Capital city
Posted by Michelle Tan on September 15th, 2008 filed in Michelle Tan: Notes From Afghanistan
Scott and I are now in Kabul, and all I can say is Afghanistan’s capital is a city of contrasts.
Lavish wedding halls tower over rickety roadside stalls selling fruit and vegetables. Neat apartment buildings that would not look out of place in suburban America sit next to small, brown flat-roofed houses that would be right at home in a Biblical story. Horse-drawn carts carrying the day’s groceries or supplies fight for road space with motorists in buses, cars and motorcycles who weave wildly around pedestrians who seem to dart in and out of traffic without regard for their safety. Driving in this city is a risky proposition.
Welcome to chaos, but welcome also to progress. Construction projects and restaurants selling pizza and burger abound in the city. Billboards advertising cell phone plans line the main roads. Busy streets imply bustling markets and people willing to brave the horrendous traffic to get somewhere.
But I’m still wary. On our way from Bagram to Kabul, the first forty minutes of the journey took us through what looked like the land that time forgot. Surely the world hadn’t moved forward while Afghanistan languished in poverty, leaving everything looking like it did centuries ago. Many, many shades of tan sand and dirt shadowed by impossibly tall and rugged mountains give that stretch of road a desolate and depressing feel. But as we got into the city, our surroundings came to life as the city folk went about their day, clogging the roads and stores. It seemed like life here, or at least in Kabul, anyway, has found some form of normalcy.
But underneath all that activity are news reports of improvised explosive devices or suicide bombings. As much as I was happily surprised by the progress that seems to have taken hold in Kabul since I last was here four years ago, I still would not want to be stuck in traffic here. Not yet.
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