CHAPTER 2

Afghanistan

Now two years has passed; I was eighteen and crossing the border into Afghanistan.   Andy and I were at the end of a twelve-day, five country mad dash across Europe and Asia and on the doorstep of a whole new paradigm.  I could feel myself begin to relax as we completed customs.  Afghanistan hadn't yet gotten used to the influx of foreign travelers.  Westerners were still a novelty, but that was bound to change soon.  We breezed through the inspections and there seemed a genuine goodwill on the part of the people there.   This was confirmed by a palm-sized chunk of hashish that the white silk, pajama, clad custom officials gave us as a welcoming gift to their country -- no tourist brochures here.

We crossed only a few miles of desert between the two border outposts, but we were surely in a completely different world.  Gone was the bureaucratic military presence of border guards and police.  This is not to say that they were not there, just that their presence wasn't strong.  In its place was a very laid-back culture.  My enduring memory of Afghanistan is the ubiquitous image of a man resting at a street corner, dressed in very comfortable pajama like clothing calmly watching life go by, while smelling the fragrance of a rose held to his nose.  Not only was there little sense of a police or military presence, life in general seemed as if it were centuries earlier in terms of dress and buildings.  Here was a land that time had forgotten and the Western world had passed by.  

Southeast Asia was the Vietnam War, bringing daily arrivals of U.S. soldiers to Vietnam and Cambodia for conflict and war.  But the Near East and East starting with Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, then followed by Nepal, Tibet, Sikim, Bhutan, shimmered in the distance as holy places of mysticism and serenity.   

ROMAN INTERLUDE                                                       

The passenger freighter from Veracruz, Mexico took us to Seville, Spain, via Colombia and Venezuela.  We lived for two years in Spain, during which Andy and I became experienced sailors, crewing for various yachts.  When the three of us arrived in Rome in fall 1969 we were licking our wounds full of Spanish salt, and in dire need of a respite.  Our experiences in Spain would provide the subject for another volume of stories.  Dorothy led the move to Rome when she found work as a librarian in the American school there.  Andy and I were at loose ends after the sailing and a few other exploits, and came to live with our mother.  Rome was one of many turning points in my life.  It was a beautiful city, and I considered Rome the ideal place for an eighteen and a nineteen-year-old to get serious. 

Dorothy had an apartment in Trastevere, an ancient neighborhood inside the old walls of Rome, but across the Tiber River.  The Tiber is the main river that flows through Rome, which is what Trastevere means in Italian -- across the Tiber.  Trastevere consisted of a warren of narrow roads in a random pattern of apartment buildings and plazas with churches and shops and public buildings thrown haphazardly into the mix.  The foreign community was focused around Trastevere, as was the counter-cultural center of Rome, so we felt right at home. 

The anti-Vietnam War effort was in full swing.  We attended large, exuberant rallies put on by the American community in the heart of Rome.  The rallies began as well-coordinated marches in various parts of Rome, often culminating at the Plaza Navarro in the old part of Rome, a huge beautiful open plaza filled with Roman statuary and fountains surrounded by outdoor cafes, that afforded an enormous space for people to congregate.  Often the anti-war rallies would reach tens of thousands.  Once the marchers reached Plaza Navarro, the rallies mixed speeches and music in a carnival atmosphere. 

Usually Americans speakers against the war began the program, speaking in English to large crowds.  The audience consisted of American expatriates and like-minded Europeans, including Italians, French, Spanish, German, and English -- mostly young.  American rock and roll bands that played anti-war songs and led the enthusiastic audience in anti-war chants followed the speakers.  "Give me an F give me a U, C, K, N, I, X, O, N, what does it spell" -- you get the picture.  It was a Roman version of a mini-Woodstock festival.  The music was accompanied with dancing in the Plaza, and the Italian craft sellers who normally did their business in the Plaza loved the additional customers.

Dorothy, Andy and I flocked to these rallies, which brought back memories of our intense involvement in the anti-war movement during our last few years in the San Francisco Bay area.  In fact, the rallies dovetailed perfectly with one of our reasons for leaving the United States at this time -- our opposition to the war and the approaching draft age for both Andy and me. 

