Of Lions and Horses in the Panshir

Last Fri­day morn­ing we head­ed off at first light from the mud­dy streets of Kab­ul. We wound our way north, past Bagram, where ISAF is head­quar­tered, and took a sharp turn east in the vil­lage of Jebal Ser­aj. We’d decid­ed to take a day long pil­grim­age, of sorts, to the tomb of Ahmad Shah Masoud. His grave lies deep his home­land of the Pan­shir Val­ley which he so famous­ly defend­ed against the long and ardu­ous Sovi­et attack.

Masoud is arguably Afghanistan’s biggest hero. Through­out Afghanistan his pic­ture is dis­played in car win­dows, post­ed on build­ings, or memo­ri­al­ized in woven blan­kets. The day he was assas­si­nat­ed, Sep­tem­ber 9, 2001, by sus­pect­ed Al Qae­da agents pos­ing as jour­nal­ists, is a nation­al hol­i­day. He earned his title “The Lion of the Pan­shir” defend­ing his home turf from the Sovi­ets dur­ing the attacks of the 1980s. Lions are intrin­si­cal­ly part of Pan­shir cul­ture. The word itself means “Five Lion­s” and we saw elec­tion posters for a can­di­date whose sym­bol was four of the majes­tic beasts. (Each can­di­date is “randomly assigned” a visu­al sym­bol so illit­er­ate peo­ple can rec­og­nize their can­di­date on the bal­lot. It’s well known that with the right funds and con­nec­tions it is pos­si­ble to influ­ence on this “random assignment.” One polit­i­cal par­ty paid for all of its can­di­dates in dif­fer­ent races to have apples for icons, to present uni­for­mi­ty to its illit­er­ate supporters.)

Dur­ing the Sovi­et inva­sion of the 1980’s the Lion of the Pan­shir and his mujahideen fight­ers would descend from the val­ley, attack the Sovi­et sup­ply chains head­ing across the Salang pass to Kab­ul, and retreat with their stolen booty. The Sovi­ets tried to dis­lodge him from the val­ley in ten sep­a­rate offen­sive attacks. All of them failed.

When the com­mu­nists fell from pow­er Masoud served in the mujahideen gov­ern­ment as Min­is­ter of Defense for the few years before the Tal­iban took pow­er. He then retreat­ed back to his val­ley, from where he con­tin­ued fight­ing the Tal­iban, (until the bomb hid­den in the dis­guised jour­nal­ists’ cam­era made him a mar­tyr.) When he died he was the leader of the North­ern Alliance, or the Unit­ed Islam­ic Front-an unprece­dent­ed mul­ti-eth­nic group of lead­ers who fought against the Tal­iban gov­ern­ment and, once the US began car­pet bomb­ing post Sep­tem­ber 11, took con­trol of Afghanistan.

In 2002 Mosoud was post humous­ly nom­i­nat­ed for a Nobel Peace Prize. (How­ev­er, the prize can only be award­ed to a liv­ing per­son.) He was buried 30 km from the entrance to the val­ley, near the vil­lage that was his home. Orig­i­nal­ly it was a plain, sim­ple grave on a large prom­e­nade over­look­ing the val­ley, but recent­ly a mas­sive mar­ble struc­ture has been erect­ed over the grave, with plans already in con­struc­tion to add a large mosque and build­ing com­plex to the site.

This was our ini­tial des­ti­na­tion as we made our way up the val­ley, dri­ving along­side the Pan­shir riv­er, stop­ping to climb around in the rust­ed shells of dis­card­ed tanks and heli­copters, until we reached the hill­side crest­ed with the mar­ble mono­lith. We paid our respects to the great hero, along side with a steady stream of oth­ers, local and vis­i­tors, who often stopped to pray at the holy grave site.

The path approach­ing the site was lined with a vari­ety of Sovi­et armored vehi­cles, some spray paint­ed with the Taliban’s sym­bol (were they cap­tured as Pan­shiri loot dur­ing a bat­tle 15 years ago?). A few bees had tak­en up res­i­dence behind the screen of one of the instru­ment pan­els, cre­at­ing a clus­ter of per­fect­ly geo­met­ri­cal cells, whose inhab­i­tants and mak­ers were now frozen to death by the chilly win­ter. Beyond the high prom­e­nade, fields spread out across the val­ley, sewn with snow.

