Kandahar Cockney: A Tale of Two Worlds

– What did he say?

– He said, all foreigners are spies.

– But I’m not a spy, I’m a journalist.

– Don’t worry. The mullah is a crazy old man.

– So it’s OK – I can go in?

But the Afghan looked uneasy, clearly afraid of the mullah’s authority, however mad he might be. I gave up and put my shoes on again, and asked him about his English. He had learned it from watching American movies on television, he said. Despite his scholarly appearance he was a soldier, on leave from the front. Tomorrow he would have to return to his unit, which was a blow because I had been on the point of offering him a job as my interpreter. Instead I asked him where his unit was stationed, but he merely smiled.

– Perhaps the mullah was right, he said archly. Perhaps you are an English spy.

This was a good joke, but despite my efforts my new friend refused to move beyond polite formality. All too soon he was looking at his watch.

– You are welcome in Mazar, he said finally. This is a good city, with good people. You will be safe here.

I watched him pad away across the square through an explosion of doves, wondering if it was really possible to learn such good English simply by watching television.

Mir was already working for another group of visiting journalists when we met. He was returning with them from a two-day trip to the Hazarajat, the Northern Alliance’s southern front against the Taliban. I had been told about these English-speaking journalists by the kindly Oxfam people and was hoping they might be able to help me. My search for a good interpreter-fixer over the previous two days had been fruitless. One or two volunteers had presented themselves at the compound doors, having heard somehow that a foreigner with dollars in his pockets was looking for someone, but it was quickly obvious that their English wasn’t up to the job. The problem was fast becoming urgent. Despite the assurances from the man at the shrine, there was a limit to the amount of wandering around on my own that it was sensible to do. In any case, having found my bearings in the city I was keen to use it as a base camp from which to explore the neighbouring regions of the country as soon as possible.

The party of journalists finally trooped in at dusk, shedding camera bags and laughing loudly, tired and dusty from their journey. I introduced myself to Ewan, a British writer based in Eastern Europe, Rick, a Canadian agency photographer, and Al, a cameraman with Live News. I met Mir last.

– Pleased to meet you, he murmured with a slight bow. My name is Mirwais, but everyone calls me Mir. Mir means ‘peace’ in Russian, you know?

He had dark round eyes in a chubby face, cheeks as shiny as apples, a wisp of immature beard on his chin. His frame was portly and he shuffled when he walked, his feet turned slightly inwards. Black curls poked from beneath an embroidered pillbox cap worn in the Uzbek style, although his nose and other features were distinctly Pashtun. His family was evidently wealthy – only the relatively rich could afford the education implied by his spoken English. They were originally from the south, he explained. His father Amanullah, a judge, still owned land and houses in the Pashtun heartlands around Kandahar, as well as in Kabul, but he had moved to Mazar when Mir was still a child. Mir asked where I was from in a quiet, attentive way that I immediately liked. It contrasted with the raucousness of the Anglo-Saxons, who were growing louder as they relaxed. He was barely nineteen, yet there was something trustworthy about him, a quizzical puppyish-ness that made guile seem improbable. There was intelligence in his eyes as well as a willingness to please, despite his obvious tiredness. Most important of all, his English, although heavily accented in the usual Afghan way, a bit guttural, a bit sing-song, was serviceable.

Out on the balcony the journalists collapsed into some waiting chairs. Ewan ordered Mir to make some tea. The imperiousness of this command surprised me. I had assumed they were working together as a team, with approximately equal status. In my limited experience I had found the relationship between journalist and fixer to be a symbiotic one, an interdependence that was usually founded on mutual respect, not on the master-servant archetype. But if Mir felt resentment he did not show it. Instead he scurried away to the kitchen, doing as he was told like a Gunga Din. On his return the muezzins began their call to evening prayers, one minaret triggering another until the city was filled with their eerie wail. Woodsmoke rose up from a hundred cooking fires, the plumes unnaturally straight in the clear, still air. The journalists were briefly silenced by the moment. Mir, keen to get back to his family before dark, gave a discreet cough.

– You can go, said Ewan airily, but don’t be late tomorrow like you were today, eh?

Mir shrugged this off with the simple explanation that he had no watch. But if Ewan cared to buy him one…well, then he would be a paragon of punctuality – or so he heavily implied.

– In your dreams, said Ewan.

– In my dreams, replied Mir, I have a Citizen Quartz. Or a Tag Heuer.

– Yeah, right.

– No, but I think you should buy me this watch. Then I can be more professional. How can I be professional with no watch?

– I’ve already promised you my radio when I leave, said Ewan. I think that’s quite enough, don’t you? Or perhaps you’d like one of Rick’s cameras as well? Hmm?

– A camera would be OK also, said Mir, considering this.

– In your dreams, said Rick.

