Flying Commercial

Domestic air travel in Afghanistan resembles the American practice only in the most casual comparison. Over a round trip to Herat, my flights ran a combined four hours late, I walked through four metal detectors (of which none were functional), and I received five separate pat-down searches from bored women (of whom two obviously felt zero regard for my silly sense of dignity). The planes smell deeply human on 90-degree days, and even my knees nearly brushed the seat ahead.

The trip began with a crazy man screaming and lunging after me outside the departure gate, pulled away by his guardian while a crowd gawked, then apologized to the clearly-shaken foreign girl. It ended in a quiet office with the chief of Herat airport security, drinking tea and chatting about India.

I get ahead of myself. Other than the deranged man, the departure from Kabul was mostly normal. We waited two and a half hours at the sole gate for domestic departures - I argued with a zealous steward who scolded me for putting a bag under the seat - but we arrived in Herat with no major incidents.

If the Bamiyan airport reminded me of a small-town gravel strip in the Rockies, Herat's lacks a similarly apt comparison. There's a two-room terminal serving departing travelers only. Arriving, we walked off the plane, past a waving portrait of President Karzai, and straight into a dusty parking lot where small boys ferried luggage in wheelbarrows.

Returning for the flight to Kabul, our taxi pulled onto the shoulder of a major road, depositing us seemingly several hundred yards from the main airport entrance (as marked by an old MiG mounted on a pedastal). Walking in that direction, however, we heard shouts from a small police checkpoint across the road - the real departure entrance passed instead between rows of sandbags into a dusty courtyard a quarter-mile from the terminal. Once there, we were shuffled into a shipping-container room for the first security check, then shuttled across to check in at a desk with two men and one laptop tethered to a SIM-card modem. Thus approved, we settled in to wait.

A policeman approached and asked to see our bags, accompanied by the woman who had patted us down just moments before. I handed him my backpack as Afreen explained that we had already been checked. He ignored her and then picked up my other bag, carrying two copper plates I'd bought from Sultan Hamidi, consulting all the while with the woman. He looked over them carefully, then asked me where I'd gotten them. I had a business card for the shop, and as I handed it over, I asked what the problem was. He replied "mushkil nist!" and handed me my bags. As they left, an Afghan-American sitting nearby quietly translated that the woman had suggested I might attack the pilots with the plate, hitting someone on the head.

Eventually, a gate opened at the other end of the courtyard, and we joined the line to file through and trek across the parking lot to the terminal. Once there, we went through another security checkpoint, where the woman ignored the plates entirely, and then to an x-ray machine, where the technician took them and insisted I put Sultan Hamidi on the telephone. After long haggling, an older guard stepped over and eventually returned my souvenirs.

Afreen and I had barely settled in to the women's waiting area when a man walked up and asked, "Farsi gap mezanid?" "Kam kam," I replied, pinching my fingers in the air to demonstrate just how little. Dread settled in as I sank into the office couch - these plates were obviously never going to make it home with me. Thankfully, the security chief had found a translator, who first asked where we were from, then spoke for several fond minutes about his time in Hyderabad after Afreen claimed it as her home. Finally, the issue of my apparent contraband came up, and our translator assured us that his chief was truly sorry for any inconvenience the search had caused. Would we like any tea before our flight?

(Postscript: upon returning to Kabul, we found that our traveling companions had shared a similar experience the day before - the guards had required them to check the glassware, some of which was then broken in transit, but allowed Francisco to board the plane with a switchblade.)

The Herat Citadel

The final tourist stop in Herat is its fortress, built on a site originally chosen by Alexander the Great, now in the center of the city and overlooking the mosques and minarets it once protected. The Aga Khan Trust for Culture is in the process of excavating and restoring the Citadel, and Afreen and I were lucky enough to encounter some of the engineering team on our visit. One pointed out fragments of old tile mixed in with the debris the construction team carted about busily, roughly dating it based on its use of multiple colors under a single glaze. Climbing the towers and peering down on life below, we caught pictures both birds-eye Herat and the fort itself - the photo below links to a brief slideshow.

Shrines of Herat

Herat is a city of shrines - over three days, I visited the mausoleums of two princes, two religious poets, and one Sufi saint known for traveling by rolling on the ground. Photos of Afreen befriending one pilgrim, Kufic script in blue tile, a pomegranate-tree fresco, and several peaceful pistachio-treed tombs tell the full story - click on the photo below to see the rest.