As we climbed around the rusty met­al, the wind whipped falling snow at us prim­ing us for some hot tea, so we went in search of a chai­hana. As we drove up the val­ley we stopped to ask men wrapped in green Uzbek robes, hud­dled against the cold, where we might be able to get some chai and a bite to eat. “Fifteen min­utes up the road” seemed to be the stan­dard response. After a few incar­na­tions of this, the road final­ly passed through a tiny town cen­ter, com­plete with a mosque, a few stores, and exact­ly one place to get food.

We stomped in and hud­dled near the fire they lit for us. After real­iz­ing all they had was beef broth and tea, so Najib took charge and sent the employ­ees to the bazar for sup­plies and then end­ed up cook­ing up the meal him­self. I’ve encoun­tered few restau­rants where you bring your own food and cook for yourself.

Grate­ful to be out of the car and out of the cold, we relaxed on the raised wood­en plat­form cov­ered in car­pets. The oth­er patron across the way start­ed chat­ting with us. We learned from him that every Fri­day in win­ter the vil­lage played Buzkashi on a field just down the street. They were now on a break for prayer, but would resume the game in an hour. He invit­ed us to come watch.

Buzkashi is the nation­al sport of Afghanistan. It’s a win­ter sport, played on hors­es, some­what like polo. Two teams com­pete to grab a dead goat and trans­port it across a field into one of two goal cir­cles. Usu­al­ly two vil­lages com­pete against one anoth­er and there are cash prizes for the play­ers who score goals.

The match we saw was played in a large field of mud and snow. A clump of play­ers reared their mounts, smash­ing and push­ing one anoth­er in attempts to reach down and scoop the 36 kilo dead goat off the ground. Many of the play­ers wore Sovi­et tanker hats. When asked how they acquired their head­gear they answered “We took them from the Rus­sians we killed.” Four hats per tank, hun­dreds of tanks, you do the math. As they kicked and whipped and pushed, the hors­es’ and play­er­s’ legs alike were cov­ered in mud­dy brown slush and the goat was inde­ci­pher­able from a bag of mud.

And so we spent the after­noon hud­dled against the cold with the entire pop­u­la­tion of a small Pan­shir Vil­lage, watch­ing hors­es and men fight each oth­er to car­ry a dead goat across the valley.

Epi­logue: On our jour­ney home we stopped to watch some kids shoot snow­balls across a field using a long sling­shot appa­ra­tus. When they real­ized I was video­tap­ing they quick­ly pushed their ace sling­shot­ter for­ward, encour­ag­ing him to dis­play his tal­ent. They then taught Peretz how to shoot, applaud­ing his efforts. His num­ber two shot earned him much whasta.

How the Taliban hijacked our educational materials…

Our Malik Dave had a won­der­ful idea. The rea­son­ing went some­thing like this:

Let’s employ the Afghan com­pa­nies that sprung up to print elec­tion posters.
They are cur­rent­ly out of work because the elec­tion sea­son is over.
Lest we hire them, they may be up to no good.

We call this tech­nique weaponized shop­ping and it’s one of the tech­niques in the arse­nal of the Syn­er­gy Strike Force.

Over the past month, Lou, Juan and crew have put them­selves towards select­ing and opti­miz­ing high qual­i­ty image files for large for­mat print­ing of edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als. We did a test run with the print­ers and then sub­mit­ted our final order. Yes­ter­day, (Sun­day 20th) Hameed and Najib went to pick up the posters.

As things turn out here, the shop own­er had been arrest­ed by the police on sus­pi­cion of print­ing mate­ri­als for (Al Qae­da or) the Tal­iban. When the police raid­ed the store, they sen­si­bly con­fis­cat­ed all of the print­ed mate­ri­als in their pos­ses­sion as evi­dence. Among this pile cur­rent­ly in pro­ces­sion of the police are posters on the sub­jects of cell biol­o­gy, hydrol­o­gy, and the peri­od­ic table of elements.

