Another Afghanistan: A Pre-Taliban Memoir

By Julie Hill

An engaging and richly appreciative account of life in Afghanistan in Pre-Taliban times.

Another Afghanistan: A Pre-Taliban Memoir is set in the mid-1970s, when Julie Hill was posted with her husband, a United Nations Development Program Representative in Kabul, in between the fall of the old monarchy and the takeover of the country by the Taliban in the 1990s. The book fills a void in what most people know about that country, which has been largely defined by the excesses of the Taliban and the politics of the US and the old Soviet Union.

While the Taliban do not enter the picture until 20 years after her departure, in the popular mind, they create a clear demarcation line between the old and new Afghanistan. Besides, given the country's millennial history, a 20-year interlude is of little consequence. For the ordinary reader, only the Taliban has coherence as a concept, so she has used them in her title.

In any case, Afghanistan remains very much in the news, albeit perhaps for all the wrong reasons, and the author would like to balance the network news with a more personal and engaging chronicle of that country and its people.

Afghanistan half a century ago was at peace with itself, with its neighbors, and even with its warlords. The politics of the region was stable, education was encouraged, women were being liberated slowly, and the country was moving in the direction of becoming a modern secular state.

The book offers a view of Afghanistan and of its people—including the foreign community—on an intimate level, afforded by the fact that she was involved both in the diplomatic wife's organization and in conversations with ordinary citizens in the country' s remote corners.

Representing the UN at the Diplomatic Wife's Organization, she witnessed firsthand the tension between East and West during the peak of the Cold War, albeit in a more informal but no less interesting arena. As an Alexandrian Greek she was neutral in the balance that pitted diplomatic wives from the West against those from the Soviet or Eastern bloc and the non-aligned nations. Significant, memorable, and often humorous exchanges occurred at the diplomatic events she attended.

Speaking Dari with women cloistered in their homes in the countryside, the author gained insights into their country and its culture. She was exhilarated and yet also perplexed to meet such a generous, gracious, and handsome people, and yet to find some of them—too many of them—caught up in violence of both a very public and very personal kind.

Afghanistan emerges in her book as a country both stunningly beautiful and bewildering, immensely rich in archaeological remains. The book tries to awaken a lost interest in remnants of civilizations and in the country's fabulous bazaars and creates a vivid tableau of traveling adventures based on first-hand observations.

Given her origins, the author has always been fascinated by the exploits of Alexander the Great and the vibrant cities the Greeks left behind, which included Ai Khanum in Afghanistan. She was privileged, as it was a rarity for a foreigner to gain a permit, to visit the legendary city on the border of the Amu-Darya River. Completely destroyed few years later by the Taliban, the area has reverted to a field of opium poppies.

The book takes the reader into places where life bustles with bargaining and gossip in bazaars and teahouses, into places where there was no road at all, traveling without a map or land mark in sight. She encounters nomads on their annual pilgrimage to higher mountains and grapples with the dilemma of their way of a life, and their cultural extinction with the emergence of the Taliban and the widening impact of globalization.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9781667804835

Julie Hill

The Author An Alexandrian Greek, Julie Hill has spent the past four decades exploring the planet and writing about it. Her previous books are A Promise to Keep: From Athens to Afghanistan (Xlibris, 2003) and The Silk Road Revisited: Markets, Merchants and Minarets (Author House, 2006). This new book tracks Julie’s personal journeys across remote areas of the globe. Speaking five languages and a chemist by training, she worked as an international telecommunications executive before retiring in Southern California. The Editor Jose Dalisay is an award-winning writer and teacher from the Philippines, the author of 28 books and editor of many others. His second novel, Soledad’s Sister, was shortlisted for the inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize in 2007.

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Another Afghanistan: A Pre-Taliban Memoir

Copyright © 2021 by Julie Hill

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address

[e-mail].

