While waiting to go through customs in the Afghani border town, we milled about with other young westerners. Andy spotted a girl from a van we had given a push to in the border town on the Iranian side. She was a pretty blonde traveling with a van full of guys, and he was trying to find out if she was attached to any of them.
"I just can't believe it," she was telling him. "I can't believe I am in Afghanistan. I am really here. I mean, I can't believe this is Afghanistan. I've thought so much about this place," she said. "It's so unreal."
"I can't believe it," she repeated.
"Yes, unbelievable," Andy agreed. He sat just smiling at her and nodding while she went on and on in disbelief. Her name was Karen, and she was from Denmark. While she sounded a little too ditzy for my type, I hoped that some female company for my brother would help distract him from what was fast becoming his closest companion as we traveled east -- an escalating morphine habit.
Andy had started using morphine with some friends in Italy. He knew that I hated it. I didn't know what was behind his using morphine; he refused to talk about it. We had already tangled over his habit more than once on this trip. I was relieved in Belgrade when his only needle and syringe had broken, although I kept quiet. Good, I thought, and good riddance to those friends of his that are behind in Rome. This relative peace lasted only until Turkey when he spotted a pharmacy in a small town.
"You wouldn't have to . . . you don't have to . . . ," I tried to plead, but Andy was already out of the van and entering the pharmacy.
"Be quiet," he muttered. "Always walk into a pharmacy like you own it and there will be nothing wrong, especially when you are asking for a syringe and a needle."
***
By the time we finished our customs inspection at the border both Karen and the van were gone. It was only a few hours driving to reach Herat, the main city in eastern Afghanistan. Throughout the barren and desolate desert there was life, but life that had to be guarded jealously in order to survive. Everywhere there were ruins and graves; in fact, much more was in ruin than was standing. What was standing had to be protected. Walls embraced every living space, it seemed, and few windows looked out onto the world. Most of the windows and doors faced inward onto an enclosed garden oasis, inside a walled courtyard. It was in these courtyards that most of the precious plants were grown including tall, straight trees and fragrant flowers. Don't misunderstand -- there were well-tended fields and orchards out in that desert too, but only where there was water. Water was the key, as in any arid land, and I spied canals that meandered endlessly to carry water down from the hills and out from the streams and rivers to small farming plots.
These plots, in turn, provided life to scattered outposts in this desolate land, and had done so for many thousands of years. I had the sense that long, long ago this had been a fruitful land with seemingly endless woods and wildlife. Now this heritage was mostly lost except in well-tended small plots, behind closely guarded walls. As we roamed farther into Afghanistan we did later discover remote valleys, with remnants of what seemed to be great forests. However, the lack of timber became increasingly apparent as we traveled, and the tall, straight trees that we spotted in the courtyards were likely being grown not for shade, but for practical purposes ranging from roof poles to shovel handles. I soon discovered that just to find a stout walking stick was rare and valuable.
We arrived in Herat by evening, which except for a few trucks, appeared to be unchanged since the seventeenth century. Our day's drive had somehow spanned centuries, a journey through time hurtling us backwards. The main concession to modern life was the truck. If there was any electricity it was not readily apparent. Kerosene lanterns lit the streets, and people, horses, donkeys and carts far outnumbered the few cars and trucks. The metropolitan area appeared to be all mud construction, mostly low one- or two-story buildings. These buildings had small windows without glass that were shuttered at night. The shutters were a dark wood -- so dark as to be almost black, and so weathered and cracked that they seemed ancient. The shutters and window frames were covered with geometric carvings, not in delicate filigree, but with sharp-edged, distinct symbols that must have been carved when the wood was freshly milled.
We stopped at a chai hana near the bazaar to eat dinner. The meal cost ten afghanis each -- or about twelve cents. At the time the exchange rate was eighty afghanis to one U.S. dollar. During dinner Andy negotiated with the waiter for a two-ounce chunk of hashish for seventy afghanis. After eating we walked down the street to check out the hotel, and while there Andy bought a one-pound bag of pot for one-hundred afghanis from the hotel manager. When we were in Iran, the rumor was that anyone caught with illegal drugs was immediately hauled to the nearest field and shot. To find such easy availability of drugs in Afghanistan confirmed that the tales we had heard were true.
As we were leaving the hotel, we ran into Karen, the Danish blonde from the border crossing. Her six traveling companions all had places in their vehicle to sleep in their vehicle, but she was left out.
"Why not sleep in our van," Andy suggested. "We're right here, parked under two pine trees."
"Sure," Karen agreed. "Let me get my stuff."
***
We stayed only three days in Herat. Andy used the time to get to know Karen, while I soaked up local culture in the main bazaar, located at the base of the ruined citadel. I met people and tried out the local food, mainly unleavened bread or rice, and oily, overcooked greens that resembled spinach. The meat was lamb or chicken, prepared on open grills as kebabs, or served in an oily curry sauce. The local specialty throughout Iran and Afghanistan was pilau, a rice pilaf, greasy with flecks of mystery meat.
Earlier, at one of these typical meals in Iran, Andy had remarked, "That was a good meal." Good was not exactly how I would describe the food, but it did fill us up. Sometimes eggs were available, and were usually the safest choice because they could be requested hard-boiled. We were sick from time to time, however, never so sick as to give up eating at chai hanas.
