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March 16
th
2011

Heidi Kingstone in conversation with Anne Sebba.


I wanted to start off and talk about my life in Kabul, which is fairly normal in an
abnormal place. Life there is referred to as The Kabubble, and I think most of us are
aware of the parallel existences we live compared to the lives most Afghans live.

My day starts off quite normally. The house I live in is a bungalow and is divided into
two halves. Each morning I pad over to the neighbours and use her coffee machine to
make coffee. Around that time I promise myself that i will do the Cindy Crawford work
out DVD but generally I put it off.

The house is one of those beautiful old Afghan style homes not dissimilar from
something Frank Lloyd Wright might have designed. During Taliban times it probably
would have cost about $200.00 a month to rent, if that. These days the war economy has
inflated the price of everything.

Everything, too, in Afghanistan is behind high walls and closed gates. Once you walk
though the unassuming doors you enter into a large garden, which attracts a legion of
feral cats and is home to a solitary rabbit.

I have a bathroom, a bedroom, a kitchen - that I hardly use a living room and a
conservatory that we call the winter garden the idea was to remind us of the ice house
in the film Dr Zhivago.

Despite the high walls everyone on the street know exactly what is going on. Men are
called chawkidors - security guards - keep watch. They are unarmed, and your safety is
really in their hands. We live in a low key way - no guns - and these men know
everything that goes on in the 'hood.

Outside the front door are the muddy streets which I often walk down to go to Flower
Street Cafe, an internet cafe, which is very confusingly not anywhere near Flower Street,
which is near Chicken Street in the Shar-e-Naw district.

Most of us use it as an office, despite its creakingly slow internet and undrinkable coffee.
We use it by force of habit but also because putting in high speed internet can cost about
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$3000.00 - and more. It is also a meeting place, which is part of its charm. Kabul is a like
a small village of foreigners, including Afghan ex-pats, catapulted in the larger town of
Kabul - it is the type of place where everyone knows everyone.

I usually leave FSC about 4 or 5pm in winter - but before it gets dark, for reasons of
security. You can't talk about Afghanistan, or Kabul, without mentioning security.
Security is a the back of everyone's mind, but it is Afghans who are murdered and
particularly Afghan businessmen who are kidnapping targets.

As a result most foreigners don't walk. To travel around the city four taxi companies
cater to ex-pats - the newest one is called Hope. Needless to say there are all sorts of
jokes like - hope you get there. Inshallah.

No matter what you do from getting out of the car to waking across the street you
inevitably get caked in mud. Kabul is a city of mud and dust. It's dirty outside defintely
but you also breath in an enormous amount of fecal matter that floats in the air- the air
itself is very polluted and it is estimated that everyday spent in Kabul is akin to smoking
two packs of cigarettes a day. I don't want you to think that most of just get splattered
in mud because there is also a vigorous social scene. Most people work extremely hard,
and the intensity of the environment is a contributing factor.

I rarely spend a night in - one week I went to quiz night at the Golden Key Chinese
Restaurant. The food wasn't bad, but most of us couldnt name the seven dwarves but
did ok with the Greek mythology. Later with Richard Dunwoody, the jockey, we ended
up at the wrap party for a film that had just finished production. The next night the
social scene was totally different, a group of Afghan returnees, educated, successful,
interesting and engaged, entertained at a restaurant called Rumi, decorated in a 60s
style, and had been the elegant home of the owner's family. The conversation took place
in English, Dari and French.

Usually on Thursday nights, the start of the Afghan weekend, it's party night, admittedly
aimed at the 20 -30 year olds who have come to work in Kabul. One recent venue was
was a tent set up in a compound with carpets laid on the ground. plants dotted around,
loud western music, flashing lights, lots of dancing and alcohol. On aggregate men
outnumber women, the best phrase that sums up the situation is - the odds are good
but the goods are odd.

In the way that Helmand is not Afghanstan, for those of us who live in Britain and only
heard news about that particular southern province, Kabul in not Afghanistan. Kabul is
a protected city - protected by a ring of steel that clamps around it. It is a city of
sandbags, blast walls, hescos and barbed wire. The best analogy is to compare it to
living in a Graham Greene novel.

