It has been six years and Kabul has changed. My luggage was through booked from Bonn, via Munich and Dubai. Three flights in three different airlines with the tickets bought separately. Miraculously it arrived safely.
The banks at the airport were closed on Friday morning when I arrived. Maybe they?ll open tomorrow or the day after, they said. But things worked out. A SIM card was easy to get. It provided roaming Internet, but with a minimum charge for one month, I decided I?d stick to the Aina office where I was staying, for browsing. The SIM card man was going to change money for me as well. I suspected the rates weren?t the best, but at that stage, I wasn?t going to argue. More negotiations led to the bus to the parking lot and then the taxi.
The photographers at Aina had done well. The last time I?d seen Farzana Wahidy was at the All Roads Award Ceremony at National Geographic. I?d met Massoud Hossaini more recently at the World Press Award Ceremony in Amsterdam. He had just won the Pulitzer and it felt good to see how they?d progressed from the days I?d shared stories with the young and bright eyed youngsters in the grounds of Aina. But the office had moved. Luckily Farzana was able to direct the driver to the new location.
The new office was getting a fresh coat of paint and I made my way through stepladders to the TV room where the billiard table was stacked up with things temporarily relocated for the painters. But there were still people around and Aina looked like a busy place.
Farzana and Massoud soon came and we chatted about old times. I was to meet the other photographers on Sunday (today). That left me the rest of the day and Saturday to do other things. I had only seen the imported form of Buzkashi in Balochistan. But it was too hot for the sport in June and the other games were played early in the morning on Fridays, so I?d already missed them. But I did have other plans.
My main task was to identify work for a show I was curating for the Mus?e du quai Branly in Paris for 2013. Afghanistan was one of the eight countries I was covering. The trips to Nepal and Myanmar had gone well and I was looking forward to seeing fresh work from Afghanistan. I was also piggy backing for a story I was doing for Saudi Aramco World. Salma Hasan Ali, who was working with me on the story, had set up an appointment at what sounded like a wonderful school set up by Sadiqa Basiri Saleem.
I thought I?d also take pot luck in tracing an old friend. I?d met Aga Ghul in my last visit in 2006. Only then, I?d thought his name was Abdul Karim (my nonexistent Pashto and broken Urdu had obviously not served me well enough). The only clue I had was a photograph of Aga Ghul and his family, in their home and a vague landmark atop a hill. I didn?t know at that time, that I had the wrong name. We might well run this story on Saudi Aramco World, so I won?t give too much away at this stage. Anyway, there is plenty more to tell.
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Musings by Shahidul Alam