Cover photo by Ric Ergenbright/danitadelimont.com

ISBN: 978-1-66780-482-8

eBook ISBN: 978-1-66780-483-5

Table of Contents

PREFACE

Part I. Portraits of Daily Life

1. Kabul, a Mountain City

2. Our Home

3. Youssouf and the Household

4. A Winter’s Day in Kabul

5. The Beauty Salon

6. Kabul Visitors

Part II. The Diplomatic Life

7. Filet for Dinner

8. Diplomatic Dames

9. Thorny Issues

10. Evenings with the Americans

11. A Russian Soiree

12. Feta Cheese and Cotton Sheets

13. An Evening of Neocolonialism

14. Goodwill to Children

15. A Modern Woman

Part III. Bazaars

16. Chicken Street

17. The Old City Bazaars

18. The Carpet Doctor

19. Bargaining with Tariq

20. At the Gold Bazaar

Part IV. Days in the Countryside

21. Souvenirs from Istalif

22. A Picnic at Salang Pass

23. The Great Game of Buzkashi

24. The Tomb of the Garden King

25. Driving through the Khyber Pass

26. In the Place of Shining Light

Part V. Portraits of the Land

27. On the Road to Kandahar

28. Immortal Herat

29. Chaikhanas and Samovars

30. Khalil’s Four Wives

31. The Governor’s Seal

32. A Carpet in Shereen Tagao

33. On the Desert Road

34. Nomads and Caravans

35. The Noble Shrine

36. Balkh and Khulm

37. An Iranian Family

38. Another Alexandria

39. Farewell to Afghanistan

Epilogue, August 2021

PREFACE

This book is based on my diary of the time I lived in Kabul with my late husband, Arthur Hill, from 1973 to 1975. Arthur served as Representative of the United Nations Development Program. This was after the overthrow of King Mohamed Zahir Shah by his brother-in-law and cousin General Mohamed Daoud Khan, and before Daoud’s own fall in a communist takeover.

The title of this book looks back to the years Afghanistan was at peace with itself, with its neighbors, and even with its warlords. The politics of the region were stable.

At the time we were there, education was encouraged, women were being liberated slowly, and the country was moving in the direction of becoming a modern secular state. Unfortunately, the Soviets captured this segment of the country, while the US and its allies backed their enemies, led by 14th-century fundamentalists who completely destroyed the modernizers or drove them into exile.

Representing the UN at the Diplomatic Wives Organization, I witnessed firsthand the tension between East and West during the peak of the Cold War, albeit in a more informal but no less interesting arena. As a Greek I was neutral in the balance that pitted diplomatic wives from the West against those from the Soviet or Eastern bloc and the unaligned nations.

The fact that I spoke Farsi allowed me to speak with women cloistered in their mud houses in the countryside, gaining insights into their country and its culture. My French gave me access to a sizable number of women who had studied in Europe.

As an Alexandrian Greek I had always been fascinated by the exploits of Alexander the Great and the vibrant cities the Greeks left behind, which included Ai Khanum in Afghanistan. We were privileged, as it was a rarity for a foreigner to gain a permit, to visit the legendary city on the border of the Amu Darya river. After hard days driving through rough terrain, we could see across the river the Soviet military vehicles moving on blacktop roads. Only hours before we had passed nomad caravans moving their herds to high pastures for the summer. These contrasts were stark. Here we visited a French archaeological team excavating a Greek city, Alexandria on the Oxus or Ai Khanum. Completely destroyed few years later by the Taliban, the area has reverted to a field of poppies.

Since the dawn of history, roads and routes have been at the center of Afghanistan. This landlocked country the size of France was the crossroads of Asia and the meeting place and battleground of two waves of civilization, from the urbane Persian empire to the west and the Turkic nomads to the north.

These two powers clashed for control over Afghanistan as it was vital to their survival. At times, the country served as a buffer zone, keeping these two empires apart, while at other times it served as a corridor through which their armies marched north to south, and west to east when they desired to invade India. This was the land where the first ancient religions such as Zoroastrianism and Buddhism flourished.

It was through Afghanistan that pilgrims and traders working the ancient Silk Road carried Buddhism to China and Japan. Through the centuries, conquerors swept across the land, every one of them leaving their mark.

In 328 BC the Macedonian Greeks under Alexander the Great conquered Afghanistan and Central Asia and went on to invade India. The Greeks left behind a vibrant Greco-Buddhist kingdom and civilization.

In 654 AD the Arab armies swept through Afghanistan, bringing with them the new religion of Islam which preached equality and justice and quickly penetrated the entire region. Short-lived dynasties then attempted to rule portions of the country, one them in 1000 AD, Mahmoud of Ghazni, who led many successful sorties in India and made Ghazni a great cultural center.

In 1219 Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes swept through Afghanistan, destroying cities like Balkh and Herat and piling up mounds of dead bodies. Yet the Mongols contributed, too, to Afghanistan’s future, leaving behind the modern Hazaras, who were the result of intermarriage between the Mongols and local tribes.

In the 14th century, Timur—or Tamerlane as he is called in the West, a descendant of Genghis Khan—created a vast new empire across Russia and Persia. Timur captured Herat in 1381, and his son Shah Rukh made Herat the capital of the empire in 1405, establishing one of the most cultured and refined cites of the world.

