The Kombi Trail by Robert Cox

Author:Robert Cox
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: eBook ISBN: 9780857733252
Publisher: I.B.Tauris
Published: 2013-06-24T04:00:00+00:00

12

KABUL BEFORE THE WINTER

Only 6 miles to go to Kabul. At last the few flickering lights of Afghanistan’s capital appeared across the dark plains. As midnight struck, Mehmed, Nigel and Tony drove slowly down the main street of Kabul. The engine’s roar echoed eerily as they hunted through the deserted streets for a place to stay. A solitary figure stood on a street corner swathed in blankets against the sharp night air. ‘Hotel koja?’ Nigel shouted in faltering Farsi. Half an hour later they were thankfully installed in the Maiwan Guest House for 15 Afghanis, the best doss-house in town.

Austere Kabul was a small town with an animated history at the centre of one of the world’s major platforms of contest – Afghanistan. Yet Afghanistan was never really a state, rather a collection of mutually suspicious fiefdoms. A first taste of this suspicion was evident the next morning when Mehmed, Nigel and Tony hotfooted it to the Afghan Tour office, the first tour operator in Afghanistan, licensed by the government. It operated a bit like Intourist in Moscow, in that all tourists had to have agreed itineraries.

The Turkish Embassy now turned up trumps with an offer of space in their compound. Once a royal palace, the embassy was quite old. It had an Ankara cat which, like all its breed, had eyes of different colours; a proper specimen, it seemed, had to be deaf as well. Mehmed and the Ambassador, Mr Talat Benler, hit it off very well. A little room round the back of the embassy provided a long overdue opportunity to unload and sort out crumpled and scruffy gear. Within an hour the empty room on the veranda was graced with a carpet, four chairs and a table, with a toilet and wash-basin next door. The ambassador and his wife, a charming couple, speaking faultless English, despite a five-year sojourn in the States, set extra places for lunch. In the middle of lunch in walked a long-lost first cousin of Mehmed’s – Lütfi Coşkun. A little later in came a member of the Turkish military junta that instigated the coup in Turkey in May 1960, but who fell out with the rest and was exiled – a certain Colonel Akkoyunlu. The junta had put all the Democratic Party members of parliament – including Mehmed’s father – on the prison island of Yassıada near Istanbul. Soon after the coup Akkoyunlu and 13 other renegades were sent away from Turkey to various embassies as ‘consultants’.

At the Ministry of Education the Head of the Secondary Schools Department, in a mixture of French and English, said he would be only too delighted to help the Expedition’s studies – ‘just write out a questionnaire’ – like a good bureaucrat anywhere.

Back to Afghan Tour for visa photos. A large collection of fellow travellers were hanging around, including two Dutch boys already met in Moscow, trying out the new Dutch car, the Daffodil, and the two English boys who had appeared out of the woodwork at Mukor.

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