©Stefania Zamparelli


Dear all,


Nov 12, 04
From Kabul to Mazara-e-Sharif


I am writing from my very basic room at Aamo Hotel in Mazar-e-Sharif, hoping that tomorrow I will be able to send this email. In fact with the favor of the moon the fasting holiday could finally end but the Eid celebration will keep stores and offices closed.
Yesterday I left Kabul at 1 p.m. and arrived in Mazar at 1 a.m., 12 endless hours of which, thanks to the amazing landscape, I could at least enjoy the daytime trip.
Roads are a real disaster; I have seen something similar only in Ecuador!
But I never saw so many car/truck accidents all in one trip. Despite the sadness I felt for each of them, I was only hoping that that would make my driver aware of the danger and therefore more prudent.
I learned to ask for back seats when traveling on busses in India... the few times I sat in front I got too anxious. In Kabul I timidly asked for a back seat but here the laws are definitely against my wish, women in front only!
So I ended up keeping my eyes on the road for the whole trip and, at least a couple of times, I lost control and screamed… predictable laughter followed!
Otherwise, I emitted sounds only on a few occasions; one was at around 4:50 p.m. when I mumbled “Iftar” (=Ramadan dinner) awaking the sleeping atmosphere; I was trying to request a stop for food but I was ten minutes too early... I was starving!
And then when a “talkative” passenger asked me “are you OK?” and my reply was, “I’m driving!” again laughter. My concern was not to be part of those awful statistics, one more of those sad few lines in articles we constantly see in the news, because shit can happen!
I must say that at the end of the trip it seemed like Allah in disguise of Lord Krishna made all of us safely sound in Mazar with a special regard for me.
In fact, the blessed driver didn’t allow me to go to the hotel but insisted that I spend the first night at his house with his family.
The kindness of Afghan people is something very special!

I was given a sultan-like big room, not attached to the rest of the house, furnished with only red carpets and pillows. I promptly added in the middle of the room my orange and red sleeping bag and went to use the holed floor toilet. Three minutes later I miraculously found more blankets on my sleeping bag.
After that, I experienced silence as only few times in my life.
Unfortunately the peace didn’t last long. At 6 a.m. two beautiful children came in and saw me. They were particularly attracted by the shiny color of my sleeping bag. The girl couldn’t refrain from getting closer and touching it to experience its softness and report it to the younger brother with merry sounds and smiles. They both tried hard to engage in a conversation with that strange alien that could say no comprehensible word. In the end they gave up and left. Ten minutes later I learned that they were not surrendering. In fact, while I was naively trying to sleep again, a real militia was getting ready for a second attack. In short, three more assaults followed and the last put me under siege at 7 a.m. Every time I regretted not having the camera in the sleeping bag… I wish I could see those faces again. I was not annoyed at all, just amused.
By the time I was at the bus the whole young population of the village neighborhood was there. These children have a real revolutionary power!

Indeed I got very annoyed and fearful just before I started to write these notes. At around 8 p.m. people knocked at the door claiming to be the police.
I had no choice but to open the door.
The young hotel attendant was there with three ugly, mean-looking guys.
Of course none of them spoke any English and they were in “civilian” clothes. I asked them to show me their ID cards and my request was intentionally or unintentionally ignored.
They wanted to see my passport and from what I could perceive they were not happy with me as a tourist so I told them of my freelancing photography; I showed them my press credentials and at this point they looked like they did not know what to do. I asked them again to show me their police ID cards and this time one of the guys put in my hand a meaningless ID which did not have "police" written on it… it is one of the few words I know how to read and write in Farsi. I started to freak-out but I pretended to be in control.
They left and 5 minutes later came back. This time there were five of them and one, who could speak 10 words in English said, “you…. journalist… hotel bla-bla, not in this place.” I replied, “Ne paisa (=no money), no salary, independent photographer, artist.” Then I said, “I am legal… yes?” And he said, “… your safety.” I replied, “I feel safe here.”
Of course because of those bastard mother-fuckers I didn’t feel safe at all, but in the end they left smiling.
Later I tried to talk to the hotel attendant and he said “no police… commander”.
"Holy shit!", I thought.



