Knowing that the Afghan experience would be different from the previous Islamic encounters, Walter looked forward to it very much. On the map, the city of Herat was their next destination. Before they could continue from the Persian part of the desert into Afghanistan, however, they needed to cross another border with customs formalities and Carnet de Duane entries. Hilde and Walter also remembered Swiss Hans’s advice—from what seemed a long time ago in Turkey—to watch out for a small boy at the border station, that if they had something to hide, they should get rid of it before the border.
As Walter slowly maneuvered the last few miles in Iran, the highway turned rougher and tighter, and they spotted a couple of buildings in the distance, wavering in the midday heat. Advancing closer to these structures, which solidified before their eyes, the travelers identified the construction as a small fort built in a square with ten-foot-high clay walls and large closed gates. When they reached the stronghold, the gates opened and let the yellow recreational vehicle enter. Then they closed again.
A relatively large interior space opened up where a variety of vehicles were parked, including buses and trucks, domestic and international, limousines and camp-mobiles, some with doors open and others from which assorted parts had been removed. Groups of people stood around the vehicles, while men with beards and in long, loose black trousers and jackets reviewed papers or maintained heated discussions while waving with their hands. One orderly file of tourist vehicles lined up in the middle of the inspection area, and a bearded man in tattered clothing pointed their bus toward this row of vehicles.
From inside the bus, both Walter and Hilde simultaneously saw the boy. He had just scaled a medium-sized reconfigured bus, touching and sniffing at stuff. He walked atop its roof, where a lot of luggage and other items were secured by ropes and chains. The license plate was in Arabic, but they could not determine the country of origin.
It took a long time until someone attended to the camping bus from Frankfurt. As if he happened to be the only customs agent at this particular border station, the perhaps-fourteen-year-old teenager looked at Walter and Hilde. He gazed at their rooftop, where a modest storage space contained a large gasoline canister and a metal box with such spare parts as spark plugs and light bulbs. The boy entered through the sliding door and sat down for a moment on the extra seat between the bench and the fridge. Smiling, he asked for papers, pointed to the carnet in Hilde’s hand, then grabbed it and left.
Fifteen minutes later, a different man came up to the bus and handed the carnet back to Hilde with one less page inside it and an entry stamp on another piece of paper. Fully aware that this meant freedom to enter the “promised land” of Afghanistan, Walter started the engine with authority and Hilde closed the sliding door without delay. Their bus moved gradually through the compound to another gate opposite the entrance. When the gate closed behind them, Walter looked at Hilde with a big smile, feeling relieved and happy.
Hilde smiled back at him and said, “Now, let’s go to Herat.”
The sun had set miles earlier, and no city of Herat was in sight. They did not want to be on the road when darkness arrived. The closer they came to the third-largest city in Afghanistan, the more activity there was on the highway and the more dispersed dust filled the cool night air. People with kerosene lamps directed almost invisible traffic. Suddenly the small convoy stopped.
A bearded man came up to the driver’s-side window and asked Walter something in Herati. Walter replied, “Hotel, motel,” while opening both hands and pulling up his shoulders.
The man signaled to the right and soon thereafter, another kerosene lamp appeared in front of a dark fortress-like building with closed doors. The person with the lamp waved to them while standing on the other side of the road. Walter slowly drove across the dark street; the man must have knocked at the building’s gate because it opened just enough to let the bus enter and then quickly closed again. After adjusting to the lighting conditions, the arrivals identified dim light bulbs over a number of doors, as well as vegetation in the middle of what appeared to be the central point or garden area of an inn.
They had made it. Some friendly faces appeared out of the dark and one who asked, “Would you like something to drink or to eat?”
When the couple had finished their lamb kebob with rice pilaf and yogurt, they remained sitting for a moment in the small chamber, which functioned as dining and breakfast room. Being that late, they were the only guests. They drank Dutch beer from bottles that the waiter had offered.
