I woke up in Kabul. I lay by the side of the road with a hangover, and a fat woman dressed head to toe in black hustled past me. The smells were of the Middle East. The noises were of the Middle East. I had not expected that.
But I had wanted something else.
I had calculated three years in Hong Kong, three years in the States, so now it was time to move on. But I had not expected Afghanistan.
No wait. It had been twenty-five years in the States. Really? Definitely time to move on.
I shifted my body onto the sidewalk and off the road. I recognized the whitewashed walls of mud brick houses. Bric-a-brac stalls pressed up against the houses, shopkeepers selling this and that, selling anything really.
Two or three years in Kabul would be okay, wouldn’t it?
In one corner sat two tables positioned side by side to form an L. Expats were pushing their way to the tables. Grizzled westerners looking for jobs. On the tables were pieces of paper where the applicants wrote their names. Each pile had a different kind of job.
Lawyer? I was not that. Teacher? Not that either, though I could always teach English. I looked at the next table over, to see if there was a better match.
No use for a computer guy.
A man in a sand-colored flak jacket stood next to me. He had a dirty blonde tousled hair look and was unshaven.
Experienced driver? I could do that.
‘Can you fix your own car?’ asked a man behind the table.
‘No.’
‘Can you drive four-wheel drive?’
‘No.’ But I could pretend. ‘I can drive stick. I drove from New York down to Florida once. Make it Maine down to Florida.’
I hesitated. ‘Well, it was only Washington not Florida, but it was a bloody long way.’
So yeah, there was a skill that I picked up in the US after all.
‘What about a Kalashnikov?’ He asked. ‘Can you operate one?’
‘No, but the man in the flak jacket can.’ I pointed at the man with the tousled hair. ‘We’d make great buddies, him being from England, so we can go on about football as we drive across the plain towards the Hindu Kush.’
I pictured us driving an open top Jeep with the guns in the back in case the Taliban spilled out from behind some hills. Yes, this was a skill they could use.
Photo of AK47s via Picryl.
