Proof of P.J.

I checked out of the fabulous Safi Land Hotel in downtown Kabul this morning and took a taxi about an hour outside of town to Bagram.

It was my first time seeing Kabul in the daylight. The city revealed itself to be a dazzling mashup of endless poverty, punctuated by brand new buildings of glass and steel, all ringed by stunning, jagged, snowcapped peaks.

The poverty is much like what you’d find in southern African cities. Underfed livestock and people live together in mud shacks or shipping containers that seemed to be randomly scattered throughout the city. Women in head to toe burkas float like specters amidst the trash and animal shit while children walk barefoot to school through traffic that has neither rules or compassion for pedestrians.

Police and Afghan military personnel lounge about with rifles hanging like afterthoughts from their shoulders, stopping cars at random and hassling taxi drivers.

The smog is unbelievable. Overloaded trucks belch nimbus clouds of black smoke, which mixes with the smoke coming off the fires that everybody is burning to keep warm. There’s no grass here, and the dirt on the ground swirls into the air, creating dust devils that only add too the choking, gritty atmosphere.

As we moved out of town the land opened up, stretching out to the horizon in brown, hard-packed flats, broken only by clusters of mud-walled huts or the occasional emaciated cow.

Every twenty minutes or so, we’d speed through a village center. These were mostly clusters of three sided, tin-roofed stores selling cokes, cookware and trinkets. Hundreds of people crowded the side of the road, waiting for taxis or minibus rides into a neighboring town or Kabul. The minibuses are similar to minivans and drivers will often cram a dozen or more people into them, charging a few dollars a head.

Of course these guys drive like maniacs. Sometimes they’ll pass two abreast on the left-hand side, playing double chicken with oncoming traffic.

My driver was pretty good, abstaining from any high-speed theatrics and getting me where I needed to go with a quickness.

Dubai is an extremely hectic city.

There is tons of traffic, construction and about at least a dozen languages being spoken on any given block. I spent my first full day there traipsing around, looking for Afghanistan’s consulate. It wasn’t next to the “American Hospital” as I’d first been told and I had a hell of a time finding it behind the “Dubai Immigration Office” as the Afghani’s themselves told me.

Turns out it was hidden in a residential neighborhood off the beach in an unmarked, walled compound.

The whole day I’d been working myself into a lather over my situation in Kabul. Contractors on the plane over from D.C. told me that I was insane to fly into Kabul, stay at a hotel and then take a taxi to Bagram Air Field. These are guys who walk with a tremendous, military swagger but don’t go to the supermarket in Afghanistan without an armed convoy. I didn’t realize it at the time, but they have no sense of what actually goes on in Kabul day-to-day.

Anyway, by the time I found the embassy I was convinced that my trip to Kabul would be a suicide mission.

While waiting for my visa to be processed I met a man named Jassim. Jassim is a businessman from Bahrain, who travels to Kabul a few times a year on business. I shared my fears with him and he told me to relax. “I take care of everything for you,” he said. He proceeded to buy me lunch, a taxi to the airport and get me set up in a four-star hotel in Kabul.

The trip to Kabul was crazy. The plane was a Jordanian 737 from the late sixties with peeling carpets and filthy seats. Food was decent though, I had some byrani.

The whole time Jassim, who insisted on sitting next to me, was telling me to relax, which just made me more convinced that I was flying to my doom. We landed in Kabul after dark, much later than planned and no time to be on the streets.

Luckily, Jassim had arranged for a driver to meet us at the airport—which is a good thing considering all of the shady characters that hang around the Kabul airport at night—and within minutes we were cruising through the city on the way to our hotel.

At first glance, Kabul looks like Malawi on steroids. Shanties, people sleeping on the street, stuff is on fire, the whole nine. But every few blocks there’s a new, neon lit building that looks like something out of Vegas. Oh, and everybody has guns.

As we were driving to the hotel, Jassim pointed to a little shop on the street and said, “That is the best bread in the world, you have to try it. I have been to Paris, London, everywhere. That shop has the best bread in the world.”

We pulled up the hotel and my mind was officially blown. It’s called the Safi Landmark and it stands huge and glittering amidst a pile of squalor, surrounded by armed guards with AK’s. The inside has a shopping mall that looks like something out of Monte Carlo—without the booze or gambling. One shop sells a Sony Vaio about the size of a Blackberry that I’ve not seen anywhere, including Dubai or New York.

A few hours after arriving at the Safi Landmark Jassim knocked on my door, handed me a loaf of flatbread about the length of my arm and said, “Room service!” The guy actually walked five blocks in the dead of night to get me a piece of bread. I can’t overstate what a risky proposition that is and I’m still shocked that he did it for me.

We then had dinner together in the hotel’s rooftop restaurant and tea overlooking the city. We said goodnight shortly after, I shook his hand and thanked him for everything. “It is nothing,” he said. “You are a nice guy and I think somebody is looking out for you.” He never asked me for a thing and I guess just wanted me to be O.K. in my travels. On more than a few occasions—whether in Africa, Tennessee, wherever—I’ve had to rely on strangers to guide me. I’m continually surprised by how willing people are to go out of their way and do kind things. I’m still pretty jaded about people, but guys like Jassim make me feel a whole lot better about the entire human endeavor.