The fusion of Central Asian and Persian culture was a major legacy for the future of Afghanistan. For the next 300 years, the eastern Afghan tribes periodically invaded India, conquering Delhi and creating a vast Indo-Afghan empire.

In 1500, from his home in Uzbekistan’s Ferghana Valley, Timur’s descendant Babur went out to conquer first Kabul and then Delhi, establishing the Moghul dynasty which was to rule India until the arrival of the British.

These series of invasions resulted in a complex ethnic, cultural and religious mix that was to make nation-building extremely difficult.

Southern Afghanistan was dominated by the Pashtun tribe, from where emerged a leader, Ahmad Shah Durani, who defeated the Mahrattas and captured the throne of Delhi and Kashmir, thereby creating the first Afghan empire. He is considered the father of the nation. His son Taimur Shah moved the capital to Kabul in 1772.

In the next century feuds between the Durani clans dissipated their power. The weakening and bickering Durani kings had to hold off the two new empires, the British to the East the Russians to the North. Three times the British made attempts to conquer Afghanistan. What followed was the Great Game between Russia and Britain (or Victorian England and Tsarist Russia), a clandestine war of wits, bribery, and occasional military pressure as both powers kept at each other at a respectful distance by maintaining Afghanistan a buffer zone between them. The Durani clan was to rule Afghanistan for over 200 years until 1973, when King Zahir Shah was deposed by his cousin Mohamed Daoud and Afghanistan became a republic.

What emerged was the Afghanistan we hear about in the news today. Another coup followed in 1978, after which the country fell under Soviet influence, provoking a nine-year war between the new Soviet-backed government and the mujahideen, or jihadist guerrillas, who eventually won. By the mid-1990s, the fundamentalist Taliban had seized power, holding it until 2001, when American-led forces dislodged them in the wake of 9/11. However they regrouped, holding considerable influence over the country in the last twenty years despite the presence of Western forces. The US and allied forces were forced to withdraw, precipitating the rapid collapse of civilian rule in August 2021 and bringing the Taliban back to power. The result can only be more suffering for the people of Afghanistan, notwithstanding feeble pledges by the Taliban to observe human rights.

We arrived and stayed in Afghanistan during a brief period of relative calm in the early 1970s, when it was still possible to walk the streets of Kabul and drive a jeep out to the hinterlands without fear of sudden annihilation.

My husband’s assignment in this country often described as remote was for me an extraordinary opportunity as a diplomat’s wife to see and to know Afghanistan at a time when events in the region were of little concern to most people elsewhere. I wanted to discover all I could about the people, the way they lived, their character, their faith, and their aspirations, while traveling around the country to view its architectural treasures.

It was a personal quest and although I kept a diary, I had no intention of turning it into a book. Indeed, some may wish that I had stuck to my original resolve. It is bold to believe that I can add anything of value to the existing literature. But there is a justification for a book of this kind, as a generation of people has grown up with images of Afghanistan at war, replete with bombings, bloodshed, refugees, and misery.

Afghanistan is a country both stunningly beautiful and bewildering. There is room for an account that tries to awaken a lost interest in remnants of civilizations, in its fabulous markets and in traveling adventures not under the aegis of a tour group but on a personal voyage of discovery.

Rarely in a lifetime of travel have I felt so exhilarated and yet also so perplexed, to meet such generous, gracious, and handsome people, and yet to find some of them—too many of them, it seemed to me—caught up in violence, of both a very public and very personal kind. Sadly, that dark red fringe will always be part of any book about Afghanistan, but we also need to remember the country at its glorious best, as it was and yet could be again.

And while nearly anything I say about Afghanistan can bear political ramifications, given the torturous history of that country, let me just emphasize that these are foremostly my personal memoirs and impressions more than any kind of deliberate or scholarly political history. That professional historians may find them useful is of less interest to me than that the reader will begin to see and appreciate another Afghanistan behind today’s raucous headlines.

Lastly I would like to thank Jose Dalisay, an award-winning writer and professor in the Philippines, and a Pacific Leadership Fellow at the University of California, San Diego. He became a mentor and friend whose wise counsel helped recalibrate my perspective at different moments during the writing of this book and who, over the years as editor of my four previous books, has taught me much about being a better writer and a better person.

Julie Hill

Rancho Sta. Fe, California

August 2021

Part I.