The tired travelers retired to their cozy bed with the green corduroy cover, grateful to have made it so far and very appreciative for the small amount the waiter asked for dinner. Next morning, they awakened refreshed and, after breakfast, eager to see the important Friday Mosque of Herat from the twelfth and fifteenth centuries with its intricate tile work and the ancient citadel built by Alexander the Great. They also checked out the trip to Kandahar, their next destination. To reach Kabul, the general consensus from fellow travelers and a few local, English-speaking individuals was to take the longer route via Kandahar because of road conditions and safety issues. Therefore, the yellow bus left Herat early next morning on the highway, first going south and then north again.
A motorway in reasonably good condition and fast-moving convoys enabled them to cover the distance before sunset. They stopped for lunch and other pressing matters whenever necessary, using cultivated areas that appeared occasionally in the moon-like landscape. Wherever humans gained access to water, green oases had been developed.
What did not happen in Herat materialized in the city of Kandahar. From the outside, their accommodation facility was almost identical to what they had found before, except that more sunlight reached the atrium, and the grass in the middle looked alive. The motel staff appeared friendlier than at the one before, and the place seemed almost fully booked. People sat on the grass and at small tables drinking tea or yogurt beverages. When they exited the camper, Walter had a big grin.
Hilde asked, “What is happening?”
He pointed to a group of young men and women. One had lit a huge self-made joint, and the person who inhaled from its rolled cardboard end started to cough profusely. A couple sitting on the lawn sucked on long, flexible tubes that were attached to a hookah. The water in it bubbled as if boiling, and smoke moved up into the tubes.
“That’s why I am grinning,” Walter replied. “Shangri-La in Kandahar.”
The atmosphere in this fortress-turned-lodging-house had a peaceful effect on minds and bodies of the arriving tourists.
After Hilde and Walter finished their camper preparations for later in the night and took a shower, they had a delicious stew with lots of spices and fresh vegetables. Then Walter asked a trustworthy-looking local man where he could obtain some real black Afghan hashish.
The man, with short-cut black hair and a thin mustache, answered with a disarming smile, “My name is Barbrak. You can buy the black from me—a short time ago, my aunt finished working on a fresh clump.”
The man left for a few minutes and then returned with a rolled, six-inch-wide, light-blue band of plastic open on both sides. He handed it to Walter, who smelled the fragrance of fresh vernal flowers. Walter unrolled the thick plastic stripe slowly and then saw for the first time what people sometimes talked about in the West: black Afghan, a generous lump of oily, sticky hash, fresh from Barbrak’s family workshop, for an insignificant amount of money.
The two men started talking about Germany and traveling, and Walter mentioned that he had had a bad case of food poisoning in Persia.
His new friend said, “You know what, if it happens again, take this. It will help you for sure.” He handed Walter a black ball of soft material that did not smell like hash. “This is raw opium. It will cure problems with the intestines.”
Walter accepted the gift gratefully, remembering that nothing had produced any healing effect during his encounter with dysentery in Tabriz.
Along with two young men from Germany riding in the backseat, they left the motel complex the next morning, heading north on the main highway toward Kabul. The additional passengers in the van needed a ride east. Their final destination: India. Occasionally Hilde and Walter provided lifts to people who appeared friendly and cooperative.
When the troupe reached Kabul, Walter found the perfect hotel, the Tajwar, with parking space for the mobile home. The young Germans took a room in the hotel. The Tajwar was a two-story building with twelve rooms, a small restaurant, shower facilities, and the car lot between trees that provided plenty of shade during the hot summer months. Walter maneuvered the camper in such a way that the pop-up top extended right into a tree. It became a relaxing habit to use the third cot bed up in the tree for a siesta after lunch.
