“When we have learned to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy.”

            -Herman Hesse

I felt my heart flutter from the shock of rotary blades whirling on the tarmac, splitting the air open then out, beyond the speed of sound.  Nothing should travel that fast except the cosmos. 

Before boarding the helicopter my daughter sent a picture of my dog Georgia, which made me think the very best dogs are mongrels.  Perhaps the same can be said about humans.   

The Afghans were playing soccer in an old arena devoid of grass in the heart of Kabul City.  They scattered when they saw us coming in low just above the tall pine tree tops.  Our Chinook helicopter landed long enough for us to grab our bags and run.  Then it was airborne,  up and over the tall concrete walls, disappearing into the city. 

After grabbing a room for the night I made my way to the U.S. Embassy pool, the most heavily guarded swimming pool in the world.  On a whim I performed a lopsided cannonball off the diving board, soaking an overweight state department employee wearing a full-blown candy striped speedo.   

That evening I was late to a business dinner at a Turkish restaurant with a group from the intelligence community.  Finally showing up I said, “Boys I’m embarrassed to admit I was held up at the massage parlor”, which of course elicited several wisecracks about happy endings.    

Later that night a transvestite named Aya sat across from me at a picnic table.  When I complained of the long days she responded, “I’ve been here six years working twelve hour days, seven days a week, only going home twice at my own expense.  I’ve lived in the same metal box for six years with the same roommate.  He’s never spoken to me.  My life comes down to work and television because I’m afraid of the night.  I’d like to travel more but I’m afraid to go alone and have no money.”  She must have been terrified because it was the middle of the night.  I wonder what she was doing there.  I think I know. 

Rabies is a big problem in Afghanistan, so we are not allowed to keep or feed animals.  But there were pussy cats everywhere, the result of a charity program to provide for their care and feeding.  These cats were the happiest I’d ever seen, with their own “authorized feeding stations”, kitty condominiums, and free reign of the place.  I heard their primary responsibility was to control mice, the byproduct of which is human happiness in large scoops. 

Then I went to a rooftop café painted blue with a view of the moon rising over the high perimeter wall.  From my perch I could hear Afghan boys playing volleyball which they love.  There were people up there like me hunched over their notebooks, bathed in cigarette smoke.  It’s obvious the rest of the world still smokes, in cafes and bars, the alternate being addiction to the inside world of television and soul zapping leisure.  I once read that the hysteria over smoking coincided with the decline of communism, no doubt true. 

How I enjoyed the tiny blue café perched above the bleeding city, with its eternal heroin wounds.  America is high.  Afghanistan bleeds.  Wishing I was a black cat, so I could explore the dark city without risk of human violence.      

Before leaving, I had a bird’s eye view of a suicide bomber blowing himself outside the nearby airport.  His target was the former warlord Dostum, returning from exile.  But he only managed to kill twenty of Dostum's men and a photo journalist. 

Then we left from the soccer field on a different kind of bird, up and over the pines, disappearing over the city.  I’m back here now not wanting to be. 

7/26/18

Kabul, Afghanistan

Kabul Cats
"Authorized Feeding Station"

 

“If you want someone’s wealth, or the area in which they live, or their bodies themselves, your motives are basically economic but you attack them on religious grounds, portraying them as godless savages, the antichrist, or worse yet, having no discernable religion at all because it had become gradually lost when they were uprooted from their homeland.  And after the utter and complete defeat of the enemy you want nothing more from them, they have nothing more to give, except that the remnant behave themselves.”

            -from The Road Home by Jim Harrison

“He once rode into me as if through lands of miracles and fire, with all the power of poetry.  I was: dry, sandy, without day.  He used poetry to invade my depths, like those of any other country!  We entered one anothers’ eyes as if they were oases.”

            -from the poem “Sahara” by Marina Tsvetaeva