During this time Andy and I also had all the other usual suspects to contend with

 -- Drugs of all kinds; relationships, sexual and otherwise; and rock and roll.  There was much good live music in Rome.  During this period a friend turned up on our doorstep straight from Pakistan with 3.5 kilos of the best hashish I had ever smoked, it was so good it would cause hallucinations, the only hash I have ever smoked to have done that.  She carried it in the false bottom of her suitcase, eight hashish bricks -- 4 inches by 12 inches and a half-inch thick.  This was when hashish was hard to come by in Rome; so needless to say, my brother and I were very popular for a time. 

Hashish is made from tar-like resins found on marijuana plants.  The active ingredients from the plant are concentrated in this residue; thus it takes much less of this substance to get the effects from smoking it.  The residue is formed into dense bricks, like slabs of hardened putty, dark brown to nearly black in color, and in this case had a gold foil seal placed on the upper third of the brick.  Later in Afghanistan I would learn how hashish was harvested and be invited by a lieutenant governor of one of the provinces to help with the harvest on his farm.  Despite the difficulty of getting hashish, we managed to smoke it on a regular basis.  In Europe hash fills the roll that pot does in the U.S. it comes from all over the Middle East and North Africa, most Europeans who smoked hash smoked it mixed with tobacco in either joints or pipes. But sex, drugs and rock and roll were clearly not what it was all about, although we did make the best of our opportunities. 

Andy and I both had our share of experiences with drugs in California and Europe.  We had tried them all, but I was wary of the harder stuff like heroin and morphine.  My view of the drug culture was such that I regarded alcohol, cigarettes, marijuana, hashish, and psychedelics as fairly benign drugs.  For me, the most addictive in this lot was cigarettes, and the one I was trying hardest to quit using.  Then there was a harder class of drugs that you had to be much more careful about, including amphetamines, cocaine, and opiates such as morphine and heroin.  Andy had started getting into morphine with some friends in Italy probably as a result of some tough experiences he had in Spain.  It was his way of dealing with that pain and I wanted to get him away from that pain and the type of environment that facilitated morphine use. 

The plaza around the corner from our apartment held the outdoor café where I would sit discussing adventures both passed and future and the book titles we would give them friends.  My family spent many a good time hanging out at the café, which was always full of travelers and artists.  American movies were popular, and there was a local cinema just around another corner.  I saw the classic 1960s road trip movie, "Easy Rider," with Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda.  The story line of two men out for adventure cut so close to our journey that I felt it was speaking directly to me.  This was just before we started traveling again, and the movie haunted me during our trip to the East.  I hoped it would not be a premonition of what was to come.  I knew firsthand the ordinary hazards of riding motorcycles, having experienced my first car versus motorcycle accident at the age of 15, after getting my learner’s permit. 

Even before we left California, or even Michigan, I had always looked for signs of what was to come.  I believe everything that happens has a reason, that there are no accidents, that big occurrences are preceded by small incidents of the same nature, and that we profoundly and fundamentally affect and control this process by our actions and awareness.  When I learned about karma it made immediate sense to me that every individual is responsible for whatever happens to him or her.  We can't and shouldn't blame others for our problems, but rather we should own what happens to us and try to change the causes within ourselves and with our reactions. 

I was a ordinary kid who fought with my older brother, played with the kids on the block, and ate TV dinners in the evening with my mother and brother.  But from my early teens I was also interested in healers such as Edgar Cayce and his teaching on karma and rebirth.  I came to the conclusion early in my life that rebirth is one of the answers to life's meaning.  I knew innately that death was unavoidable, and not something to be feared.  Already, I accepted death as the one thing in life that could be counted on.  Everything else, even the next breath is unsure.  I remember visiting the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, on a family vacation, and being both awed and inspired by the ideals expressed in the construction and architecture, if not the organization.  By my teenage years, I was convinced that most religious traditions were dead, leaving behind only dry, hollow husks of the ideas and insights that had once inspired them.  I thought the living traditions had died, and the important unbroken lineages from one great teacher to another was lost.  I lamented that no saints were left, and the organizations left in their wake were corrupted by the politics of wealth and power. 

One of my early thoughts on the subject of rebirth was that I could see different animal qualities in people left from their previous lives.  I saw some people as being timid like a deer and others as being bold like a lion.  I saw much of the population of America as being the reincarnations of cows, which led to my teenage conclusion that this was the reason the population of America could be so easily led around like cattle and manipulated by politicians. 