Portraits of Daily Life

1. Kabul, a Mountain City

Ariana Airlines descended into Kabul. I peered through the tiny window at the city’s sharpening outlines, and saw a large square, Pashtunistan Square; a broken wall of an ancient fort, the Bala Hissar; a dirty brown waterway, the Kabul River; and beyond an extensive area, the Shor Bazaar, the old quarter of haphazard mud brick houses climbing up rock faces, and a precipitous walled skyline. Snow-capped mountains decorated the distance. As the plane landed, I saw the tents and flocks of the nomads around them.

As we reached the ground the mountains appeared higher, and the snow on them formed a long pattern of streaks and smears, like Kufic writing stamped on the rockface. Marveling at those mountains, I was struck by the luminosity of the skylight, unlike anywhere else, comparable only to Lhasa in Tibet. The sky stretched wide and blue, the light pure and crystalline, foreshortening distances. In that light, no one could take a bad picture.

From the airport there was no traffic. If knots formed on the road toward the center of the city, it was caused by donkeys, camels, and sheep, but not cars. Not a single billboard on that airport road advertised Coca-Cola or Marlboros, or posters of movies.

At 5,500 feet above sea level, Kabul was perched at the intersection of caravan trails that had been functioning for more than 3,000 years, hemmed in on the west by the Koh-i-Baba mountain range nearly 17,000 feet high, and on the north by the even greater Hindu Kush, the western end of the Himalayas.

Kabul was a gray city; everything was of that same color, from the crumbling walls of the mud brick houses to the clothes the people wore. A sprawling settlement, probably a mountain village or a fur trading post around the edges of four or five hills, was covered with snow, even in July. There was no building of any great architectural merit, although there were trees and gardens on a generous scale.

1. Kabul River, flowing through the heart of the city.

A variety of shops lined the wider streets in the modern section of town, and the sidewalks were fairly clean. I was surprised by how many of them displayed wedding gowns and quite a few Western dresses, although the colors had faded with age and with the sun. Pelts and furs hung outside the fur shops, among them that of a snow leopard. As I walked along the street, I peeked at the handicrafts displayed in the shop windows, and saw beautiful camel bags, salt bags, and donkey bags.

A seller of cold drinks attracted my attention, fizzy drinks colored like those imaginative liquids used in Alexandria, my native city, advertising chemist shops. The bottles were stopped with marbles and shrieked like mandrakes as they were opened; they were iced with muddy-looking snow.

A pistachio vendor peddled his wares, like those in Alexandria’s Corniche. He made a cone with a piece of newspaper and filled it with dried fruit—pistachios, walnuts, raisins, melon seeds; it was yours for a couple of cents. Another trader, targeting passersby, sold pebbles of lapis lazuli, semi-precious stones sought since ancient times and mined in Badakhshan, a province in the northeast.

As I made my way toward the center of Kabul, I was able to get an eye-to-eye view of the people on the street. I was struck by the different looks of the Afghans, as Afghanistan was the original melting pot.

I tried to pick individuals who were on foot or on bicycles, looking for differences in their features or clothing. Many of them were dressed in gray or tan shalwar khameez—baggy pants of Arab derivation, an enormous shirt whose tail, worn outside, reached below the knees to flap over the breeze—often with a Western suit or jacket over them. They sported a turban, with one end trailing over their shoulder, and wore plastic sandals.

I passed a man in a long brown robe with a little beard and fair skin; he wore a tan wool hat with a roll of fabric at the bottom. He was a Tajik, his hat typical of his tribe. The Tajiks were the peasants of the Persian empire and they seemed to have come eastwards from Iran.

I passed two men with very light skin, both blue-eyed. Were they Europeans or Americans wearing Afghan clothes? I was told that they were Nuristanis from the mountains in the north, supposedly descendants of Alexander the Great. The Nuristanis were the country’s oldest inhabitants, closely related to the ancestors of all Indo-European peoples. Their territory was a tangle of high mountains completely isolated and impenetrable except on foot, a province I regretfully would not visit during my stay.

A Pashtun walked by, carrying a gun inlaid with mother-of-pearl and wearing crossed bandoliers on his chest. The Pashtuns were the country’s largest ethnic group, the ruling race, both nomadic and sedentary. They were tall, lithe, with prominent dark eyes and Semitic noses. They took pride in claiming—although there were contradictory theories—that they were descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. Pashtuns led the country, from the exiled King Zahir Shah to Daoud, the current President.

A minority of men wearing Western suits were most probably government employees; some had added a fur-collared overcoat and a handsome cap of karakul, shaped like fezzes or American Legion caps.

Many faces looked Asian. I would later learn that they were people of the Hazara tribe, the latest arrivals in Afghanistan, apparently the descendants of Mongols who came after the invasion of Genghis Khan eight hundred years ago.