The Musalla complex

The first period of neglect and decline for the Friday Mosque came with the construction of the Musalla complex early in the 15th century. Queen Gawhar Shad's architectural legacy once included not only a mosque but also a madrassa, and the complex was adorned with 20 minarets.


Unfortunately, time and fortune have been far less kind to the buildings at Musalla - in 1885, in anticipation of a Russian invasion that never came, the British dynamited most of the complex to clear the line of their artillery defenses of Herat. Minarets were toppled by earthquakes, and later wars brought further destruction.


The mausoleum of Gawhar Shad herself still stands, as do five minarets. Stopping by on a quiet Saturday afternoon, Afreen and I were able to wait for the guardian to unlock the building. Inside, UNESCO restoration plans sit among the handful of tombstones. At the very back of the complex, part of a sixth minaret marks the former mosque, with the remains of a Soviet tank standing watch. A paired reminder, these two remnants of war each commemorate the former grandeur of the area and its sadly strategic location.


(Musalla complex - album link)

Sultan Hamidi

Across from the Friday Mosque stands a glorious junk-shop full of relics and nonsense, the purview of a charismatic performer and true vaudevillian. In the course of an hour in his store, he served our group tea, strummed every stringed instrument among his wares, and told stories of his two wives and 18 children - including a son who was shot in the mosque and a daughter killed by a missile-strike.


In Farouk, Sultan Hamidi found a kindred spirit. Our official group negotiator soon claimed Afreen as his zan (wife) and swore his father's name was also Sultan, striking his most outrageous bargaining stance and proving himself an equal showman. Hamidi clearly delighted in the sparring, and so loud debate soon filled the shop.


Ameel fiddled with a tabla while Francisco sorted through the rifles to admire a broken pistol inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Alyza searched the painted glassware for a carafe labeled in Arabic, rather than English, characters. Afreen and I debated the value of antique copper plates engraved (strangely enough) with women's faces, and soon we all accepted Sultan Hamidi's invitation to visit the glassblowing workshop down the street.


Pedestrians hurried past the workshop with hardly a glance at the furnace or the hunchbacked man working molten vases, but we visitors with cameras soon drew a curious crowd. Herat's streets were secure, but the population clearly lacks Kabul's bored familiarity with foreigners - it usually took mere minutes for our group to acquire an entourage after setting out on foot.


Returning to final negotiations, Sultan Hamidi pulled out a karakol and traditional Kandahari jacket, costuming the boys for photos in turn. He solemnly presented Farouk with an additional glass vase as a gift, but made him buy a silk-embroidered cap, tacked onto our pile as a final impulse purchase. We left with several carafe-and-cup sets, a long-handled switchblade, three copper plates, miscellaneous small gifts and the satisfaction of long bargaining successfully concluded. Cracking open a battered copy of the Lonely Planet guide on the table, Sultan Hamidi showed off his photo on page 5 - somehow I suspect he exercised similar charms on the author.

Friday Mosque

A Ghorid king built the first Friday Mosque in Herat in 1200. It survived damages from the Mongol invasion, an earthquake, and royal neglect as a later mosque usurped its place as the primary place of worship in the city. Over the years, it has been built over considerably, sometimes in the name of restoration and sometimes with new elements entirely.


Over the centuries, however, periods of investment and rebuilding have turned the mosque to a monument in tiled mosaics. The open vestibules off the main courtyard (iwan) have simple whitewashed walls, but every other surface boasts rich detail.


Our group (classmates Afreen and Francisco, plus new friends Ameel, Alyza and Farouk) slipped in on a quiet Saturday morning to photograph and explore. Slipping off our shoes before stepping out into a courtyard of white marble, we padded quietly among the arches with their sprawling geometric patterns and lilting calligraphy before rejoining for a moment together in the shade.


A workshop hidden in one corner of the complex houses the craftsmen who design new patterns and restore the old. Wandering past the sign for the "International Project for Preservation of Historical Monuments," we watch this team chip at tiles, stencil templates, and lay out new pieces, entirely unperturbed by their audience and its cameras.


Though prayers remain several hours off, our driver is impatient and many shrines remain on the day's agenda. And so, after expressing sincere admiration for the work underway, we exit through a different façade, snap a few additional photos, and continue on to see more of Herat.

(As usual, the photos link to a full slideshow of the Friday Mosque)

Herat: photos for the day

In campaign news, violence against candidates continues: an explosion injured 17 people. Actual Herat travel-blogging and campaign news to follow soon, I promise.