By good luck, they visited Afghan during a time when no unrests, revolutions, invasions, or other foreign interventions were occurring. All the different ethnic groups and tribes lived together harmoniously and thought of themselves primarily as Afghans. None of the locals cared how the Western tourists dressed or behaved—except the salespeople along streets, in the bazaars, and wherever they offered their products, who tried to attract their attention. Anything available could be bought for a fraction of what visitors paid in their home countries. A favorite restaurant offered Wiener schnitzel and French fries plus salad for fifty cents—though nobody in their right minds touched the salads. A variety of beer brands could be obtained at any time. In addition to all sorts of homegrown products from the fields in the countryside, the trouble-free environment provided every visitor to Kabul an enjoyable time.
One day, Hilde and Walter went to a traditional Afghan fine-dining restaurant with host and separate dining niches for every guest. They sat on large, soft pillows on the floor instead of chairs, and a round brass plate with rims functioned as a table. Walter brought his cassette recorder in anticipation of the local music. After they had settled on the pillows, he fabricated a tobacco-hash joint from the local black and lighted it. This moment would be unreal and unimaginable anywhere else in the world, except Amsterdam. Walter handed the joint to Hilde, who felt somewhat unsure about this and initially passed, but she later accepted the potent smoke. At most sitting nooks, one or all the guests smoked something and in different ways.
Musicians near the center wall began to tune their instruments: the dombura, a dutar, and a rubab, as well as a zurna flute and percussion instruments tabla and daf. Walter settled back into the cushion leaning against the wall, his right hand on the cassette recorder, waiting for the right moment to press the record button. Stereo microphones had been inserted left and right into a khaki denim bag that Hilde had handmade specifically for the recorder. The musicians intermingled tuning of their instruments and real play. Suddenly, Walter felt transported to a world of sounds he had never heard before. A sense of Orient carried him somewhere else for a while. When he opened his eyes, fresh yogurt, coriander, garlic, spring onions, tomatoes, potatoes, and fruit stood in front of him on the brass plate.
Hilde looked at him and asked with a smile, “Do you like this music?”
He replied, “Oh man, I love it. Is this real?”
Naturally, the tourists visited the old part of town, with bazaars nestled along narrow, crooked streets. Carpets, rugs, wall covers, trousers, shirts, blouses, fabrics, copper, brass, semiprecious turquoise, lapis lazuli, tourmaline, and quartz were all offered for below-bargain prices. Professional purveyors and importers from all over the world filled container loads with cheap Afghan products to be sold in European or American hippie stores.
Two weeks into their stay, Hilde and Walter decided to make a side trip to the Buddhas of Bamiyan, about 180 kilometers northwest of Kabul. On a bumpy, unpaved road, they made the drive in a day and took in the sights of these ancient statues from 500 BC. The temperature in the area, more than eight thousand feet in altitude, turned quite cool at night. Souvenir shops dominated the vicinity of the site, and facilities did not exist. After one night near the Buddhas, the yellow camper returned back to the capital, their spot at the Tajwar still available.
The next day, Walter went on an errand, walking down the main street, where every few steps someone offered something for sale. He was not in a bargaining mood; his mind was set on buying only yogurt and some flatbread at a nearby small, wooden shack, when he noticed a very young boy cuddling something in his arm.
The boy saw him approaching. He conjured a few-days-old puppy into his hands and said, “You can have for good price.”
At first, Walter did not want to come close to the boy or touch the tiny dog. Then something made him stop and take a closer look at this heartbreaking scene. The puppy’s eyes were closed, and it was trying unsuccessfully to suck on something. Within thirty seconds, the boy decreased his demand from five hundred to fifty Afghanis. An internal struggle began in Walter, debating the pros and cons and at the same time looking at the puppy, which produced barely audible wailing sounds. He passed the money, less than twenty-five cents in value, took the tiny body that fit on one hand, and moved on because a crowd of bystanders had already gathered.
When Walter returned with yogurt, bread, and dog, Hilde cried out, “Oh my god, what did you do?” and then a little softer, “Look at it—it is crying.”
A concerned and trying time began, during which the new dog owners struggled to find the right diet for their new bus mate. When the situation seemed stabilized and the puppy kept everything he swallowed inside, the three left Kabul for the Indian border.