Dressed in black academic regalia with a gold tassel and blue sash, I took a long drag from a cigarette as I stood staring at the 20-foot concrete wall directly in front of me. Coils of barbed wire stretched across the top, and Afghan snipers, with weapons drawn, hunched in watchtowers.
I stood alone in a hidden, grassy nook behind the administration building on the American University of Afghanistan campus in Kabul, away from a crowd gathering on the main grounds.
The weather was perfect with mild temperatures, a slight breeze, and puffy clouds. The spectacular, snow-capped Himalaya Mountains loomed in the distance.
I leaned over and began gently heaving. Panic attacks—sweating, pounding heart, racing thoughts, nausea— have plagued me since childhood.
As a rule, a person with anxiety issues should avoid war zones, but I was broke, needed a job, and ignored red flags.
Still, deep down, I knew my decision-making track record was flawed, so I consulted my former shrink, Dr. H. Although he had diagnosed me with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) a few years earlier, we did not discuss it much. My impression was that GAD was a failing, and if I were more like the Karate Kid, it would go away. The reality was quite different.
Regardless, Dr. H was enthusiastic about Kabul.
“It’ll be good,” he assured me. “It’s all good.”
His blessing gave me confidence that Afghanistan was the right choice.
A year later, I found myself escorting the Class of 2011 — AUAF’s first graduating class — across campus, from the administration building to the gym/auditorium where the ceremony would occur, about 300 feet.
The campus was an oasis in an otherwise dirty and teeming city, with spacious lawns, towering trees, and well-tended rose bushes. It had been a stark compound of Soviet-constructed concrete buildings on several barren acres only five years prior.
Dr. F, an Afghan who fled to America in 1980 when the Soviets invaded his country, returned to Kabul after the United States and its NATO allies defeated the Taliban in 2001. He envisioned an English-speaking, US-accredited university in Kabul to educate young Afghans to compete on the world stage.
Accreditation is arduous, and AUAF had not gained it after five years. Regardless, a dozen Afghan men and women were graduating, an impressive accomplishment for a fledgling college in a war zone. A celebration on campus had been planned for months. The excitement among students was palpable, but several colleagues and I had doubts.
At lunch about a month before graduation, I sat at a large round table in the AUAF cafeteria with a few colleagues. Lillian, who had arrived in Kabul about the same time as me, sat at the table too.
A couple of years younger than me, she was in her mid-fifties and tall with long red hair that often looked like it needed combing and a dry British sense of humor. She lived in my guest house.
Most of AUAF’s international employees lived in fortified guest houses that were relatively safe. However, a couple of months before I arrived in Kabul, the Taliban invaded a guest house, and several Swedes died. The Taliban had bribed an Afghan guard who gave them access to the property. The bloodbath was a reminder of our vulnerability.
The university assigned me to the Garden House in the Kart-e-Say section of Kabul, not far from a hospital, Parliament, and the Russian Embassy, all targets for suicide bombers. The compound lived up to its name with large lawns, canopies of grapes, rows of flowers hidden behind tall concrete walls, and a heavy, medieval-looking iron gate.
The compound included a large, two-story house with an apartment for a small family — a Brit, his Cambodian wife Malay, and their 4-year-old son lived there — along with several single rooms in which a Canadian, a couple of Brits (including Lillian), an Australian woman, and an American man resided. Another American woman lived with her Afghan husband in a small, detached apartment at the front of the grounds.
My cottage, nestled in a rear corner, was shabby at best with thin, worn carpet, no curtains, and a bare light bulb hanging from the middle of the living room ceiling. The tiny bathroom reeked of sewage no matter how much I cleaned. The shower head was in the middle of the bathroom ceiling next to the only light source, another bare light bulb.
I could not find anyone to watch my two Chihuahuas, Riley and Abby, while in Kabul, so I took them. I thought the guest house grounds would be perfect for exercising them, but it didn’t pan out. Malay’s unpenned rabbits (which she eventually cooked for dinner) roamed freely around the compound, so I usually leashed my dogs outdoors to prevent a gruesome rabbit attack.
