Thirsty Thursday, Kabul

Thursday night I met up with Vince and Scott—back at the Samarqand. We had dinner and Scott enjoyed a t-bone steak while I had the lamb chops. Scott had just returned from a trip down to Kandahar to interview some people working for an NGO that gives food and aid to the local population in exchange for interviews about the security situation and their feelings about the dynamic there. He said everyone at the compound he went to was armed. Scott and Vince started talking about machine guns and which give the least kick and whatnot. Not a conversation to which I could ably contribute to, but one I would have found engrossing at age 12 or so. Seriously, though, Vince has seen a whole lot—lived an amazing life. He served in Vietnam where he was shot in the belly (“thank God it was cheap Chinese ammo—the good Russian stuff and I’da had ‘em in my spine…”) and then continued the next several years all through Central America fighting the drug wars. He has a few purple hearts and a passionate dislike for John Kerry! He told us in Baku that he and his brother-in-law, who is Russian, sorted out that they were shooting at each other on at least two occasions through the course of their respective military careers. Would you introduce a guy who’d shot at you to your sister? That’s right, Vince met his future brother-in-law through working in Afghanistan and eventually was introduced to the sister—the rest is history. It’s pretty funny that these cold warriors would end up being so close. I was wishing my Dad could talk to Vince--I think he'd find Vince really interesting. Flashback to Baku--Vince offers sage advice and Scott springs to action when the door of our van pops open: 

 After dinner we went upstairs for a drink, then Vince had his driver take us to The Four Seasons, which Vince referred to as “the ghurka bar.” I learned on this trip that ghurka’s are British-trained Nepalese soldiers who these days commonly work as security/mercenaries around the world. Apparently very well respected group in military circles. Anyway, this place was dead—a bunch of Nepalese guys, ghurka's, I suppose, were huddled around a furnace and there was an over-friendly cat. Vince claimed the place had “changed a lot—gosh, last time I was here they had music on and it was really fun…” So we managed to twist his arm into going to L’Atmosphere, which is the most famous western place here in Kabul. Apparently it’s particularly popular in the summertime because they have a big pool. Well, right as we walked in, after getting frisked, of course, which is standard practice here, who should I see but Rory Stewart the author of “The Places In Between,” the book I just finished reading in Baku. It’s a chronicle of his hike from Herat in the west of Afghanistan to Kabul—only weeks after the fall of the Taliban. I mistakenly called him Scott, but he was kind enough to turn around and graciously accept my thanks for writing the book. He expressed some resentment about westerners coming to Afghanistan without understanding the country well. So I suppose he would resent people like me passing through, but he was walking out of the most popular western nightspot in Kabul, so I guess he can’t claim to be too hung up about it. L’Atmosphere was packed. It was surreal—this easily could have been some place in Manhattan. “And that’s why I don’t like it,” Vince grunted back. Awful guy to girl ratio, as is to be expected, I suppose. As was said in the “Kabul After Dark” article by some gal: “the odds are good, but the goods are odd.” I thought that was funny. Vince had his driver swing by my place to drop me off. The guard answered and we walked down the outside corridor to the house when he invited me to check out their room. The guards use a little room at the back of the house to hang out through the night. I went in and was greeted with a wall of heat—that place was like a sauna! I watched some Indian music videos with the guard before calling it quits and heading up to bed.