Afghanistan: Overland to Kabul (6)

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

)Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

― Mark Twain

After three weeks in Holland, we got word from Hans’s Afghan partner that he needed a truck. So Hans went on a quick shopping trip and ended up buying a large DAF vehicle with 20 some gears. It also had a space behind the seats that was large enough for two people to sleep in.

Hans went out with an expert to practice how to shift gears and drive the truck for two hours one afternoon. The next day, we loaded up our suitcases, sleeping bags, cooking utensils and some food and set off.

This truck is about the size of the one we drove to Kabul. However, the sides and top of our truck were solid and it was a dark green color.

Germany and Austria

In reality, two hours of practice were not enough. Every time Hans tried to change gears, he had to slow down into first gear to do so. We made our way slowly across Germany the first day and decided to keep driving during the night. While I was sleeping in the passenger seat using my fox fur coat as a pillow, we crossed the Austrian Alps in a snowstorm. That is when Hans finally learned how to shift all of the gears!

Yugoslavia

I really wanted to spend my birthday (April 4) in Greece, so when we left Austria, we took a more southerly, less direct route that went the whole way through Yugoslavia rather than through Hungary and Bulgaria. In 1977, Josep Broz Tito was still in power in Yugoslavia, and the country had not yet been divided into the independent states of Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia and Kosovo.

Yugoslavia was also behind the iron curtain of Soviet control. I wasn’t sure what it would be like for an American to enter the country, but we had no problems at all. I remember that the countryside was beautiful, but poor, and that men were still using oxen to pull their plows.

Greece

On April 3rd, we crossed the border into Greece and headed to the town of Kavala, which is on the northern coast of the Aegean Sea. We found a hotel in Kavala and spent two wonderful days there. The spring weather was still a bit cool, but the skies were blue and the sea was glorious.

For my birthday dinner the next day, we chose a simple cafe at the edge of the sea. The fresh fish, Greek salad and freshly baked bread washed down with ample amounts of retsina were all delicious.

We also explored some of the backstreets of Kavala, where Hans found a supplier of ouzo and stocked up.

Turkey

After two nights in Greece, we headed to the border with Turkey. At the Greek side of the border, I needed to use the restroom. By the time I got back to the truck, our papers had all been checked and stamped and we were ready to go.

Then we entered the mile-long no-man’s land between the Greek and Turkish borders. We arrived at the Turkish side and stopped. And waited. And waited some more. We watched as the customs official who was supposed to stamp our papers ate lunch and then ambled along a river for at least an hour.

At one point, Hans left the truck and went into the customs office to see how things were proceeding. A few minutes after he left, my door was suddenly jerked open by a man in a guard uniform. In the moment, I was confused by what was happening. It only dawned on me later what he might have had in mind.

Thank goodness, Hans returned just then.

“What the hell are you doing!” he yelled, and the guard quickly disappeared.

After three hours, we were finally allowed to enter Turkey. We quickly drove past Istanbul and headed into Anatolia—the Asian part of the country. The villages soon grew farther and farther apart as we drove through vast stretches of apparently uninhabited countryside.

Except that every few miles, boys—from about the age of three to teenagers—would climb over the embankment and suddenly appear at the edge of the two-lane highway. With one hand, they tapped their index and middle fingers against their mouths while in the other hand they held a rock. Their meaning was clear: throw us some cigarettes or we will throw a rock at your windshield.

Hans had already driven the route from Kabul to the Netherlands once before, and so he came prepared. Before leaving Greece, he had stocked up on cartons of cigarettes. As the boys started to appear, we quickly threw handfuls of cigarettes in their direction and watched in the rearview mirror as they scrambled to pick them up.

We were driving in a particularly isolated area when all of a sudden we heard a siren and saw the flashing lights of a police car coming up behind us. We pulled over to the side of the road, and Hans got out of the truck, along with our papers, to talk to the two policemen. One of the cops shook his head.

“There are problems with your papers,” he said. “I will take your wife in my car, and you follow us in your truck to the police station.”

“No.” Hans replied. “I am getting back in my truck, which is much bigger than your car. If you don’t get out of my way, I am going to run you over.”

Hans climbed into the truck, started the engine, and headed down the road. Thank goodness, the policemen did not follow us.

We finally got to the Turkish border with Iran, where we joined a line of trucks that stretched for at least two miles end-to-end. In those days, thousands of trucks were bringing goods from Europe into Iran, and the Turks clearly took advantage of this as much as they could. The line did not move an inch the rest of the day, so we prepared to spend the night.

We got some firewood out of the truck and built a fire. Then we fetched some things to eat and drink. The driver in the truck behind us walked up, indicating that he would like to join us. We soon learned that he was Bulgarian and could not speak any other language. Using sign language and smiles, we said that he was welcome.

We shared some of our food, and the man went to his truck and brought back a jar of peaches his wife had canned. Hans also shared some of the ouzo he had bought in Greece. (Actually, he shared a LOT of ouzo!)

Although the night was cold, the fire kept the chill away. I started to reflect on how amazing it was that I sitting around a fire in the middle of nowhere in Turkey with a man from Holland whom I was planning to marry and a man from Bulgaria who lived in a Soviet-controlled country and whom I would never otherwise have met. I looked up at the moon, which was full, and asked myself in amazement:

“How did a girl from Montana ever end up here?”