Malay’s son constantly teased the dogs. He frequently pounded on my cottage windows to rile them up. He could have been a playmate for the pups, but he was only interested in taunting them. His parents didn’t seem to care.
Admittedly, and to my amazement now, I had done almost no research on Islam. I had no idea that dogs were haram — forbidden.
Garden House residents shared one washing machine (no dryer). The day after I arrived, the Afghan husband from the front apartment marched up to me as I stood on the patio smoking a cigarette.
Without introducing himself, he snapped, “You can’t use the washing machine. It’s against my religion.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t understand,” I replied, completely mystified.
“You have dogs,” he shuddered at the mention of the word. “It is against my religion to touch a dog or dog hair.”
“Ok, well, the dogs and I will stay away from you. We’re on opposite sides of the compound,” I said.
“Don’t you see?” His irritation grew. “You get dog hair on your clothes. You wash them. Then I wash my clothes, and I get dog hair on mine. I cannot have it.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” I mumbled.
“Humph,” he grunted and stomped away.
When I mentioned the conversation to Grace, a blonde French-Canadian living in the main house, she advised me to talk to the vice president who handled such matters.
He laughed and shook his head when I told him. He said that the couple could buy a washing machine if they didn’t like sharing. They were bullies; ignore them.
The husband closely monitored my laundry habits. As soon as I washed a load of clothes, he ran an empty load with the hottest water the washer could produce to sanitize it, and then he laundered his clothes. Occasionally, he approached me, holding a dog’s hair between his fingers and shaking it in my face.
“Look! See what I found in the washing machine?”
I would shrug and walk away. Engaging would accomplish nothing.
When I first arrived in Kabul, Grace had asked, “Have you traveled abroad before?”
“Yes,” I said. “To Europe.”
“Europe doesn’t count,” she had replied.
I was beginning to see what she meant.
Guesthouses were guarded around the clock by at least two and sometimes as many as four Afghan men who brandished automatic weapons.
Every work-week morning, which ran from Sunday through Thursday, an AUAF van or SUV pulled through the Garden House gate and onto the compound’s driveway to transport employees to campus. A guard walked around the car exterior, inspecting the vehicle’s undercarriage with a mirror attached to a long pole.
When the van was about to depart the Garden House, guards, in bullet-proof vests, drew their AK-47s and Kalashnikovs, threw open the gates, checked the residential street for activity, and then signaled for the van to pull out. Weapons remained drawn until the gate closed, and the van drove away.
An Afghan escort always sat in the front of the mini-van next to the Afghan driver; neither carried guns. University policy dictated that vehicles only stop when in traffic jams. If an accident occurred, no matter the cause, Afghans at the scene might pull internationals out of the car and kill them.
When the van arrived at the campus, a similar security ritual occurred with armed guards opening the gates to the rear campus entrance.
Our movements were limited. The university provided transportation to the few safe places we could go, and we could take taxis that the university had vetted as secure.
After a few days, Lillian and I donned our scarves (expected attire for women in Afghanistan), called one of those cabs, and headed to Chicken Street, a few blocks in the central city considered secure.
Lillian was a mystery. She was a linguist who had taught English in Jordan before coming to AUAF and had traveled extensively throughout the Middle East, India, and Africa. Although I could not prove it, I felt sure that Lillian either worked for or had close ties to British intelligence.
Chicken Street runs through an ancient part of Kabul reminiscent of the Silk Road’s heyday. Bearded men wearing turbans or caps and perahan tunbans (long tunics and baggy pants) lingered about. Shops lined the street and were tucked away in low buildings in a maze of narrow, dark, and mysterious alleys.
Lillian walked casually but purposefully. She strolled toward an antique store down a side street, and I followed. We entered the dark and hazy store through a small doorway. An Afghan man in his 30s and wearing a white perahan tunban threw up his hands, smiled, and said, with a thick accent, “Lillian! How good to see you!”
He motioned to his assistant, and within moments, tea appeared.
Lillian introduced me to Abdul, the shop owner.
“Please, browse around,” he said, handing me a cup of tea and motioning toward the store.
It was a maze of dusty rooms connected by low doorways and stuffed with antique carpets, furniture, and other merchandise.
