Afghanistan: Hans (4)

A memoir of life in Kabul, Afghanistan from 1976 to 1978: Part IV

)The glorious Afghan autumn passed too quickly, and I suddenly found myself facing the beginning of a cold, desolate December.

As the only English teacher at Kabul Teachers’ College, I had a classroom, blackboard and chalk. But no textbooks. I also had students. Sometimes. But not always. I never knew, actually, if anyone would show up or not. Which became really discouraging after a while.

I should have asked to be transferred to Kabul University where all the other Peace Corps Volunteers were teaching, but I didn’t. Instead of reaching out to the Peace Corps Director for help, I kept my frustrations to myself. (My reluctance to ask for help is one of my least admirable personality traits.)

I was also getting depressed romantically. I would just meet someone in the international community and become interested in them only to find out that they were either married or were transferring out of Kabul to some other country.

As the dark days were closing in on me one evening in early December, I decided to visit the home of the American Marines for the first time. Marines are stationed at every American Embassy around the world to provide protection. Those in Kabul lived in a beautiful home in a new suburb of Kabul close to the American Embassy and not far from Kabul International Airport.

Once a week, they would turn their two-room basement into a Happy Hour for the international community. The first, largest room had a bar where the Marines served alcoholic drinks, as well as an area set aside for people who wanted to play darts. (This was especially popular among the British.) The room behind had a record player where people could dance to music.

I had just arrived with some friends when I happened to look up and see a young man descending the staircase. A voice in my head immediately said, “That’s the most interesting man I’ve seen in Kabul yet!”

I watched as he talked briefly with a Peace Corps friend of mine named Jackie and then walked over to the bar. As soon as he did, I went up to Jackie and said:

“Is the man you were just talking to single? And does he live in Kabul?”

“Yes,” she replied to both questions. “His name is Hans, and he’s from the Netherlands.”

“Super!” I said. “Will you please let him know I’d like to meet him?” (I was really bold in those days.)

“Yes,” Jackie said. She turned around and headed toward Hans.

It took him a while, but he finally walked over to me and introduced himself. We started talking, and I learned that he and his father owned a business together in Rotterdam called Carpet Centre Afghanistan. They bought oriental carpets in Afghanistan, shipped them to Holland, and then sold them at wholesale prices to small retail shops all over Europe.

Hans asked me to dance, so we walked into the other room where the music was playing. The evening sped by, and to our surprise we were the last two people to leave the bar.

Then we climbed into Hans’ jeep, and he took me to his house in Shahr-i-Nau. We sat in the living room for a while and talked to his two roommates. Adrian was a British student, and Casey was a Texan with a hippy shop in Austin. Then we went to Hans’ bedroom, and I spent the night with him. (What can I say? It was the ‘70s . . .)

We discovered that we had both been invited to the same party at a mutual friend’s house that weekend, so we made plans to meet up again then. After what seemed like ages, the evening finally arrived, and I headed to the party. Hans was already there, dancing with a beautiful Italian girl.

I waited and waited, but he continued dancing and talking with other people. I finally went up to him and said,

“Are you ever going to dance with me?”

“Yes,” he replied. “What about now?”

Hans told me later that he realized in that instant that I was the woman he wanted to be with. Just two weeks later, we were sitting in the lounge of the German Club when he turned to me and said:

“Will you marry me?”

“Yes,” I replied.

And suddenly, just like that, the dreary, depressing Kabul winter transformed into a light-filled wonderland! Two scenes of our first weeks together stand out in particular in my memory.

Christmas Eve and Father Panigati

The first scene occurred on Christmas Eve when Hans and I decided to attend midnight mass at the Catholic Church.

The church was located within the compound of the Italian Embassy, and the presiding priest was named Father Angelo Panigati. Father Panigati arrived in Kabul in 1965 with the status of diplomat and as owner of the parish of the Italian embassy. He then used his ability with languages (he spoke 14, including local dialects) to minister to the international community. Barely five feet tall, he had an outsized personality and a heart that was full of joy and compassion.

I later learned that Father Panigati had spent his entire adult life ministering to people in far-flung places of the globe. Before coming to Afghanistan, he had spent 14 years as the priest in some of the remotest Andean villages in Peru. To move from one village to another, he rode a mule.

I also learned that Father Panigati loved acting in the plays the international community produced. Because the Church frowned upon his participation, he simply acted under an assumed name.

The first time I met him, at the Christmas Eve celebration, the small church was absolutely packed. Hans and I stood at the back, with even more people spilling out onto the sidewalk behind us. And then the entire congregation began singing Christmas carols. In German, French, Italian and English. All of our voices blended together, and you could feel the love and longing for peace completely fill the church and spread out far into the December night.

Dinner at Jim and Winna’s

The second scene is the night Hans and I were invited to a dinner party at the home of Jim and Winna, a young married couple and fellow Peace Corps Volunteers. They lived in a district near Kabul University, so Hans and I drove there in his jeep.