Hope­ful­ly, we’ll get them back. We did pay a good 4,000 Pak­istani Rupee equiv­a­lent of 45$ Pak­istani Rupees, called “Cal­dari” are the de fac­to cur­ren­cy of Jalal­abad deposit.

Such a day’s course of events is start­ing to seem per­verse­ly nor­mal for us, as much as I can still imag­ine seems per­verse­ly abnor­mal for those whom I usu­al­ly count as peers.

***

Two days ago (Sat­ur­day Sat­ur­day is the first day of the work week. 19th) an attack took place in the cen­ter of town focused on Kab­ul bank where police offi­cers were col­lect­ing their pay. From our sources at the hos­pi­tal upwards of 40 peo­ple have died and many oth­ers are in crit­i­cal con­di­tion. Among the dead are report­ed the “deputy police chief and the head of crim­i­nal investigation.”

Many of our friends at the pub­lic hos­pi­tal were on high alert deal­ing with the patients that stretched their capac­i­ty. Mean­while our friends at a local radio sta­tion were broad­cast­ing the need for blood donors across the air­ways, result­ing in hun­dreds of donors show­ing up at the hos­pi­tal, ready to give.

Our friends say that the only day in recent mem­o­ry that com­pares at the lev­el of impact was when protests erupt­ed in 2005 after it was alleged that the Koran had been flushed down the toi­let in Guan­tanamo.  The dif­fer­ences are stark. There are many more civil­ian casu­al­ties and this was not a pop­u­lar uprising.

***

Yes­ter­day (Sun­day 20th) was a day of mourn­ing. Two of our guards had lost a broth­er. Many of our friends had checked out for the day to attend funer­als for friends, rel­a­tives and acquain­tances. Our UPS (unin­ter­rupt­ed pow­er sup­ply sys­tem) had died but we could­n’t get it repaired because the shop of the com­pa­ny that had built it was also dam­aged in the explosion.

***

We got hold of some exclu­sive footage.

In this video you see a cap­tured insur­gent and secu­ri­ty video show­ing how he entered the bank dressed as a police offi­cer and start­ed fir­ing. Sev­er­al things stand out. First­ly, he looks like a clean cut young man, noth­ing like what we have learned to think of as insur­gent or ter­ror­ist. Sec­ond, while he is fir­ing hordes of peo­ple run past him, with­in a foot in dis­tance, and none of them give his vul­ner­a­ble back­side a good whack.

Tile Porn

Pre­sent­ed here for your visu­al enter­tain­ment and aes­thet­ic enlight­en­ment are images from Her­at’s Fri­day Mosque, one of the gems of Islam­ic Architecture.

Teleconferencing Medicine

Tues­day was one of my most reward­ing days in Afghanistan.  I wit­nessed some­thing unde­ni­ably and irre­versibly positive.

In the morn­ing an ambu­lance came to pick Dr. Pete and me up from the Taj.  We crammed along with the dri­ver in front, while 5 female OBGYN doc­tors and a male ward direc­tor sat in the back, occu­py­ing one bench and the patient cot.  I’ve rid­den in the back of this ambu­lance before and know that the cot slides around and the whole set­up can’t real­ly accom­mo­date more than 3 com­fort­ably. But the back also con­tained a bunch of endoscopy equip­ment, which I had tak­en out of the hos­pi­tal (where it had pre­vi­ous­ly sat for 7 years unused, after USAID proud­ly donat­ed it but for­got to teach any­one how to use it, or even both­er to fig­ure out whether sen­si­tive expen­sive equip­ment from Amer­i­ca can be plugged into the unpre­dictable cur­rent com­ing out of their wall sockets.)

