finer points of conversation

One cultural nut I have made absolutely no progress in cracking is phone answering etiquette. No matter what I do I end up with a long confused silence. I have no idea what's expected of me. When I call people here they answer Yes? and wait for my response. I introduce myself and ask how they are before moving on to what I'm calling about. So far so good.
But when I'm on the receiving end, I answer Yes? and they say Hello. And then silence. I try to fill it with Hello, how are you? or Hello, go ahead. These responses are met respectively with Fine, thank you, and then silence--or Just Silence. Today I let this silence run a few seconds and he asked confusedly who he was on the phone with. Was I supposed to identify myself upon answering the phone? They never do. And the caller hadn't identified himself and it was a new number. What the fuck? So I identified myself and he said something to the effect of Oh, it is you...and then more silence. Then he switched to English and somehow that allowed us to go on with the normal conversation: he was so and so I had email him we could meet soon etc etc.
I have yet to receive a phone call from an unknown number that didn't follow this general pattern. Maybe I'll start answering Hello who is this?

Journalist Safety Committee

I sat in on an interview (not because I was invited but because I didn't gracefully leave the room in time) about a report on attacks on journalists in Afghanistan from a local group that's based itself on CPJ and RSF. Maybe the most interesting thing is that they found only 11% of attacks were by the Taliban. Their explanation is that the Taliban in fact want to retain good relations with journalists and have found that killing journalists works against them. They want publicity, ASJC's officers said. When journalists call Taliban spokespeople they answer on the first ring; journos have to call government ministries repeatedly just to get the official line. After prominent journalist Sardar Ahmad was in the wrong place and the wrong time and gunned down with his wife and children in an attack on the Agha Khan's Serena Hotel in March, a large group of Afghan journalists boycotted any coverage of the Taliban, which ASJC says the Taliban recognized really didn't serve their propaganda interests. When another journalist was killed in a suicide attack a few months later, the Taliban issued a statement of regret.
The government is another story. According to ASJC, big politicians and especially warlords/governors out in the provinces all have their own TV and radio stations and newspapers so they have less need or patience for independent journalists.

The interview was weirdly reassuring actually--there have been fewer and for the most part more predictable attacks on local journalists than I had assumed/thought from reading occasional news.

ASJC is looking for foreign interns, by the way. Spread the word.

Bush Market

I walked to the mostly empty Bush aka Obama (formerly known as Brezhnev) Bazaar today and bought a couple pairs of shoes. Apparently they've fallen on hard times with less and less falling off the back of American trucks as troops withdraw and Chinese knock-offs filling in inventory. If the ones I bought are knock-offs they are excellent ones--they came boxed and tagged and appear identical to pictures of the models I've found online for about 4x the price.

The market seems a great place to sock up on bulk cleaning supplies, cooking oil, etc. They sell boxes of a dozen Clif Bars (only chocolate chip, chocolate peanut crunch, and crunchy peanut butter flavors though) for about $3.50, though they are almost all recently expired. I guess Clif shipments have ground to the halt as part of the US military drawdown. When I asked about fresher bars because the whole stack he had were dated 14 July, a teenage shopkeeper played ignorant but them as I started to walk away said Wait, I can get you 24 September bars. He couldn't find any in the end though. I do regret not buying the one box of 14 September bars I found--that's like a 90% discount off of bodega prices.