Nov 16, 2004

Whiskers

I thought it was a stray cat but my compelling need for communication revealed to me what was behind the appearance.
I was near a butcher stall when I saw the little thing.
I crouched down to caress it and to my surprise the cat accepted my hand and demanded more affection. Yes, that booth was his home. He stared at me and while I selfishly obliged him, I noticed something strange on his face… his nostrils were unusually large and red and his expression was strangely sad… then I realized… his whiskers were cut off!
While still bent over I turned my head up to the butcher, a big mustachioed man who was standing up at the booth, and I looked at him. With a tone expressing disappointment and with my fingers miming the scissor cuts, I said, “his mustaches are cut off!”
The butcher’s face got animated with a big smile; then he proudly and repeatedly kept beating his chest with one hand, and while nodding, he loudly said something. It was easy to understand the meaning… that asshole, with a vicious addiction for blades, did it!
I screamed at him “no-no-no, you don’t do that” while I was again performing the scissor cuts!
He almost got scared, and now his hand was in a halt and surrendering position, as if to say, “O.K. I won’t do it anymore.”
I stood up and could better look at him… he was there all in one piece; he had two arms and two legs, and I shamefully and cynically thought, “not even a landmine would lose its power for you, you’re a hopeless idiot and will always be!“
Then I softened my feelings and reached a different conclusion… he may have just accomplished his mission by revealing to me the possibility of becoming vegetarian.
©Stefania Zamparelli


Nov 21, 2004

I am a Bedouin

I took my last shower ten days ago while I was still in Kabul. No running water in my hotel in Mazar-i-Sharif, and no shower at all, just cold water in beaked buckets to be drained in the built-in floor toilet. Buckets and ablutions can do the job, but in a very partial and acrobatic way.
My clothes smell like a dirty apron and my never washed leather jacket bought in 1996 in a K-Mart store is getting closer and closer to its pre-factory state. It emanates a smell that resembles the buz, that corpse of a calf or goat used for the Buzkashi game.
I can tell you that the folks in turbans crowding Mazar-i-Sharif Streets and me are using the same means; I can sense it… we all carry around the same mother earth odor.
Yesterday I decided to put some energy into cleaning especially because tomorrow I will fly to Herat and it would be nice to start a new chapter in a more decorous way.
So today I had a busy schedule among the many things, I had to pick up the laundry bag. While leaving my room, the hotel attendant tried to tell me not to go out because it was raining. I looked through the window and could see just a little pouring, “No problem!” I said.
I was wrong. Slippery mud everywhere: while precariously walking I was desperately looking for concrete and wherever I found it, puddles were also there. My just brushed shoes regained the prehistoric artifact-look, my buz jacket became heavier, and my cleaned laundry bag… useless… all wet! The laundry man justified the excessive presence of water in the washed clothes by pointing at the gloomy sky… as if to say, there was no other way to dry it!
I was dissuaded from going to the hair salon because an occasional translator said, “Very dirty place… they recycle the shampoo water.”
On top of it, the Internet connection was slower then usual.
There is always a reason for things to get slow or not completely done here, if you don’t want to be disappointed, expect it partially done… buckets can definitely make the job.
I got back to my hotel and found out that my glasses had lost one screw.
Tomorrow on the airplane I will be wearing my stinky clothes, my mudded shoes, my hair will be wrapped in a colored bandanna (my better scarf is in the wet laundry bag) and I will probably be reading a paper with glasses fitted only on one ear.
©Stefania Zamparelli