With the total absence of electricity, nights were darker than I had ever seen. The city huddled against the night, and we gathered with everyone else in the only nighttime refuge for travelers -- tiny chai hanas dimly lit with only with kerosene lamps. Life here went at a totally different pace -- about the speed of a walk; the wheel was still mostly attached to a cart and horse. Mechanization had not yet arrived, and despite the few trucks and fewer cars, life still went about its business on foot.
We found rooms for the three days while we decompressed. Typically these lodgings were termed a samovar, and consisted of a one- or two-story mud building, usually built around a courtyard in the center where guests could park if the gates were big enough to get through. Inside the center of the samovar compound, two walls formed an L where the lodging rooms were situated, and the other two walls formed the L for the outer perimeter. A single room with pit holes completed the unisex toilet facilities, positioned either against the inside of the perimeter wall in the remote corner, or just on the outside of the wall, near a back entrance to the courtyard. Cooking usually took place in a room made perpetually smoky from the open fire because there was no venting. Not only was there no electricity or running water, there was also no bedding other than the cushions and pillows lining the walls of each samovar.
However, every courtyard did contain a well, although this water was suspect since the wells were shallow and none too far from the outhouses. Herat, like most towns in Afghanistan, had either canals or wells to supply water for the community. Sometimes the canals would be underground, culminating in a municipal well where people brought jugs and containers to fill. The safest way to get water was to make use of the omnipresent brass samovars that held boiling water and could be found at the samovars or chai hanas. The hot water was used to make either green tea or black tea, which were not only the standard beverages, they constituted the entire range of drink choices. There was no Cola-Cola available, and no refrigeration or ice to be found anywhere.
Herat was the biggest city in western Afghanistan. At the time, I would guess that 50,000 people lived in this densely packed, ancient walled city and surrounding neighborhoods. Numerous empires and civilizations had swept across the deserts and mountains of the region, rewriting history so many times that it was all myth by now. If I had seen ruins on the way to Herat, this place was a living ruin. Definitely the walled city had not changed much since the days of the Silk Road.
More impressive was an ancient structure that must have once been a citadel or ruined palace. It was also made of mud but with tall minaret-type towers in each corner. We had entered Asia and we had come by the back door, a door that spanned centuries.
The serpentine mazes that were the bazaars in the old walled city were overflowing with a bounty that seemed surprising and in contrast to the desolation surrounding the city this place was an oasis. The stalls in the bazaar sold everything the land offered, and filled the needs that the way of life demanded. The range of produce was surprising considering the desert setting; nuts and dried fruit of all kinds, grains, breads, and melons piled high in the different stalls that served as shops. The locals were farmers who were close to the land and knew how to extract a veritable bounty out of the desolation. In addition, there were traders -- cloth merchants, hardware dealers, woodworkers, smithies; the bazaar was teeming with activity, creating a giant oasis in the great desert.
As enchanting as all this was, something was definitely missing -- most obviously the women. Neither in the bazaar, or the chai hanas, were women visible. I felt this was a real loss for Afghanistan. Society is debilitated by such a division at its heart; both from the lack of the feminine in one’s day-to-day life, and the power that is exemplified by male over female. This can't help but corrupt the society and creates a real paradox when the rules to uphold morality and thus prevent corruption are themselves the source of the corruption. This is the same paradox found in many laws supposedly based on morality, and is one of the reasons that our founding fathers were so wise to demand a separation between church and state. There was a strong feeling of exclusivity in Afghan society from its very roots; the men could and did exclude the women, and excluded many others. I had some very good experiences in Afghanistan, it was by no means all negative, yet there always remained a wall that I couldn't cross. I saw myself as a stone that was skipping over the surface of the culture that was Afghanistan.
When I did see women in Afghanistan, especially in the cities or towns, they unceasingly wore a burka, a long, full garment covering the wearer completely from head to toe with only a small 2 inch by 4-inch grill of lace to peer through. The burka color was often dark blue, or some other solid primary color. All adult Afghan women over the age of fifteen wore this form of dress, which I considered to be demeaning, because my impression was that it was enforced on women from without. Western women learned to modestly adjust their style of dress. If a western woman expected to be respected and taken seriously in a village, especially by Afghani women, she conformed by wearing some type of scarf as a head covering, and a long skirt. At the time, western women were not expected to wear burkas.
The only exceptions that I saw among adult Afghan women were nomad women, or women in remote villages. They still wore long skirts and modestly concealed their heads with shawls or scarves, but they had more freedom of movement. These women needed to do physical work, which took place out in the open, so a burka wasn't practical since it severely limits physical movement. Nomad women also wore more vivid colors such as red or blue velvet, with small mirrors and silver ornaments sewn into their clothes, reminding me somewhat of the traditional dress of Navajo women.
I'm not sure it was a conscious recognition, but I sensed the closed attitude of the culture and this put me off from trying to delve into it more deeply. I did enjoy the simplicity of the Afghan lifestyle, which I attributed to the remoteness of Afghanistan. I never got to know any of the locals well enough to get a better understanding of their philosophy or religious practice.
I found the complete opposite of these feelings later in my journeys when I first met Tibetan refugees in India. Tibetans are of a culture that has been traditionally and geographically isolated as well, but now, as refugees, they are a study in encompassing others. Tibetan philosophy embraces the equality not only in all people, but also in all sentient beings, and the fundamental precept is to do no harm. 
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