Some Reading...

Afghan artifacts that had been protected at a museum-in-exile in Switzerland have returned to Kabul. Among the 1,400 items, a phallus once held by Alexander the Great. Click here to read about the Afghan artifacts that weren't looted.

March 8 was Women's Day, which is a big to-do in Afghanistan, but for many women here, life remains grim. Read here about a woman who married a man who stalked her and later became her abusive husband.

Afghans recently celebrated their new year with a ceremony that kind of resembles the U.S. Groundhog Day, only their superstition is based on the strength of wrestlers who hoist up a flag pole. Click here to learn about how erecting a flag pole can bring peace in Afghanistan.

Thunder Under a Blue Sky

Boom!!! That was the alarm clock, about 6:45 a.m.
Landry: What was that?
Me: I don't know.
Landry: Just thunder.
We tried to go back to sleep, but my sleepy eyes squinted at the sunlight coming through our window and a bright blue sky. "I don't think it's thunder." I rolled out of bed, went to talk to the cook downstairs, who pointed to the big cloud of an explosion outside _ a brown mushrooming cloud that dissipated as it rose into the sky over the mountains of Kabul.
Gunpowder explosion, officials said, in a poor part of Kabul. At least six were killed. Cause: unknown.

Recent Acquisitions

The works of Mohammed Akbar Salam.
Les peintures de Mohammed Akbar Salam.

Hi-Tech Afghan Gadgets

Afghan photographers use these heavy camera obscura to take official (passport-sized) photos on the streets of Kabul. This is Landry's first portrait, "Alisa 1920."

Suicide Bomb

A suicide bomber detonated himself just outside the U.S. air base in Bagram, killing more than 20 people, most of them Afghans who work on the base. Hundreds of villagers _ almost all men _ poured into the area to seek news of their relatives. One man ran up to the base entrance, crying, moaning and wringing his hands.

One woman ventured out of her home to search for her son, an employee on the base. I only saw maybe one or two other women that day, but was otherwise surrounded by men and boys.










Death toll figures ranged from three to more than 20. I saw a dozen bodies carried by shoulder or driven away from the base.













The area where the bomb blast happened is actually a busy market area, where Afghan workers line up every morning to go to work. Among the surprising sights that day, were these two young children who walked out of the area that journalists were initially forbidden from entering.

She was a bright little spot that appeared on an otherwise sad, muddy day in Bagram.

Playing in Snow, Afghan Style

Afghan children, I've found, are vicious. I met one young boy who offered me his snowball as a sort of friendly gift of ammunition. He had somehow managed to pack this snowball into a deadly baseball-sized ice rock. He smiled at me and pointed at it, proud of his technique.

During an outing in January, dear Landry was clobbered in a snowfight. Thank goodness his face was protected by his bushy beard... which still isn't long enough to satisfy the old Taliban rule. Under the Taliban, Landry would have been jailed until his beard grew to a fist's length.

The housemates went for a day of fun in the snow, which meant sitting on an innertube and hurling yourself down this hill. The brave housemates had also gone snowshoeing, even though this country is notorious for its landmines. One of them said that according to the Afghans, if the snow is deeper than 50 centimeters (20 inches), then the weight of an object with a large surface area (like a human being wearing tennis racket-sized snowshoes) is not enough to trigger a landmine.

It's all fun and games until you come home without a leg.

Happy Circus Children

We went to an outdoor performance by the circus children at their school on the outskirts of Kabul. Landry (in the above photo with the bandage on his left middle finger from the car accident) played a bout of tug-of-war, in which he pulled relentlessly on this elastiboy! After the show there was an announcement that one of the cute little girls, 6-year-old Fariha, will be one of 17 children touring in California in January and February 2008.

The visit to the circus made Landry so happy. He described it as the first time he had seen Afghan children here who were "épanouis," or "beaming" with a happiness that was pure and simple.

Another Glimpse of Afghanistan

My mission here is to paint the lives of the Afghan people -- my most recent stories are on the children and the artists. (Check out the links below to my stories and audio/photo essays.)

My colleague, Rafiq, said he was going to take pictures at a school that teaches children the circus arts. Here's the story.

For the arts package I did, Landry fowarded me a story he found about the Afghan arts on one of our favorite Japanese online mags. Through this article, I met one Afghan artist who introduced me to several others. The findings? What appears to be an Afghan art renaissance. I included with the story an online audio/photo tour of Afghanistan's National Gallery -- this could be your one and only chance to see this art collection, unless you decide to take a trip to Kabul!

Allah to the Rescue on Afghan Roads

Landry was traveling by road from Kabul to Islamabad, when a terrible thing happened -- his driver was taking the mountain road curves a bit too wildly and the car flipped over. Landry, who wasn't wearing his seatbelt, found himself upside down in the car and immediately crawled out of the broken passenger side window. The driver crept out as well, completely unharmed -- "Allah protected us," he told Landry, whose middle finger on his right hand was a bloody mess. He wrapped it in toilet paper and a plastic bag.