Sometime late in the night, we extinguished the fire, said goodnight to our new friend, and crawled into the cab to sleep. Early in the morning, we were awakened by sounds of trucks beginning to move. Hans quickly jumped into the driver’s seat and started up the engine.

Unfortunately, our new friend was still sound asleep behind us (no doubt as a result of all that ouzo), and the last we saw of him, the trucks behind him were pulling out around him.

Iran

We finally made it over the border into Iran where the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was still in power.

As soon as we were clear of the Turkish border, I said:

“Hans, stop the truck.”

A bit mystified, he pulled over to the side of the road. I opened the door, climbed down, and knelt on the ground. Then I literally kissed it.

“Thank you,” I whispered, “For bringing us safely into Iran.”

Then I got back in the truck and we headed down the road again with one goal in mind: finding someplace to take a bath. We had left Greece one week before and had not been able to bathe since then. I had been wearing a scarf around my head for days to hide the greasy strands of hair, and I was desperate for a shower!

Thank goodness, it wasn’t long before we came across a small village with an ancient hammam (bathhouse)—men on one side of the building, women on the other—and were finally able to luxuriate in a hot, steamy, soapy bath.

Then we headed east, toward Tehran. Shortly before entering the city, Hans turned toward me and said,

“The traffic is so crazy in Tehran that there’s a 90% chance we will have an accident before we get through the city.”

And he was right. The traffic—especially in a truck—was truly awful. Fortunately, however, we made it to the other side without an incident. Unfortunately, we soon discovered that we were on the wrong road!

Our goal was to drive to Mashad, which is directly east of Tehran. However, we were now on a road that was taking us in a southeasterly direction, toward the city of Kerman. There was no way we were going to go back into Tehran to correct our mistake, so we continued on the route until we came to Kerman and could head north again toward Mashhad.

The rest of the journey through Iran took place without incident.

One thing shocked me, however. The food bazars in the villages that we passed had only a few tomatoes and potatoes for sale, and they were long past their prime. Iran had a major oil industry, and the Shah was spending millions of dollars annually on huge construction projects. So why was there so little food? In contrast, Afghanistan was one of the poorest countries in the world, but the farmers produced an amazing abundance of food—vegetables, fruits, spices and meats.

I do not know if the Shah had something to do with the lack of food or if the food bazars in southeastern Iran had always been sparse, but the discrepancy mystified me.

We eventually arrived in Mashhad and spent a night there. Mashhad is an ancient city in Iran where the huge Holy Shrine of Imam Reza is located. The Shrine was built in the 9th century and has become a pilgrimage site. In the 18th century, Mashhad even became the capital of Persia for a while.

I remember wandering through a huge bazar that sold everything you could imagine, from household goods and spices like saffron to clothes and oriental carpets. We stopped at a shop that sold precious stones, and I bought several pieces of Persian turquoise. In contrast to turquoise from the American Southwest, which is striated with different colors, Persian turquoise is solid blue and reminds me of the sky.

We left Mashhad the next day and headed for the Afghan border. Unfortunately, customs officials there refused to allow us to cross due to problems with the truck’s import papers. (There actually were some problems, apparently!) The upshot was that Hans had to backtrack to Mashhad to get the papers amended, adding two more days to our already overlong journey.

The Bus to Kabul

By this time, my vacation was long gone and I was feeling a great deal of pressure to get back to work. So I decided to take a bus to Kabul alone while Hans dealt with the paperwork.

The bus route led from the northwestern border (near Herat) to Kandahar, the major city in southern Afghanistan, and then northeast to Kabul. Because it was a 6-hour journey to Kandahar and another 6-hour journey from Kandahar to Kabul, both the bus driver and the passengers would spend the night at an inn in Kandahar before continuing on to Kabul the next day.

I said goodbye to Hans, made my way through border security, and climbed onto a bus filled with Afghan men. Once again, I was the only Westerner, as well as the only woman on the bus. A young man sat down in the seat next to me, and we conversed sporadically in English for the next six hours.

The passengers arrived at the inn and began waiting in line to check in. When it was my turn, I was astonished to hear a man’s voice behind me tell the innkeeper in Dari that he and I were together. I swung around, looked up at my fellow traveler, and yelped out:

“Durustnes!” (It’s not true!)

With a glare at the young man, the innkeeper handed me a key to my own room. I headed there immediately and crawled into bed, grateful for the comfort of a real mattress and sheets after three weeks of sleeping in a sleeping bag in the cramped space in the truck.

I awoke early the next morning, got dressed, and opened the door. Right in front of me, sound asleep on a hard wooden chair, was the innkeeper. He had slept there all night to protect me!

After a breakfast of nan and tea, I climbed on the bus for the last 6-hour leg of the journey to Kabul. Sure enough, the same young man sat down next to me again. When we got to Kabul, he insisted on escorting me to my home because I was a single woman traveling alone. He left me there, acting like a perfect gentleman, and I never saw him again.

Ever since that day, however, whenever I hear the word Kandahar, what comes to my mind is not angry bearded men toting Kalashnikov rifles but an innkeeper who spent the night sleeping in a hard wooden chair to protect a stranger from harm.