Kabul Golf Club

It was a brisk day in Kabul. And as I walked beside my golfing companion, all I could think of was the scene from Blackadder Goes Forth, where the soldier asks what the procedure is if he steps upon a mine.

Answer: You throw yourself 50 feet straight up into the air, and scatter yourself across the battlefield.

The Kabul Golf Club is that kind of place. Some de-miners I'd once had dinner with had expressed reservations about the place – ordinance is still turning up as the ground erodes, and the de-miners were chased off by the local warlord before they could complete their job.

Still, I figured it was a golf course, which meant lawns and grooming and there couldn’t be mines, could there?

Except there was no lawn, no grass, no grooming at all. Just barren land with thorny brown weeds that clung to my trousers. Small mounds of earth had been piled up and flattened at the top to tee off. Around the holes, a charcoal-colored “green” of sand and oil. I putted a ball into a hole, just to say I’d done it, but I’m no golfer. Though it was nice to be out in the open (a rarity for women in Kabul), it wasn’t worth the paranoia, my tiptoeing in the footsteps of those who’d gone before (a dicey mine-avoidance ploy, at best). There probably aren’t any mines out there, but I think about the kid who stepped on one in Kabul last spring. Who knows where the damn things are? The area near the “course” was the site of heavy fighting. Ruined mud brick buildings line the road back into town.