Kabul Cowgirl
In a country where women do not ride bicycles, drive cars, or play sports, I managed to get on a horse yesterday. An friend of a friend, a nouveau riche Afghan, has six horses on the outskirts of Kabul. He is from Badakshan, Afghanistan's northernmost province, the birthplace of the national sport, Buzkashi (horse polo, without clubs, and a drowned goat instead of a ball).
The horses were beatuiful, all stallions and quite temperamental. The saddles were enormous armchair-like structures with a cover of hand-woven carpet and a big handle in the front apparently "for hooking your leg on when you hang down the side of the horse." I didn't do too much of that.
We left the mud-walled compound and rode down the main road to Darulaman Palace, a big castle which once housed the royal family and which at some point in the future will hopefully become the seat of parliament. At the moment the palace and its surroundings look a lot like Dresden or Warszawa circa 1945. Through the gaping holes of rockets and grenades one can see the insides of what used to be richly decorated dining rooms and sitting salons. We rode through what once must have been the palace gardens, now a wasteland of dirt and garbage.
It was quick to leave the city and enter the villages. Though my black headscarf revealed only half of my face, I was no doubt the evening's greatest attraction. The men whistled, pointed, and laughed, and the children yelled "Haraszi!"--the Dari word for foreigner. One teenage boy tried to persuade one of his cows to attack my horse.
Through alleys too narrow for cars and too dirty for feet; up hills that had not been de-mined and down marginally green valleys where nomads herded their sheep -- for two hours I was in an Afghanistan that I had never thought I would get to see, let alone on a Sunday evening after work. I saw long queues at the water pump, a fist fight too real for comfort, and raw sewage running down the middle of a road where children played. I saw Taliban-looking men in stylish turbans and not one woman without a burqa.
We got back after nightfall. My hands were blistered and my backside was sore, but I couldn't feel it.
The horses were beatuiful, all stallions and quite temperamental. The saddles were enormous armchair-like structures with a cover of hand-woven carpet and a big handle in the front apparently "for hooking your leg on when you hang down the side of the horse." I didn't do too much of that.
We left the mud-walled compound and rode down the main road to Darulaman Palace, a big castle which once housed the royal family and which at some point in the future will hopefully become the seat of parliament. At the moment the palace and its surroundings look a lot like Dresden or Warszawa circa 1945. Through the gaping holes of rockets and grenades one can see the insides of what used to be richly decorated dining rooms and sitting salons. We rode through what once must have been the palace gardens, now a wasteland of dirt and garbage.
It was quick to leave the city and enter the villages. Though my black headscarf revealed only half of my face, I was no doubt the evening's greatest attraction. The men whistled, pointed, and laughed, and the children yelled "Haraszi!"--the Dari word for foreigner. One teenage boy tried to persuade one of his cows to attack my horse.
Through alleys too narrow for cars and too dirty for feet; up hills that had not been de-mined and down marginally green valleys where nomads herded their sheep -- for two hours I was in an Afghanistan that I had never thought I would get to see, let alone on a Sunday evening after work. I saw long queues at the water pump, a fist fight too real for comfort, and raw sewage running down the middle of a road where children played. I saw Taliban-looking men in stylish turbans and not one woman without a burqa.
We got back after nightfall. My hands were blistered and my backside was sore, but I couldn't feel it.
posted by Anja at 9:00 PM
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