a new friend

I think I may be stirring up insubordination at the guesthouse.
It started when I insisted Waheedullah, the short 22 year old Hazara house keeper, join me for dinner yesterday evening. Soon he was trash talking the newspaper staff for treating him generally like dirt and never letting him eat a meal with them. Recently the journalist mentioned in my previous post heard gunfire from a nearby wedding celebration and thought it was an attack and locked herself in the steel-walled safe room. It took Waheed some time with his limited English to coax her out. It says a lot, I think, that she didn't immediately let him in to take shelter with her if she thought they were under attack.
Then I told him, honestly, that I'm moving out soon because they charge $50/night at this guest house. He was incredulous--I didn't ask what percentage of that they give him. He's supporting a big family: six sisters, a mother, and a father who can't work because his knee was destroyed by a bullet and subsequent botched surgery received before they fled to Pakistan, where Waheed spent most of his childhood.
Then I mentioned that I am into martial arts to steer the conversation in a light direction and he first responded with an anecdote about a Panjsheri (READ: arrogant Tajik) cracking him with a clean left hook (one of several scars on his face) because Waheed had bumped the Panjsheri's pickup truck with his bicycle (the police then showed up and shook Waheed down for money--Shiite Hazaras don't have it easy). Then today he asked me for some martial arts instruction. I showed him one sambo move and introduced him to the wide world of mma videos. He asked me not to mention martial arts or that he exercises in the gym to the cook, his boss. Apparently the landlord forbade Waheed from working out after Waheed knocked down the cook for slapping and haranguing him for laziness one day when Waheed was sick from heat and Ramadan fasting.
So basically I'm doing all I can to encourage him to fight and disrespect hierarchy--evident already in that he drafted me to spend about 2 hours last night installing and running antivirus software for him. He's not the first Afghan I've given tech support and none of them have made any effort to hide their porn collections--not sure if that's from lack of know-how or because it's nothing to be embarrassed of.

A few pics of Friday recreation in Shahr-e No park:

I didn't get one of the boys chasing each other in flip flops around the perilously wet top of the tanker.

They are very South Asian in their cinematic tastes around here. I got my beard trimmed on my way home and at the Salon of Hair Reform they had a Bollywood action flick playing. I watched nervously as the hero was beat up in a barber shop and the villain slashed his face with a straight razor while minions held him down.

A swarm of schoolgirls:

I spent much of the day walking around the city and the only visibly foreigners I saw outside armored vehicles were a group of Chinese men in a shop. Seems those expats left are hunkered down even more than 2 years ago. I took a look at a room for rent and from my conversation with the current resident it seems that it's a renter's market now, with landlords trying to fill vacancies that haven't had since the boom days of the Obama surge.
You get an idea of the doom and gloom here. I must say that photo at the top of the article is ridiculously captioned, suggesting that what my best guess is a teenage boy trying to play soccer without getting dust in his eyes is an insurgent who targets foreign civilians.

Friendship Fail No 2

In a second attempt to befriend my American journalist housemate, I waited around to eat with her after the house cook brought in a huge pile of rice, entire chicken, soup and salad (the latter of which I avoid while my stomach acclimates). Finally she appeared, said Hey, ladled half the soup into her bowl, and disappeared back into her room to type and make phone calls. I sat at the dining table alone and ate. A few minutes later she returned and, in the 15 seconds during which she fixed a place of rice and chicken and grabbed a diet coke, grumbled that she was supposed to have her farewell dinner with friends tonight but an emergency story has come up and there goes her last evening in town. I've never once sat at that table, she said of the dining table as she walked away. Minutes later she was on her cell again rushing out to let someone she's now interviewing into the guesthouse. Perhaps I did right choosing grad school over journalism.

Back in Kabul

I'm back in Kabul to begin dissertation research on local fixers/interpreters who work with foreign journalists. Here's the view of Dubai's skyline in the distance:

And of the hi tech entertainment station Emirates provided on my way to Dubai:

What a fancy airline. On my first flight, New York-Dubai, a kid sitting behind me was restless so a flight attendant came over and handed the kid his personal iPhone ('my iPhone, a thousand dollars, I give it to you') to play with until in-flight entertainment system kicked in.
On the second flight the attendant-passenger relationship was more acrimonious because of the disobedience and/or lack of English comprehensive of many passengers. A flight attendant would pass by and force a seat back upright for takeoff/landing and then moments later the passenger would sneak a glance over their shoulder and then decline right back. Hissed and repeated requests to sit back down and not access the overhead compartments as the plane banked steeply for landing were casually ignored.

I'm staying in the lovely green expensive guesthouse of a US news organization for the next few days until I find something affordable and equally inconspicuous. The idea is to meet some people who will let me observe them as they work but thus far I have managed to earn an only exasperated sigh from the one journalist I've met so far (over my inability to connect to their wi-fi) but have done better chatting with the Afghan driver and housekeeper.


If just tuning in to this blog, you will find below stories not from Kabul but from Istanbul last summer. There are more posts and pictures from Afghanistan if you navigate back to summer 2012.