November 25, 2004

A Japanese stereotype

I am in Herat, and as I write this city name, the word “heart” takes over.
The spell check sometimes makes appropriate changes. The earth of Afghan civilization is right here, very close to Iran.
Streets are in concrete, my hotel supplies shower/hot water, the old city displays a wonderful castle and… that’s as much as I need!
But Herat is not the reason that I started to write, the cause is Ken, which I nicknamed pachyderm. I approached him at Herat airport, the morning I arrived.
He looked like he was lost and I could see right away that he was Japanese… not to mention that no other foreigner would be here with a big backpack and no mission to accomplish. I stopped his walking by saying, “Where are you going?”
I rightly assumed that he was going to Herat to look for a hotel, as I was too. Don’t forget… we are still in the airport.
We ended up sharing a cab and eventually a room that is still hosting both of us.
Reciprocal convenience was and still is the only reason for such a share.
Pachyderm Ken is one of the least interesting human beings I ever met… no taste, no apparent emotion/insight, no charm, no kindness, no POV, no knowledge at all.
He spent the last 15 months traveling and, I dare to add, by inertia.
He says that he travels to watch nature scenes, mostly mountains.
I assume that at one point of his life he identified himself with a rocky mass. Then he had to keep up with that by eating mountains of cookies and drinking rivers of local cola per day… Pepsi or Coke would be too much expensive for him!
Just like a mountain, he has no social skills at all; the few times I walked down the street with him I could notice that he would give no smile or attention to any of the many people who were trying to talk to us. His only concern is “Chaaandas? …How much?” please, read it with a Japanese accent/tone.
His round and big face has a diameter of approximately 11” and that makes the narrow openings of his eyes harder to be found.
While walking with him I pointed at a photo on a building portraying Massoud… I asked him, “Do you know who is he?” In Afghanistan photos of Massoud are everywhere, even embroidered on carpets. He said “no.” I added,
“Maybe you heard his name… Massoud… does it ring any bell? He was killed on September 9, 2001” “No, I don’t know”, he replied.
This 27 year old man after spending more then a month in Afghanistan never got the curiosity to find out about the hero posted all over the country!
The only questions he addressed me was “Which kind of phooootos you take… can I look at your wolk?” “Sure”, I said.
His comment was, “oh-oh… People, instead I take photos of naaatule. ”In fact, for KEN-NO-SOCIAL-SKILL it is impossible to approach people”, I thought. He showed me from his laptop the nature photos taken with a small ultra compact digital Pentax. His laptop “bought in Japaaaaan… very-very cheap” (again Japanese accent please) is a 10”X8” PC of an unknown brand that sounds like Soniac. I asked him which software he was using to edit the photos and he said, “Photo paint… it is a very light softwaaale!”
Pachyderm uses the minimum amount of technology and the “risks” he takes are always very well calculated. He also tries to avoid notice by wearing Afghan clothes!
When he walks, he slightly moves his hips up and down but only every 3 steps, while shaking his hands as they were loosen from his wrists; maybe that is his way to rebalance the mass of his body, I thought. His gestures are feminine and yet he is graceless.
Pachy decided to be part of one of my tours and with some disappointment because my photo equipment was in his words “too daaangelous.”
I obtained a permit to go inside to the - not open to public - Ekhtiaradin Castle in the Old City of Herat. Pachy was lucky enough to be part of this special visit and… he was a real pain n the neck. He took hundreds of pictures obstructing my view and guess what… from my same angles and of the same people: the many guards who were escorting us!
I thought, there are no mountains here motherfucker, and said, “please get out of my sightline, I need room to move around!”
And you should see with what agility he would photograph while lightly jumping from one place to another… he even emulated my short height by bending on his knees… I almost hated him!
Pachy - turned into butterfly - followed me also in a bread-making stall, and also there he enjoyed taking my same photos.

I know that pretty soon my cruel and wild side will come out and already I almost feel sorry for him.

©Stefania Zamparelli


December 20, 2004

Dear Muslim Mothers of Afghanistan,

If you accept the role that your Islamic republic is giving you, you should consider teaching your boys how to cook and how to clean.
I understand that living in the reclusion of your houses keeps you unaware of what’s going on outside… let me tell you, your boys are doing terrible!
Your men are in charge of all thinkable humble jobs; they run hotels and restaurants, they are servants in the upper-class houses, they clean private and public offices and… the result is always dreadful. I ignore how they are managing at a better-paid occupational level because it is none of my business… I am only in transit here, but I do need food.
They pretend to clean but in reality they only minimize their work by using simple precautions like taking off their shoes before stepping inside their stalls… please, for your own wellness, trust my words and stay away from those thresholds-miniatures of desert! Those dusty 3 sq. ft. of shoes-parking-areas are intended to prevent the filthy from becoming dirty… even a mouse would find his path away from those hazardous barriers!
So Afghan women, hurry up, master your children-boys in their in-fashion crafts; in the meantime get ready to serve the society and grab the best career opportunities… it would be nice to see you running a society well cleaned by men.

Fondly.

©Stefania Zamparelli

Dear blank god,

Please reveal yourself to the people affected by collective neurosis: So many flexions are necessary only if one's life style is extremely sedentary.
Away from the desert partial ablutions should be replaced with showers and hot baths.
Ritualism should be replaced with meditation and shrinks, and…
Please, even that act of praying by miming the reading of a book…
Give them real books and the tools to understand the sense of what they say.
Up to now they only got addictions camouflaged within toxic ring tones.

©Stefania Zamparelli

Dear Travel Book Editors,

Please remember to always include the translation of the word “straw” in the food and eating section of your phrasebooks. It can be very annoying to buy a can of coke and to mime the need of a straw.


Dear geographers,

I’m 2000 meters above the level of the sea and a thousand km land distance away from it… I wonder… why bothering the waters if they are in all directions far? Should we borrow the nearest plain?
I’m 2000 meters above the level of the plain and I can hardly wait to get close to the ocean.


Stefania