Dark Skies in a Metropolis

I remember seeing the Taliban on pixelated phone screens when they took over Kabul in '96. Soviet oppression, the sadness, the terror, was over, I thought. A new government was formed, a black-on-white flag above the yellowstone peaks of the Capitol palace, and bearded men with unclean robes filed out of marble-clad hallways onto revolving chairs. They would all rest their elbows on the desks, synchronously peering over at the reporter asking questions, the sounds of gunfire outside, or the camera pointed at them, the rest of the world watching. 

I don't remember when they left. It was the last time I saw a television broadcast by the Taliban. They faded from memory. They had been conquered. The Taliban were. But they haven't. I am surprised. I am here in Kabul at the airport, the last bastion of democracy. We are live in 3...2…1. 

This is Jack Williams with the BBC live from the Hamid-Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan. We need to keep moving. There are explosions and gunfire around here. It isn't safe. It's the story playing out in much of Kabul, the dying heart of a crippled nation. Women's rights, in particular, is under threat as the Taliban regime rises once again over the capital city it last controlled in 2001, when the United States expelled the Taliban from Kabul. These days, AK-47s are the new must-have item for young men. They tell us "it's for protection -- I have a family to protect". 

Our producer, Mike, mouths to me "bomb -- leave now," and he gives me a worried look through the cloths covering his face. We see it go off about a mile away from us, far enough away that we see the smoke rising above the city, casting shadows like some underworld creature burrowing out of the ground. The speed of sound is 761 miles per hour. For six seconds we wait, watching flaming pieces of wood make parabolic arcs in the sky like a 4th of July fireworks parade and waves of people rush away from the blast like ripples in a pond moving away from the incident drop of water. There are three stages to an atomic bomb blast: the fireball, the shockwave, and the firestorm. These occur over the course of several minutes. What I am looking at right now, against a backdrop of peaceful skies and temples older than any Western civilization to have existed, are all three stages happening simultaneously. It doesn't make any sense. I see one woman look up at me, lifting up her burka to get a better view of me and my camera pointed towards the carnage she is escaping from. The tide of people running trample her. I think she survived. 

Mike and I pack up our gear in tactical black bags meant for clandestine surveillance in rugged terrain. But the Taliban knows we are here. There's nothing secretive about this operation. They want us to show the world they are resilient. 

Our drive back to the hotel feels like the day we came, before the takeover, with kids playing in the street. Beside the car, a vendor pushes his fruit cart, screaming "apple, one dollar" in broken arabic. Behind the car, people honk their horns even when the traffic can't move faster. But there are no women here. Instead, there are guns. In America, there are over three-hundred million guns, one for every person. Likewise, in Afghanistan, there is no shortage of military supplies. Some Taliban have two guns. They keep them clipped to their American military vests. 

Last night, I very nearly mistook a Taliban soldier dressed in a camouflage outfit with tactical sunglasses for an American soldier. Its beige-green color was symbolic of this desert war, the one we saw worn on American and NATO troops from the pictures of their first deployment in Kabul in late 2001. I later saw that soldier beating a woman on the ground. I can still see the white stitching where the U.S. flag was ripped from the fabric. 

Around the corner is a cafe with glass partitions, fixtures, and chairs. Traditional Afghan fabrics are draped everywhere. Taped to the windows are about twenty flyers advertising women's yoga and women's studies. Women's calculus seminars, one paper lists, begin on August 10, 2021, and end December 10, 2021. I expect that few to none will attend. The Taliban have had twenty years to devise the end of American influence. They will begin by slowly dismantling freedoms, like the Nazis, until its people have forgotten what freedom felt like. Burkas, amputation as punishment, beheadings in stadiums are in store. 

I have not yet seen public amputations or beheadings. Most people haven't, or don't believe it can go back to that way. Most people were born after it stopped being that way. 

That way is a term that people throw around here often. The British tried to take over Afghanistan in the Anglo-Afghan Wars, the Mongols were successful, the Soviets failed, the Americans withdrew. The reference to a time frame before rule by another country is useful, if not necessary, for classifying social reforms that impact Afghanistan today. For instance, the communist revolution in 1978, backed by Soviet troops, precipitated a generation of Afghans cultured to believe that all foreign influence was bad. Some young men became mujahideen fighters, who collectively are known as the Taliban today. Our driver pulls into the limestone driveway of the hotel. He walks out of the car and opens our door, politely gesturing us out of the car towards the hotel lobby. He says to me in broken English, "My name Ahmed, call if you need help move around Kabul." Ahmed gave us his cell number, took our bags out of the car, and drove away in his mid-2000's Honda Civic. Now, it's just Mike and I, two white men from the West, walking along the garish red rug into the half-air-conditioned lobby of the Serena Hotel. Our trip planners told us that the Serena was a favorite of American and Canadian diplomats and tourists before the Taliban. The front desk is empty except for a one-man skeleton crew: a woman. She tells us that her colleagues were fired after business dried up. She is waiting for the U.S. to come back, with the full force of their military, to take back Afghanistan. She does not know that the U.S. has spent over thirty times Afghanistan's GDP on military supplies to keep a dying war alive, that it wouldn't keep fighting to save the lives or rights of a people who seem so foreign to Americans. 

She tells us her name is Jasmin, and asks if we are a Starwood Gold or Platinum member. We are not. She gives us magnetic room keys for rooms 1107 and 1108. Going up the elevator, we notice that the instructions for operation in case of an emergency are in English first with Arabic below. Welcome to your floor, the elevator’s speaker system tells us. We walk to the room on velvety dark red carpeting under old-fashioned lamps that light the hallway with a yellow glow, much like candlelight does when navigating a crypt. I press the key to the card reader on the door and I hear it unlock with a ding sound. I tell Mike I'll see him tomorrow. I open the thick wood door to find a relatively normal room -- bed, nightstand, Sony TV. The TV is playing a recently out-of-taste welcome video displaying the attractions one must visit in Kabul. The destinations now are unsafe or have been fortified by Taliban soldiers. I rest my briefcase on the bed, take a deep breath, and walk near the balcony. I pause for a second, because snipers have been deployed around the city. I go anyway. I open the polished glass pane door and walk outside onto my limestone balcony overlooking the city. The planets Jupiter and Saturn are visible as two points of bright light in the sky. Uranus is visible, too. Normally, city lights drown out the faint glow of the planets, but tonight is unlike any other night since the night we came. The skies are quiet. The clouds above the city rest in darkness. Most streetlights and homes don't have power. Government buildings with their own generators stand out amidst the black valley, and the headlights of cars coursing through the city give some indication to satellites orbiting above that a city does live here. Without these lights, perhaps, a metropolis of four million people, for tonight at least, would cease to exist. 

Works Cited: 

Hashemi, Sayed. “Kabul Airport Attack Kills 60 Afghans, 13 US Troops.” AP NEWS, Associated Press, 27 Aug. 2021,https://apnews.com/article/europe-france-evacuations-kabul-9e457201e5bbe75a4eb1901fe deee7a1. 

Howell, Elizabeth. “What Is the Speed of Sound?” LiveScience, Purch, 31 May 2013, https://www.livescience.com/37022-speed-of-sound-mach-1.html. 

Sadat, Sayed. “Escape from Afghanistan: 'There Was Nowhere to Hide'.” Hanna Herald, Hanna Herald, 30 Sept. 2021, 

https://www.hannaherald.com/news/world/escape-from-afghanistan-there-was-nowhere-to hide.