Winna had prepared a wonderful array of food and laid it out on the kitchen table. Jim had lit a fire in the fireplace and placed cushions and quilts on the living room floor. The guests helped themselves to the food, sat down on the pillows, leaned against the walls, and ate with their plates balanced on their laps.

While we were eating, it began snowing heavily outside, so we all decided to just spend the night there.

One of Jim and Winna’s guests was a Peace Corps Volunteer I had never met before. Tim had spent his two years of service by himself in a small village in the Hindu Kush Mountains. He became fluent in Dari and grew to love the people and the culture so much that he had stayed for a third year. Now, however, he was going home.

After dinner, we all helped ourselves to some delicious chocolate brownies that Winna had made, then sat back down on the floor. Tim began regaling us with stories about the people he had come to know. He also told stories that the Afghans tell each other when they are sitting around winter fires together.

I was wrapped up in a thick quilt, curled up next to my new love, warm in front of the fire. I watched the snow beginning to deepen outside the window while listening raptly to Tim’s stories. And then—unfortunately—I fell asleep. It turned out that Winna had laced the brownies with hashish, and my evening was cut short as oblivion descended!

Meeting Frau Farhadi

On our first official date, Hans took me to the Gulzar Hotel and Restaurant for dinner. The hotel, also located in Shahr-i-Nau, served German food. This made sense because it was owned by a German woman named Waltraud Farhadi.

Hans told me that the first time he and his father, Jan (pronounced yawn), had gone to the Gulzar, his father had suddenly become rooted at the entrance while staring at the woman coming toward them.

“Waltraud!” he said.

“Jan!” she replied.

Then they fell into each others’ arms. It turns out that they had been in high school together in Amsterdam before the Second World War.

During the war, Waltraud had married a German soldier who was killed at the front. In 1947, she met an Afghan named Ghulam Mohammad Farhad. 

Farhad had studied at the Technical University of Munich from 1921 to 1928 and become an electrical engineer. After completing his studies, he returned to Kabul. In 1939, he became president of the Kabul Electric Company. In 1947, he returned to Germany for a few weeks to buy electrical equipment. This is when he and Waltraud met and fell in love.

After a quick marriage, they returned to Kabul together. Whereupon Waltraud learned that she was wife number two! Papa, as she always called him, already had a wife and children. (The second marriage was legal in Afghanistan because Moslem men are allowed to have four wives.) Although such news came to her as a shock, she remained in Kabul and bore Papa a son and a daughter.

In 1948, Farhad became mayor of Kabul and remained in that position until 1954. During this time, he installed the city’s first traffic lights and switched the side on which cars drive from the left to the right.

I can’t imagine what it must have been like for a young woman from Europe to move to Kabul in 1947. Before there were any traffic lights, before Afghanistan had opened up to the world, before embassies had been established, before the airport had been constructed, before the highways connecting Kabul to the west, south and north of the country had been built.

I also have no idea how she managed the years during which she gave birth to her children and raised them. What was her life like? How was it to share her husband with another woman? I am almost positive the two families lived in separate households, but I don’t even know that for sure.

Nor do I know when she started the Gulzar Hotel and Restaurant. By the time we met her, her children were grown and her son, Volkmar, was helping her in the business. Frau Farhadi always struck me as being strong and independent and very much a successful businesswoman. How did she reconcile these different sides of herself?

I will never know the answers to these questions. She was around 60 when we met, and there was always a bit of formality and reserve about her. Hans and I called her Frau Farhadi out of respect, never Waltraud. We went to her restaurant numerous times, enjoyed the delicious German food, and were always warmly welcomed. But the line to close friendship was never crossed.

Moving In

A picture of our garden

I moved into the house that Hans rented soon after we decided to marry. It was a traditional Afghan home, with two stories and a huge, tree-filled garden surrounded by 10-foot high walls.

The main floor had a living room with a fireplace, a very basic kitchen, and a dining room that was large enough to have a second couch and living area. There were three bedrooms upstairs. The large master bedroom, where Hans slept, had a balcony that overlooked the garden.

Adrian soon returned to university in the UK. Casey stayed another month or so and then returned to Texas. After that, it was just Hans and me—along with Faramurs, who was our full-time servant, and Hussein, Hans’ right-hand man. Faramurs had a family and lived with them in his own home in Shahr-i-Nau.

Hussein, however, lived in a small dwelling that was inside our compound, just to the left of the house. Barely five feet tall, he was a Hazara from Bamiyan who was around twenty years old.

Hussein started to learn English when he was little boy by hanging around the tourists who came to see the Buddhas. As someone who has worked extremely hard to learn foreign languages, I was in awe of his language abilities. By the time we met, he was not only fluent in spoken English, but he could also write and read a little in English. And his skills were all self-taught.

Hans had an innate knack for understanding Afghan culture and for interacting with the people. In addition to Dutch, he spoke and read English fluently. But languages were definitely not his strong suit, and he learned only a few words of Dari. Therefore, Hussein acted as Hans’ interpreter, and the two were almost always together when dealing with day-to-day matters. Hussein was an amazing young man, and he is one of the major reasons why the welfare of the Hazaras matters so much to me.