What about a fellow arranging carpets outside a store? A Hazara, too? He was an Uzbek, also with a Mongol background. He wore an embroidered hat, another characteristic of his tribe. The Uzbeks came from the Russian border, delightful people with amused eyes and sweeping moustaches. They were great horsemen, the riders at the buzkashi tournaments. I would see them in the northwest country later on my travels, sporting glorious stripped silk chapans; they had to be rich.

There were no women visible immediately, but in the modern section of the town I spotted a few, unveiled, billeted in skirts just below the knee and a simple white blouse.

In the market, the women were shrouded in flimsy flowing robes, a protective garment which hid even their eyes; one never made eye contact; a few were dressed in costly pleated silk chadri in blue or gray. Were these women young or old? Were they beautiful? I could not tell. But I did know that these women, whatever their age or appearance, were positively alluring in their mysteriousness.

Three men came by riding on one bicycle: one in a fur hat, one in a karakul skullcap, and the third in a turban—people from different tribes, a mosaic of ethnic and linguistic groups.

Such a richness and diversity of appearances and tongues was not new to me. The Alexandria where I was born had been settled by a mosaic of people. Next to the sons of Pharaonic Egypt were the sedentary Arabs as well as the Bedouins, the Syrians, the Jews, and the Caucasians—Greeks, Italians, Maltese, French, British—each with their own physical characteristics, clothing, and language.

I was fascinated to observe the Afghans, trying to figure out their origins and to identify the diverse tribes by their features and clothing before hearing them speak. It became a game for me, a game I would continue to play at airports years later. So much was new to me, so much to see and to understand.

That first day and those first weeks, I stood on the threshold of mystery and discovery, and would be amply rewarded for my curiosity.

2. Our Home

Before Afghanistan, Arthur and I had lived in a succession of countries and temporary homes in the course of his work as a representative of the Ford Foundation and later of the United Nations Development Program. Arthur had been born in Australia and I in Egypt; we had met at the university in the United States and had been living there, when an opportunity arose for us to venture backout into the world, thanks to Arthur’s work in international development.

Our first overseas assignment found us in Thailand during the peak of the Vietnam War. Accommodations were at a premium, and we were billeted for four months in a hotel before moving to an apartment which became our home for the next two years. Its furnishings were made out of teak, most pleasing but so uncomfortable.

At that time there were no malls, no shopping centers, and but one department store, the Daimaru; Western food items were unavailable except at what were then called the underground stores where American PX goods found their way.

Yet for all those discomforts there was clearly a tremendous charm in Thai living, and I was soon immersed in Thai culture and Buddhist rituals, and witnessed spectacular festivals and royal pageants. Teaching at a local college gave me the opportunity to meet Thais outside the professional circle of my husband.

Thailand began to teach me that it was possible to whittle down my list of necessities. This lesson foretold a curious freedom down the road; I did not panic with the lack of utilities when later on we lived in Kabul.

Our next assignment brought us to the Philippines, where we had a newly furnished house in one of the gated communities of Makati, a plush suburb of Manila and also its central business district. Our garden was resplendent with glorious orchids. Manila, a centuries-old entrepot, was rich in art and culture; the rhythm of life was very different from anything we had experienced before. Our dinner guests represented a diverse spectrum of the academic, government, and business world. Dinner parties were sit-down affairs followed by long insightful discussions of politics and the economy that covered the whole of Asia; our experience in the Philippines served us well in Afghanistan. Friendships developed, precious ties that half a century later still endure, making those seven years of our stay the happiest times of our lives.

After the sophistication of the Philippines, we found ourselves among a rural, village-dwelling, agricultural people, oriented to tradition, to ceremony, to respect for the Samoan way. Somewhere between Fiji and French Polynesia lies Western Samoa, where the United Nations had established its regional headquarters. Our house here was a large wooden frame with a huge verandah nestled among coconut, avocado, and banana trees; traveler’s palms shaded the expansive garden which even encompassed a small coffee and pineapple plantation. It became a stopover for tourist buses.

I had every reason to expect that our sojourn in Afghanistan would be no less interesting, despite the hardships you anticipate from leaving the comforts of Western living, and indeed for every trial we faced there was a corresponding gift of joy and discovery.

In Afghanistan we were fortunate to be assigned one of the loveliest houses in the new and affluent neighborhood of Wazir Akbar Khan. The early part of the novel The Kite Runner by Khaled Hussein is set in that district. The neighborhood was still developing with many empty lots where vegetables, mostly carrots, were planted and with half constructed houses with eight-foot walls and flat roofs. This was a diplomatic enclave and also home