Towns To Pass Through

Centre of Asadabad, capital of the province of Kunar, Afghanistan

Mehtar Lam, Jalalabad and Asadabad, Capitals of the Provinces of Laghman, Nangarhar and Kunar, Afghanistan (March 2017)

A maze of an incredible number of electrical wires crosses through the greyish sky between slightly run-down one- and two-storey buildings that line – with hardly any break – all the roads that spread out from the central traffic circle. It looks as if the city is covered in a giant spider’s web. Below, the side of the road is blocked by wild parking cars or people that try to sell whatever goods or services they can. Some have stalls or carts covered with big umbrellas, others, like a watchmaker with a small glass showcase displaying metal watch bands and his tools, simply sit on the ground. Cars, pick-ups and small lorries honk to steer through the thereby narrowly made roads, the sounds of their engine blending in with the chatter from the shops tucked into the ground floor of the buildings. The town is Asadabad, the capital of the eastern Afghan province of Kunar.

While the provincial capitals of Afghanistan are most certainly not my Shangri-La, it is unavoidable to pass through them. So in hope that an acquaintance of mine can bring me to a remote corner of the country, I have to accompany him to several of them in the east.

The first stop is Mehtar Lam, the capital of the province of Laghman. Driving through the green fields of a wide valley framed by bleak hills just off the busy main traffic artery between Kabul and the Pakistani city of Peshawar, it is only a short ride until the bustling small shops and stalls begin to line up on the side of the road, making clear that we reached Mehtar Lam. With at least here in the bazaar hardly any two-storey buildings it rather feels like a big village than a town. But the bulwark of concrete T-walls along for ordinary traffic restricted roads hiding government buildings clearly gives away its status as a provincial capital.

Driving up to one of the lifts on which Mehtar Lam is built, passing a few very old lorries, the ubiquitous Corollas and, here in the east, increasingly rickshas, the scenery changes. In an apparently new quarter at the edge of town, there are several multi-storey buildings, some finished, even already showing traces of wear, others only shells still under construction. It is hard to assess, whether this new quarter is a sign of progress of Mehtar Lam or – given the empty shells – of a failed boom and subsequent dereliction. At least during my short stay, I have hardly seen any ongoing work.

In any event, expats usually call this type of buildings poppy palaces, in a reference to where the money for such constructions allegedly came from; Afghans often simply say „qasr“ (palace). Inside, the large guestrooms – with deep hand knotted carpets, rectangular long sitting cushions called „tushak“ and normal cushions called „bolisht“, hidden spotlights in leveled shiny ceilings as well as heavy curtains – are cosy, but usually also kitschy. On the other hand, the façades on the outside with strangely decorated porticos with columns that, here in Mehtar Lam, are often horribly trying to imitate palm trees with the capitals like short bended palm fronds and the bodies a poor copy of the trunk, are just bad taste. Of course, the vast majority of residents can’t afford such „splendour“ and lives in the simple tiny brick and mud wall houses with makeshift washing lines in front of them that are just in sight of the „palaces“.

The town seems quiet. In fact, once away from the bazaar or the main road, the side streets are virtually deserted and a silent emptiness yawns over the dusty unpaved roads between the high enclosing walls surrounding most Afghan houses.

But the appearance is deceptive. In the dim light of the morning, from the foot of the craggy mountains on the eastern horizon that still hide the rays of the sun, only a few kilometres behind a high building with a big white cupola in the style of a town hall, the distant sound of gun fire echoes over. The Taliban are reportedly only three kilometres out of town. And a few weeks ago, they even tried to overtake the city, with their bullets allegedly hitting these very houses. Then, some muffled booms follow the gunfire – according to my Afghan friend, it is the sound of exploding rockets. But the fight is far away and intermittent enough to be of no immediate concern.

On the next day, from the rooftop of another „palace“ the extent of Mehtar Lam becomes more clear. The small town is set in the middle of a plain of green fields and lush trees that is surrounded by ragged stony hills and, beyond, high-rising snow covered mountains. And Mehtar Lam is small indeed. A close-by hamlet of ochre mud wall houses half hidden in the green, is already another village that still belongs to the district of Mehtar Lam, but not anymore to the town itself.

