Afghanistan: Land of bitter lakes and 1000 splendid suns
If I was truly travelling the world with a rucksack and a lifetime supply of Imodium, I wouldn’t start with Afghanistan unless I was looking for culture shock that could restart a heart. The Banyan Buddhas have been blown up, Chicken Street is having hard times, and I don’t think I’d be able to head to a market to haggle for pomegranates without fearing for my life. I also have it on high authority that there’s little more a visitor can do than drive between compounds in a white SUV. The 60s in Kabul sounded fun, but Adam Curtis’ Bitter Lake made me realise that safe passage has been a hard commodity to find for at least the last 35 years.
The novel I chose to read was recommended by one of my children, Olivia, who has already read A Thousand Splendid Suns twice (as well as several other Afghani books). It’s a depressing page turner from Afghani-American Khaled Hosseini which unpicks the history through the lives of two women married to a man with no redeeming features. Despite the wrenching subject, Hosseini seems to love the country and I got a feeling similar to that of watching Kite Runner (a film of another of his novels). I’m already realising I may need to spend more than one week in each country to do it justice…
We watched the film Osama, which has the dubious honour of being the first film made in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban. It slowly breaks you through the story of a girl and her mother trying to live without a male chaperone as the world is torn apart.
I had hoped to head to our local Afghani restaurant for food, but it has not re-opened since lock-down, so instead I made lubya, served with fresh tandoor cooked bread from the Kurdistan supermarket. It was a meal we will definitely be eating again.
We will also be drinking more cardamom tea — the trick is to crush the cardamoms. It was pretty intense trying to get all this done in a week but I none the less ended up promising that in future I would also make the national breakfast. Thankfully there is a blogger who has already done the hard work of researching recipes for me. Seems I am not the only person setting myself impossible challenges!
I had thought it would be hard to find songs from a country that famously banned music but Spotify came up trumps! I found this playlist of new and old Afghani music, but it was interesting, rather than good, so we gave up and dined instead to the excellent: Traditional Music of Herât Gada Mohammad.
Looking forward to seeing how Albania goes next week!
3 October 2020