Lillian chatted with Abdul while I perused the antiques, sipped tea, and eavesdropped out of curiosity. Lillian asked about Abdul’s children by name, but soon the conversation became muted as he took her elbow and strolled out of earshot.
About a half-hour later, Lillian appeared by my side.
“You ready to go?” she asked, stuffing a small package into her purse.
She noticed that I noticed the package. As we strolled along Chicken Street, she explained, “He gets me marijuana and hash.”
“How’d that arrangement happen?” I asked. Afghanistan was a tense place, and marijuana was relaxing. I wanted some.
“A couple of weeks ago,” Lillian explained, “I did some exploring and came here. I was walking along and smelled marijuana coming from a shop. I went in and said, ‘How about sharing?’”
“Let me make sure I understand,” I said. “We’ve been in Kabul the same amount of time, and you’ve already been to Chicken Street and made friends with someone who provides you pot, and you know his family?”
Lillian shrugged.
“I’m just amazed, that’s all,” I said.
“I’ll share it with you,” she replied.
Although I have not led a sheltered life, I could be, even in my late fifties, indefatigably naïve. I initially took Lillian’s story about Abdul at face value. Later, I concluded that Lillian considered me a gullible and safe companion, or she would not have taken me to the antique store. Abdul was one of Lillian’s contacts in Kabul.
Evidence that Lillian was a spy or agent mounted. She frequently visited students’ homes in remote villages on weekends and holidays. When I tried to leave my guesthouse because I yearned for a short stroll down the block in a residential area, an Afghan guard stood in front of the massive iron gate and held up an AK-47. I was not going anywhere.
Eventually, I saw the genius in using a 50-ish British teacher and mother as an infiltrator. Few would suspect.
At the lunch table in the AUAF cafeteria, we avoided talking about our safety at graduation even though it was obviously on everyone’s minds. Discussions about safety were informally discouraged by the university’s American president, a tall and thin white man with grey hair, perfect posture, and a square, tense jaw.
He maintained that talking too much about safety would whip up hysteria among faculty and staff and turn graduation into a colossal failure.
He had a good point, but, on the other hand, our lives were at stake, and reassurances of our safety had been minimal.
I piped up, “My daughter doesn’t want me to go to graduation. She thinks it’s unsafe.”
The table quickly grew silent. I thought I had said the unspeakable until a colleague agreed, “My son doesn’t want me to go either.”
Others nodded.
I turned to Lillian and asked, “Are you going to graduation?”
Almost in unison, all heads turned toward Lillian (others also suspected she was a spy). She hesitated as she surveyed the anxious faces. Then she replied, “I don’t know yet.”
Meanwhile, preparations for graduation were underway. Large white canvas tents were erected on the lawns, lunch would be served, and VIPs from high-level Afghan government officials to US ambassadors to warlords were invited. American-style caps and gowns were flown into the country for the 12 graduates, faculty and staff would wear academic regalia, and the ceremony would resemble any US college with full pomp and circumstance.
Warlords were important. Because their children attended AUAF – like other parents, they wanted the best education available in the country for their kids – they provided an amount of protection for the campus. Some of my peers were comforted by that knowledge, but I had doubts. What if one of those students failed a course or disliked a professor? Would there be repercussions such as kidnapping?
At a minimum, the first graduation from the only American-affiliated, English-speaking university in Afghanistan seemed like a tempting target for Taliban violence.
As AUAF’s registrar, my job was to lead the administration’s graduates down an exposed sidewalk and into the auditorium for the ceremony. It was only about 300 feet or so but looked like a mile.
AUAF’s security manager, a Brit who looked like a young Sean Connery, briefed me on plans to keep the event safe. Armed guards and sharpshooters would be stationed in the towers on each corner of the 20-foot concrete walls surrounding the campus. Visitors would pass through metal detectors, and security would pat them down. The Afghan military would establish a perimeter outside campus to prevent bombs from launching or suicide bombers from ramming a wall with cars. The efforts helped quell my concerns, but I knew they would not stop a determined attacker.
A few days before the event, Lillian and I relaxed on the patio surrounding the Garden House one evening, smoking cigarettes and drinking vodka. She calmly said, “Graduation should be safe. I’m going.”
