On the Road to Jalalabad

After all the security threats, warnings, and exhortations, I finally managed to leave the office for a road trip to Jalalabad (Afghanistan). My mission: to interview Kuchis and fill in some holes in our economic research. Who are the Kuchis? Ethnically Pashtun, they’re the nomads of Afghanistan and over 2 million strong. I was with a Kuchi expert, and we hoped to catch some remaining in their winter grounds near Jalalabad before they migrated.

An hour outside of Kabul, I finally understood why the British have spent so much ink writing about this country. The scenery is mythic – craggy mountains, wide open landscapes that put the American West to shame, and, to use a cliché, people living the way they’ve lived for hundreds of years.

But then we began crossing through the minefields, stacked with warning rocks: red for mined, red and white for mined, and white for de-mined. But you have to be careful, because a rock that’s white on one side may be red on the other. We drove through huge fields stacked with these rocks, and the sight was creepy and sobering.

Once through the mountain pass, everything was green. Kabul is such a smelly dustbowl, that I’d forgotten what that color meant. But driving past wheat fields and grasses, I felt like something had lifted from me, and I was back in a world that was alive and verdant. The road was lined with mud-brick villages. Mud isn’t the best of building materials, since it’s not actually waterproof, and the eroded buildings looked like ancient settlements, adding to the fantastical nature of the view.