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Rebuffed at the Pak border, I started back to Kabul. They said I needed a Carnet de Passage, available in Iran, to drive my car further. Motoring across Asia was hard enough. A two thousand mile detour in the opposite direction to get a document did not help, but as Ulysses S. Grant's mother said, "never turn back if you are lost on the trail. Keep going and your mule will eventually find its way out. I had no wagon, just my Mercedes. However, the "can" in American does not mean "Ameri-cannot", even if Afghanistan felt like the deep end of a dry pond, and you are stroking. without a paddle.
Afghan Truck Stop by Allan Wayne
Nevertheless, by now, I was savvy with local landscape. I could find travelers in Kabul to share gas. At the Kyber Hotel, I met an American couple from Philadelphia, looking for a ride. They were in their early twenties, had been riding buses, on their way back from India, and were road weary. He had mid-length hair, leather coat, glazed Brad Pitt gaze. Her hair was longer; she was demure, with a sweater. "The buses are late," he explained. "Hard for my lady." I could tell they were happy to get off the bus. They said they knew a woman, looking for a ride, and would try to find her. I went for a walk.
Afghanistan can be surreal. Literally, things move in slow motion. Everything, especially language, is alien, and one is basically reduced to walking around like a mute. I remember a sensitivity exercise back home, when I tried not talking for a day. If I had to communicate, I would write something down. As the day wore on, It was strangely exhilarating, and transcendental in a pure way. When you are out of your comfort zone, in a state of physical vulnerability, there is something visceral to the senses. But the same could be said of a prostrate exam. After a while, the thrill is gone.
Back at the hotel, I heard a door slam. The biggest eyes I have seen approached.
"You must be the one who needs a ride," I said to the young woman. "How is it going?"
"I've been puking my guts out," she said." Her cheek bones were dark lagoons. She was from Chicago, with a savvy sideways deference. She was pretty, but under the weather.
I offered her a ride. We would leave in the morning. On the way out, I ran into the Philly couple. "You and the lady are riding together? " Brad beamed. "Beautiful! It will be a great trip!" Some thespian air about Brad was starting to bother me.
I walked around Kabul. Probably crossed paths, from the phrenology I encountered, with the possible progeny of the great Prophet, himself--many tribes, dialects, different dress--Pashtuns, Kuchis, Bedouins,Tajik--but everywhere in Afghanistan feels the same, as soon as you cross the Iranian or Pakistan border, in spite of the differences--they are a unified people.
I checked out the Embassy, and confirmed the Carnet story. I worried that if I drove to Herat, where guards had tried to take my car, that they might not let me into Iran. I learned I could leave my car in a government compound in Kabul, and take the bus to Tehran. It sounded easier than being a chaperone in Brad Pitt's bell jar.
When I informed Brad, his eyes widened. "This is -a-verry-big- problem-for-me," he said in a chopped cadence, having commandeered the Afghan dialect, and served up a mongrel recipe of mangled linguistic sheep stew. Afghan immersion redux?--Or Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs's Court? He had a ways to go.
"Sorry," I said. "It's a big problem for me, too." I remembered stopping at an Afghan gas station. At the pump, sales are clicked off the meter, using a lever. If the Afghan puts the nozzle in your tank, without clicking off a prior $5 sale, for example, and start pumping gas--$5.05, $5.06, then the new driver pays for five dollars of gas that he never gets. I did not hear the "click", and figure I got ripped off. Afterward, I listened more carefully. Afghanistan tends to sharpen ones senses.
With that, I drove to the agency, not far from downtown Kabul, that regulates interstate trucking and commerce. It was a steel pole building, grey metal roof, surrounded by barbed wire, where various government cars and multi-color Afghan trucks parked. Inside, on a concrete floor, I looked at the labyrinth of tables, the folding types with metal chairs, filled with men, some in dark suits, others with typical Afghan garb, a few Arafat-looking types, with checkered keffiyeh headdress, and mix of white turbans, making marks on paper. It looked like a bingo parlor for Bedouins, but better dressed. Afghan truck drivers, merchants, and businessmen, were going through a documentary gauntlet, to bring cargo in and out of Afghanistan. They took my car and parked it in the compound.
It was fascinating--a physical model of bureaucracy, all hand written and completely mechanical, no machines whatsoever; no air conditioning, no heat; just bare bones space, distilled down to the essence of what meaningless minutia means. Even in Afghanistan, apparently, this is possible; a concentrated bureaucracy; no spawn of grey buildings, nor forest of towers, but all in one room, for your eyes to soak up the entire process. Beginning to end.
Somehow, it seemed a fossilized reenactment of early bureaucracy--the missing link and prototype of all bureaucracy--sequential, serious, dull, dehumanizing, moving in a pin-dropping pace, men making marks, not even letters or words, just mindless scribbles, hieroglyphic scrawls, the death of humanity, of human spirit and barter, no need for language, just pass the paper to the next table, where a different set of dignitaries work scribed magic--the driest occupation in the driest of lands. Yet the Afghans snatch victory from the jaws of defeat with one redeeming virtue.
At the last table, the most powerful man, not in size, but with the most meticulous suit, dark mustache, and black Karakul hat, took my document. He paused and examined it methodically, with barely a glance at me, the only westerner. It was like a greeting card with two folds, and seam on top. Various scrawls, phrases, and dates decorated the inside. He took a brass candle holder, held it, and lit a purple candle. With ritualistic care, he tilted it, so wax droplets fell, and formed a quarter-size puddle on my card's seam. Then, he took a brass seal, and pressed it into the wax. When he removed it, viola!--I had my scribed purple seal, a ciphered message, perhaps from Caesar himself, pressed into my postcard portfolio. It was worthy of Florentine royalty. It looked good enough to eat.
He gave me my keys. I paid four dollars. I felt free. I was off to the bus station.