Then again, I have also rid­den on the lap of an old­er beard­ed Afghan stranger in a Toy­ota Corol­la sta­tion wag­on taxi where we were 11 all togeth­er and 3 women sat in the trunk. Hameed, who was my com­pan­ion on this adven­ture, tried to pass me off for an Uzbek who did­n’t know the local lan­guage. That cov­er last­ed for about 3 sec­onds until one of the geezers start­ed talk­ing to me in Uzbek, and then laughed that I did­n’t know my own lan­guage. Then Hameed claimed I was mute, for lack of any­thing else to say. That excuse last­ed for as long as I did­n’t speak (3 sec­onds) since he had failed to warn me of his inten­tions. They all laughed and the guy told me ‘kine kana’ for sit dude and guid­ed me onto his lap.

Ambu­lances are not used in the same way in Afghanistan.  They may some­times trans­port a patient from a rur­al clin­ic to the main hos­pi­tal, but most­ly they are for off-label uses. The dri­ver is crazy even by Afghan stan­dards. Usu­al­ly he blares his siren, verves in traf­fic, as if he were born to be a race cum bumper car dri­ver, play­ing per­pet­u­al chick­en on the drag. Today he man­aged to keep him­self most­ly in check, prob­a­bly because of the female doctors.

Today, we were head­ing to the ILC (the Inter­net Learn­ing Cen­ter) at Nan­ga­har Uni­ver­si­ty for the first ever tele­con­fer­ence between the doc­tors of Afghanistan and Pak­istan, and I was a lit­tle bit anxious.

Cul­tur­al­ly, we men are not allowed to speak to the female doc­tors (or females in gen­er­al, oth­er than the ones we brought along with us).  We can­not look them in the eyes.  We fol­low this pro­to­col because we have been told that doing oth­er­wise would make them feel uncom­fort­able. Instead, our con­ver­sa­tion flows through a respect­ed Afghan inter­me­di­ary. That was the role of the male doc­tor who is their ward director.

But, you see, some­times, and in our sit­u­a­tion in par­tic­u­lar, it is use­ful to talk, such as, when you need to assess their needs for a par­tic­u­lar type of train­ing.  Do they speak Eng­lish?  How well?  Would an Eng­lish speak­ing spe­cial­ist suf­fice?  Should the train­er speak Pash­to?  Is trans­la­tion only nec­es­sary for the fin­er points?

We got off to a bad start. We were hav­ing inter­net qual­i­ty of ser­vice prob­lems. The con­fer­ence qual­i­ty was jit­tery to the point of annoy­ing. We final­ly hacked togeth­er a solu­tion, using the video feed from the poly­com tele­con­fer­enc­ing unit while rout­ing the audio through Skype. At last it was working.

Tele­con­fer­enc­ing is a visu­al medium. When we first fired up the equip­ment and their faces popped up on the screen, I saw the doc­tors play out their instinct to bring their veil to their faces and hide from pub­lic view. We dis­abled the win­dow-inside-the-win­dow on the pro­ject­ed screen that showed us what the doc­tors in Pak­istan were see­ing.   You can hide behind the voice, but not behind a cam­era; but you can think that you are hid­den when the cam­era isn’t reveal­ing what it sees.

When select­ing a loca­tion for the con­fer­ence, we con­sid­ered sev­er­al places with pass­able inter­net.  In the past a con­fer­ence had been sched­uled at the Taj, but the women did not show up because of cul­tur­al issues stem­ming from the fact that it is known as a West­ern­er enclave. So now we were on neu­tral turf at Nan­ga­har Uni­ver­si­ty, (hav­ing trans­port­ed them 10 miles to an inter­net cen­ter that was built by the Rotary Club and to inter­net that was pro­vid­ed by NATO.)

The female doc­tors sat in the front row and the men sat behind them.

Dr. Pete’s main gig is run­ning a com­pa­ny that sets up telemed­i­cine capa­bil­i­ties in var­i­ous hos­pi­tals and field clin­ics around the world.  Though his work­ing rela­tion­ship with Holy Fam­i­ly Hos­pi­tal in Pak­istan, Pete got a female OBGYN doc­tor ultra­sound spe­cial­ist and a female Pash­to trans­la­tor to teach a class on the prop­er use of an ultrasound.