Retracing the way back from Mehtar Lam to the main traffic artery and driving further east, we soon reach Jalalabad. As Jalalabad is virtually not only the capital of the province of Nangarhar, but the centre of the whole east of Afghanistan, it is way more bustling than Mehtar Lam. As always, hundreds of cars and many more rickshas, colourfully decorated by their drivers, some with painted motives from gun wielding Pakistani or Indian movies, choke the broad roads, blowing their horns in vain. Big SUVs or Toyota Hilux with Kalashnikov-armed guards in the back demand – often successfully – the right of the stronger and rather forcibly cleave their way through the chaos of tiny rickshas.

On a stretch along the banks of the Kabul river that flows through Jalalabad, some for Afghan standards posh restaurants line up. Their spacious terraces with traditional sitting platforms, in one place with an aviary with cooing doves, overlook the river. While it would be a good spot, the garbage strewn in the dirty water of the river destroys the scenery.

We only pass through Jalalabad, taking the Behsud bridge over the river. The second bridge, just a few metres away from the first, has only recently been opened and the driveway to the bridgehead is still unpaved and so bad that even a Toyota Hilux only can drive over it at walking pace. And while the second bridge certainly has eased up things, the point is still an even for the traffic standards in Jalalabad bad bottleneck that more often than not seems stuck. Albeit somehow traffic always inches over the bridge.

Leaving the busy bazaars at the edge of Jalalabad behind, the market stalls – the old rather shabby huts and the newly built looking like rows of storage units with roll-up steel doors – are soon replaced by lines of trees with slim trunks and fields of slightly swaying dark green blades of wheat that reach right to the bleak mountain slopes on both sides of the valley. The green of the bottom of the wide Kunar valley is only sometimes broken by smaller village bazaars and, of course, the wide Kunar river meandering between sand and gravel banks that spot the river like tiny oblong islands.

After about one and a half hour driving northeast from Jalalabad, we reach Asadabad, the capital of Kunar province. As with many towns in Afghanistan, it is announced by a free-standing archway over the road, just a little bit out of the town itself. In the case of Asadabad, the top of the pale archway is painted in black, red and green – the colours of the Afghan national flag – and portraits of the Afghan president and the governor of Kunar are sported on its sides.

Driving into town, it resembles Mehtar Lam, Jalalabad or any other provincial capital that I have seen in Afghanistan. A bazaar in low-profile houses where the chaotic Afghan traffic only moves slowly between carts piled with fruits, clothes or any other merchandise. Albeit my host’s Afghan entourage claims that – compared to Mehtar Lam – Asadabad’s bazaar is rather disappointing, I myself can’t see any significant differences.

There are of course, as in every town, the small peculiarities. For example the insane amount of electrical wiring that is found over Asadabad’s streets, but not in other towns and for which no one could give me a specific reason. Or the many pick-ups with considerably heightened chassis which are allegedly necessary for the bad road from Asadabad to places in the very remote neighbouring province of Nuristan. But all in all, there is not much to see in Asadabad. And even if the current construction of what will likely be a clock tower on Asadabad’s main roundabout will be finished, this will hardly change.

Maybe the most noteworthy thing while staying in Asadabad is that at least once or twice a day there is the dull boom of an artillery cannon and, seconds later, small billows of smoke appear on the nearby mountain slope where the shell had hit. While the artillery allegedly targets Taliban, it is not clear, if this is indeed always the case or if sometimes there are mere warning or training shots. In any event, life in Asadabad is hardly troubled and, at least so far, the town is – contrary to more remote places of Kunar – under no significant insurgent threat.

Driving back from Asadabad to Jalalabad some days later, the sea of wheat fields is only broken by a few single men checking on their crop. Further down the valley, in the dimmer getting light of the low standing sun, large groups of children play cricket on grassy fields. By the time we arrive once again in Jalalabad the twilight of dusk has already almost given way to the darkness of the night.

Here I cut loose my overprotective host and guards, and go to a simple hotel named after the capital Kabul. There are only three thin tattered „tushak“ and some very old blankets in the tiny room. And, for some reasons, also three tv sets – I don’t try them out, but probably none is working. For 300 Afghani (about 4.50 US$) per night you hardly can ask for much. From the dusty balcony that runs around the hotel, but no one seems to ever use, I watch the stream of honking Corollas and rickshas around Pashtunistan Wat traffic circle slowly become a trickle until they almost completely disappear, even though it is only between eight and nine o’clock in the evening. Only the colourful lights that decorate the hotel on the other side of the small alley run along the in the dark invisible cables for a little bit longer before also they go out.