PS: I have TONS of pics but can’t upload them now. Hopefully later…

After a 24-hour delay due to airplane mechanical issues, I’ve finally arrived in Dubai. Nearly everybody on the plane from D.C. was some kind of profiteer/contractor headed to Afghanistan to make some money. The man next to me was former U.S. military working as a hired gun from KBR out of Kabul. He didn’t talk much.

When I got to the airport in Dubai I was detained in customs for a couple of hours because of my ballistic gear, or as they called it, “life vest.”

The folks there were extremely friendly, even offering me coffee, tea or water. They kept my gear, giving me a receipt and saying I could pick it up from the security office when I leave the country. Not sure why the stuff would be verboten in the U.A.E. but whaddyagonnado?

I’m settled in a decent hotel near the water, popular with British travelers. The place has a proper pub with cricket on the telly and a midget Pakistani guy in a fez working the door.

Dubai itself is a glittering, sprawling expanse of highways and neon. I went for a walk to get some dinner and got kinda’ lost in a maze of alleys, kebab shops and the kind of vast electronic stores you’d find around Times Square. The city feels pretty safe, even when I was lost at 11 P.M. and speak no Arabic.

I have a busy day tomorrow. I’ve got to secure a visa for Afghanistan, try to find a sat-phone, and make sure that someone is there to meet me at the airport in Kabul. I’m going to attempt to hit the beach if I have time, but that will have to wait ‘till my work is done.

I’ll also post some pictures of Dubai, at the risk of this blog turning into boring ol’ vacation diary.

I’m all packed up and ready to go. I’ve been bon-voyaged by just about everybody I know and I’ve said all the goodbyes I could remember to say. I’m heading to the airport in Nashville now, flying to D.C. From there I’m on to Dubai, for a couple of days of final preparation and hopefully a trip to the beach.

It’s a long trip—about 22 hours, door-to-door—but I’ve got some great books and a Rocky movie on DVD.

Wish me luck!

P.J.

It seems that every time something bad happens in Afghanistan, I get worried emails from friends and fam. While this is completely understandable, tragic news like this, and this, needs to be kept in perspective.

Afghanistan is roughly the size of Texas and when bad things happen, there’s a strong likelihood that it went down far away from where I’ll be. As I’ve written before, I’ll be in the Khost province on the country’s eastern border. So if something happens in say, Helmund province, that’s no-where near where I’m at.

Here’s a pretty decent map of Afghanistan and her provinces. Check it out the next time you hear that something went ‘boom’ and are worried that I was nearby.

Believe it or not, I’ve received requests to model some of the gear I wrote about in this post. To that end, I suited up just for you, dear readers.

The vest weighs about 30 lbs. and is fitted with quarter-inch thick slabs of something (titanium?) that cover my chest and back. There’s also places to stick notebooks, pens, etc.

In addition to looking slick, the shades are also fragment proof and sealed at the temples. I don’t know much about the helmet, except that it’s made of Kevlar and quite comfy.

Don't French kiss in here

I leave for Afghanistan this Saturday, but I spend two days in Dubai first in order to secure a visa and possibly do some indoor skiing. One thing I won’t be doing is engaging in any PDA’s. One hotel even has rules against making out in the lobby. Check it, from the U.K.’s Times Online:

“It is strongly recommended that you employ discretion when expressing affection in public. Anything more than a peck on the cheek could offend those around you and even possibly lead to police involvement.”

Police involvement? Yikes!

Thanks to the genius Jim Ridley for shouting me out on Bites, the best food blog in Nashville (sorry Claudia!)

Some friends are taking me out for a little farewell dinner/whiskeyfest before I head to the land of MRE’s and insurgents. I’m craving a nice piece of veal with capers and a decent Chianti, but I don’t know if that’s possible in this part of the world. I may have to wait ‘till I get to Dubai.

I began packing for my trip today and it feels good to get started. I’ve been planning in my head and making lists for so long that physically putting it all together seems like my first true step out the door.

Pictured above are my ballistic vest, Kevlar helmet and blast goggles. The vest is reinforced with quarter-inch metal plates that sit over my vital organs, front and back.

The helmet is heavy.

Next up we have some reporting tools; notebooks, longish lenses for my Nikon, a laptop, digital audio recorders, charger, flash, power converter, etc…

And here’s everything else…

I’ll also be bringing a bunch of Phillies baseball caps. I figure that as much as the people of Afghanistan want freedom and potable water, they’d probably also like to wear the emblem of a world championship baseball organization. Who wouldn’t?

Hi Everybody!

If you’re here, chances are you want info about my reporting trip to the Middle East. Above is a map of Afghanistan, where I’ll be for most of the next month. I’ll be spending most of my time on an Army base in the Khost/Kwost province, near Kabul. On the above map, the area is marked by that big-fat red square, in the middle of the eastern border with Pakistan.

I’ll be posting as much as I can over the coming weeks, pretty much whenever I can get internet, though who knows when that will be.

I hope you will all leave comments and such and look foward to sharing stories of my trip with you.

Thanks for stopping by!