I was play­ing gen­er­al inter­net and audio­vi­su­al tech in the equation.

It start­ed out as a bor­ing lec­ture. The lec­tur­er spoke, the slides advanced. For me the mate­r­i­al was new and there­fore inter­est­ing. I also had the sec­ond occu­pa­tion of observ­ing the entire­ty of what was going on. But the intend­ed audi­ence sat silent and seemed bored.

Were female doc­tors reluc­tant to ask ques­tions? If so, why? Were they shy? Was it old hat and bor­ing? Were we the con­de­scend­ing for­eign­ers that assumed they were mere­ly play­ing doc­tor until they met us and want­ed to teach them a thing or two?

Pete was doing a good job break­ing the ice, ask­ing “dumb ques­tions”, and man­ag­ing the flow.

And then, about an hour into the lec­ture, a new voice piped up. She spoke qui­et­ly and was fur­ther away from the micro­phone so it was hard­er to hear. I climbed around a maze of wires (from the poly­com, the pro­jec­tor, the speak­er sys­tem, the lap­top and attached micro­phone) and brought the micro­phone near­er. The female doc­tors laughed at my park­our moves to maneu­ver the lap­top and not snag any wires. We were begin­ning to win them over.

They asked two or three ques­tions in all. We ran around behind the scenes, print­ing new hand­outs that the Pak­istani doc­tors sent over in response to the questions.

Two hours after it start­ed, the class was over. By way of effec­tive class­es, this was a fail­ure.  Very lit­tle new infor­ma­tion was trans­fered per unit time.

I posi­tioned myself at the back of the class­room next to the male ward direc­tor who has been typ­ing away smart­ly at this lap­top and chat­ting on his cell­phone dur­ing the lec­ture.  He had a long white beard, design­er glass­es, and a tra­di­tion­al white cap. I told him that we under­stand that the class was­n’t per­fect, but that we con­sid­ered this a first test. We would also like to become bet­ter and improve the class­es and to do this we need­ed open crit­i­cism from the doc­tors them­selves. He walked to the front of the room and trans­lat­ed what I said to the doctors.

And then some­thing unex­pect­ed hap­pened.  They turned and start­ed to speak to us direct­ly.  Or, under these cir­cum­stances, I can be for­giv­en for erring on the side of call­ing it direct­ly.  They expressed their needs.  They expressed sat­is­fac­tion at today’s meeting.

At first their remarks were ven­tured in the void, not addressed to any­one in par­tic­u­lar. But then we (also) start­ed to feel com­fort­able to engage the indi­vid­u­als, respond­ing to indi­vid­ual com­ments and weav­ing a com­mon con­ver­sa­tion­al thread. It was a true dia­log.  We took notes: they want­ed large, high res­o­lu­tion actu­al ultra­sound images, case stud­ies, exam­ples of nor­mal and abnor­mal cas­es. (They said that they did­n’t know what nor­mal was sup­posed to be!) They want­ed to be doc­tors play­ing diag­nose-this-patient while star­ing at the same raw image.  They did­n’t need a basic the­o­ret­i­cal review. They had the books and stud­ied them. They want­ed the doc­tors in Pak­istan to show their images, and they want­ed to bring their own trou­bled cas­es to discuss.

(Please “Please for­give the poor audio qual­i­ty and lack of edit­ing, but you can hear the banal­i­ties of the moment for your­self.” for­give the poor audio qual­i­ty and lack of edit­ing, but you can hear the banal­i­ties of the moment for yourself.)

The women ranged in age from the 30s to their 50s and in this con­ver­sa­tion I saw with­in them artic­u­late doc­tors who cared about their patients and want­ed to become bet­ter stew­ards of their health, but also I saw (for­give me Allah for say­ing this) youth­ful excit­ed chat­ter­ing girls.

