't really interested in the Armenians that Felix eventually found in the hillside. He wanted to discuss Syria and our relationship to it as foreigners. He talked about countries at war, the Mehlis report, terrorists ("anyone who acts against humanity"), as well as that it was sometimes necessary to conduct "cleanup operations - amaliyaat al-tandthiif" for the sake of peace and stability - at which point he mentioned Hama, of course. More about the ubiquitous Hama later, though.

We waited for some time at the roadside for a minibus going northwards, and eventually ended up in Hassake (then another motorcycle-taxi ride to the bus station) for the connecting bus to Qamishli.

2005-11-13T23:46:00.000+04:30

Having just finished Robert Fisk's new tome, The Great War for Civilisation, I decided to see some of what he had written about for myself, nearly always the best way to learn about something. Focusing on his chapter on the Armenian holocaust, I set out at the same time as other Syrians were heading back to their families to celebrate the Eid al-fitr, the formal end of the month of fasting, ramadan, which Muslims undertake. The bus station, as always, was a manic conglomeration of noise and smell. A bus left for Deir ez-Zor, my first engagement, fairly soon, however.

Oil is perhaps the most important aspect of this half-way-house city. Extensive fields were found in 1984, and since then the city has grown in reflection of this new natural wealth. The city boasts a well-organised archaeological museum, an outdoor swimming pool for the sweat-sodden months of summer, and a 1920s suspension bridge built by France when Syria (and Lebanon) were under her mandate. It was for the Armenian Church, as well as to see friends living there, that we had stopped off. Opposite our hotel, on a lettuce-crisp morning, we crossed over to the Church and were greeted by a young boy. He took us round the church and eventually we reached the underground museum, the most interesting part of the church. This detailed, in extracts from speeches, books and large-print photos, the exact details of the 1915 Armenian Holocaust. It was instructive to look at the map detailing the movements of people around the Syrian and Turkish lands. There are also bones in cases on display, bones of those since uncovered from graves.

Deir ez-Zur lacks the essential qualities for a ‘must’ on the tourist ‘trail’. It is a simple town, with only a ramshackle amusement park, an outdoor swimming pool (to assuage the dense summer heat) and an excellent archaeological museum as specific ‘activities’. The nature of Deir ez-Zor, though, works against the specific. As a town, its quality is in-betweenness, the lack of will to be anything specific. It was an attractive place to stop over at, on account of the air – a much needed break from the oppression of Damascus. There was a moment at night, standing on the bridge above the Euphrates, listening to the rustle and whispering of the leaves in the trees around, where you might have found some peace or rest, or whatever you want to call it. Needless to say, there are relatively few foreigners there ‘seeing the sights’. It’s mainly a staging-post on the way to Qamishli, and thus onward to Turkey, or as a crossroads to visiting the ruins at Dura Europos or Mari on the Iraqi border.

2005-11-13T23:17:00.000+04:30

Further pictures of Qunaitra...

2005-11-13T23:05:00.000+04:30

Visited Qunaitra about 3 weeks back with Felix. Had been last year, but interesting to revisit with the new perspective that time generally provides. Initially 'lost' by Syria in the summer of 1967, the Israelis drove the population of some thousands out and then totally demolished the town [really, you're lucky to see standing buildings] before the hand-over to Syria (mediated by the UN) in 1974. On this occasion, the then-president Hafez Al-Assad declared that the town would be rebuilt. In the end what happened was that it was left exactly untouched, largely for its propaganda value. To visit, you need to get a military permit (from a building just round the corner from my house) which allows you to enter the UN-administered demilitarised zone at the Golan Heights. Photos given here show what was left behind...

2005-11-12T20:03:00.000+04:30

Finished Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, a book filled with insinuated melancholy. As John Harrison put it:

"By the final, grotesque revelation of what really lies ahead for Kathy and Tommy and Ruth, readers may find themselves full of an energy they don't understand and aren't quite sure how to deploy. Never Let Me Go makes you want to have sex, take drugs, run a marathon, dance - anything to convince yourself that you're more alive, more determined, more conscious, more dangerous than any of these characters. This extraordinary and, in the end, rather frighteningly clever novel isn't about cloning, or being a clone, at all. It's about why we don't explode, why we don't just wake up one day and go sobbing and crying down the street, kicking everything to pieces out of the raw, infuriating, completely personal sense of our lives never having been what they could have been." (review in The Guardian books supplement)

2005-11-06T10:30:00.000+04:30

Beirut, Lebanon

Wild sunset on Saturday evening as I strolled back from Robert's house on the Corniche in Beirut. It's nice to walk among palm-trees. Bought some books in Beirut (Burning Tigris: a history of the Armenian genocide, Seymour Hersh's Chain of Command, and Ilan Pappe's new history of the Middle East), and dropped off some special Qamishli cookies at the Mashlabs house as an Eid present, but they weren't at home. Had planned to visit friends in Chatila refugee camp, but the day wore on and it was eventually too late. Trip worth it just for the sunset...

2005-11-05T06:52:00.000+04:30

Damascus, Syria

Pictures of the moderately enthusiastic demonstration outside the US embassy last Tuesday 1st November around noon. Placards with words such as "Justice" were parade before the large police presence pictured. Indeed, even though the demonstration wasn't really a threat to the Syrian government, hundreds of riot police sat in cars in side-streets adjoining the main road. The protesters now have a tent outside the US Embassy. A similar night-and-day protest is being pursued by students outside the Ministry of Culture just outside of the centre of town.

2005-10-26T09:44:00.000+04:30

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