To Afghanistan and Back by Ted Rall

Author:Ted Rall
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: NBM Publishing
Published: 2002-06-05T16:00:00+00:00

10. When Life is a Short-term Lease

DUSHANBE, TAJIKISTAN, December 7

“How old are you?” the soldier wanted to know. Resplendent in his spiffy new Northern Alliance hat and shiny Pancho Villa ammo belt and matching AK-47, he tiptoed through what some said was a minefield (though he said they were from Badakhshan Province and didn’t know Takhar or the mysteries of its mines) to take a leak.

“Thirty-eight. How about you?”

“How old do you think I am?”

Salt-and-pepper hair, definitely receding. Not just eye bags, but wrinkles. Subtly hard facial angles; not a gram of baby fat. I thought 42. I said 36 to be polite.

He enjoyed a hearty laugh. “I’m 18!”

Middle-aged teen-agers shouldn’t come as much of a surprise in a country with an average life expectancy of 43 (considerably less for front-line troops). But when you spend just a few weeks living the same toxic lifestyle as these poor and unlucky souls, it’s amazing that they live as long as they do.

All things considered, I lived considerably better than the average resident of Taloqan, Afghanistan, where I just spent a couple of weeks. For one thing, I was willing and able to pay the extortionate rate of five bucks for the sticks you burn to boil bath water in an ancient tin stove. A hot-water hamam goes a long way toward improving your outlook after a night spent watching bombs fall far too close to your home address. And call me a spendthrift if you want, but I always sprang for the 60-cent horse-drawn cart ride across town. Most Afghans didn’t.

Otherwise, there were few indignities or inconveniences that my Amex, Visa or carefully concealed wad of crisp hundreds could ease, much less eradicate. Like most Afghans, I slept on a filthy mat along one wall of a freezing-cold room containing said stinky mat on top of one astonishingly dirty red carpet. The foul stench made sleep nearly impossible; strange rashes spread among the press corps. Afghans, when asked about this, shrugged and pointed to their own scary blotches.

Though as an infidel I was technically exempt from the 5 a.m.-to-6 p.m. Ramadan fast, the only way to sneak a snack without causing the highly armed locals to take offense was to stay home and pay a kid to run to the bazaar. Since I was always out and about, like other journalists I observed a de facto Ramadan fast. Think it’s easy? Try it yourself: Move to Arizona and go all day without a sip of water. The principal difference is that Afghanistan is drier and dustier.

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