Pete point­ed out that doc­tors from devel­oped coun­tries have a lot to learn from Afghanistan.   Since it takes so long for peo­ple to get them­selves to a hos­pi­tal, patients present advanced stage patholo­gies. Abnor­mal­i­ties are so com­mon that you almost have to rede­fine nor­mal. He told me that when he spent a day at anoth­er ultra­sound clin­ic in Jalal­abad, he was blown away at the pre­sen­ta­tion of unusu­al in every case. Each would be a case study in Amer­i­ca. You just don’t see that kind of stuff as a doc­tor. More cas­es in one day than he has seen in all his clin­i­cal rotations.

We learned a lot from this ses­sion, sim­ple banal things.

We learned not to ask, but to just give. You end­less­ly wal­low in self-cen­sor­ing cul­tur­al sen­si­tiv­i­ty orbits ask­ing whether you can com­mu­ni­cate with the doc­tors direct­ly, but then again, you can just do it. Don’t ask can we have your emails. Just give a hand out with your own, with the Pak­istani doc­tors emails, the coor­di­na­tors, etc. Add a note describ­ing what role each per­son plays and put the ball in their court.

At the end Qahar, a friend with whom we col­lab­o­rate with on var­i­ous inter­net projects, walked into the room. On their way out, the female doc­tors sur­round­ed him. They told me that he is their com­put­er teacher and their Eng­lish teacher too. It was clear that they appre­ci­at­ed him.

And that appre­ci­a­tion also cau­tious­ly reflect­ed on us. They start­ed to trust us that we actu­al­ly cared and weren’t there to mere­ly wave an illu­so­ry mag­ic wand in the form of high-mind­ed advice and grandiose con­sul­ta­tion based on “The way we do it in America …

***

Of course, it is dis­hon­est to end on such a pos­i­tive note. A cou­ple days lat­er, we went for a sec­ond vic­to­ry. The head doc­tor of the hos­pi­tal where the women worked was sup­posed to have a one on one plan­ning meet­ing with the chief doc­tor from Pak­istan, to plan future train­ing ses­sion for doc­tors from oth­er depart­ments. It was the third attempt to sched­ule such a meeting.

The time was set on both sides, the venue pre­pared, var­i­ous par­ties were involved. And then, he did­n’t show up.

I was sad and it showed when I talked to our friend at the ILC. And he tried to con­sole my by say­ing, “We are used to this. We plan, we talk, and then when it comes time, it does­n’t work out. That’s normal.”

It’s a big chal­lenge to stop being used to fail­ure. It’s a big chal­lenge to rede­fine normal.

Traffic fLaws

Osten­si­bly, in Afghanistan, traf­fic dri­ves on the right hand side of the road. How­ev­er, this rule is lenient­ly applied. In Afghanistan the road is used for dri­ving, and if the left hand side of the road is open, a dri­ver will take it.  Today while cruis­ing down the lane of oppos­ing traf­fic, we had to edge back into the reg­u­lar flow to pass a check­point. The guard was angry.

“Why were dri­ving on the oth­er side of the street??” He demand­ed, accord­ing to Najib’s translation.

“What did you tell him?” I asked.

“That I had for­eign guests in the car! [Refer­ring to us]” Was the answer.

I saw one dri­ver in Kab­ul even dri­ve up onto the side­walk. No small com­mit­ment because the street is sep­a­rat­ed from it by a 2 foot deep ditch so he’d have to dri­ve the length of the city block before get­ting back. Still, the road was full of cars honk­ing but the side­walk only had pedes­tri­ans on it- and they learn quick­ly to get out of the way.

Crane recov­ers fall­en truck on Kab­ul High­way. (Tod­d’s photo)

With all this chaos you’d think that there would be lots of acci­dents. And you’d be very right. The road from Kab­ul to Jalal­abad winds down gorges for miles before open­ing up into the plains of Nan­garhar. This is where 16,000 British Troops and their fam­i­lies were noto­ri­ous­ly slaugh­tered in their retreat from Kab­ul in 1842. One lone sur­vivor, Dr. Bry­don, made it out of the val­ley to Jalal­abad. As the sto­ry goes, the Afghans let him sur­vive so some­one could tell the tale. Mean­while, today the gorge is not dan­ger­ous because of IEDs or Afghans shoot­ing from the hills but because of hor­ri­ble dri­ving. Dr. Baz Moham­mad, the direc­tor of the Pub­lic Hos­pi­tal told me that in this year already there have been 1400 acci­dents and 300 deaths on that road. He knows because many of the patients treat­ed at his hos­pi­tal are vic­tims of those crash­es. (The Afghan cal­en­dar starts on the Ver­nal Equinox, and so these fig­ures cov­er 9 months of acci­dents, not just 1.)