As soon as I arrived on campus on graduation day, I darted into my office and slipped on my regalia. Despite Lillian's assurances and downing a couple of Xanax® pills, my heart and mind were racing. (In Afghanistan, no prescription is necessary to purchase pharmaceutical drugs.) I snuck outside behind the administration building for a cigarette, hoping the pills would kick in.
In addition to concerns about safety, I was upset because, much to my horror, I was persona non grata among Afghans working at the university.
My ordeal began a couple of weeks before graduation. I didn’t feel well but couldn’t put my finger on it, and then I started cramping and bleeding from my vagina even though I was post-menopausal. Concerned, I was flying home after graduation to see my gynecologist.
At the same time, I was worried about the Chihuahuas. They were miserable. Abby hovered in a corner in the bathroom, and neither she nor Riley ate much. They were tired of being penned up or leashed.
A month or so earlier, I had convinced an AUAF driver to take the dogs and me to a large, fenced vacant lot near the decaying Darul Aman Palace. AUAF owned the property, and the dogs could run and sniff freely.
An armed guard approached and opened the gate when we pulled up to the property. He was friendly, glad for a break from the monotony of watching a vacant lot.
Some Afghans were fascinated by the feisty Chihuahuas even though dogs are haram. They had never seen such small ones. When an Afghan guard at the Garden House jumped into a car to escape Riley nipping at his heels, the other guards laughed. They respected and liked the Chihuahuas. They petted them and allowed them in the vehicles.
I strolled with the dogs beside me for about a dozen yards into the treeless lot when the nearby Palace caught my eye. I recalled a warning that the bombed-out structure’s area was probably riddled with land mines.
I wondered if I was standing in a minefield.
At the same time, I noticed three large dogs running fast and rapidly approaching us in the distance. Wild dogs roam Kabul streets, and these had slipped through the perimeter’s chain-link fence, eager to prey on the Chihuahuas. I momentarily froze, concerned about stepping on a mine, when the guard rushed past me towards the oncoming dogs. He began hitting them with the butt of his rifle to scare them away.
Horrified, I scooped up Abby and Riley and ran with one Chihuahua under each arm towards the SUV in the guard’s path. The driver and escort stood around the car, smoking cigarettes. They saw me coming. The escort opened the door, and I jumped into the back seat.
Having chased the dogs away, the guard ambled up to my open window. I thanked him for helping and asked, “Is this lot mined?”
The English-speaking escort interpreted my question. The guard smiled and shrugged. “Possibly,” he said.
The escort added, “When the university builds here, the heavy machines will be armored to protect them from mines.”
“Why are we walking on it?” I queried.
The men shrugged their shoulders. I asked them to take me to a fenced space where the dogs could exercise. They did what I asked.
Overwhelmed by guilt for bringing the dogs to Kabul, I became determined to get them home safely. My older sister Patty had softened on the idea of keeping them for a while.
I flew with Abby and Riley to Frankfurt, Germany, where Patty and I met. We stayed in Frankfurt for only a day before she flew back to Phoenix with the dogs, and I returned to Kabul.
In retrospect, I flew to Frankfurt with the dogs and flew Patty there from Phoenix, at no small expense, even though I was flying home in about three weeks. I didn’t need to go to Frankfurt. Later, in retrospect, some of my decisions mystified me. Was my frontal lobe even functioning? Was it self-defeating behavior? I had no idea.
When the plane landed in Kabul, I felt fatigued. Nevertheless, I dragged myself through customs and barely managed the long walk to the parking lot to catch a ride from an AUAF car.
The ride from the airport to my guesthouse was, as usual, wild. Deep potholes riddled the streets, and no traffic control — not even a stoplight — existed in the city. Men pulling carts (the lucky ones have donkeys) shared the road with huge trucks.
While sitting in the back seat of the white SUV, cramps gripped my lower abdomen, and I felt a wetness between my legs. I knew I was bleeding—a lot.
I crumpled up my coat and slipped it under my bottom for extra layers of fabric to absorb the blood flowing from my vagina. I silently panicked in the back seat.