It is also a difficult place from which to tell reality from illusion. Kabul itself is booming.
Shopping malls sprout like mushrooms, roads are slowly being paved, the hills around
the city shine at night fuelled by city power, which did not exist a few years ago. A whole
construction industry has built up around the narcotecture that has also fuelled the
uncontrollable demand for poppy palaces, gaudy, garish, enormous, mirrored and vast
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hideous houses.

It is a false economy equally fuelled by drug money and foreign aid money. Afghanistan
exports $400 million but imports $4 billion; very little internal market exists. While the
economy may be an illusion what is most definitely not illusion is the overall grim
reality of the situation for women.

While Afghanistan has over decades signed up to virtually every human rights treaty,
ratified a slew of laws protecting women and children and enshrined women's rights in
the constitution, no political will exists to implement them. The culture is becoming
increasingly conservative, and women's status remains frightening low. That is not the
whole picture but it is the overwhelming overview.

There have been some positive changes. Some women work, some are educated, some
are the main breadwinners supporting their families. In many women don't wear
burqas, and in the capital a few young girls bravely wear tight jeans, short jackets and
knee length boots. A new generation of impressive young men and women exists who
could be future leaders, given the opportunity. Any success women have had has to be
seen in pockets.

Compared to the ghost town that Kabul was after during and after the Taliban, Kabul
has transformed. The city had largely been destroyed by the mujahidin who preceded
the Taliban, and widows in burqas begged in the street for money to feed their children.
Widows are still the most disadvantaged sector of society.

Historically change has been imposed from the top down, by the elite who are
disconnected from the majority of Afghans who are some of the poorest people in the
world.

Illiteracy for women is still about 80 percent; domestic abuse is endemic. food
insecurity for men and women forms the basis of most Afghans main concern. I recently
asked an Afghan taxi driver what he thought of the political situation. He replied that he
didn't have time to think about that, his concern was how to feed his family.

Despite all these things, women, like women everywhere, are nuanced, amazing, some
are strong and powerful, smart and determined.

I wanted to tell you a few stories about some of the women I have met.

Last autumn I went to the north of Afghanistan to do some work for the German
government. Gul Jan was involved in one of the projects. She used a solar dryer for her
fruit and vegetables. She had one tooth left in her mouth, a long grey plait under her
white hijab, and a face wrinkled like a shar pei. She beamed and spoke about how happy
she was to have been involved in the project. Thrilled to get out of the house, to have
learned a skilled, to have felt important and useful and to contribute to her family's
income.

Hasina (not her real name) was in charge of one of the German projects. Like many
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ShiaAfghans she had gone to Iran as a refugee but had returned to help other women.
Smart, insightful, modern over the last five years her original optimism had turned to
despair. In Kunduz, where Hasina lives, the Taliban have made in roads, and so threaten
daily life. She now wears a burka which she had not done before.

Hasina oversaw the disabled women's leather project. The women had eah lost a leg,
some in mine accidents. They were all very, very poor and were glad to have learned a
skill to be able to generate an income. but the reason they loved the project was that it
had brought them all together. They felt comfortable within this group and not like the
freaks they felt like outside, Hasina also told me how depressed women were and how
difficult their lives were. As if this needs any emphasis on one day I spoke to two
friends. One had to cancel meeting for dinner because she had to counsel a friend whose
sister had been killed by her in-laws. After that phone call another friend, who I was
sitting with, read out a text message she had just received, informing her that a high
school friend she had not seen for many years had been killed by her mother-in-law.

There are happy and sad tales, and Afghanistan remains an exotic, beautiful country, but
also one that if you don't go to Afghanistan as a feminist, you certainly return as one. As
one women I interviewed at a shelter said, in Afghanistan, all women have bad fate.

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The Upper Wimpole Street Literary Salon provides a forum for women writers to meet and exchange
ideas about ongoing work. We are a diverse group of over 100 writers from the fields of biography,
journalism, fiction, poetry and scriptwriting. We meet about 5 times a year in central London. Each salon
features members presenting a recently published book or a work-in-progress. Our informal setting
allows for frank discussion of our craft and of the particular challenges women writers face in promoting
and publishing their work.