The main road in the city of Jalal­abad has a divider down the mid­dle of it, in a futile attempt to keep traf­fic on its own side of the road. Often it works, but it’s cer­tain­ly not uncom­mon to see a vehi­cle dri­ving the wrong way on your side of the bar­ri­er. They’re com­mit­ting to dri­ving against traf­fic, act­ing on the assump­tion that traf­fic flow­ing against them will all spot them in time to swerve around their oncom­ing car.

There are no road signs in Jalal­abad. Dri­vers indi­cate they are pass­ing by honk­ing loud­ly. No on uses left or right blink­ers as turn signals, but it is local­ly under­stood that flash­ing your blink­ers means you plan on hurtling straight through an inter­sec­tion, regard­less of oncom­ing traf­fic. The only street­lights in the city are found at one par­tic­u­lar­ly busy traf­fic cir­cle in the mid­dle of town. They aren’t pow­ered. Instead, a cop with a shrill whis­tle and a stop sign the size of small din­er plate stands in front of the lights, wav­ing his sign men­ac­ing­ly while being thor­ough­ly ignored by the cars fight­ing to get by. Round­abouts are com­mon here, and dri­vers usu­al­ly go the same way around them. Not always.

Tak­ing a turn, espe­cial­ly a left-hand one, is not for the over­ly car­i­ous. Cars will not let you turn unless you give them no oth­er option. The only way you’ll be let into the flow of traf­fic on a busy street is if you get the hood of your corol­la nosed in far enough that cars can’t swerve around it. The rule of the road is that you nev­er give up space to any­one if you can’t help it. This includes budg­ing an inch for the army truck with 4 men hold­ing AKs in the back try­ing to wedge its way into traf­fic. No excep­tions giv­en. When we rid­ing in the Teach­ing Hospital’s Ambu­lance (they sent it to the Taj for our ride) its dri­ver turned on the siren in a vain attempt to push faster through traf­fic. The siren had lit­tle effect. It could bare­ly be heard above the honk­ing of horns, not that peo­ple would have heed­ed it if it had been louder.

Five lanes of traf­fic? This is a two way road with one lane in either direction.

Park­ing is also hap­haz­ard. There aren’t real­ly park­ing spots down­town so much as there are gaps between food carts where you can stash your car for a while. The cops, Mehrab told me, don’t give tick­ets because “no one would pay them.” Instead, they go around with a screw­driv­er and take the license plate of cars parked “illegally.” (The vast major­i­ty of parked cars here would qual­i­fy as this in Amer­i­ca.) That way, dri­vers have to go to the police sta­tion and pay to get their license plate back. The fee is nom­i­nal, but the has­sle of hav­ing to pick it up is sup­posed to deter.

Most cars are bought on auc­tion in Amer­i­ca (after hav­ing been totaled) import­ed and repaired. You often see plates from CA, MA, TX, and even from Canada.

The odd­est acci­dent I’ve almost got­ten into involved a van div­ing in front of us whose wheel popped com­plete­ly off the vehi­cle. Maybe the nuts weren’t tight­ened, oth­er­wise they were rust­ed com­plete­ly through because the whole tire with its wheel popped off the axle and flew across the road, into oncom­ing traf­fic, smashed into the front of a car going the oth­er way, and ric­o­cheted back into our lane. Najib slammed on the brakes as the tire bounced across the road in front of us. Mean­while the dri­ver of the van had man­aged to keep con­trol and pull it over to the side, undam­aged if you don’t count the miss­ing tire.  The car that took the brunt of the tire seemed to have a smashed front light, but lit­tle oth­er dam­aged. And we cruised between the two stopped vehi­cles, head­ing into town.