Northern Afghanistan: Two Armed Guards, One Volga and Pom-Poms

3:30 a.m. and an air raid siren blitzes over the sleeping houses of Kabul. I’m instantly awake, and my heart speeds up…but thankfully it doesn’t have the effect that it did the first time I heard it and grabbed Tariq to wake him up. It’s Ramadan, and the siren is Kabul’s version of a wake-up call for everyone to eat breakfast before light becomes visible and the fast begins. Tariq shuffles out of bed to eat some bread, jam and hot milk. I’m back in the city after eight days touring the northern provinces of Afghanistan: Balkh, Kunduz, Takhar. We began our journey with a flight from Kabul to Mazar-e-Sharif, a hub of activity in a very dry, windswept plain. Land of camel trains, larger-than-life melons of various varieties, and a bizarre, rusted overland gas pipe built by the Russians to draw fuel from Afghanistan to the heart of the Soviet empire. Hard to believe, but the pipe runs through compounds and even houses on its journey north! Mazar is also home to one of the most beautiful mosques in Afghanistan, a wonder of blue domes, multi-colored tilework, and flocks of white pigeons.

We were in Mazar to understand the intricacies of commercial activity in hand and machine embroidery, though my client Kerry Jane Wilson, a brilliant Australian whose lived in Afghanistan for 11 years, and I couldn’t help but shop for antique silk scarves and silk chapan cloth that is locally made into cloaks for men. Kerry Jane is a PhD of nutrition, and with her keen observations I was introduced to the reasons for the diseases and deformities I’m now accustomed to seeing around me. Smallpox – Afghanistan was one of the last countries in which the disease was eradicated. We moved from urban bazaar to rural marketplace interviewing women embroiderers, traders, shopkeepers, wholesalers, children…basically anyone in our path that could give us a lead or help us unravel a piece of the puzzle. The freedom to move around in public space was glorious. We met an amazing women in Mazar-e-Sharif who literally must be the most astute business-person I’ve ever heard of, never mind met. When everyone else in the country was necessarily cowering behind mud-brick walls to avoid Russian rockets, Raquiba was buying up old fur coats, mending and reconditioning them, adding a flourish of embroidery and re-selling them at a profit to Moscow.

Luck and a very good Afghan colleague with a wide range of networks were with us. We found a fantastic hidden market in a rural village outside of Mazar where women under burqa were directly selling embroidered wall hangings (called “sozanni”) to Turkish traders. We learned that village-based women can sell their work in women-oriented embroidery buying and selling markets off main thoroughfares. Urban women can sell products on streetfronts. All of these women are able to function in public because the culture has opened up “gendered space” in which they are free to do business – and where men that are not directly involved in the business transactions are tacitly forbidden to enter. Women do not work alongside men in public bazaars but rather inhabit specific markets, isolated government-owned retail space, or at the bottom of the social ladder – on the ground in front of sidewalks. After the dark years of home confinement during the Taliban times, it was at least encouraging to see them out there.

From Mazar we flew on PACTEC (a humanitarian flight service) to Kunduz to avoid dangerous ground travel. Our pistol-packing driver Aziz, from Afghan Logistics, insisted that he be accompanied by another armed guard. This was all very well, and as a result I had the rather extraordinary experience of taking a very secure pee in a gas station bathroom while a very rough-looking guy with a Kalashnikov staked out the perimeter near the bathroom door. We landed in Kunduz, a urban center east of Mazar-e-Sharif and close to Afghanistan’s border with Tajikistan. The home of carriages with horses bedecked from head to toe with a flurry of red, green and blue pompons and jingle bells. Has to be seen to be believed (see picture). We stayed in a German guesthouse called the “Lapis Lazuli” and – no joke – were picked up from the airport in a bright blue Volga with furry cheetah print seatcovers. That, and the fleisch roladen and dumplings that only my mom can make (or so I thought), were highlights of Kunduz. The peak experience was finding a vibrant, hidden Baluch embroidery market where over 500 burqa’ed women and girls were directly selling their finished pieces to wealthy Uzbek traders. Kerry Jane and I wondered if we were the first expatriates to ever see it.

Unlike any other trade in this country, many women see the pittance they can earn for embroidery as profitable because they can keep the proceeds themselves (i.e. don’t have to turn it over to a husband or father). With some exceptions, women producing embroidery in this market are not “creatives” but rather passive recipients of design prescriptions that come from traders canvassing preferences in distant consumer markets. Kerry Jane and I are looking for a project opportunity that can begin to change that, and help women find ways to play stronger design and coordination roles in the industry. And hopefully, in the not-so-distant future, Afghanistan will be more than just a dirt-cheap labour market.

After three days in Kunduz, we hopped in our four-wheel drive (the armed guard was happy to not have to share his shotgun – literally - seat with one of our local guides) and drove through sand-dune like landscapes to Taloqan in Takhar province. After a day of research we didn’t turn up much except for some of the most hideous loud gold embroidery on cheap velvet you can possibly imagine. We decided to drive back to Kabul from Taloqan…unfortunately through a very insecure stretch of road in Baghlan. I wasn’t too keen on taking the risk, nor were the drivers, but Kerry Jane wouldn’t have any of it. She must be the female version of Crocodile Dundee: tough, ironic, and uncompromising. Ghafour (our armed guard) strapped on his bullet proof vest as we drove out of Taloqan towards the Kunduz-Baghlan road. I don’t want to get too far into what was going through my mind for the next tense hour, let’s just say that I’m nowhere near a Crocodile Dundee type. When we reached the famous Solang tunnel, I exhaled my relief. It was cold up in the mountains and a stark reminder that winter in Afghanistan is not too far away. And when I walked into our compound in Taimonie, Kabul and saw Tariq and Che I was very glad to be home!