Where once no one was on the road, hordes of men poured out to upend the overturned car. They flipped the vehicle back on its wheels, and the driver turned to Landry and said, "Let's go!" A different vehicle? A bus nearby? Nope. The driver hopped into his car, revved up the engine and off they went toward the border with Pakistan, with little broken pieces of the window tinkling into Landry's lap as they sped along madly in the stunningly beautiful Afghan hinterlands.

Landry's finger? Broken just at the tip and a big flap of skin was torn off. A few stitches and a few weeks of bandage.

Flying Tang on the Shomali Plains

We went on a wonderful day trip and took a hike along a snowy path into a village north of Kabul. There, the children had a snowfight with one of our friends, and we enjoyed saying "salaam" and "eid mubarak" to the villagers on their special Eid holiday. Along the way, the rocky mountainside and homes were spraypainted to show they were cleared of land mines... or not. On our way back, we came through the Shomali Plains -- near the U.S. military base at Bagram -- which have been cleared of mines, so we decided to go for a little frolick in the vast white expanse of calm.

Snowman in Kabul

I saw this snowman down the street from my office and felt that I had to go visit the new public art. My colleague, Musadeq, and I admired the snowman's pearl necklace, his green scarf, his red plate of delights, and as we walked away, the artist himself came out to greet us. The security guard gave his gun to the snowman to rest his arms and told us that at 10 p.m. on Christmas night, he came out to build his friend. He finished his oeuvre at 3 a.m., five hours later.

In Vogue in Kabul

Meeting Karzai in Kandahar

I was among a small group of foreign journalists who interviewed Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Dec. 12 in the southern city of Kandahar. The interview took place in the governor's guesthouse palace; security was tight. Earlier in the day as a press conference began, Karzai looked directly at me and, seeing a new face, said, "Oh! Who are you working with? Where are you from? Thailand? Nice place." Friendly guy.

Seafood Crap

My driver, Sher, and I decided that our 10-minute daily commute from home to work would be time for our lessons in English for him and Dari, one of Afghanistan's main languages, for me. "Yak - Doo - Say"... "One - Two - Three." We pass a herd of goats on the dusty, traffic-jammed Kabul roads. The goats, "buz," graze on piles of trash on the side of the road. Tomato is "banjana," which I remember because it sounds kind of like Italy's hello. On my way to work, we pass the kitsch Golden Key seafood restaurant, which has a big sign with pictures of crabs, fish, shrimp and three golden keys. He's learning the names for the seafood in the picture, but he doesn't have the pronunciation down yet. Each time we pass the restaurant, Sher points at the sign and says, "This is crap."

Terror in Kabul

Terror in kabul PDF

Rookie Misstep

I walked through the old city of Kabul to interview a former opium addict and her children. The slippery, snow-covered path was precipitous, so I inched along, following in my guides' footsteps, but at one point, I accidentally strayed from the path. I stepped into what I thought was snow, and my leg plunged knee deep into the ground. Not a big deal, I thought, just deep snow. I pried my leg out, only to find that I had fallen into a sewage drain full of human excrement. Thankfully I had knee-high boots on, which was covered in stinky poo. I promptly had my clothes laundered by the housekeeper at work. The neighborhood shoeshine boy cleaned my boots the next day. I pray that I never stray from the path again.

Bundled in the Snow

Alisa stands on the slippery, slushy patio in front of the yard of our fenced-in housing compound in Kabul.

Don't Use This Door

As winter set in, my colleagues decided it was time to keep the patio door closed so that the office would stay warm. This sign was promptly taped to the door. That's me behind the glass door in the office.

Afghan Officials Uncover Alisa's Secret

Afghan consular officials kindly granted me a visa to stay here, but I guess the long hair in my passport photo was not enough to convince them that I am a woman. I thought those surgeons in Bangkok did a pretty darn good job! This photo courtesy of my colleague Musadeq Sadeq.

Seeing Snow Again

Last night, Landry and I had saw our first up-close snowfall in years -- five years for me. I've seen snow on mountains in Nepal and in Afghanistan recently, but it's not the same as having a white lawn before you, only a few paces away, freshly dusted. It all melted into the city's muddy roads under the day's sun, making my commute to work less dusty than usual.

Life in Kabul

Landry and I arrived at our new home in Kabul on Nov. 9. We have been forced to make minor adjustments to our lives -- making sure to brush our teeth and shower during the few hours each day when there is electricity, and sleeping nestled under heavy blankets in the winter chill that settled on this city the day we arrived. We've since had a wood-burning stove installed in our bedroom, which keeps us warm for a few hours when we go to bed.

Work has been interesting for both of us. Landry spends his days creating graphic designs, such as a new logo for the Ministry of Women's Affairs. Meanwhile, I interviewed the minister herself, and have done other stories, including one about a 16-year-old woman, Gulsum, who set herself on fire to escape her abusive, 40-year-old husband.

Today, my workplace office manager's 2-month-old daughter died. She had a bad cough yesterday, and then at midnight, she died, I was told. Afghanistan has one of the world's highest rates of infant mortality.

Kabul from Atop: Brownville

Old Afghan

Islamabad

Islamabad