I still vividly remember a dream I had in Rome that seemed to tell me that there was another higher option in life's pursuits, over and above the goal of wealth or knowledge.  That dream was a precursor to many of the choices that lay ahead of me and gave me guidance as to the path that I should take.  The character in the dream was a friend of mine who had the same first name as I.  This Steve stood with money in one hand and a book in the other, and was trying to decide which way to go when he realized that there was another choice, one that was directly overhead.  At this point he dropped both the money and the book, put his hands together in prayer, and rose straight up into the air.  This still remains the most straightforward dream I have ever had.  I didn’t need to be Freud to interpret it. 

So Rome became the stepping off point for the next part of the journey.  My brother and I lived in Rome for about six months, with the looming idea of continuing on with our travels.  By now it was early spring of 1970.  During our entire stay in Europe there was a constant flow of travelers going on to India and the East.  This flow had an effect on us like the current of a powerful river.  I felt a calling that was reminiscent of Horace Greeley's exhortation during the nineteenth century, but instead of the West, it was calling, "Go East, young man."  This had been pulling at me for quite some time.  We were saving our money and making connections, when a friend, Felipe, offered us a Volkswagen van that was 15 years old.  A 1955 model, it was two-toned in color with the upper half white and the lower half red.   In the back were bench seats that converted into a bed.

We put this van through its paces driving around Italy with our friends over some rough roads on which it did fine, including an approach to a bridge that caused us to become momentarily airborne.  As we approached the bridge, the road curved up sharply, which at the speed we were traveling threw the van up into the air.  The van came down hard on the bridge but with no damage.  That told me the suspension would make the trip, something I would remember later when passing a newer Volkswagen van with a broken spring on the side of the road in Iran.  Our van wasn't without its peculiarities; when you stepped on the brakes the headlights came on, the emergency brake was non-existent, and the horn didn't work.  Our horn was an old cow horn found in the countryside and stuck onto what was left of the side view mirror on the driver's side.  It was our editorial on the excessive use of horns in that part of the world and our lucky talisman to boot.  To me the fact that the horn didn't work was an asset because I was fed up with how frequently people in that part of the world used their horns for every minor frustration.  Later the non-working horn would make trading the van more difficult.  

We did have one minor mishap on our trial runs through Italy, a brake failure that Felipe promised he would fix before we took the van.  Our trusting nature would later almost cut the trip short before it started, but we didn't know that then.  It was in Rome where I started to learn how to drive in Europe and Asia; the first lesson was not to take your eyes off the road in front.  It seemed that the guy in front had the right of way always, meaning someone would pull out in front of you or changes lanes into your lane.   You had to be ready to see this and avoid the accident, one did not have the luxury of time to look in the rear view mirror in order to give way to others, all focus had to be in front.

Another of the peculiarities of the van was the paperwork.  Felipe had given us the title, but had not signed it or changed it over into our names.  This was later to present some problems when crossing borders.  Felipe's intention was that Andy and I would sell this vehicle for him; however, to me the arrangement was pretty nebulous.  How we would arrange the paperwork for a vehicle sale for Felipe was beyond me.  Still, we took the gift of the van as a sign, and with a few hundred bucks in our pockets, which could take you a long way thirty years ago in eastern Europe and central Asia, we felt financially flush and said our good-byes and took off.

Our plan, discussed in the outdoor café over countless cups of coffee and glasses of wine, was to go not stop until Afghanistan; after that all bets were off.  Our rudimentary route was to head north through Italy around the Adriatic Sea to Yugoslavia.  From there we would pass through the capital city of Belgrade, then on through Bulgaria and it's capital Sofia, then on to Turkey, passing the cities of Istanbul and Ankara, the capital.   From there we would head north to the Black Sea coast, and follow that to eastern Turkey, then south through Turkey, past Mount Ararat, to the northwest border of Iran.  From northwest Iran we would travel southeast to the capital city, Tehran.  From Tehran, we would go north, through the mountains to the Caspian Sea, and then make a beeline east to Meshad.  Meshad was the last major town in Iran before the Afghanistan border, and from that border we would head straight east to Herat. 

We had managed to get a handful of maps, but most of our navigational tools were the travelers' stories we had collected.  My brother had a pocket diary, and I had a camera.  I did take pictures of the whole trip, but they were lost a few years later in Amsterdam by Andy.