[Previous entry: "Kandahar Chronicles #12 - 17/09/2003"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "Kandahar Chronicles #14 - 20/09/2003"]

09/19/2003: "Kandahar Chronicles #13 - 18/09/2003"

Kandahar sprawls across the late summer plain in a harsh, brown glare. In the central bazaar, gaudily painted trucks wrapped in chains jingle slowly along clogged streets in a wake of choking fumes. Men on Chinese bicycles wearing their flowing, cotton sharwal camise jostle with donkey carts and motor-rickshaws. Pedestrians push through the mass, filling the spaces in between like oil. The roar and cough of the generators belch blue/black smoke into the hot air. Grinders scream and welders spit as artisans manufacture their goods along the uneven dirt sidewalks. A goat chewing on a cabbage leaf shits pellets on a pile of ripe garbage. A cat with a feather in its whiskers runs guiltily along an open sewer and disappears down an alley.

Kids point and stare. I roll down my window. “What do you want you pack of little shits.” I gripe as they swarm around my side of the cruiser.

“Yeeaah, pakka-lidda-shi, pakka-lidda-shi!” they cheer. Oh dear, what have I done.

“ZAA!” (Go away) I say with a smile and they run off squealing. I’m stuck in the snarling traffic of the bazaar with my driver, staring at an image of Rambo fighting a giant serpent painted on the back of a motor-rickshaw. My driver has abandoned the vehicle to buy toiletries from a street vendor. We’re heading back to the base after a visit to the police station to follow up a story about a shooting in town between the Coalition and suspected Taliban. They didn’t know anymore than before but the PC is at a UNAMA security meeting and should find out more.

Three serious looking US soldiers stand guard outside a generator shop while a fourth is inside shopping. The citywide power outages have got them too. I’ve heard that their base has generators the size of locomotives. I recognize one from the airport security and we exchange nods. The fourth emerges from the shop with a generator that looks too small to charge my phone. He glares menacingly around him, daring anyone to ridicule his purchase. They move deliberately off toward the Humvee, the tail man besieged by the pack of kids. “Pakkaliddashi! Pakkaliddashi!”

Jamil jumps back in just as the traffic starts to roll. He’s bought “Pert” shampoo and Colgate. You can get anything in this bazaar if you know where to go. Kandahar is only two hours drive from Pakistan and just about anything you can get there will end up here. We crawl past the furniture shops; men sit around a computer desk drinking chai. We pass a shop selling yoghurt by the scoop from huge barrels. Next door, a man sells spoons in front of a shop that sells plastic buckets of all sizes. Two women covered head to toe in burkas recognize each other from across the road, the smaller one dodges nimbly through the traffic to the other side. We get clear and pick up speed, leaving the noise and the smell behind. The sun is low and casts long shadows around us. Tonight, the generators will be replaced by lanterns, the vehicles parked, and the bazaar will assume its timeless identity.

Replies: 3 Comments

A very eloquent entry.

anon said @ 09/23/2003 12:02 AM EST

Appreciate you posting your experiences in Kandahar for all us back here in Toronto, please keep it up.

Furious said @ 09/20/2003 02:01 PM EST

Must be hard to adjust to such a bustling, lively city as that.

Chris Chien said @ 09/19/2003 10:14 PM EST