Afghanistan: The Coup (9)

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

As I mentioned in the post titled Hans, Hans and his father owned a wholesale oriental carpet business in Rotterdam called Carpet Centre Afghanistan.

Carpets in Afghanistan were often made by hand in small villages, frequently in simple homes with dirt floors. They were then sent to Kabul on the backs of donkeys and camels or in open trucks. By the time they arrived, they were filled with dirt.

Hans would buy these carpets from various dealers and then ship them by air to washing factories in Switzerland. In the process, he ended up paying for several kilos of dirt in each shipment, which added a good deal to the overall cost. In addition, the cost of labor in Switzerland was extremely high, and delays in receiving the finished product from Switzerland were common.

So the main reason Hans was living full-time in Kabul was to build a facility where the carpets could be cleaned using much cheaper Afghan labor and then air-freighted directly to Holland, where they were immediately ready to sell.

After our wedding, Hans got serious about building the facility. Unfortunately, he decided to build it in our compound, right inside the entrance.

He designed and built an electrically-operated steel drum, kind of like a huge clothes dryer, but with holes in it, where the carpets could be tumbled free of dirt. He also had a width of concrete laid down where the carpets could be washed and rinsed and then hung up to dry.

This worked great for him, because he didn’t have to pay rent for another building and he could walk outside our front door and be at work.

It was a different story for me.

Afghans in their homes were absolutely wonderful. But walking through the streets as a young foreign woman was a constant challenge. I followed the same route through Shahr-i-Nau every day to my teaching job, and every day I faced catcalls and hassles from the men around me. After a while, this began to take its toll.

Now—instead of having a refuge to come home to, where I could be myself and feel safe—I had to walk past ten Afghan men every time I left and returned home. I could no longer spend time in our garden—or even on the balcony outside of our bedroom—because ten pairs of eyes would be staring at me if I did.

The final straw occurred one day when an American friend of mine tried to visit me, and the men at the door refused to allow her to enter! When I learned this, I not only felt angry, but completely trapped. I also felt something I had never felt before: depression.

I could have asked Hans to move his factory somewhere else. I could also have rented my own house somewhere else. But I did neither of these things. I internalized my feelings and became more and more depressed.

At one point, my female students invited me to one of their homes for lunch, and I know they went to a great deal of expense and effort to create something special for me. I still feel regret and shame every time I think of this, but that afternoon, I could not get out of bed. Even Faramurs, our servant, came to my bedroom door, urging me to go with the student waiting downstairs who had been sent to fetch me, but I could not do it.

That is when I knew I needed to return to the U.S., at least for a while. Without a passport, Hans could not accompany me. So in mid-March 1978, I climbed on an Ariana plane alone and started the 24-hour journey back to the U.S.

My visit home

My sister and brother were both living in Seattle then, and my parents were living in Boardman, a small town on the Columbia River in north-central Oregon that was a 4-hour drive away from Seattle. So Seattle was my destination.

One of the reasons I wanted to go home in March is that the Teachers of English as a Second Language (TESOL) organization was holding its annual convention that year in Mexico City. TESOL is the most important professional organization in the world for people who teach English as a second language (ESL), and I loved attending their conferences. I always learned so much and came home with tons of books and inspiration!

Mexico City was also where I taught ESL for the first time—during the summer between my two years of graduate school—and I really wanted to see some close friends again. So I flew to Mexico, had a wonderful time, and came back to Seattle renewed and refreshed.

The days flew by. Toward the end of April, my sister, Janice, and I decided to visit two good friends, Pam and Doug, who were living on Orcas Island. (This was the same place I had been visiting in 1976 when I learned I was not going to Tunisia as planned and that the next Peace Corps opening was in Afghanistan.)

On April 27, 1978, we woke up to a beautiful spring morning and were just sitting down to some strong coffee and a stack of delicious blueberry pancakes when the phone rang. Doug answered it and then turned to me.

“It’s your brother,” he said.

I picked up the phone and said, “Hello?”

“Turn on the radio, Clarice,” my brother said. “There’s been a coup in Afghanistan.”

The coup

For the next few days, I was glued to radio and TV stations, worrying about what was taking place and how Hans and my friends were doing. Hans finally called me about a week later to let me know everyone was OK. Part of the following information is what he told me from a first-hand account, and part of it is the historical version.

Note that in the map below, the EducationalUSA Advising Center—which is what shows up on Google maps now, in 2024—was the American Embassy in 1978. (At the cost of $800 million to build, the facility is a good deal more robust than the words “Advising Center” would indicate.) Also note that the Presidential Palace is just south of the American Embassy/Advising Center and that the Kabul Intercontinental Hotel is on the left side of the map in the middle.

The basic facts

The basic facts are that a coup d'état occurred on April 28, 1978 (in Seattle, it was the 27th) when Pashtun soldiers loyal to an Afghan named Nur Muhammad Taraki stormed the presidential palace. On doing so, they executed President Daoud, his wife, and several other close relatives, including women and children.

Taraki was the leader of a communist faction named Khalq, which was aligned with the Soviet Union. Shortly after the coup, he installed himself as Prime Minister.

The coup d'état not only surprised the United States, but it also (reportedly) surprised the Soviet Union. Within a week, President Jimmy Carter had decided to recognize the new government in the desire to retain some influence over it.

In addition, Washington quickly replaced the previous American ambassador, Ted Eliot, with a new ambassador named Adolph Dubs. Ambassador Dubs was a career diplomat and Soviet expert who spoke Russian and who had served as ranking chargé d'affaires at the United States Embassy in Moscow. He arrived in Kabul on May 13, 1978.

Personal experience

According to Hans and other people who lived through what has become known as the Saur Revolution, this is what happened on the street.

On the night that the coup began, Ted Eliot—the American Ambassador (and wealthy descendant of the poet T.S. Eliot)—was at a party at the Intercontinental Hotel, along with many other diplomats and high ranking officials. Eliot, who was rather clueless anyway, apparently had no idea that a coup was about to take place.

Back at the American Embassy, the marines guarding the facility suddenly noticed tanks driving by. With some alarm, a couple of marines jumped into a jeep and followed the tanks into the center of town, where the tanks suddenly began firing on the Presidential Palace.

Eliot and the other diplomats were stuck at the Intercon for the night because the fighting was taking place between them and their embassies.

Fighting continued in the area the next day. Hans told me that he had rescued two Dutch friends of ours and their sixteen-year-old daughter, who were literally huddled under their dining room table while shots were being fired all around them.

Thank goodness, none of our friends in the international community were harmed. But it took a while for everyone to figure out what had happened, who had taken over the government, and how that would affect life in Kabul going forward.

I stayed in Seattle for two more months. The political situation seemed to have stabilized by then, and things—on the surface at least—were back to normal. So in early July, I made the decision to return to Hans and my life in Afghanistan. Unbeknownst to me, it was to be for the last time.