When we arrived at the Garden House, I slowly stepped out of the car. Sure enough, blood had gone through the layers of clothing and, to my horror, onto the car seat. I had left a spot of blood about three inches wide.
Unnerved, I fled to my apartment to escape the humiliation of the driver, escort, and security guards staring at me and chattering in Dari.
I rushed into my bathroom and cleaned myself up. Meanwhile, the car sat in the driveway, the men discussing what to do.
I ran outside, slipped through the back door of the main house, and knocked on Lillian’s door.
When she opened it, I blurted out what had happened.
Her eyes widened. “Oh my God.”
Muslim men (and most men, for that matter) consider menstrual blood beyond horrible. Women should never let anything bloody show.
“I don’t know what to do,” I moaned.
Lillian offered to help clean up the blood or put a towel over it. We walked to the driveway, but the SUV was gone.
“This will get around campus. It’ll be awful,” I groaned.
“No one will drive you,” Lillian said.
She suggested floating a story among the drivers and escorts that I had been in Germany for surgery and the rough roads in Kabul had undone my stitches and caused bleeding. It was regular blood, not menstrual blood. Lillian would casually mention the story when being driven somewhere. Afghans, like everyone, gossip. The story would get around.
The ruse didn’t help much. Drivers still avoided me. If they saw me approaching the motor pool area where internationals gathered for transportation, they either disappeared or took off quickly in their vans. I would wait until another international needed a ride and then quickly slip into the vehicle before the door closed. Drivers could not remove me from a van once I got in it. The trick was getting in.
Not surprisingly, I constantly fretted about bleeding heavily again at an inopportune time.
My colleagues agreed that seeing an Afghan doctor for a “female” problem was not a good idea. Physicians are not regulated in Afghanistan. Anyone could call himself (rarely herself) a doctor. Even if a doctor had graduated from Kabul University, the level of training was not on par with western standards.
Instead, I used multiple thick pads and tampons and waited for graduation to be over with so that I could visit my doctor in the States.
The blood-on-the-seat issue and concerns about safety weighed heavily on my mind as I stood in the nook behind the administration building before the graduation ceremony. I took a final drag from the cigarette and squashed the butt in a tin can used as a makeshift ashtray.
I turned toward the activity on the main campus grounds, took a deep breath, and somehow made myself walk to the steps in front of the administration building and join a dozen graduates dressed in caps and gowns. Their excitement was palpable. I had become acquainted with the students and was thrilled for them.
Dozens of well-wishers had gathered along the sidewalk leading to the auditorium. The graduating students lined up behind me in single file. The security manager, who stood in the crowd surrounding the sidewalk, caught my eye and nodded. I restrained my urge to run away.
With my legs feeling like gelatin, I cautiously but deliberately descended the five steps in front of the administration building and then turned onto the sidewalk toward the packed auditorium. The students followed in a line.
My face was sweaty as I peered down at my black academic gown, expecting to see red laser dots emanating from sharpshooters’ rifles.
I stepped aside when we reached the auditorium door. The students walked inside, down the aisle to “The Graduation March,” and onto the stage with a cheering crowd of a couple of hundred people.
My job was done. I walked to the motor pool office and waited for another international to come along and request a vehicle. After a few minutes, a male faculty member showed up and asked for a ride. I stepped into the van with him before the doors shut. Not a word was said, and there was no eye contact. The driver took me to the Garden House.
I went directly to a chest of drawers in my bedroom, where I had spread out my hash stash. I cut a small chunk from a black cigar-shaped hunk of hashish using a pocketknife, stuck it into a pipe, lit it up, and inhaled.
I walked with the pipe into the living room and sank into a shabby chair. After a few hits, I kicked off my shoes and threw my regalia aside.
When I had first arrived in Kabul, Grace had warned me that the city “will test you in every conceivable way.” She was correct.
I felt discouraged. Instead of Lillian's fearless confidence and poise, I was riddled with panic attacks, self-doubt, and social awkwardness.
The rub was that I thought I was hardened and tested. I had already survived a long war. Vast armies were not deployed, but it was brutal, seemingly endless, and forever shaped the lives of those caught in the crossfire.