There was a recognisable theme here. Like other locals I had met, Mir seemed covetous of our possessions, our watches, our cameras, our pens, even our shirts and boots. They had their eye out for the main chance, a canny way of extracting promises, presents, favours. Mir was evidently an expert: he knew when to push, when to leave off, how to retreat by turning a request into a joke. The banter was easy enough to handle, but it also wore you down. In an unguarded moment you could easily find yourself pledging away a radio without really meaning to, and in a society where a man’s word was his bond it could be difficult to retract such a pledge without causing offence. From our vantage point on the balcony we watched Mir shuffle off into the gathering gloom, and I set about making friends. Al was at the end of his trip and heading back to Live News’s offices in Islamabad the next day, but Ewan and Rick had plans to take Mir up to the western front. They weren’t talking much about those plans yet because they were still catching their breath, still adrenalised by their experiences in the Hazarajat.

– You should definitely go down there, said Rick. Man, they put on a good show. My ears are still ringing. Ewan, are your ears still ringing?

He was squatting out of sight in the corner of the balcony and rolling a joint in his lap. His understanding of the country’s labyrinthine politics seemed limited. He was much more interested in smoking the powerful local chars, which he did almost all the time, to stupor-inducing effect. He spoke more slowly than was normal, and sometimes mispronounced his ‘r’s in the manner of a true pothead. His photography might have been excellent, but he struggled hopelessly with the names of the people and places he was photographing, relying on Ewan to annotate his rolls of film as they spewed from his cameras. Ewan was English public school-educated, a tall man with a big voice and a maverick attitude to his work. He could tell a good story and needed little prompting to recount what had happened that day, relating with relish the baffling illogicality of the Hazara Shi’ites they had met. It had been his idea to go to the front line, partly, he admitted, because he had never been under fire before and wanted to see what it was like. He was a risk-taker and an adventurer, which suited me fine – because an adventure was one of the things that I wanted from Afghanistan too.

Karim Khalili, the Hazara Shi’ite leader, had given them permission to visit the system of shallow trenches on high ground just south-east of Bamiyan, the Hazarajat capital in central Afghanistan. The Taliban were dug in a mile or so away on the other side of a valley, with their supply lines running all the way back to Kabul. The sector the journalists visited had been quiet for the past several weeks, but the arrival of a party of Westerners, well equipped with cameras, had prompted the sector commander to put on a display. After making sure that the visitors were seated comfortably, he ordered his artillery to open up on the Taliban positions across the valley.

– It was great, said Ewan, until the Talibs started firing back.

Which they apparently did with considerable accuracy, having had the whole winter to calibrate the range. Ewan and the others had suddenly found themselves crouching behind a wholly inadequate rock. Shells exploded in front of, behind and only just along the line from their position.

– The shock waves made our teeth rattle, said Ewan, savouring the memory of it.

– Yeah, said Rick, his jaw already slack from the spliff. We ate dirt, man.

– And Mir – we sent him back to the truck to get some water just at the wrong time, Ewan went on. I saw him walking up to us, right out in the open – just walking! And there were shells going off all over the place and I shouted out to him, Run! Mirwais, get your arse up here, fucking run!

– Yeah, Rick sniggered, passing the joint to Ewan. And then he dropped the water and you sent him back again to fetch it.

– You did what? I said.

– He’s overweight. He needed the exercise, said Ewan with studied preposterousness, tilting back his head and exhaling a long stream of smoke into the evening air.

– Jesus, I said. He might have been killed. Was anybody hit?

Ewan gave me a cool look.

– You don’t understand. Anybody might have been hit. There was no cover up there at all. The trenches were hopeless. It didn’t make any difference where you were.

– But was anybody hit?

Ewan looked away at the sky again and did not reply.

– Some guys up the line got smoked, said Rick after a pause.

– You think, said Ewan.

– Nah, they did. I told you, I saw it. A shell came down right on top of them. There was nothing left. I think they must have been blown to pieces. I really wish I’d photographed it.

There was another silence. With the probable exception of Rick, we were all thinking the same thing: journalists are supposed to report objectively on events, not provoke them. People dying, just so that a journalist from Eastern Europe could see what it was like to come under fire? This was serious stuff. Al seemed soberer than the other two and had so far said little, but he had read my thoughts, and now he spoke up.

– Afghanistan isn’t like other places. I’ve been coming here a lot. You can’t always separate yourself from the story like you should. Because we’re here, we’re in it. It’s a war. And if you try to stay objective you end up reporting on nothing. Believe me, I’ve tried.

– Right on, drawled Rick.

Al ignored him.

– Publicity is a weapon for these people just like anything else. They use us like we use them. That’s just how it is. You shouldn’t lose sleep over it.

– So do you think it was worth it? I said. Worth people dying for, I mean?